MA Multiplayer Games Design: Starting Up A New Team
👋 Hello, welcome to a new series of posts!
As you might've guessed from the title, this set is going to be all about designing for a multiplayer game. Since I'm now doing a Master of Arts degree, I won't need to worry too much about doing the programming / technical aspect of the project, so that's pretty neat!
The class is structured a bit unusually, in that the number of classes we have changes per week, so sometimes there will be a period of 2 weeks before seeing the class again. Since its all still introductory at this stage, the content is divided between providing resources for the developers and the designers, with activities to complete using the information we have been provided. There will also be some weekly slides to complete to help show our understanding of the various topics that will be covered.
The New Team
The plan for the project is to work as a team of 2, one designer and one programmer, to build a multiplayer game. Much like what I did in my final year of the undergrad degree, we will need to use Unity and PUN to help us create this game. The main difference this time is that the game needs to have more technical complexity in regard to setting up servers, having accounts to log in / out of, etc. Luckily for me, my teammate seems to be really talented with programming content for games projects! Plus, if we ever need it, we can always refer back to how my multiplayer game was set up with my GitHub 😄.
Game Ideas - Primal Instincts Proposal
Since I have a multiplayer idea already outlined from my Game Design class, I'll propose that to my professor and teammate and discuss its viability. I think the game idea has potential, plus it will be interesting to try my hand at creating a horror-based game for a change! If the idea doesn't seem to land with either of them, then I'll probably start brainstorming some potential ideas that I can go through with my teammate in the coming weeks.
In case it does get the thumbs up, I've started having a go at learning Arcweave. Its a really friendly tool and I can see it being very helpful for visually conveying parts of this game idea to my developer in an easier way than just by using a Word doc. I've had a look into Articy but it seems far more intimidating to pick up within a short timeframe, so I'll stick to Arcweave for now!
Closing Thoughts
That's pretty much it for the first week! I'll keep learning Arcweave's interface and playing around with it to get more comfortable, since its always handy to learn a new tool as a designer if you're in a position to learn something new. Next week will likely confirm whether we go ahead with the Primal Instincts idea or find a new one to develop and design, so watch out for that update!
So, until next time, buh bye! (⌐■_■)