1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Sticking to convention, the game concept -
- Designed with smartphone platforms and touchscreen technology in mind
- Heavily influenced by other mainstream app games such as Candy Crush and Angry Birds
- My intention with the product was to implement the addictive quality of app games into my game. I believe that's key in making the game successful commercially.
- It doesn't challenge the forms and conventions of real media products. It's not really designed to. It fits rather snugly into the puzzle/platformer genre of app games. With such a tremendous variety of different app games out there, it's rather difficult to make something that stands out.
The convention challengers -
- The style of advertising. Inspiration is taken more from adverts for console games and animated films in its concept.
- Most real app developers haven't the money to spend on making pricey TV adverts, so have to make do with web advertising, and popularity gain on the app store.
- Those that do create TV adverts for their ads are often well established companies that gain income from various sources, not just the game.
- Most TV adverts of this type also include some footage of the app itself being used. Given the nature of my brief that wasn't possible to do in the time frame I had, although, If I'd waited longer to change briefs, I could've possibly made some footage of the game itself. As it was I instead used the trailer to portray the key concepts of the game, introduce the environment and the character, so I could expand on it later.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
Consistency -
1. Colours. They all use the same colours schemes, swatches on illustrator.
2. Objects. In each one I incorporated the same objects, Mobo the character, the hexes
3. Art Style. It was seen throughout my creation and development process that my art style changed and evolved. Mobo initially had a different colour scheme and the title had detailed shading. By the end of the project though both of the ancillaries and the ending slate for the trailers all used the same colours, the same types of images, and know had a consistent and identifiable art art style - simplistic gradient shading mixed with solid colour, and solid black outlines on the edges of the objects.
Complimentary -
1. Main image on the magazine advert is of a scene in the trailer, showing Mobo before he starts the level. It's actually directly redrawn as an image from one of the screenshots of the trailer animation inside blender.
2. Game icon emphasises Mobo clearly, with the framing of the hexes around him, and his face shown clearly.
3. The style isn't lazy. The ancillaries don't reuse the artwork or imagery from each other. They're all different and original. Only exception is using the screenshots as game footage for the magazine ad.
4. They each provide something different to the whole picture of the game. The trailer looks into the gameplay and character. The magazine ad backs it up with worded information on the captions and a different viewpoint of the scene. It also has more details about the game than the trailer does. The icon shows Mobo in a different light. He's inviting you into the world in the trailer, through the gap in the hexes.
3. The style isn't lazy. The ancillaries don't reuse the artwork or imagery from each other. They're all different and original. Only exception is using the screenshots as game footage for the magazine ad.
4. They each provide something different to the whole picture of the game. The trailer looks into the gameplay and character. The magazine ad backs it up with worded information on the captions and a different viewpoint of the scene. It also has more details about the game than the trailer does. The icon shows Mobo in a different light. He's inviting you into the world in the trailer, through the gap in the hexes.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Questionnaire -
- By far and away my biggest contributor to deciding on how the game would be designed.
- My target demographic was teenagers, and it was teenagers that I got feedback from.
- Developed an idea of the particular elements of an app game that draws people to play them, then come back and play them again.
- Figured out the sort of price people are willing to pay for downloading games.
- Learned the different opinions that people had on the impact that app games are having on society.
- Discovered which particular genres of app games are the most popular, and which games people can easily identify, to indicate which games are commercially successful.
Trailers -
- I shared the completed trailers around with family and friends. Nothing but positive feedback.
- Refer to my written notes, and the images, showing the feedback messages sent.
- That this blog seems to be worth reading, if the view count is anything to go by.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
General -
- The world wide web proved indispensable for conducting research into the industry of gaming. Also without it this blog wouldn't have been made.
- I made use of my family's various smartphones to play and analyse the different app games that I reviewed.
- I made a point of formatting this blog in preparation for this project, looking into things to spruce it up and improve it, to give it a more professional feel. The blog itself is the platform that I'm using to detail this coursework. I could very easily have just made written notes and kept it in a folder, but this itself is making use of technology
Social -
- When I was doing the questionnaire, I encouraged people viewing the blog to put in their own answers to the questionnaire, either by emailing or by posting a comment on the questionnaire blog post.
- Through email I was able to keep in touch with my teachers to get instructions and feedback on my work. I also used it to obtain questionnaire results and other feedback for my research into audiences.
- When I was looking for feedback on my two trailers, I posted them up in three different places: the blog itself, my youtube channel, and my facebook page, and encouraged feedback on each one. I also shared the trailer around among my family and friends, who in turn linked the videos to their own associates, who then emailed me their own feedback.
Practice -
- I also put thought into setting up an online survey for my questionnaire, using a tool called SurveyMonkey, but decided against it due to the cost of doing so.
- As I detailed in a different post, I had a go at using Unity, following a tutorial to make a simplistic game, in preparation for making the actual game, before changing the brief and having no need for the software.
- Screen capture software known as jing, when I was looking for a way to record my animation. before I realised I could output the animation as a quicktime film and import it straight to iMovie.
Key Technologies -
- There are also of course the two pieces of software for making my game: Blender, the modelling software, and iMovie, the movie creator, both of which were key for my work being completed.
- The images I used for my post on the concepts for my game were drawn and coloured in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop respectively.
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