Looking back - My MA

Well - what is the best way to surmise my MA games design project?

It didn't start out perfectly, it had a great middle and a less impressive end. 

Well, that might be a little too short and critical.

I started the degree while I was working at a computer games company (CCP Games) as a QA tester, which lead the focus of my project towards what the company was interested in. As such, my original plan for the degree was to research the concept of mid-core games as a market and tablet gaming. I should point out that I personally held no interest in these subjects, but I was swept up in my first job at a AAA games company. Once that contract ended and I came back home I started to realize that my own interests lay in a completely different direction - I also found out that mid-core was a bum-theory and I had little to no interest in the overly saturated tablet gaming market.

I started looking into tabletop role-playing games and storytelling systems as they are something I am absolutely interested in. I always found that when I played role-playing games with friends I always seemed to have different priorities and desires to the other players around the table; I later found that I was trying to reap a different emotional reward to the other players, which made me realize that there were many different emotional rewards that role-playing games can deliver to their players, and even different ones to aim for!

I settled on trying to solve a question the disparity between my interests and the interests of my friends raised - which boiled down to why they liked creating stories anywhere but the role-playing table. I found that It came down to a lack of creative boundaries and jumping off points which are integral to simplifying and streamlining the creative process into something entertaining. To prove my hypothesis I created Preposterous!

The Preposterous box

Preposterous was a rather successful game, it proved that given the right creative boundaries and jumping off points players enjoyed the process of telling stories. It was my favorite part of the project and I wish I had stuck to my guns and tried to make the tabletop role-playing game based around the same findings. However, I wanted to make a digital game and explore my theory on how random chance might be able to a more immersive role-playing experience in a choose-your-own adventure plot.

The final part of my project was a huge undertaking - perhaps far too much for the time slot and a little too ambitions for myself. Trying to learn Actionscript 3.0 enough to make a game that didn't lend itself well to tutorials was the first hurdle that tripped me up, the 80K+ writing was a rather tall order also. If it weren't for my contracted artist (Rebecca MIchalak) I wouldn't have even been able to finish the analogue version of Wasteland (working title).

If I had the time to do this all again I would cut the desire to work in a digital format and the part where I stopped looking into what I wasn't interested in - that being said, I am not sure that things would've been any different any other way. Overall I am impressed with what I was able to achieve, it might not be perfect but I don't think anything ever hits the deadline completely finished.

Wasteland - the Analogue version

Cover of Wasteland

The finished Wasteland product - well, almost. Due to timing constraints I had to send the book off to print before I could finish the proof read! Luckily, I will be able to proof read the document before the hand-in. It is too bad that the actual book is nothing more than a layout and display piece, however I couldn't chance the book not arriving before the hand-in.

I am pleased with how the project has gone - the analogue version is an almost-perfect representation of the games system; a few of the more dynamic parts of the game have been removed but overall the system has benefited from the analogue system. I wasn't expecting the book itself to be as long as it turned out, but I was trying to create something that diverted from the usual methods creators of such games use to shorten their pieces. What else could I expect?

If there is anything I learnt from this project it is this: I really ramble when I type.

It's something that has become more and more apparent to me through this blog and writing that book; a lot of the writing I did could do with iteration and re-writing. But that's something I will have to work on in the future, it is unfortunately not possible before the end of this project.

Well, I am glad to see the project come to a conclusion with a physical representation of my product. It is a choose-your-own adventure game that takes an alternate approach to the illusion of choice in games: instead of there being a right and wrong choice for the protagonist there is a series of jumping off points to lead the player in their choices, two or three options and multiple outcomes for each.