Author: Liz

Instead of following a specific developer, I wanted to focus on Naughty Dog and their transition from making 2-D platformers like Crash , which—were simplistic in both a narrative and gameplay elements, to triple-A story driven works like Uncharted and the Last of Us. To me, Naughty Dog’s evolution into a character and story driven works was a radical departure from their initial beginnings.

 

In an interview with Gamespot, Even Wells, the new director of Uncharted spoke of the studio’s decision to move away from games like Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter.

“EW: It really is the motivational factor partly, and also because we develop a franchise to really take advantage of the hardware we’re making it for. And we felt that with Jak and Daxter–the way we were doing it on a PlayStation 2–was engineered to take advantage of the PS2.”

source: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/qanda-naughty-dog-on-uncharted/1100-6181783/

 

What I found interesting, was how their development first seems to stem from the hardware first and then to the story and characters they want to tell. While they worked with stylized characters and environments for Jak X (the last main title in the franchise they worked on before moving to Uncharted), they wanted to take advantage of the PS3 graphical capabilities and make human characters.

With Uncharted, they wanted to make a game that blurred the line between video games and cinema. Richard Diamant, the lead character artist at Naught Dog at the time of this transition, talked about how the responsibility of working on a the lead characters for the game.

 

source: http://www.3dtotal.com/team/interviews/Richard_diamat/richard_diamat_02.php

 

 

Working Title: Lost One

by: Sandra Kang, Madeline Finn and Elizabeth Agyemang

Description: 

First Play through:

You need to find her. That’s all you know, all you can care about at this moment. The boardwalk is shutting down. The lights are dimming, the crowds thinning and you only have ten minutes to reach her. You look in your wallet, where a picture of her resides. You need to find her.

In our game, the player takes the role of an unknown character, searching for the child depicted in their wallet. You walk through the crowds, picking up conversation, reading notes and signs and interacting with strangers and families, all in an effort to find the child. Sometimes it’s a little girl, sometimes a boy, but all the player knows is that they have to find this child and take them home.

Artist Statement: Our piece looks to explore the heightened anxiety and stress that comes with searching with searching, uncovering but being unable to find. In addition, we want to explore how identity is pieced together by the world and people around us. As the player interacts with the strange and familiar faces lingering around the board walk, they being to uncover the identity of the child and the character they are playing it.

Game Inspiration:

Heavy Rain- The scenes were the main character is search frantically for his sons were really a reference here. We want the player to feel the sense of panic and tension that this game invokes.

Assassin’s Creed II- the crowd mechanics in Assassin’s creed (the amount of people and the interactions) is something we would like to emulate

Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask- Like this game, we want to build time and multiple playthroughs as a narrative element throughout the story

 

 

Non Art Inspiration

Where’s Waldo – The notion of looking for someone in a crowd but being also intrigued by the other characters that inhabit a place

Rashamon- In this movie, the viewer and the characters have to uncover the truth of the situation based off of different accounts and perspectives. Identities are all disjointed and twisted because no perspective is the true one.

Vantage Point: In this movie the viewer gets a lot of run through of the same scene but the story unfolds from the different perspective in which it was told

 

 

For our game, we want to create a walking simulator in which the player controls an insect scouring for food. The game will start with the player on a kitchen counter. They must traverse the countertop in order to consume food. When the player consumes different foods, they will gain certain abilities depending on what they eat. For example if you drink coke from the counter, your mobility increase for a short period of time. If you drink red bull—you get wings. Food with a lot of cholesterol slows you down, and even foods that give you power ups can slow you down later. Watch out for the running water and don’t forget to jump over that burning stove. Or you’ll die. And if you die you can’t reach Paradise. Paradise is where all the insect meet and engage in erotic consumption of food and lust filled encounters. However, before any true insect can reach the paradise, they must overcome the sticky thing. The sticky thing is death. Do not get trapped by the sticky thing. Our trick is that we make things big…real big.

 

This game will be brought to you by Madeline Finn, Sandra Kanga and Elizabeth Agyemang.

sorry I don’t know what happened to my post…reposted with full access to the files for anyone.

Mac Version

Windows Version

Reading about the way Eliza functions reminded me of the game Façade. Being my first experience interacting with characters via keyboard comments, I was really impressed by how intuitive and smart each character in the game appeared to be. I had assumed that Façade relied on a series of keywords the user might type, in order to generate those compelling responses but I didn’t realized that this type of text based interaction between the user and the computer has had such a long history. In that sense, I’m surprised by how little it has evolved within the gaming industry. I mean, side scrollers have evolved into completely 3D landscapes, sprite based games have evolved into full scale, open world games and point and click shooters have evolved into well, shooter games. I’m just surprised to see that text based games seem to have remained stagnant in that sense. I wonder if this is because of the more graphical nature of the other gaming types mentioned. I mean, though all of those games have evolved graphically, conceptually they are still the same at their core.

I think that maybe because text based character games like Eliza rely on the one on one dialogue between the AI and the player, an evolution for the form hasn’t emerged in the same way as the other forms of games. I mean, now we have voice acting but unless the technology behind voice commands and reading them evolves in a more intuitive way then typing things on your keyboard or selecting text through your game pad, I don’t see the genre really moving forward. Also, because character and user interaction with said character is important, I think it would be a lot harder to make a game with a variety of characters—with their own personality and ticks—within such games. RPGs and dialogue based games try to flesh out their characters, and do so more than other games, but at the same time they are not nearly as intelligent or unique as characters like Eliza are.

Extreme Make over

There are a variety of games I was considering critiquing for this post, from Shadow of the Colossus, Mario Sunshine and Legend of Zelda Wind Waker but upon reflection I think the game that has really stuck with me is Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper.

Despite any preconceived notions one might have about a game staring a sugary sweet, superficial, plastic, commercial, action figure doll—Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper is a dark game. The premise of this game—similarly in Gone Home— is that Barbie, our main character, has just completed her time abroad at the Detective Academy. When she returns home, there is a carnival in town which her boyfriend, the illustrious, built and mildly dimwitted Ken is financially in charge of. At the carnival, Ken and the money raised for charity, disappear as a result of a magician’s act. This forces Barbie to search for her missing boyfriend, the money and the person responsible for their disappearance.

Unlike a majority of games “geared towards young girls” at the time, this was a game where the player (and main female character), has real agency.

I think one of the strongest elements of this game is it’s characterization of Barbie and its ability to build tension through the music and the slow pacing of gameplay. Never in this game do you dress up Barbie, or clean or cook as other games would have you do. Instead, you are constantly going from scene to scene, gathering clues, interviewing suspects and chasing (really the chase scenes were incredibly riveting in this game) the villain as you the go from area to area searching for clues from the disappearance using your handy magnifying glass piece together the mystery of the shadowy man responsible for Ken’s disappearance.

The unsightly characters, the haunting music and the eerie handprints and footprints that appear through the scenes really work to build the dark tone and atmosphere.

As a child, this game really struck a sense of horror in me, and now, whenever I hear the haunting music of a carnival, my blood turns to ice.

Oh, Ken.

 

 

 

Journey through the snow and be reborn.

Please download the game to play.

Click here: Red Rising

*Updates:

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