Today we are working on our prototype.
one to ninety
Creates and improves the educational gaming-experience!
Usablity Testing the first
Our friends from angry raccoon games gave us some heuristic evaluation on our game.
They were not pretty sure if the game is for the male or female audience, but agreed that the game will work for players from 14-20 years.
We like the idea of working with a young audience, still we now need to find out how we could include older audiences.Ideas
- Include bonuses from the real world that will attract adults.
- Make it possible to play the game efficient, even though you do not have time all day
- Encourage families to play together
one to ninety proudly presents
Imagine you are trying to construct a paper lantern and you’re stuck half-way. Imagine you fold a paper airplane but it won’t fly. Imagine you need a hat from a sheet of paper, but forgot how to make one. There is only one person you could entrust your problems to. Who?
From the depths of origami, born out of papyrus, master of bleaching, folding and cutting paper. Scissors tremble in fear of his hands, which cut paper like a knife cuts through butter. There is no paper alive that hasn’t heard his name.
We bring to you your guide and sensei for your gaming experience: Paper-sama™ (Programmed on PEFC-certified paper).
He will help you take your first steps in the game. He will be hard on you, but also he will always watch your back.
questions upon questions
This is an interview about our target audience.
Q: Could you specify in more detail the genre of your game and which gender it will appeal to and why?
Julia: I think female players will love our game because it is non violent and has a low frustration. Furthermore it scores with a beautiful look. Male players will enjoy the competition in our game.
Q: Are there gender neutral qualities?
Julia: Yes, of course. For example the likeable charakter, the smart-looking simulation and the weak punishment of failure.
Q: Who is your target audience?
Julia: Our goal was to reach a large audience but it turns out it works better for female players. The game will fit best the age group from 20 to 30. But it will be also fun for other age groups and also male players.
Q: Why will your game appeal to this audience you have chosen?
Julia: Actually there is no game that is comparable to our game. Great simulations with nice graphics like sims and a lot of facebook games like farmville and so on are really successful in our expected audience. The possibility of combining the game with the reality is at present unique.
Q: And the last Question: How could you make your game Gender Neutral without changing your basic idea?
Julia: Although our target audience are females, it’s not necessary to make any big changes. We think that the game attracts the attention of both genders and features many aspects of gender neutral games.
Lets start selling
You got too much money and meet us in the elevator
Our Game will be an massive multiplayer online simulation game focused on environment. Through building and leading the inhabitants, it will be simulated how humans and environment interact.
You buy our game, that stands on the back
What if you do something good for our environment and it has a direct impact on your own tiny planet? That’s our concept in short. Imagine to have your own planet and how you lead it will have consequences on your nature, while using alternative energies will make your planet a happy place, other resources will give you way more energy, but be careful, cause it hurts your planet’s nature. Grow your population and economy to new frontiers, link up with friends and family and show the world what sustainability means to you, because sustainable actions in real life improve your nature in game.
Fieldresearch
We took out the lab coats and jumped into the world wide web to dive for other games, that are somehow related to our game.
So check out which products get similar to our game, still most of them are really far away. We had a little hardstop when we sah Imagine Earth but there are still loads of differences, that it does not support communication and has no link to the real world are only two examples.
ENERGY CITY
Simulation
Roundbased
Level of difficulty: Really simple
Skills:
Resource Management
Impact from different plants on the enviroment
http://www.jason.org/digital_library/8239.aspx
ASCENDANCY
Simulation
Roundbased
Level of difficulty: medium
Skills:Efficiency calculations
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascendancy
IMAGINE EARTH
Simulation
Realtime
Level of difficulty: -
Skills:
Resource Management
Impact from population on the enviroment
http://www.imagineearth.info/en/
SPACE PIONEERS
Simulation
MMO
Level of difficulty: Depends on the other players in the universe
Skills:
Resourcen Management
Timing of actions
http://www.looki.de/info/space-pioneers/start.html
SIM CITY2000
Simulation
Realtime
Skills:
Resource managment
Polution control
Polution effects
Game City Vienna
This weekend we visited the Game City Vienna! On Friday we attended various interesting lectures. On Saturday we discovered loads of innovative game designs, ready to enrich the markets. We had a lot of fun and welded our team spirit into a new level.
Here are some of our experiences:
Nils
I really enjoyed the Avatar lecture. The lecturer was described by the host as the” friday boss monster”, her lecture being the last one on Friday. She gave an overview on four of her recent studies examining the behaviour gamers have towards their Avatars.Later on I had an interesting talk with the lead producer of “Ludwig”, a new Austrian educational game. Actually I met a lot of smart people.
Personally, I think the smaller projects were more interesting than all the overdone games the big concerns presented.
The lack of good coffee ultimately presented the biggest problem on our otherwise enjoyable Vienna weekend!
Alexandra
The lecture on politics in games was not only stimulating, it also gave me a new insight on how games can influence people.
On Saturday I spent hours waiting, in order to get a drawing of Capt. Balu for my boyfriend. I felt quite nerdy standing in that line…
All in all the convention brought back the feeling of being a child, but all the strange people attending the convention made me feel especially normal.
Tired of all the children and all the turmoil, I fell asleep only seconds after arriving back home.
Julia
I had a blast playing ’Eye Pet‘ on the PSP. Watching the pet adapting to the table via a camera and a card was entertaining and technically fascinating. Still, most of the stands were way too busy for me. I refuse to wait in line for three hours just to get a glimpse of some ridiculous game!
While I did find some interesting game concepts, there were also simply bad ideas. The trash game (literally) ‘green runner‘ from “Wiener Energie” for instance turned out to be a complete waste of time.
Actually, the games I enjoyed the most where the simple oneswe played during the opening lecture. Which proves once more: Keep it short and simple.
Headhunt
Hiring can be hard, but we chopped through pretty well. After sorting out which professions we need, we believe we hired a really strong (and slightly flustered) team.
So after checking what kind of team you need for game-development-project (some unneccesary jobs were left out), we posted the three following positions:
Executive producer – Works on the concept, the usability and takes care of the administration
(Includes: Team Leader, Technology Leader, Quality assurance managment, Office Administration, Script)
Art director – Ensures quality of the product in video and audio
(Includes: Lead Designer, Senior Designer, Lead technical Artist, Music, Sound design, Audio director, Voice directing)
Brand manager – Responsible for external communication and PR
(Includes: Marketing, Coverartwork, PR, Story Concept, Web Assistant, Textediting)
We hired a brand manager!
Julia Suppan will take care of Public Relations. She is good with people and fluent in English, which is important for writing articles for the blog. Her calm nature will be conducive to professional external communication. She is also a skilled designer and web-developer, and an excellent presenter. So we hired her as one of the three core team members.
We found an art director!
Alexandra Derntl‘s bright and clear visualizations speak for themselves, and even more impressive are her skills as a typographer and as an artist. We think she will prove as one of the three most important members of the team.
New in the team: Our executive producer!
Nils-Leo Nienstedt will be the left-handed lateral thinker in the team. His organizing skills and interest in writing concepts will benefit the group in many ways. With his affinity for good usability, he rounds out the team of three. In addition he is friendly with the local coffee shop and will therefore provide the team with the necessary caffeine.
Producer – While we would love someone to sponsor the project, we manage without a producer for now…
Programming/Programmers – Apparently we don’t actually have to program the game. (In case of problems we will hire Thomas Radeke.)
The Birth
What is more difficult than finding the perfect name for your „child“?
After a long discussion and numerous of inquiries via Google and Wikipidia, we have decided to do this in a more creative way. Namely mathematically. Therefore we took the crossfoot of our birth dates and add them together.
The result was 91. Afterwards we write it out in word.
einundneunzig
But we find an english name would be better.
oneandninety
Then we tried to add the mathematical component.
one+ninety _ one-ninety
That was good but we could do better. We tried to give the name an additional kick – and it worked.
We chose „one to ninety“, which reminds of the age advice of games.
Finally we had more than a name – we also had a targetgroup!
