Year 3: Research report: Godus

Godus

Godus is a game from the controversial figure Peter Molyneux and the game itself has a controversial history. Abit of history about this game first the developers 22 cans originally created a game called curiosity and was designed as a social experiment in which all the players around the world would work towards destroying tiny cubes to find out what was in the center of a giant cube the game was released on "26 of May 2013" Wikipedia: Curiosity (2015). The winner curiosity "Bryan Hendersonn" Wikipedia: Curiosity (2015) was given the opportunity to become a major component in the game got us where he would be allowed to affect  the game as well as Profit-sharing from the game. Unfortunately this ended badly as miscommunication from the company  to the winner and very little was given to him as a reward is also in raids the community surrounding the game curiosity as they felt it was a scam.

Goduds is a game that has been described by Peter Molyneux as a spiritual successor to his previous game populous. In the game the player  acts like a god and actively tries to increase the population of their community through the system they will gain belief from the community once this has gone the player can move on to new areas and explore. the player can also explore multiple islands but has to gather up ships and resources in order to make the journey to discover new lands.

The game was released "20th of December 2013" Wikipedia: Godus (2015) and currently that this states 27 October 2015 the game has sold "308,000 copies" Steamspy: Godus (2015) at the cost of £15 each quickly calculating this equals to £4.6 million in revenue.  Also the game had a Kickstarter a page where "17,184 backers pledged £526,563 the help bring this project to life" Kickstarter: Project Godus (2015) meaning that this game was successful financially as it was able to raise at least £5 million in revenue. so with a financial success like this obvious that the game had no financial troubles I could be completely easily with a competent development team. But this is where the controversy of this game comes in as it seems the developers had many problems due to internal conflicts between the development team and Peter Molyneux.

If the game is a financial excess time to look into user and reviews of the game to see if it was a success with the community. First off looking into the steam community reviews and it shows/away that the community doesn't seem to like this game so much. There are a total of 5000 reviews on this game with "1800  positive" and "3300 negative" Steam store: Godus (2015). mostly reviews are centered on the game being designed for mobile platform not the PC and I deliberately scammed the community into thinking that would be a full PC game. As well as another issue raised is the lack of content being added into the game and the lack of and bug fixes for the game.

The website Metacritic gave a user score of Godus "1.6" Metacritic: Godus (2015) most of the complaints from the reviews revolve around the lack of content and false promises the developers said about the game and have not implemented even though the game has almost been out for two years.

On the website Gamespot a review by "Daniel Starkey" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014). He often praises the art style and atmosphere of the game but often talked about the gameplay of not offering the challenge "nothing else in Goddess is limited by time or is in any way dangerous to anything or anyone, and so the possibility of failure in the voyage of discovery isn't a comfortable fit" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014).  he also claims based on his review of the game is over 50% complete "developers toucans say on the game's splash screen that is currently at 49% complete, and that feels about right" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014) state being a year into its developments this not after a good sign.

 Good points

it seems the goal is set a goal for itself that was too high for to achieve with the time and the development team at heart. It seems to have them promised to be a bigger better game than it turned out to be and this is where it's downfall is the most showing.

.Good graphics: the graphics are the unique art style which looks nice and vibrant adverts in well to the idea of a God game

.Nice peaceful atmosphere: The music and atmosphere set by the game is calming and peaceful

.Ambition: though it led through the bad reputation of the game the ambition to create some and fall short is still an apple tree for a small development team is something that should be admired that they at least tried to create something grand.

 Bad points

It is clearly obvious that the reason this game failed was the promise of a lot more content than it could deliver and with the financial success of the game is only the developers fault that the use promises of content on offer filled. of the writing of  this document the game is now after two years and many are still complaining about the lack of content and I think this point the game will not be updated any more and  that had its time to place in all the content promise and is not delivered. personally I think a game like this is more damaging to early access than a game that flout lies about self as this game promise the community so much and on the delivered only due to its ineptitude as development company.

Godus as a game had great potential to become something that unity to rally behind  it could adapt to them. what would the mistrust of the winner of the curiosity game as well as the lack of content delivered the game has completely lost its trust from the community and at this point has no way to personally I think that the community should trust this developer again as they had their chance to implement a lot of content into the game but I've yet not delivered. It is a shame because the ambition of a game like this could have been great ledger shows that even with vast amounts of money and early access game can still fail.

Bibliography

.Wikipedia (2015) Wikipedia: Curiosity [online] available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_%E2%80%93_What%27s_Inside_the_Cube%3F

.Wikipedia (2015) Wikipedia: Godus [online] available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godus

.Gamesindustry.biz (2015) Gamespy: Godus [online] available from: http://steamspy.com/app/232810

.Kickstarter (2015) Kickstarter: Project Godus [online] available from: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22cans/project-godus/description

.Valve (2015) Steam store: Godus [online] available from: http://store.steampowered.com/app/232810/

.Metacritic (2015) Metacritic: Godus [online] available from: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/godus

.Gamespot (2014) Gamespot: Godus early access review [online] available from: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/godus-early-access-review/1100-6418467/

Year 3: Research report: Earth: Year 2066

Earth: Year 2066 

This game has been involved in controversy ever since it was released on steam. Currently the game has been removed by valve for violation the terms of  the steam store for the reason of lying about certain aspects of the game which forced valve to offer refunds and Paul the game from the store. I'm using this game is a highlights show the worst of early access and how far a  early access game can go to defraud its audience appears much money as possible.

The game was released on April 17th 2014 Steam store: Earth: year 2066 (2015) and this described as an action adventure survival game from its steam page. the game was released by the developers killing Day studios and this has been the only game the developers have published according to gamefaqs.

Earth: Year 2066 is a survival game in which he was the player are spawned into an environment which resembles a destroyed outpost in the middle of a desert. You as the player  have to survive threats in the environment due to the poor developments of the game this was the only real game features just that the player can run around and fight threats that was no story or objectives introduced.

In terms of sales of the game not much information is available about the amount of units  sold. This because of the Wikipedia page entry for this game and also the steam store page have been both deleted so is almost impossible to find the total sale figures.

In terms of the community opinion about the game this is impossible to know as when the game was taken down by valve from the steam store all the community reviews were also believe along with the bots there are still some articles and people that manage to review the game for was taken down. A review from a reviewer called Leif Johnson from the site game spot complained about the games current state saying that "You can experience the entirety of the game in 10 minutes tops" gamespot websites: Earth: Year 2066 early access review (2015) and complaining about the price tag of $20 to experience a game that has so little content.  Many other review sites do not even have a score of the game as how quickly the game was removed most review sites tend to have ignored the game and only talk about its removal from steam.

Good points

Being honest about this game it is probably one of the worst early access games to ever be released. With no story no objectives, bugy gameplay, developers that don't care and a hefty price tag it's fair to say that there are not any good points about this game. 

 Bad points

Inside the final point to start the scheme listing all that bad points because of the amount there are from the developers lying about their game to the game must be improved in with bad UI and hazy instructions that leaves the plain confused quickly some over some of the bad points this game has.
. No goals: the game has no endpoints and no objective to complete meaning that players will wander around with no direction not knowing how to complete the game
. poor optimization: the game has a lot of stuttering issues in regard to frame rates though the graphics are not heavily intensive due to poor optimization and poor development
. not worth the cost: the cost of £15 for only a very small amount gameplay, poor graphics and very bad mechanics the cost is way too high for a game in the state
. 10 minutes of gameplay: with the small amount of landscape in the game which allows players to see all there is within 10 to 15 minutes and with a price tag of £15 this seems like a robbery.
. many bugs: along with its poor optimization the game consists of many bugs regarding enemies that some times will not notice the player and a lot of unbalanced issues and unrealistic mechanics in regard to enemies as well as crashing on menus and frame issues

In summary Earth: Year 2066  is apparent that the game was trying to scam people out of their money by offering them something that could be put together in a week or two and it is good that steam  remove this game from the store is not only does it shed a bad light on early access it also is conning people out of their money by lying to them.  I hope this developer and this game will be held up as an example of some of the worst, or the early access and all your mind communities to be wary of developers.

Bibliography

.Valve (2015) steam store websites: Earth: Year 2066 [online] available from: http://store.steampowered.com/video/290750/2031918?snr=1_7_7_230_150_7

.Gamespot (2015) gamespot websites: Earth: Year 2066 early access review [online] available from: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/earth-year-2066-early-access-review/1100-6419291/

Year 3: Research report: ARK: Survival evolved

ARK: Survival evolved

Ark: survival evolved is a multiplayer online survival game described from the Ark: survival evolved wiki page which acts as a main websites for the game "use your skill and cunning to kill or tame and ride the Leviathan dinosaurs and other primal creatures roaming the land. Once, harvest resources, craft items, grow crops, research technologies, and build  shelters to withstand the elements, while teaming up with or preying upon hundreds of other players to survive" Wikipedia:Ark: survival evolved (2015)

Ark: survival evolved has come out of the emergent survival game genre which over the past two years has become very popular in the PC community. With survival games proving very successful like the Dayz mod for Arma 2, The survival game the forest and the muiltplayer online game Rust. Ark tried to improve upon the survival game formula by introducing large dinosaur base animals into the game to offer player versus Everything aspects to the game more commonly known as PVE. As most of the other survival games have not implemented a PVE system this gives Ark an advantage over the other survival games on the market. with this new dynamic it offers players to just team up instead of fighting each other which is  not very common in most of our games as they mostly consist of people fighting over people of this dynamic offers more to players if they don't feel that player versus player is for them.

The game was released "June 2, 2015" Wikipedia:Ark: survival evolved (2015) meaning the game at the time of me writing this is only five months old.  It is already scheduled to be released on Xbox one and the Play station 4 under their daily access scheme program. In the first week of the games release on steam the co-founder of wildcard which are the developers, Jesse Rapczak claim that "over 400,000 units have already been sold at 25 apiece, yielding over $10 million in revenue" Gameindustry.biz: Ark: survival of old has already generated $10 million (2015). 
Jesse also goes on to claim that the development costs of the game have already been  paid for with this revenue "the revenue from sales has already paid for the $1.5 million cost of development over the past seven months" Gameindustry.biz: Ark: survival of old has already generated $10 million (2015). This means that even if the developers set aside an extra half a million dollars for marketing, extra development and bug fixing  they still managed to gain $8 million in profits just from the first month of sales over. 

From the writing of this the game has reliably sold 1.3 million copies Steam spy: Wikipedia:Ark: survival evolved (2015) adding this all at $25 each this adds up to a total of $32.5 million taking off the cost of developments the game made $31 million in profits from its total sales. it's very sure to say that Ark: survival evolved is a financial success so looking towards the community has it received such similar success in its reputation.

According to reviews posted on steam from the community there is total of "40,000 reviews" Steam store: Ark: survival evolved (2015) and one in four of these reviews are negative which is quite an issue. Most of these issues center around the game being hacked by other players, poor optimization and the game not being stable. There are not many other official reviews out about the game because of its state of development and how long it has been released for. looking at the reviews from steam it shows the still are problems but in the game's defense it is only banal for a few months at the rate patches and new content is being moved into the game these issues could be cleaned up relatively fast from a developer such as wildcard.

Good points

Ark: survival evolved has some good points and has taken good ideas from similar games and improved upon them as a summary of some of those points.

.Intricate PVE (player versus environment): allowing players to customize the games are they only can fight creatures and the environment instead of each other which is not really been an option on all their survival games.

.Steam workshop: allows people to create mods and utilize the steam workshop giving people an easy way to download and implement these mods into their own lobbies.

.unreal engine 4 development: a feature has been implemented allowing players to use the user-friendly game engine unreal engine 4 to develop mods for Ark.

.Constant updates: with weekly updates of the game and also dedicated staff and helpful developers problems for the game quickly being removed due to this feedback.

Bad points

coming back to some of the bad points around this game and some of the issues raised by the community there are some of those points.

.Poor optimization: The game still has many issues regarding optimization as players are still having trouble running the game smoothly with the hardware recommended.

In summary Ark: survival evolved has been a massive financial success earning millions of dollars in profit but has run into issues regarding its current state which I'm pretty convinced will be removed given time and because of the attitude of the developers it seems that the scheme once finished could be one of the best in the survival game genre.

Bibliography

.Wikipedia (2015) Wikipedia: Ark: survival evolved [online] Available from:

http://ark.gamepedia.com/ARK:_Survival_Evolved_Wiki [Accessed 17th of October 2015]

.Gameindustry.biz (2015) Gameindustry.biz: Ark: survival evolved of old has already generated $10 million [online] Available from: 
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-06-09-ark-survival-evolved-has-already-generated-usd10-million

.Gameindustry.biz (2015) Gameindustry.biz: Steam spy: Ark: survival evolved [online] Available from: http://steamspy.com/app/346110

.valve (2015) steam store websites: Ark: survival evolved [online] available from:  

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/

Year 3: Research report: Space engineers

Space engineers

Space engineers is an early access game released on 23 October 2013. From the space engineers website describes the game as "Space engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build spaceships and space stations are various size and utilization (civil and military)" space engineers websites: about (2015). The idea of the game came from Marek Rose who said he was inspired by advanced level Lego box sets quoted from the space engineers websites " this idea was inspired by his childhood days, spent with the popular construction toys Lego and Lego Technic" Space  engineers websites: About (2013).

Two years later after the release of space engineers the total number of units sold is quote "Space Engineers has sold over 1.5 million copies since launch" Space engineers website: About (2013). Not accounting for sales or price changes on the product the default price from the Steam store is "£18.99" Steam Store: Space engineers (2015). Quickly calculate these numbers together comes up with the total figures of sales rounded down to £28 million in sales. although the figures for the size of the development team or cost of production have not been released for this game is seek to assume that the game definitely broke its costs multiple times over and could be deemed  financial success.

Space engineers is based around the idea of creating spaceships from base materials. The game can be played in both single player and multiplayer and can be played in two modes creative or survival. Creative mood alarms players to have unlimited resources and builds structures instantly while survival mode means that the players have to collect resources through mining and construct structures over time. The game supports steam workshop integration which allows players easily to other imports all the players structures or download mods for their game and has a very easy integration system which allows other people to download there is mods automatically when they join your game. Most of these features have been implemented because of the successful feedback the game is received during its early access phase of development which shows when feedback is taking correctly the audience it allows the developers to implement features more successfully and also gives them a list of features which the audience want to see in the game instead of normally they would have to construct the game first and then listen to feedback afterwards. This is another way early access offers  are good concept for developers as it gives them good ideas on what the audience wants to see in the game.

Well dose space engineers maintain a popular reputation among the gaming community to find out I will look at our multitude of reviews about the game and compile them into  a consensus about the game. On the steam store page for space engineers there are "41,000 reviews" Steam Store: Space engineers (2015). 38,000 of these reviews are mostly positive with the other 3000 being negative which equals out to about 7.5% of the audience that review found the game negative while the other 92.5% of the audience found the game enjoyable.

On the popular review site Metacritic space engineers has a review of "8.5" Meritocratic: Space engineers (2013) from the users but doesn't have any official reviews because technically the game is not out of early access and is not a fully released game yet. these have been reviews collected from the two years of the game being in early access and show a more overall look at the reviews of the game throw its two-year early access process.

Good points

Space engineers has many good points under its belt here will be a quick list on some of those points and then start of the bullet points.

. Constance updates

weekly updates for the game that adds features or new contents

. workshop integration

this allows players to mods and implement their mods into the game and also allow the space engineers community to use these months in whatever way they see fit

. active developers to take feedback and implements that into the game

the developers often looked through their forums then take  this feedback and implement them to fix bugs or maybe implement new features that players have been one thing. An example would be many players have wanted planetary areas in the game and this is an update I was coming for the game as the writing of this document.

. going beyond the full game and implementing more updates to this day

currently the game is at 1.1 and still being updated by the developers as though it was an early access new that the game is fully complete but the developers still feel the need to implement more features to  increase the game's play ability even more

Bad points

space engineers doesn't have many bad points to its name as the developers have been very transparent in their goals of the game.  there have been some problems with the game but these are mostly due to its early access nature and most of them have been fixed relatively quickly are the developers. It does appear that we have some updates to the game old saying use cannot be used again which if players have invested a certain amount of time into can infuriate them.

summaries space engineers has received a well reception from games audiences and also made a heavy profits and has an exemplary example of what the early access business model can do for a game. 

Bibliography

.Keen software house (2013) space engineers website: About [ online] available from:

http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/about.html [Accessed 15th of October 2015]

.valve (2015) steam store websites: Space engineers [Online] Available from: http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/?snr=1_7_15__13 [Accessed from 17th of October 2015]

.Metacritic (2013) Metacritic website: Space engineers [Online] Available from: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/space-engineers/user-reviews [Accessed from 17th of October 2015]

Year 3: learning agreement

Learning agreement ___________________________________________________________________________ Norwich University of the arts Learning agreements ___________________________________________________________________________ Course:Game Art and Design Unit number: BA3a Name: Charlie Harrison Student number: 1300299 ___________________________________________________________________________ Proposal: For my final project I have decided to recreate and expand upon a previous project idea for a tower defence game updating it with a new engine and expanding upon its design. My reasons for coming back to this game idea is because I felt the project was unfinished and with more time that the final year offers I felt I could push this idea to its limit. Along with this extensive period of time I hope to create many different prototypes and have them play tested by an audience to obtain feedback which will be recorded and utilised to improve gameplay. I intend to build the game from the ground up focusing mainly on gameplay and game mechanics to create smooth and interesting new gameplay with the use of constant feedback from play tests. As I already gain a advance knowledge on certain game engines I will use this to demonstrate and show understanding of these practices by creating fully complete gameplay, intricate gameplay mechanics as well as showing the projects developments as more feedback is collected then showing how I have adapted gameplay to this feedback. Through the use of my blog I will be researching various methods of obtaining feedback from an audience as well as looking at industry practices on how to implement such changes within the game itself. As well as researching into other similar genre of games and seeing how they have implemented certain features and how they will impact gameplay this will acquire breaking them down into the purest form to understand how to implement a mechanic smoothly I incorporate with the overall theme of the game. This in turn will give me a grasp on how common gameplay mechanics function within a game as well as giving me insight into how they can be improved and expanded upon to allow for a better gameplay experience which I’ll be able to use when seeking employment. The name of the main studio projects will be called “Evolution”. it will be a single player tower defence game for the PC platform. The main aim of the player is to survive an infinite number of enemy waves through the use of constructing towers which will have a multitude of effects such as resource gathering, strategic defence and attack. Different to other tile defence games the Failure state within this game is to stop the enemy from destroying the towers you are constructed once all these towers are destroying the game is over. The USP (unique selling points) for this game as a mechanic called ”tower library system” this is also intrinsically attached to another game mechanic called “mutation”. mutations will occur to the players towers that are surrounded by other towers and randomly will gain new abilities called mutations these can be simple as staff games or even new physical properties to the structure. this then ties into the tower library system as players will be able to store these new towers with mutations and then utilise them in another place of the game. Meaning that the more players play and gay mutations always there will be to progress through. The reason I’ve chosen this area for my main studio work is to gain a real insight into different mechanics and how they interact with each other. As well as to explore the idea player progression and how this can be used to keep the longevity of a game as with this game the amount of mutations players can collect and store will be vast obtaining higher tier of certain mutations will become difficult a long process and I will attempt to study this process the player will go through and how it can be used in the correct manner to improve gameplay and player enjoyment. This will mean i will have to research into various different game genres that employ player progression in a means to expand gameplay looking from Genres From MOBA (Multiplayer online battle arenas) to MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). looking at many different articles and reviews on how this player progression is kept in check and balance for these games. As well as personally I find this idea of player progression and certain goals which are hard to achieve an interesting topic as it puts a value on hard to achieve our aims meaning that once they are achieved it gives a sense of satisfaction which I intend to explore and researched thoroughly and see just how powerful of a gameplay technique this really is. For my research report I will be looking into the subject matter of early access and whether this is a good or bad way of obtaining funding for projects. This research report will be in the style of an industry report looking very closely at facts and figures from the initial start of early access games to their current position. then seen whether or not this system has a future and whether consumers will either allow this method is to flourish or ignore it. A report like this will require a vast amount of research into many different games have employed the early access approach and whether they have been met with approval or disapproval from the audience this will also mean looking at various articles and financial figures of games from this area. though this is not directly tied into my main studio work this will be tied in personally to me and my future career as it will allow me to explore the opportunities of using early access to startle my own game ideas and whether certain information has to be learnt in order to create a game using the system and gain approval from the audience. I will manage my project using a schedule of each week breaking down the years in which time is allocated as well as a list of objectives that should be the filled within that week is also mean at the end of each week my blog will become updated with new work or research that has been undertaken. I will not use these in which same time is allocated to certain tasks that have to be fulfilled instead listing by what days of the week concern objective should be done allowance for lenience and unforeseen circumstances to be worked around. Assessment work:
Evolution is at tower defence game which will explore and delve into play progression and how certain gameplay mechanics improve this concept. The player must construct towers with different properties in order to survive and infinitely spawning wave of enemies and then to see how far they progress through these waves. The way the play will progress further through these waves is by obtaining and saving mutations that towers will spontaneously gain over time they don’t save these mutations in a tower library which can then act as a new tower spawning menu in which they can build any of these mutated towers as they see fit. This means that the more the player plays of the game the more mutations they collect the further they will be able to progress through the waves to essentially achieve a high school. players will be able to review all the collected towers they have in game or on the games menu and be able to customise them by renaming them allowing them to customise their Arsenal. What I hope to produce the end result of this. .One completed game .A research blog looking into multiple subjects that relates to the game The name of my research report is early access: good or bad this will take the approach of the industry report and focus mainly on facts and figures about this side of the game industry. it will look into through the use of facts and figures whether this side of the industry has a future or whether it will crumble. I will start by researching into most of the prominent early access games and also some of the major failures that have given early access to such a controversial title in the games industry I will also look at the financial gains early accesses obtained and also what the current opinion is across the games industry and summarise my findings based on projections of figures what early access future will be. Schedule of work: 21st September - 4th October: .Introduction to year three .Start research into research report .Start constructing basics of evolution game project .Update blog October 5th - October 18th: .Finish learning agreement and submit .Update blog .Research into similar games to my studio work .Research further into research report focusing on statistics and figures October 19th - November 1st: .Update blog .Implements more mechanics into a evolution game product .Start a draft of research reports containing 2000 words .Further research into research reports focusing on early access opinion within games history November 2st - November 15th: .Update blog .Submits 2000 word draft for criticism .Continue research into both studio and research report November 16th - November 29th: .Update blog .Received feedback from 2000 word submission .Develop failure states for evolution game project November 30th - December 13th: .Update blog .Undertake first play tests for the evolution game project .Finnish research into research reports and begin final draft of the report December 14th - December 18th: .Update blog .Have the finished draft of the research report and begin scrutinising and correcting mistakes .Compile playtesting results and implements within the evolution game project January - February: .Undertake multiple playtesting sessions for the evolution game project .Finalise and hand in research report .Implements more mechanics into the evolution game project .Implements comments from playtesting into the game project March - April: .Undertake multiple playtesting sessions for the evolution game project .Implements comments from playtesting into the game project .Implemented more features into the game .Begin to finalise game mechanics and features .Start to implement 3-D and 2-D artwork into the game project May: .Finalise projects and submit Resources: .Tutorials on how to rig a character model and create custom animations for that rig .Tutorials on advanced blueprint techniques in on Unreal Engine 4 (Artificial intelligence) Learning Agreement agreed and signed by: Course leader: ____________________________ Date:_______________________ Unit leader/tutor: ___________________________ Date:_______________________ Student: __________________________________ Date:_______________________

Year 3: Side project: Week 1-2 Insect

In the first week we where given a side project in which we where asked to do make something related to insects. I desired to make a games design document about an ant MMO.

Year 3: Main project: Two slides to show my work

Main project: Pretension to show what i will be doing this year

This is the pretension that i used to show my class what I would be doing for the next in both my main project and the Research report.