The document provides an evaluation of Harry Taylor's research, planning, production, and technical qualities for a video game project. Some key points: - Research included a case study of Call of Duty WW2 to understand important game areas. Primary research through interviews helped generate ideas. - Planning consisted of mind maps, mood boards, style sheets, and schedules. This provided foundations for the work but could have been more detailed. - Production saw some changes from initial plans, like changing the background color. The game concept was simple but colors and menus could be improved. - Technical qualities like audio were different than the similar game Dune, providing some originality, but Dune had smoother gameplay and

1. Evaluation
Harry Taylor

2. Research
• The first step towards my research was conducting a case study for a chosen game. I chose the game Call of Duty WW2. This was
because I have played/play this game so I can talk about it in more detail. The strengths of doing a case study is that it gives me an
understanding of what areas of a game are most important to research. I don’t think there are any weaknesses doing a case study
as it is extra research and provide ideas to the researcher. If I could improve my case study, I would look at more than one game as
a wider range of information is always more useful and gives the researcher a larger understanding of the topic under research.
• When researching existing video games, a big strength was the understanding of what makes a good video game. For example, I
could look into popular colour schemes, sound effects and even the types of avatars that are commonly used in a game and the
adapt one of those features to fit my game. This helped my product because I have a similar avatar to a very popular game called
“Geometry Dash” so people can maybe associate the two games. Another strength of my research is that it helps me to start
developing basic ideas. This is a massive strength because it means I can expand of these basic ideas and then eventually come up
with a strong final idea. The qualitative research I conducted (the interviews) are also a useful and strong point of my research.
This is because I can get ideas from the audience that the game is going to be played by. I would say that primary research is
mandatory because you can only get so much information when conducting secondary research and primary research ideas are
also bespoke to your specific product which therefore means you can make the game more to the audiences standards. An
obvious downside to this is that you can’t take ideas from every single person and then convey this information into your game as
not everybody has the same creative ideas, but you can take simple ideas such as game mode ideas as these can be varied and
changed. Overall, the strengths of my research helped me to create a better product due to inspiration from other games.
• There was only one big weakness in my research and that was the YouGov.com statistics. I think that this was a weakness because
YouGov doesn't focus as much research on smaller topics/subjects for the games I was researching so it was hard to find a wide
range of information that was valuable to my research. I think that I could definitely improve my research by developing it more.
By this, I mean I could be more detailed with the research I have found. However, as I only had a short amount of time and more
than one product to research, I had to keep detail just above average standard. Another thing that I could have improved on
would be using more than one source to find out about audience information. For example, I only used YouGov to find out about
audiences but I could have used something like Google Books. I don’t think that this would have effected my product because I
was already set on an idea just from the brief. I think that it may have effected some minimal things like shades of colours but
nothing major.
• Overall, my research proved to give me more strengths for my production than weaknesses and actually influenced me to change
certain parts from my plans.

3. Planning
• I started off my planning by listing my initial reactions to the brief we were given. A strength of this is that it helps me to gain a
greater knowledge of the brief and I can also start thinking of any initial ideas. I then created a mind map of three different
potential ideas that I could take into production. I came up with a driving game, a side scroller game and a shooter game. I chose
these three genres because these are all types of games that I have played which means I can generate better ideas to put into
one of these games. If I had chosen to make a “TellTale” type of game(a game that revolves around choosing an option for your
character to carry out), I probably would have lacked in ideas as I do not play those games. I have found that it is definitely easier
to produce a game when you have had experience with games as you want your game to be as good as the big games out there. A
strength of making a mind map is that no idea has to be perfect straight away as you can then choose a final idea and then create
another mind map and develop that final idea further. Creating more than one mind map helped me because I went from a
summary of the game I was going to make to then having an idea for colours, avatar shapes and in game items such as
collectibles. A weakness to point out for using mind maps is that not everyone likes the idea of having ideas spread unorganised
around a page. This could mean that people get confused over their own idea and then don’t do very well in production. An
alternative to a mind map is a simple list of ideas one after the other so that people don’t get overwhelmed by their own ideas.
The third stage within the planning process was the mood board. I did not find this very useful after creating a mind map but I
think that looking at certain colours and fonts gave me some inspiration. On the other hand, I had already decided that I wanted
vibrant colours so getting an image of vibrant colours wasn’t very helpful because it didn’t progress my idea any further. I think
that I could have added images onto my mind map instead of creating a mood board because this way I can put my ideas to an
image and then change that if necessary. On the contrary, a mood board means that I can put my text into images. This would be
very helpful to people who learn purely by images, videos etc. I then analysed the mood board which added more development to
my plans. This strengthened my plans by adding more intricacy into them but it didn’t make any difference to my product. To
follow my mood board, I then made a schedule. A strong point of making a schedule is that it spaces out your tasks so that you
don’t do 3 weeks of research and then 2 weeks of production and no evaluation and even if you don’t use the schedule, it still
gives you a rough idea of what you should be doing and when you should be doing it.

4. Planning
• After I made my schedule, I then moved on to pre-production. This included making style sheets, health and safety plans and
layout plans. The first item that I made was a style sheet. For me this only meant gathering colours, fonts and an avatar idea.
I was already set on an avatar idea so I didn’t gather many images for an avatar. I think I could have improved on my style
sheet by simply adding more variants for colours and text as I kept it minimal. I kept it fairly minimal because I didn’t want to
choose a different colour scheme or avatar and then have to re-plan everything as I would have run out of time. A strength
of creating a style sheet is that it is re-useable. For example, I could give it to another person and they could follow the style
sheet to make the same product. I think that the style sheet had more weaknesses than strengths because as I already had a
set mind on what colours I was going to use, I didn’t really need to get more ideas. To improve, I could be more precise
when choosing colours during production. Another weakness of a style sheet is that you could discover a better colour/font
whilst in production which would make most of the style sheet unusable and would be a waste of time. This could also be
said for the mood board but it is important to have something to reference in case you get stuck for ideas. I then started
making practice layouts using images from Google. A strength of this was that I could visualise what I was going to draw in
Photoshop which would make production easier as I wouldn’t be sat idle trying to think of ideas. One of the later stages of
production was the contingency planning and health and safety. I think that the only strong point of these forms is just
knowing that there are precautions if something were to go wrong. A weakness of a contingency plan is that the solutions
for any problems that occur are fairly obvious so it isn’t the best plan to fill out with the limited time. I also filed out a health
and safety table which I thought wasn’t necessary and didn’t provide any strengths to my work because there isn't a lot that
could go wrong whilst using a computer. If something were to happen then it is easily solved/preventable by using common
sense.
• Another stage of planning was finding music and sound effects that I could potentially use. We could have chosen to make
our own sound effects and music using n application called Garage Band but as I was on a tight time limit and had no
experience using this application, I thought it best to sounds and music off YouTube.
• The final part of the planning was making a proposal. This was an important part of planning because I listed skills that I've
used before which hopefully can remind me to use those skills again in the future. The proposal is also a formal way of
getting all my ideas down. A strength of creating a proposal is that all my ideas are listed in one place in an organised way. I
don’t think that the proposal had any weaknesses because I did reference it quite a lot in production to see if I was sticking
to my original idea.
• Overall, my plans were very useful and I think my production may not have been as good if I didn’t have any plans to follow
as I did a lot of referencing. I think that they were definitely the foundations for my work.

5. Planning

6. Time Management
• I think that I handled my time management well. I split the main areas of this project into weeks. For example, I spent week
1 researching, week 2 planning and pre-production, week 3 and 4 producing and then week 5 evaluating. This works very
well because you don’t want to spend 2 weeks researching and then have 1 less week producing as this would make the
final product undeveloped.
• The week that I moved onto planning, the college closed due to snow so I had less time to develop plans and create
production experiments. I do think that having less time on production experiments worked well because I didn’t want to
waste time on an animation that isn't my final product as I could be using this time to develop my final product and make it
better.
• I don’t think that an extra time on my project would have made it better because I wanted it to be simple. I think that I could
have improved the menus by taking more time designing the text but the gameplay its self wasn’t meant to have a lot of
detail.
• If I had more time to produce my work, I would have focused on making a better background. Even though I said I wanted it
to be simple, a detailed background may have canceled out the simplistic avatar and menu.

7. Aesthetic Qualities
• My final product looks different from what I originally planned in my layout plans. For example, I changed an abstract
futuristic background to a city skyline. The first attempt at making a skyline looked better because there was a bright orange
colour clearly visible, but when I remade it so that it would actually scroll, I made the background bigger which covered up
the orange, red and most of the pink. This left me with a dark blue and purple which drained any vibrancy out of the scene.
This completely contrasts all my plans so I tried to fix this by making the platforms red and the avatar a bright green.
• The game concept wasn’t very creative as it is just a side scrolling platform game. The colours and shapes I used to design
the assets in the game are just normal and nothing out of the ordinary. In a way this is a strength of my project because I
have stuck to my plans and not made it up as I go along but on the other hand I believe it looks undeveloped and undetailed.
• The aspects of my game that I like is the city skyline effect and the sky. The sky was simple to make (smudged rows of colour
together) and it proved effective. The only problem with it is that you can only see the darker colours when the background
scrolls. This is a problem because it doesn't fit with my plans.
• If I could improve something about my game, I would add more detail to my background. For example, I would add more
into the background such as more buildings. I could also add an extra animation like a plane in the sky or something along
those lines.
• The strengths of the aesthetic qualities in my game are the lights on the building. Even though they are minimal, they look
very effective and if they weren’t there, the background would look empty. Another strength of the aesthetics is the sky.
Even though most of it is hidden behind the buildings, it still adds a bit of colour to the game.
• I think that I will also consider the sky a weakness because I didn’t do it the same as my first attempt. My first attempt at the
background looked a lot better and I prefer how the buildings looked further away but I didn’t have time to replicate this on
a larger scale.

8. Audience Appeal
• In my plans, I had the idea of using bright colours and trying to include some violence in my game. As my game is a very
basic platform game I found it hard to include any sort of violence. I don think this is a major problem because the game
doesn't need to be violent to attract a male audience.
• I don’t think any specific parts of my game would appeal to my audience I think that it would be the gameplay its self. These
types of endless games with unlockables are very popular so that will definitely appeal to an audience of 16-19 year olds.
• When conducting my primary research, I asked whether my audience would like to see an unlockable character menu and
the response was very positive. I also asked whether my audience prefers side scrolling games and two thirds of the
responses said they did prefer them as they are simple and easier to play. The final question that I asked was about having
more than one difficulty and all of the responses were yes because it adds variety to the game. My primary research did
actually make me change a few things in my game. For example, on the start menu I had a difficulty menu option but I was
never originally going to animate that. I ended up putting two difficulties into my animation due to my questionnaire. The
only question that I asked that wasn’t going to change my production was the question about whether or not the player
preferred side scrolling games. This was because I already had ideas that were all based around side scrolling games.
The sky was meant to
include bright colours
but they are hidden
behind the building.
The avatar is a fairly
basic design but when
the player gets higher
scores, they will
unlock more avatars.
The score reminds the
players that there is
competition in the
game which will make
them play it more.

9. Technical Qualities
I will be comparing my work to the game Dune. The game is a mobile side scroller. That is obviously one similarity between my
game and this game. The game Dune is also an endless game where the player must achieve a high score. A third similarity is how
the player can unlock more avatars from gaining a score of a certain number.
The first difference to point out is the fact that the game Dune is more complex in the way the avatar scores a point. The avatar
must gain height and go above a line to get more than one point and must land on a slope to get a point. The game is very smooth
unlike my game. The setting for the game is a clear difference and different settings can be unlocked by doing certain tasks in the
game.
The audio I used whilst editing my game in Adobe Premiere were downloaded clips from YouTube. I also downloaded sound
effects as I didn’t have time to make them myself. The audio was very different from Dune’s audio and I cant see any similarities
between them. The music is completely different which means my game is fairly original.