We now move into the more practical side of the project, where I begin to test the feasibility and practicality of my design model and accompanying designer guide. To support the practical elements that make up this stage of the project, and to continue my own professional development, I have been exploring and updating my current skills using Epic's Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). I have found this engine ( and in particular it's Blueprint visual scripting system) to be far more flexible and user-friendly than it's predecessor, Unreal Development Kit (UE3). As a result, I have decided to make this my preferred engine for any game development I undertake for the foreseeable future. I also intend to acclimatise myself with Unity 4 and possibly CryEngine to stay up-to-date with current game engines on the whole.
Considering my current project, it is clear that pre-defined design constraints will play a significant factor in how the model and designer guide is understood and subsequently used. However, it will important to maintain flexibility in the model in order to cater for different types of game within the wider Exploration genre. To help define reasonable and practical constraints, I intend to utilise Game Jams with participants who I have not worked with previously, to test both the model and the designer guide; this should help to maintain impartiality while maintaining focus on what I hope to achieve. The volunteers will be informed of the nature of the research but will be left to utilise both the design model and the user guide as they see fit during the design and development stage of their games. Subsequently, I then intend to ask participants to provide feedback on both of these items so that I may analyse the results and make refinements to the model / guide as required.
Once refinements are made, I intend to present my findings in a journal article (or other form). At the time of writing this, I have not yet decided on the best way of presenting my findings so this is subject to change as the project draws to a conclusion.
On-going game-based research
Throughout the completion of the project, I intend to continue to play and review any new Exploration titles that are released. Already I can see Exploration games that take different directions in terms of visual, audio and gameplay style (see The Endless Night compared to Sunless Sea as prime examples). It will be interesting to see how the design model fits into these games in terms of shared trends and constraints.
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| Sunless Sea by Failbetter Games |
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| Hinterland Game's The Long Dark |
