Creating a Utopia (16/4/2013)

In today's session we looked at the learning outcomes for this module that can be found on Moodle alongside the grading matrix.

In relation to the above I took the following notes:

• Make sure I back up my answers/opinions with quotes so as to show my understanding of the module and the contents we have talked about. Referencing is really important, therefore should be included. 
• Do more of my own research and add it my blog otherwise I'm just forwarding what the lecturer has told me. Therefore I need to show my own skills at producing my own research, otherwise I risk a low mark. 
• Perhaps look back over my previous work and see if I still agree with what I wrote. If I do or don't then say why. That way I demonstrate an ability to analyse and develop/improve my work. I can also use previous written work to back up my future posts, therefore showing an increasing understanding and personal opinions. 
• Maybe look over my blog and see where I am in the grading matrix. Thus I can improve it if need be.

We then reminded ourselves of what we talked about last week before discussing the choices we had made on the Utopia and Dystopia.

• Is a utopia in a dystopian setting a utopia or not? For example, a fortified building in a zombie genre or the vaults in the 'Fallout' series may not be ideal looking locations, but I believe they would be considered utopias given the circumstances of the dangers outside.  

• 'Minecraft' and 'Little Big Planet' may be considered utopias since you can make your own creations within them (thus being your own utopia). Sport games and musical games may also count as utopias as since the only goal in them is to perhaps participate in some of your favorite pastimes. 

• Maybe look up the old vector game 'The Sentinel' as in that the player must try and create their world. However, the tower in the middle on a hill known as the sentinel will shoot the player if it sees them. Therefore its the idea of trying to build a utopia, but with an outside force trying to stop the player.  

After talking about the above we then worked in a group of five (myself, Adam, Bonnie, Jim and James). We were asked to create a game idea. The genre and game play could be what ever we wanted it to be, but for us it had to be set in a utopia whereas some other groups had dystopians.
We shared ideas and came up with the following.

• Before we came up with any ideas we thought about examples of gameplay we would want in our game. Therefore we used 'Journey' and 'Flower' as examples for the type of gameplay we wanted e.g. beautiful worlds and music with a sense of freedom accompanying them.  
• First of all we messed around with the idea of tribes that lived together in harmony, but needed certain items. Therefore it is up to the player to be a good neighbor as it were and provide the tribes with basic items such as materials and fish. 
• Another idea that I shared was of a young child's imagination in which their dreams are their kind of utopia as they want to roam free and don't know the concept of death. Therefore the child would explore, discover and collect objects in beautiful areas that included a vast ocean, forest, desert and snowy mountain.  
• We then wanted to introduce game concepts that included 'laps' / tasks that would need to be repeated on a regular basis, such as maintaining somewhere or something. 
• We then thought that since it tends to be the difference in each human's ideology and control that led to the collapse of all the other utopias we had researched in the previous session we decided to remove them and governments from our ideas. Instead we messed around with the concept of either aliens or animals. 
• We played around with the idea of animals and then animals with powers before finally deciding on elementals. This last option we felt was best as that way we could link each element to a different controller trigger and bumper, thus allowing for quick swapping between them and easy combining of powers by pressing two of these buttons at once. Granted the Xbox remote, which was the controller we were referring to has coloured buttons on the front, but we felt that these needed to be reserved for jumping and other such abilities since they are more easily accessed than the back ones referred to previously.
• We decided that it should be kept to only one planet and not a universe so as to clearly identify the world as a utopia and one that has a mix of environments. If we had introduced other planets with only one type of environment then it would be debatable which ones were truly utopias, for example a lush forest is more likely to be a utopia than an arctic environment.
• We were originally going to make the game multiplayer since they would be four playable elementals. However, we decided against this since we thought some players may try and mess around with other player's experiences and as a result the utopian atmosphere wouldn't work. 
• Even though it will be a single player game, all the elementals must be on the screen at the same time, otherwise it would be far too easy a game. For example, if the fire elemental came across a river and just simply changed to the water elemental the player would be able to cross with no problems. Therefore no challenge is presented to the player and they would breeze through the game. Having the elementals work together to get past obstacles would help further demonstrate the game's utopian ideals of working with one another. 

Our final idea will need to be ready in two weeks time when we will present our idea to the group through a power point presentation.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Long, N. (2013) 'Minecraft' Screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.edge-online.com/news/minecraft-xbox-360-edition-headed-to-retail/ (Accessed: 16/4/2013).
• Unknown. (2007) 'Fallout 3' Vault 101 Screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/File:Vault_101.jpg (Accessed: 16/4/2013).
• Unknown. (2010) 'The Sentinel' Screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/51340-the-sentinel-game-mode-or-creature/ (Accessed: 16/4/2013). 
• Unknown. (Unknown) 'Little Big Planet' Picture [Online image]. Available at: http://uk.playstation.com/littlebigplanetpsv/ (Accessed: 16/4/2013).