8. evaluation

1. Evaluation
Jay Birkin

2. Research
My research was of a big help to me for my project. In it I wrote about already existing games, My
research was very productive and allowed me to look at existing ideas so I could get designs to help
me with the final production process in my final project. The strengths of my research were creating
existing products pages, for these I got a collection of images of similar products that I wanted to
make and see what made them good and attract an audience and I did this for each different product.
I do not think I could have changed anything to better my research it had everything included in and
more and it was extremely detailed and understanding so you could see clearly where I was heading
with this project. I used some really good existing puzzle games such as the witness, The escapist and
limbo, these are all puzzle games but they vary and are on other ends of the spectrum. Finally the only
game which I used which isn’t a puzzle was city skylines, this was because I couldn’t decide on what
type of video game to make so I looked at different genre ideas to inspire me to sway to one opinion
or another. I learned that games that were very similar too my idea used lots of brighter colours and
that generally suits the genre of the game so I would base my final product of off some of these ideas,
except id prefer to make mine unique. My research also involved finding out the small details which
are relevant for selling any product, these include age range, gender and price range. This helped me
so I could choose weather or not to make it violent and dark or do the exact opposite. I did other
means of research such as interviews, I did two of these, these two interviews were 5 questions long.
These questions helped me to understand what other people liked but even if their opinions were
different to mine I would still stick with what I wanted to make because some opinions can be biased.
One of mine was answered with decent length answered and it gave me some ideas for my game but
the other one was short handed and didn’t answer my
questions very well or even at all. I took little ideas from the
answers like psychical puzzles to include in mine but all of
these other ones didn’t help me towards my game much in
any way.

3. Planning
• The planning was very helpful because it started with ideas for what I was going to make towards the end
of the project. My ideas were very well generated and it was a hard choice of picking what I was going to
choose to make for my video game. In the end the choice I went with was a mixture of my decisions
because I really liked certain aspects of them. These ideas were generated through a mind map on the
website bubbl.Us, this website was very useful in the making for my project. As well as mind maps I also
created a mood board, the mood board was a collection of images which I gathered for a purpose, that
purpose was to get ideas and influence my final product. I generated many ideas using mind maps that
went into detail about specific things and lots of ideas which I wasn’t going to carry some of them through,
so I decided on that when I made my mood board. I got a collection of images of the different products I
could create and chose these because they look great and I wanted them to inspire my game. I think that I
could not change anything on my planning PowerPoint, it is as good as it can be and I would not change it,
I did actually get feedback on it and it said I was at distinction so there was no need to change anything.

4. Time Management
• My time was managed very well because I handed everything in on time with it all complete and nothing to change except
for the exception of my production, mainly because this was a huge project. To make sure everything ran smoothly I had a
time schedule and I stuck to this time schedule very well. I didn’t miss out on anything important, plus I got all work in on
time. My time was managed well I think. I was on time for every deadline and sometimes finished my work before which
gave me a bit of time to look at what I wrote and if it was good. This is a table that I had made earlier on in the project
before going on to production and this was a great guideline and I stuck too it well and followed it. If I had more time then I
would have probably just ended up
creating even more parts for my game. I
think the product and designs I made
were great but of course there is always
time for improvements so if I had more
time I would have just tried to make
them look even better even though they
look good as they are now. This table is
right because I actually had 2 weeks for
making products and reflecting at the
same time so I just filled up my extra
time with making even more things
leaving me with a large total of pieces of
work for my project, which consisted of 1
min 50 seconds long video. I only just
finished my game together at last second
because my sounds needed to be added
a second time after all of the files got
corrupted and didn’t work, this dialogue
of course would draw in the audience. I
also had a problem whilst writing up a
page on my production reflection where
my computer crashed but luckily I save
regularly so it didn’t set me back that
much just about half a slide.

5. Technical Qualities
The colour schemes for my menu screen match what I was looking for. The existing product does not use the colour red and I think that
this suits the horror genre well but too much is not good so I think mine includes just the right amount of contrast. The black of the
backgrounds work well and really work created a better mood. The design has all the requirements that it needs it has darkness and
mystery, this makes it better for when before starting a game. The existing product has an image of it to the right this image adds to the
audience appeal especially considering the fact that it is distorted but with mine I have used existing parts/objects included in the game,
I think this is better due to the fact that the audience then can know what they are in for.
This again has its own style. The colours suit great and the pixels suit the game
genre more. Mine will be a bit more simpler for the audience to understand and
not be as complex. Black and white is simple but effective and it works better than
colour as I have already tested and it suits the video game just fine. No text but
dialogue this is not very useful if people don’t play with sound but if they do then it
means a better gaming experience. Compared to other games which use dialogue
and have the words along the bottom which you can read as well. The light in the
center is imaginative and looks good if it were not in the middle I do not think it
would work and would look too plain and bland. Other horror games include much
more detail than this but I like the simplicity.
The sound is very deep and this relates the
mood of darkness and horror. My voice is
included a lot almost as a narration for the
game whereas other horror games do not have
other characters talking at you in the game
most of the time it is just sound effects or you
the character himself who talks to himself.

6. Aesthetic Qualities
My opinion is that the work looks good
and I like my graphics and design for
the game. It is an original design and
the game genre really suits the visuals,
they match well to make the game
appear much more spooky. This was
creative and unique unlike anything
else really ever created.
My strengths for this topic were making it look more scary than puzzle like but I will still stick to the
genre that I chose. I thought that my game looked fantastic and I would not really change it in any way
possible, I think that it is different from other games and it is really appealing to attract a certain
audience. If I were going to change anything I would not make the floor tiles overlap, instead I would
have a black outline around every square tile. Another part of the visuals which I would change is that
when the game zooms in it becomes more blurry, especially when it goes really far.
These games
are both puzzle
escape games
They both seem to use much darker colour
schemes. This works well for both games
however the existing game looks as though it
switches between day and night so it is not
leaning more towards a thriller/horror like
mine.
This has an bar at the bottom which has the
option of a book and a bar, I think if I would
have included something like this in my game
visually it would be better but it wasn’t really
necessary in the time left I had. I was actually
planning on this but I never actually made it and
it still looks good without it.
The only aesthetical quality
which some people may not
appreciate is the N, it is
backwards, this is deliberate
to mix it up a bit, plus I
think it looks more
appeasing.
Both of the games are first person and this makes it feel more
like an experience which is better gameplay, so there is no
characters but in mine there is but this character does not
really interact. He is more just for show just like an npc.
The fonts in both games are
big and bold and this works
well for any title in a game.
The boldness contrasts with
the spookiness.

7. Audience Appeal
My audience for my game was met in my opinion. I thought that it should have been at that age because it has some
violence and it would have bad language which is why I made it for this age range group. Other things that I decided
were psychographic, demographic and social status of my audience. 10-20 is the general age for gamers which is why
they would buy my product . Every product that I have made I would say is intended for males but some females
might like them but a small ratio, they appeal more too the male gender because they are darker colours and use
more violent topics of gaming. Geodemographically doesn’t really apply to my product because it is different and
unique and vary massively so if somebody sees a product of my brand they are going too have to collect all the
merchandise if they want it all even more than others. The social grade is any and I would say I achieved this because
it will be a free to play game which is very reasonable. My product is very appealing and looked good so people would
impulse play it, They were appealing because they used darker colours and cool styles.