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Postmortem: "Insignia" Introduction
Our ‘Insignia' project was a first round finalist in the 2004-2005 Dare to be Digital student video game competition. The project was the major group component of our final year studies on a BSc Interactive Systems and Video Games Design course at the University of Bradford, UK. The process of pitching our idea was highly informative and gave us an industry perspective, insight and positive feedback from the judges. The pressure of competition also helped really focus the team's efforts rather than the more nebulous approach of most student projects. The game was conceived as an RPG/RTS game in the vein of UFO. The game design detailed a dark modern world where corruption and conspiracy among the world's great superpowers, corporations, governments and religions forces the player into a morally ambiguous fight against supposed evil. The player manages teams of highly trained military operatives whose mission is to track down the underlying truth behind these conspiracies. The game focused on adult themes, typical and atypical power groups, and a modern role playing setting laid over a mission based tactical RTS. The core team consisted of six game design students and a number of other students enlisted from various artistic and creative media degree courses: computer animation, 3D modelling, etc. The game system was based on an academic D20 licence provided by Wizards of the Coast, utilizing the type of rules system seen in Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate. We also used the Unreal Tournament engine, modified to run as a 3D RTS engine, and we used the on-campus motion capture studio to help with character animation. We entered Dare for industry feedback, and the experience value, believing (correctly as it transpired) that "Insignia" was not a normal kind of candidate for Dare. We had discussed pitching a smaller game concept, one achievable in ten weeks, but the team preferred to create something ambitious. The judges commended our work, game design, and presentation material. They raised concerns that our game background was too adult for commercial application in the risk adverse video game market and was far too ambitious for a program like Dare. What Went Right 1. License. Obtaining the D20 Licence from Wizards of the Coast provided the impetus for our entire year's activities. After obtaining the licence we approached the University and suggested forming a student team with the objective of entering game competitions and promoting the University and the video game design course. 2. Team. Our video game design course had plenty of students with diverse skills. We recruited a core team of six students, covering the skills of programming, design, art, audio and production. We supplemented this core team with recruits picked from the other degree courses throughout the University, bringing 3D modelling and animation skills in as we required them. We had a lot to achieve and we split the main tasks based on the individual skills of the core team. Two members of the team focused on programming primarily in the development of the engine and the implementation of the D20 rule set within the game. Two other team members focused on art assets: one on concept art and storyboarding and the other on user interface, logos and website graphics for the game. Another student developed the music and sound effects. I developed the game design material and managed the entire project, organizing support from the University and managing the competition entry requirements. The entire team worked on the motion capture material. External team members used the game design materials, storyboards and concept art to animate and produce the character models for the game. 3. Priorities. We decided that our first priority was to receive good grades, our second to produce a good portfolio and our third to enter competitions. We also wanted to run the development process as close to a real game project as possible, so we had regular lab days where we only worked on the game. We also wanted to give students from other courses the benefit of working on a video game project.
The core team got exceptional grades and added a great project to their portfolios and got the chance to pitch that project to industry professionals. Choosing our priorities early on allowed us to focus on what really mattered during the year. Obviously our primary concern and major deadlines centered on reaching the milestones imposed by the University for grading. It would have been easy to get lost in the development process and let production slip away from us if we hadn't addressed our priorities at the very beginning and throughout the academic year. So for every production decision we made, we asked 'is this going to get us higher marks at the end of the year?' and if the answer to that question was 'no' then we didn't focus on it. 4. Freedom. We had a very strong desire to make an adult-targeted game dealing with weightier subjects than your average modern RTS/RPG. We weren't interested in telling teenage fantasy fulfilment stories. Or background wasn't planned to be a homogenized, easy to market, derivative game. Our game was intentionally grim, dark, and morally ambiguous. That was the game we wanted to make and the University was happy to let us work towards that end. This worked very much to our favor. We had great belief and enthusiasm in our project and our ambitions. We received very positive feedback from the University early on and this directly lead to them granting us many resources and freedoms not available in previous years or to other teams. The University gave us access to our own computer lab allowing us the freedom and privacy to work on our game. We were initially allowed to hand pick our team which is not a normal policy of the University. We were granted access to the motion capture studio. We were also granted support by the IT service to install any software that we needed for the project. 5. Dare. While we were required to make a group project as part of our final year game studies, we wanted to take the project further. ‘Dare to be Digital' was a great opportunity to move in that direction. The effort of gathering and preparing our game material for a pitch late in the academic year provided a wonderful opportunity to focus the team. We had a fairly clear indication of the milestones necessary for academic progress. It was harder to evaluate what was required of our Dare entry. We spent a lot of time discussing what we should focus on and strategies for presenting our material. This process alone was a great way of sifting through the essential and non essential elements of the game. Dare requests a market and commercial assessment for each game entered. We spent a fair bit of time researching the market for PC based RPG/RTS games. This was an enjoyable and informative process. We got some really great feedback from the Dare judges. Yes, our game background was over the top. Yes, our game was far too large and ambitious to take into the Dare competition. But they also said we had excellent ideas. They told us they could see the team members working in the game industry and commended us on the game presentation materials that we presented.
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What Went Right
Features
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