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Essential experience
On Thursday after we presented our video he explained essential experience and why it is so important for us designers to consider when making a game. From what I understand and the essential experience means what do you want players to feel when playing the game and design the game based on that feeling, e.g. if you had a climbing game you'd want the player to feel tired and saw similar to what the climber would, after that you design the game based around tiredness, so you can have a mechanic that emphasises on endurance and being careful on not wasting your endurance.
Here are some of the questions that are essential when creating/ designing a game:
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What experience do I want the player to have?
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What is essential to that experience?
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How can my game capture that essence?
James emphasised the importance of using this technique in games development because it essentially is the anchor everything in the game, it is the component that connects everything together without it, you would have a bad game that makes very little sense.
For us to get familiar with this technique James asked us to do some homework, which was due in the next day (thanks James :( ), the task was to come up with an essential experience and create a page on your blog about the essential experience you have created: the page should consist of my idea including brainstorming patterns or mood boards.
Here is the process behind the essential experience homework.
Process behind it
What experience do I want the player to have?
I want the player to feel happy, in the sense of nostalgia in the game. By definition nostalgia means a 'desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life', this could be the game itself that evokes the emotion or it could be the player projecting that emotion onto the game.
Reminded
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Projecting
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Memory
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Triggers
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Excitement
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Past
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Seeing
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Reflection
Nostalgia
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Ideal/ realism
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Wishful
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Happiness
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Joy
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Escape
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Wonder
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Excitement
What is essential to that experience?
I researched what trigger nostalgic and there are many ways that could trigger nostalgia, here are the possible ways:
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Imagery
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Healing
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Seeing
Why would the game evoke nostalgia?
Possible idea:
Maybe the gameplays with memory as a there:
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Perhaps in the present, the game world looks horrid and disgusting, but in the past, the game world might have looked beautiful.
How could this be shown in the game?
Plot
art style:
Objects
- Looking at on object that reminds you of a time before
Environment
Bad world :
-Dark
-Gloomy
-Sombre
-Miserable
Good world :
-bright
-Vibrant
-Jovial
Mechanic:
- Time travel
How can my game capture that essence?
Possible ways that a game captures nostalgia:
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One of the most generic ways is that time travel to a time before everything went bad. As I said before nostalgia means 'wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life', time travel by definition is 'hypothetical or fiction travel at will to the past of the future', both time travel and nostalgia play with the idea of past and future, and how fluid the two worlds are
How to capture the essence of time travel being nostalgic?
Create 2 sketches explaining how the game could capture nostalgic time travel
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perhaps in the game world, the present is dark and depressing but in the past it was different.
Moodboard
This is the mood board that I have created based on the idea of 'nostalgia'. The mood board consists a series of pictures that perfectly shows a great contrast between the past and future, the pictures that look disgusting and dirty represent the future, I can imagine the character living in this rubble, longing for the past, which leads to the other point. The landscape pictures represent the past, the past looks bright and vibrant, typically when we look at the past it looks great and fun, we see it in a rose-tinted perspective, we're longing for that moment in the past.
First Feedback
On Friday we had to present our idea to the rest of the class via slack, we had about 4 or 5 groups of four and we had to show what we did for our essential experience. The group that I was it seemed to have liked my idea, here is the feedback that I got from them:
Molly:
Liked the idea of past and present
Find examples of games and movies that use nostalgia
Have a look at the game Oxenfree
I quite like the idea of a mystery game and triggering different memories. It could link to the lens of inherent interest as the player would become more immersed in the story and where it goes
Patrick:
Look at the science of nostalgia
Have a look at the game witness
Secondary Feedback
Emilia:
I like the concept of discovering the mystery as to why the world ended up the way it is. Maybe the player can come across a series of different objects/things and only some will assist the discovery of what actually happened. So the player thinks they've found the answer when really the so-called 'evidence' has no relevance at all.
Kaja:
I like your idea for an essential experience. The mystery game idea sounds interesting. How would the plot progress when the character comes across these memories? Other than the memories I mean. Maybe one memory could hint to a location the character should go next? I think Horizon Zero Dawn would be good to take a look at in regards to the memories scattered around.
For the Narrative game: Maybe the character could be a time traveller? Maybe they suddenly were thrown into the future and had to figure out what happened in order to back and prevent it from happening?
Kiera:
Play gone home
Lio:
This concept is interesting and links into the lens of inherent interest and projection. It is a struggle when people have amnesia (make sure to do research into this to represent) and I like how it will be in the layout of a mystery game. Will this be MOMENTO style where there are hints via post-it notes or clues that will allude to the persons past?
In the next week I presented the same essential experience to a different group to see what there perspective to a different group to see what there perspective of it. James in lectures has said that you must change the group you had every week in order to avoid an echo chamber.
With this group similarly to the last, they liked my idea here is some of my feedback:
Third Feedback
The task for the third peer review was to present a game pitch based around the work that I have been doing, I have to show the game loops, storyboards, concept ideas and research to give my peers more a visual reference to what my game idea is going to be like.
These are the slides that I presented to my group of 4 in my peer review, I had the review with Mikas, Valka and Daniella. In my review I explained that I split the essential expereince into two ideas, and from that I created seperate gameplay loops and storyboards for each of them, They seem to have liked what I have done so far. Here are some of the feedback that they have given me.
Feedback:
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Consider both ideas
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Research the narrative of both game ideas
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Trying to implement your own memoried
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Design the narrative of the game
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Make moodboards for both idea's
One to one talk with James:
Here are some of the suggestions that James gave me to improve on my performance in the course:
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Self-determination
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Milestones
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Time blocking
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Time and project management
To - do list:
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Look at some games and movies that use nostalgia
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Have a look at the game oxenfree
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Look at the science of nostalgia
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Have a look at the game witness.
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