Studio 1 - Exploring Game Concepts

Studio 1 - Exploring games and identifying games concepts

List of games that I am familiar with:

MMORPG
City of Heroes - 2
City of Villains - 2

Arcade
Fifa 09 - 3
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 - 3
Wii Sports - 3
Gran Turismo 5 - 4

First Person Shooter (FPS)
Call of Duty 4 - 1
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood - 2
Time Crisis - 3
Area 51 - 3
Doom - 1

Action/Adventure
Manhunt - 4
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Series - 1

Platform
Superfrog - 2
Zool - 3
Dizzy the Egg - 3
Alex the Kid - 5
Pac Man - 2


Games Concept Identification

Manhunt – The concept of this game is a very simplistic idea. The general idea of this game is that the user can take control of a convicted murderer and experience true portraits of what it is like to kill people. Although that is the main idea, the developer’s added a slight twist to the game – by creating a storyline that the killer had already been sentenced to death however; conspiracy had occurred and that the convict was given a fake death in order for him to be put into a ‘game’. In this game the convict must fight his way through each level (and sections of levels) by performing gruesome murders. The more gruesome the murder, the more points the convict gets.

Fifa 09 – The main concept is a realistic football simulation game. The developer will be aiming to create as much realism as possible towards the user and creating a clever Artificial-Intelligence (AI) which will control players, decision making, and movement etc of the players that the user isn’t controlling.

Gran Turismo 5 – A realisitic car racing simulation game. Gran Turismo aims to look, feel and react as much as possible to real cars.

City of Heroes – The game concept here, is to create an online role-playing superhero game with a comic book feel. The user is able to create endless costumes for their character, as well as their own size, gender and superhero name with a background story.

Time Crisis – 1st person shooter as a member of a S.W.A.T. police team. The user follows an automatic route set up for them throughout the entire game, however they need to decide to use cover effectively and they must aim using a wired gun instead of a standard controller.

Implementation of Games Concepts

If a game concept is generally followed throughout the entire production of the game itself then I believe the game will be very good. Too many games are released these days that state they are going to do various things and that the general idea is in this direction, and when it comes to the release date; the developers have produced something completely different.

If a games concept is fully explored and thought about carefully then the implementation should go smoothly. For example: If a developer had come up with the idea for a violent FPS game and the gun fired tennis ball’s instead of bullets, or the blood came out as bubbles then the implementation of the game would be extremely poor. It would be this bad, because the developer didn’t explore the game concept to its maximum potential.

I personally believe that the design stage of the implementation is the most important. I believe the design stage plays an extremely important role in the final outcome of a game.
This is the stage where everything is thought out, drawn and laid out for people to see what the levels, characters, environments, costumes etc will look like. I think it is the design stage that ‘makes or breaks’ a game.