Video Game Chosen: Sims 3
Genre: Simulation
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MloaJR2YkGA
Website: http://www.thesims3.com/

Lens 1: The lens of imagination (45)

• Most if not all the objects in Sims 3 are modeled after actual reality. Objects like television, fridge or even beds are pretty much similar to what our reality has to offer.
• Things that are modeled after reality have to done in a way such that player are accustomed to.
  For example during sleeping it is possible for character to move around and even dreams.
• Time is something that player has to imagine. It is not realistic and feasible to simulate real time and therefore player has to get accustomed to character progressing faster such as life span of a character, its career or even its mundane activities.

Lens 2: The lens of the weirdest thing (69)

• In the various expansions to Sims 3, there are many different forms of unusual things that can make the game mechanics even more interesting. This gives players the option the freedom to choose the form of game mechanics they want in their game by purchasing only the expansion they are interested in.
• In the normal Sims 3, ghosts do exist and character is able to interact with them.
• In Sims 3: Showtime, genies are available and can grant wishes to character.
• In Sims 3: Seasons, aliens appear at time and have power to manipulate Sims’ minds.
• These features give Sims 3 a touch of what can possible not happen in real life and give players a good laugh at the end
  

Lens 3: The lens of the world (74)

• In the various scenarios/maps in Sims 3, there are various stories that a character can take in the forms of career or even the various recreational activities. Different activities improve different aspect of the character life. For example a character that is very focused on social activities will probably have lots of friends and usually host a lot of parties.
• Some similarity to reality is the need to have a job for income. Hence there have to be a balance between working and playing (or event working on his skills).
• In the world there are many options for character to explore. Some examples are Pubs, Gym, Music Concerts, Pool parties or even things like fishing.
• The world in Sims 3 allows players to simulate a “perfect” life for themselves which is usually achievable in the game.

Lens 4: The lens of freedom (71)

Character features

• Players are given the option to create their characters in any way they want. This includes down to the detail options such as face and body features, or even the clothes they wear.
• However, players might get overwhelmed by too many options and they can therefore have the lazy option of generating a random character with the random name and traits.

Character Property

• Players are able to build their houses with many options. Things like furniture, lightings, walls colours and many more are up for the players to choose.
• Player can also customize the grass outside their house with even more stuff such as a soccer goal post, car lot, or even just plant trees to make the whole place even attractive.
• However, the house is constrained to the limited land plot designated to the player. Also the maximum number of floors is restricted to 5 to simulate realism.
• As the same with character features, players are allowed the option to purchase a pre-built house to prevent the hassle of building from scratch.

Character Life

• Character can choose what form of career they want to take.
• Character can also learn what skills they want to learn, as well as spend its time on the recreational activity that the player likes.
• Players are also given the freedom to push their character to do things that are either not ethical in or common in actual society. For example a player can choose to do minor crimes such as stealing or even join a criminal career to provide a twist to the usual life that people take.

Lens 5: The lens of character traits (77)

Personality Traits

• Characters are given many different personality traits for players to choose from. Players are allowed to choose any 5 from the many given choices if they are creating the character.
• Traits can also be inherited via genetics from parents to simulate realism.
• Personality traits are grouped into 5 different category and some examples from each category are:
  • Mental: Can’t stand art, Insane, Computer Whiz
  • Physical: Athletic, Light Sleeper, Neat
  • Social: Charismatic, Flirty, Loner
  • Lifestyle: Ambitious, Frugal, Over-Emotional
  • Hidden (Needs to be unlocked): Burglar, Pizza Appreciator, Pyromaniac

• Certain traits allow for the character to have actions or benefits specified to that trait. For example given a Charismatic trait:
  • Characters build charisma skill 25% faster than other Sims
  • Characters in the Political career have more success asking for contributions
  • Characters’ conversation will never bore other Sims

Skills

• Skills also helped characters develop their life in the game. Each skill helps the character to do certain things better and they are seen through its daily activities.
• Example: A character with high handiness skills is able to repair his television set efficiently.
• Some example of skills are: Logic, Creativity, Painting, Fishing

Trine 2 Official Trailer: http://youtu.be/t-wzG14VZd0

Introduction
Trine 2 is a side-scrolling platform game that focuses on solving puzzles to complete each level. The story revolves around 3 heroes, a wizard, a knight and a thief, who wants to save their world from danger.  Players can choose to control any one hero at any time to solve the puzzle. Each hero has unique abilities which provide a wide variety of game play scenarios.

As a puzzle game, Trine 2 has designed a wide variety of puzzles to challenge players. By controlling characters with different abilities, players have a wide range of tools available to solve a particular puzzle. This allows players to explore different ways to solve each puzzle. In addition, players will not feel restrained as they have freedom of control over their play style. However, the puzzles in Trine 2 are static and do not have replay values. It follows a story progression and once the game ends, most players will not be motivated to play it again. 

Lens 35: Heads and Hands

• Contains elements of hack and slash by killing enemies which adds a new variety to reduce the stress on the brain from puzzle solving
• Fighting style is simple and fun to play. It involves fighting enemies while solving puzzles.
• Must move fast to dodge projectiles as well. This requires proper timing before jumping across some obstacles.
• Using both dexterity and brains creates a good balance in player experience

Apart from puzzle solving, the game also requires good hand eye coordination. To reduce the draining effects of puzzle solving games, fighting and dodging mechanics were cleverly included. These mechanics complement the story and engages the player.

Lens 31: Challenge  

• Challenged to solve puzzles with the given tools. For example, the picture shows a solution to climb up a cliff. Use the wizard to create a box to ride up the steam. To defend against the fire, switch and use a warrior’s shield.
• Players are challenged to switch characters to adapt to the situation
• Wide variety of different puzzles provides a different challenge. Difficulty of puzzles increases as the game progresses
• Difficult challenges occur when a boss appears. Increases the tension of the game and creates a greater sense of satisfaction after defeating the boss

Challenges are consistent throughout the game to create tension. They are also challenged to balance both puzzle solving abilities with fighting skills that are required during some parts of the game. The game design ensures that players will not feel bored while playing the game.

Lens 37: Cooperation

• Players can play with up to 2 friends to enjoy the full experience of the game
• Very special cooperation mechanism where player can swap character control depending on the situation
• Multiple character are controlled when in cooperation mode which creates more options to solve the problem
• Game experience is enhanced as teamwork will create new opportunities to explore new places
• Synergy between players when they work together allows them to complete each challenge faster

Trine 2 truly shines when there are 3 players in the game. In single player mode, players can only control one character at each time. However, when multiple characters are controlled, abilities can be used simultaneously. This allows infinitely many strategic team plays to solve puzzles. Players will feel motivated when they discover a new way to perform a specific action.

Conclusion
Trine 2 creates a fantasy world that provides player with a high degree of freedom. They choose from 3 unique characters and decide how to use them to solve a wide variety of puzzles. It is delightfully open-ended as there are many ways to solve a puzzle. Although it loses out in replay value, it makes up by providing players with an unforgettable experience in this magical world.

Analysis of the flash game SMO Arena Fighter, throught 5 lenses : Skill, Chance, Triangularity, Time, Competition

Document : http://www.lbarman.ch/misc/CS3247-A1.pdf

The Game

The game to be analysed here is “Fieldrunners-2”. It is a cross-platform tower-defence game, and the Steam version will be used. The URL of the website of this game is http://subatomicstudios.com/games/fieldrunners-2/

5 Lenses

• Challenge(31)
• Visible Progress(49)
• The Puzzle(52)
• Punishment(41)
• Freedom(71)

Challenge

The challenge in this game is to build towers appropriately to stop the fieldrunners. The game offers three difficulty levels – casual, tough and heroic, which can accommodate a wide variety of skill levels. New maps of higher difficulty will be unlocked as the player finishes the relatively easier ones. The game also has endless mode for all the 25 maps, where the difficulty will increase as the rounds goes up, with no upper bound. The benefit of this is that players who are really interested can explore various possibilities and find better plans. Such design is easy to implement, and at the meantime, leaves a wide space for the players to attempt. There will always be challenges as long as the players want.

Visible Progress

There are four kinds of visual progress in the game. The first one is in the world map view, the flags indicate the maps that have been finished, and from the number of stars on the flags the players can know the highest difficulty level that they succeeded.

The second one is for each map, there is a highest score.

The third one is the card view, in which the player can see the achievements they have made.

The last one is the tower view, where the information of the unlocked towers will be displayed.

All these representations are quite direct and easy for the players to see.

The Puzzle

Among the 25 maps in this game, 5 are puzzle maps, in which, the players will be reminded of some rules of the game, as well as be given hints on how to make use of the rules in the game. The five puzzles almost cover all the tricks that the players can play. They are purposely designed as an introduction to advanced levels. From the world view we can see that the puzzles are in a separate area, which indicates that other maps have no dependency on the puzzles. If the player find the puzzles are too difficult they can just ignore them, and maybe they will learn the skills in the process of playing.

Punishment

The game has only one type of punishment – every time the player sells a tower, 2500 points will be taken away. In this kind of strategy games, players should have a complete plan before the game starts, so although selling towers – or changing plans—is allowed, the player will receive punishment. In this case, I do not think there is a better way the change this punishment to rewards. The punishment of 2500 points is used delicately that it will not affect the final score very obviously, but it can distinguish the players with better plan. This is more like a reward for the good planners than a punishment to casual players.

Freedom

Except for the five puzzle maps, the players can choose any unlocked towers and place them in any way they want. The game offers perfect freedom to players. The players only have to follow two rules – buy whatever you can afford and place it any one of the green cells. Beside the rules, what matters will be the imagination of the players. Such freedom is very easy to achieve in terms of game design, and can lead to players to explore. Given this freedom, the players are not so easy to get tired of the game. Only one suggestion for the game – if the players can create maps themselves and share to others, maybe more players will enjoy this game.

Game: Dishonored

Website: http://www.dishonored.com/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkNPOMfxWY

Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcD28sNiB0w

Dishonored, a first person shooter action game produced by the famous developer behind Skyrim, is a game that allows players to play as Corvo, a royal protector turned assassin. The story is sets on the city of Dunwall, a steampunk themed environment that has been invaded by a rat plague.

Corvo is the royal protector of the Queen, Elizabeth which was killed at the beginning of the story and her daughter, Emily is kidnapped. Corvo is accused of being responsible for the murder of the queen and the kidnapping of Princess Emily. With amazing sword skills, sharp shooting skills and a gift of supernatural powers, players will be playing as Corvo to get his revenge.

The Lens of Essential Experience

The game offers the experience of playing as an assassin that not only utilizes the usual swords, guns and bombs but also the gift of supernatural powers like Blink to teleport towards far and hard to reach places, Possession to possess animals or humans to get around the places without being noticed, Freeze Time to stop time and do lots of interesting stuffs like grabbing flying bullet on midair and many more. This kind of experience is very rare in lot of first person shooting games as majority of them only focus on making interesting and unique guns instead of giving the player supernatural powers. One exception is BioShock series. In fact, the developer actually admits that they were inspired by the Plasmids in BioShock games. Overall, this game gives players a new and different first person shooting experience.

The Lens of Fun

Dishonored is fun in the sense that it provides lots of ways or combinations to kill the enemies. You can sneak in and struck your sword into the throat from the back, you can hardwire an electric passage to fry the enemies that pass through it, you can summon a bunch of rats to eat the enemies alive, you can reflect an explosive back to the enemies using Windblast, you can just Windblast the enemies out of the edge of a high ground, you can Freeze Time, possess an enemy and move to the front of a flying bullet, and many other interesting combinations waiting to be uncovered by the gamers. Overall, this game gives players the fun of trial and error in killing the enemies with a variety of arsenals at their disposals.

The Lens of Problem Solving

Unlike many assassin games, this one actually encourages players not to kill the targets. Killing more people will actually leads to a bad ending. So players are encouraged to accomplish every mission with a no kill run. So the biggest and main problem to be solved in this game is how not to kill as an assassin? For every mission, there is a way to somehow make the target disappear forever instead of being dead. Players are challenged to explore the environment to look for this alternate no kill method. This game claims that it offers lots of way to finish the same mission. However, for a no kill run, it actually offers only one method for each mission. So it is a disappointment for players who wish to play another method of not killing the target.

The Lens of Unification

Dishonored main theme is the dark reality of a rat plague infected city in the world that utilizes steampunk technologies and the Outsider’s dark arts. Overall, Dishonored has a constant theme throughout the game. You can always see rats roaming around the street that reminds you that the city is infected by rat plague. You can always see steampunk technologies used by the citizens of Dunwall. You can always see other people who can use the supernatural powers similar to the protagonist’s.

The Lens of Resonance

The most powerful and special thing of Dishonored is the combination of super power plus guns and sword stealth actions, and the contradicting property of not killing people even though you are an assassin that seeks revenge and that only by not killing people that you can obtain the good ending. In fact, it is so unique that it was nominated as Game of the Year by many gaming journalist and actually won some of them both by editor’s choice and by people’s vote.

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CS3247 – Game Development     Assignment – 1

Option 1:

Game:      Football Manager 2013

Link:          http://www.footballmanager.com/

Lens 6:     The Lens of Problem Solving

l  What problem does my game ask the players to solve?

The game asks the player to take control of a football club as a manager and try to at least achieve the seasonal goal set by the board.

l  Are there hidden problems to solve that arise as part of gameplay?

In order to achieve the best possible results, the player has to strengthen his team within the financial restrictions set by the board. The player also has to set up the right tactical instructions according to the opponent in order to win the matches.

l  How can my game generate new problems so that players keep coming back?

Other teams managed by the AI will also try to strengthen their own team as the transfer window and provide tougher challenges. The player can also choose to apply the managerial position from another team to take a new challenge in a new environment.

Lens 29:   The Lens of Chance

l  What in my game is truly random? What parts just feel random?

Most of the events are dependent on one or more attributes. For example, a player will be more likely to be injured if he has a high “injury proneness” attribute value.

l  Does the randomness give the players positive feelings of excitement and challenge, or negative feelings of hopelessness and lack of control?

Most of the time it gives the player negative feelings of hopelessness and lack of control.

l  Would changing my probability distribution curves improve my game?

Changing the probability distribution could certainly make the player more happy, but it also takes away the realism of the game.

l  Do players have the opportunity to take interesting risks?

Yes. For example, deploying a very attacking tactic when playing against a much better team.

l  What is the relationship between chance and skill in my game?

Most of the time skill is more important. However, a period with bad luck could change things around.

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Lens 31:   The Lens of Challenge

l  What are the challenges in my game?

The challenge is to achieve the board’s requirement within the financial limit they have set.

l  Are they too easy, too hard or just right?

For a skillful player, it could be easy. For a beginner, it could be very difficult.

l  Can my challenges accommodate a wide variety of skill levels?

Yes. Some players are good at spotting talents. Some are good at setting up tactics. Some are very good at exposing opposition’s tactical weaknesses.

Lens 32:   The Lens of Meaningful Choice

l  What choices am I asking the players to make?

The players have to decide which position does the team need to improve on and try to sign players who can play in that certain position.

l  Are they meaningful? How?

They are meaningful as your success will depend on your quality of squad.

l  Am I giving the player the right number of choices? Would more make them feel more powerful? Would fewer make the game clearer?

The player has to discover the choices himself that are available.

l  Are there any dominant strategies in my game?

Usually there are certain good players who would not cost a lot. Signing these players would be a dominant strategy.

Lens 46:   The Lens of Economy

l  How can my players earn money? Should there be other ways?

The players can earn money by selling their players in their squad. They can also win competitions in order to win money.

l  What can my players buy? Why?

Players can make signings from other teams. It gives them a chance to strengthen their team.

l  Is money too easy to get? Too hard? How can I change this?

Money is hard to get. As a manager, the players are usually unwilling to sell their best players so they usually won’t be able to get good money from fringe players. Increasing the players’ match day income would increase the money they would get, however as other teams would also have their match day income increased, this would inflate the transfer fees and it is not easy to increase your own purchasing power.

l  Are choices about earning and spending meaningful ones?

It is meaningful ones as your results will depend on the kind of players you have.

Is a universal currency a good idea in my game, or should there be specialized currencies?

Universal currency is used as in the real world.