XB3002 Games Futures Definition

Working Title
Artificial Selection

My IP Opportunity         
                             "Logical Selection Complex"

Justification
This is the concept that in the future we will have to eventually select who can breed and who cannot due to the overpopulation. This will lead to a society where people are judged inferior based on the importance of their genetic material and if they have the social right to continue their bloodlines.

I believe that over the coarse of my blog I have justified that the best horror ideas come from the most believable fears that we have had over our time. That being said I think I have also pr that throughout the blog that the next largest fear that we will face is that medicine has worked too well and we will soon have to many people and not enough resources. These two facts combined prove to me that in the future we will have a very genuine population crisis, however before it actually happens I think that fear of it will rise quickly in anticipation of the event. This will create an IP which will be very marketable.

To reference my research on why this will be marketable I will simply say that the reason the wolfman was so popular was because in our past a certain event spouted horror stories that have been passed down, I will also say that Frankenstein is a horror story of an event that has probably been tried countless times and if not has been feared for longer, zombies have been around for as long as we have feared illness, disease and that there are too many people. Throughout my blog I have drawn up the conclusion.

Game genre
Horror adventure genre

Target Audience
My target audience will be the same as the target audience for horror films, usually this is people over the age of 18 who seek thrills.
Story Description
The game will follow two protagonists in a futuristic world where the population has been reduced by 9/10ths, this has lead to a society where the level of status somebody has is based completely upon their genetic structure. A society where everything is based upon your family and genetics has lead to genetic profiling, and the most insane rules and cruel dictatorships, you shall play in tandem the story of an orphan in the lower cast who ends up marked for death and at the same time you play a daughter of the higher caste who finds out a that the caste system is actually a lie to keep control, this means she is marked for death. Eventually their paths cross and they find out they are in fact twin sisters. This leads to the dissolution of an evil society after years of oppression.

Look and feel

These are two mock up posters for the game roughly illustrating the direction for the art style etc. However I Also have these mood boards to help sum up the overall direction of the game.

The look and feel of the game will be a quasi realism based in the ruins of Magadan, Russia. The style will include a lot of the propaganda elements of Russia during the wartime, there will also be however quite a lot of graphic gore and scenes of a violent nature to highlight the disgusting state of the world. Just in case it isn't clear from these mood boards I shall give a analogy:

Think of a winter covered Russian city (Magadan) abandoned for many decades save a small pittance of the population (maybe 350 people). You shall play two characters respectively, playing through their live in first person using a system akin to the one of heavy rain to interact with the world. However you shall also need to run from people who wish to harm you!

 Game Description

The story shall begin by introducing the player to both the characters style of life, first of all showing how cruel the high life of the higher caste really was. It will include the guards of the high caste and the large amount of slaves the high caste use, the first scene will include a savage beating of a low caste slave for absolutely no reason. It will end with that slave dying as the high caste finish their breakfast, from there it shall move to the almost street urchin lifestyle of the lower caste girl as she tries to get through a single day. Her game play will focus mostly on action and adventure whilst the high caste girl will focus on stealth.

The introduction of the game shall end with both girls being marked for death by a single man of the higher caste, one for overhearing a conversation and the other for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This will send them both on the run where they they must both survive by hiding in the areas outside civilisation, this part of the game shall introduce the many predators that exist in the world that prey on humans. This chapter will end when the characters find one another and realise they both know the truth, from there they need to attempt to make the lower caste realise that they have the right to rise up and take over! To do this they unite with the rebellion and Storm the higher caste, it is at this point they realise they are both high caste themselves.

Main characters
(writing to be entered at a later date)

 

Nonplayer characters

Setting and scenarios

This would be set within the post apocalyptic ruins of the russian city Magadan on the east coast of russia. The story being that a war based on population caused the human race to be whiped out to near extinction and left the remaining populace isolated, alone, and obsessed with controlling the population to a genetic level.

Above the images show the location of magadan, the weather conditions that will be present in the game, the range of architecture which will show the difference between the classes, the level of ruin you shall encounter and the style of community the remaining people shall have.

Above I have tried to show the different aspects of the setting through these images. The ruins of magadan shall be that of a derelict ghost town where only a few locations are still inhabited. I thaught that the local shopping centre will have become a sort of slum location where most of the low caste live while the high caste live in the ruins of the parlimentery buildings. The weather shall always be a obscuring blanket of winter.

As for scenario I wanted to show how I planned to introduce the gameplay style to the player by blocking out and storyboarding the tutorial level for protagonist 1. This scene shows the player caught out after curfew, a crime which results in death if you are caught by the guards, however to top it all off it seems that a set of guards are actually actively looking for you personally for some reason! The player shall be told that she will be safe at the local church...If she can get into that building without being caught. This level shall introduce the player to the many mechanics they shall use to overcome the obstacles they will face throughout the game as protagonist 1. This takes place in a moody set of ruined buildings on the edge of the slums.

Game Mechanics

There are many mechanics the player shall utilize througout the game as the two protagonists:

• Basic movement and navigation
• Object interaction
• Speech trees
• Hide and sneak
• Lie

As of yet I still need to illustrate and explain many of these...


Hide

As both of the Protagonists there will be large parts of the game where you shall need to go undetected, there are many different ways to achieve this. However for the most part you will need to Hide, Evade and Decieve antagonists.

You will be prompted whenever there is the option to hide in any object nearby.

Alternatively you may interact with objects to cause distractions I.e. Knocking on doors to cause confustion or throwing objects to make noise.

If you are caught by antagonists you will need to find a way to escape their capture, if you do not you will be caught or worse...killed.

There may be the possibility to disguise yourself as sombody else, this may work if you manage to act normally while pulling off the disguise.




Lie mechanic

During cutscene events you will have to make sure to pull the correct faces or else you may find yourself in a lot of trouble!

There will be some sort of choice or puzzle system put into place which will force the player to try and keep a streight face when lying as the player.

They shall be shown an emotion in the corner of the cutscene and they will have to mimic it, pulling different faces shall cause the cutscene to play out very differently depending on what emotion you show. Different shown emtions will lead to different story outcomes.


USP & Exciting gameplay features

The main USP of this game shall be the story. The player shall througout the game have a lot of ability to affect the story of the overally game, depending on the players choices the endings shall range from a multitude of different outcomes.
One of the unique features of this game is that there are two protagonists whos survival is not completely essencial to the ending of the game. This means that if one of the characters dies or is in some way incapacitated the player need not actually start again or try harder to make sure that player does survive, instead the player may continue as just the other antagonist. They will miss out on large bits of the game but they shall still get one of the endings.

Marketing

To market this game I think a gameplay trailer would have to be produced, however I think it would work better if done as though it was an upcoming movie due to the games nature. Other methods could be the release of special bits of clothing that appear throughout the game which when purchased allow you to unlock different features (perhaps different outfits in the actual game). Other marketing campaigns would be possibly attaching it to a band and releasing their music free with the game to generate intrest in the games stye through a different medium.

Future Technology

One of the main uses this game will have for future technology shall be that facial recognition technology. If the game was able to recognize the facial expressions of the player it would be able to cause the player to actually have to express the mood of her character during conversations, this could lead to a number of different endingings in each conversation where the character laughs if the player laughs or screams if the player screams!

Other useable future technology includes holographic Television, this would allow the player to actually look around the edges of the screen and see a different image. If this technology was available the player might have to use this to look around the edges of screens.

Finally if the controller could actually detect the players current heart rate the character could become harder to contol the more frightened the player is, this could also effect the cutscenes by making the character angry if the player is angry or tired if the player is tired Etc.