Merchandise

We came up with the idea of some merchandise for our game. I chose some of the most simple forms of merchandise. I stuck with the same kind of effect i used on my CD case with the font and green colours.


Mug


Mousemat


T-Shirt

Game Covers

We have just started producing ideas for game case covers. They are not yet all complete but here are my ideas so far.





The general idea of all the above photos was to include a pulse heartbeat line since the game is called Pulse. I implemented a zombie head because our game was about aliens and creep y monsters. The writing i used represents blood and gore and the background looks a bit like bloody tendons.

I changed my mind on these ideas and decided that it looked a bit to cheesy for a shooting game, unless we were aiming for this game to be brought out for the Nintendo Wii i needed to change the style.




I then opened up Photoshop and decided to go for the complete product. I feel the bright green represents infection and gore quite well. The text is spooky and shows the game isn't going to be funny. I've added the pegi symbol and our team logo to the case along with the Xbox 360 title. This leaves us open to creating more cases for other platforms like the PS3.

I will complete this post with the rest of my teams ideas for game covers once they are completed.

Ethical Issues - Libel/Acts

Libel

This is the law put in place to make sure you don’t miss represent something or someone. For example if a football player like David Beckham was put in a football game, but his character acted like an idiot and missed every kick and fell over all the time this wouldn’t be right. Another example of this is if it came on the news that Peter Sutcliffe said that he hadn’t ever paid his TV license in his life, this isn’t going to effect his reputation because he is known for being a mass murderer. However if this was said about the BBC boss Greg Dyke this could seriously effect his reputation and even loose him his job working for a famous TV company.

http://www.urban75.org/info/libel.html

Race Relations Act

The race relations act was put in place by the British parliament in 1976 to prevent racial discrimination. This is put in place to prevent discrimination against race, colour, education and work. This is basically to say no matter where you come from or what colour your skin is we should all be treated equally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Relations_Act

Obscene Publications Act

The obscene publications act has been in place since 1857 in Britain, since then there were two more acts put in place, one in 1959 and one in 1964. Only the 1959 and 1964 laws are still in place today. This law is about criminal obscenity, an example of this is in 2009 a man posted on the internet about the band Girls Aloud. He claimed they had been kidnapped, raped and murdered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscene_Publications_Act

Computer Misuse Act

The computer misuse act was put in place by the UK parliament in 1990. This act is what you would be convicted under if you used your PC for something illegal. A great example of this is R v Gold & Schifreen. These two people used their home PC’s and Modems in 1984/85 to obtain the password and login name of a BT employee which was 22222222 and the password being 1234.They were able to browse the BT files and even view the private messages of Prince Phillip. This sparked another conflict with BT and they were said to be not taking their security seriously enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act

Ethical Issues - Representation/Religion

Ethical Issues are becoming more serious every day. Games Developers have to be very careful when creating their content these days. Simple things such as saying “Oh my God” can be regarded as blasphemes.

Representation is also a serious issue when creating a game, an example of representation is where you would create something that exists in real life but your creation portrays the real life version into something that it’s not i.e. if you created the city of Leeds in your game but made everybody hillbillies that would be bad representation of what Leeds is really like.

Another issue that has to be taken into great consideration is how appropriate your game is for the audience that you have made it for. A game like grand theft auto couldn’t be created for children or teenagers under the age of 18 as it isn’t suitable. Also if you created a game revolved around religion you would have to be careful on whom you advertised it to and make sure that it isn’t too offensive.

Religion takes a huge part in making a game, Religion is a very touchy topic on what you can and can’t do because different religions believe in different things. An example of this would be Christians may find any reference to God or Jesus in a game offensive.

This image is a copy of an old picture of Marilyn Monroe in a white dress but instead includes Asian women in her black robes. Asian women aren’t allowed to show skin and this picture portrays them as sex objects.

Source :

Maryln Monroe

Persian Maryln Monroe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

+ PPT Presentation

Ethical Issues - Copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a law put in place by most governments to make sure the creator of the original work has the rights to decide who gets to use the content and benefit financially.

This is a very serious issue within the games industry because if you put something that doesn’t belong to you or that you haven’t bought or asked for the permission to use in your game, you could be sued for a lot of money. An example of this is a small town in India which created a replica of Hogwarts School in their town without asking for permission from the author of Harry Potter. JK Rowling sued the town for a fairly small amount of money in her eyes, but for the town it was a very large amount.

If you are going to create a game with lots of real life objects in them there is lots of copyright issues you have to come by. Games such as Formula One have to get permission from all the different car companies to use their names logos and car designs in the game. If they can’t get this permission they would have to create it as close as possible but change some detail i.e. If Ferrari refused to give permission to use their name in your game you would have to create your own and name it something like Farreri, by changing around the a and e it is no longer Ferrari and cannot be classed as copyrighted.

Source :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

+PPT Presentation

Job Roles

Each member of the group had to decide upon a job role. As we don't have anyone who can program and nobody knows what their true strengths are in modelling/animation we are just going to share at the jobs.

The roles we could of considered were:

Concept artist - Drawings to be sent of to modeller.

Modeller - Model from concept art ideas.

Animator - Animates models created from concept art.

Programmer - Programs AI's and Interface.

Game Influences

We had to look at other games on the market and look at how the creators influenced thier games. We looked at how they used different sounds and effects in the trailers to get across what the game was about. For example a shooting game isn't going to have happy people in it and fun music, it will be more serious and some form of spooky/upbeat music.

The games i looked at were:

Call of Duty 4

World of Warcraft

Medal of Honor:Pacific Assault

Two of theese trailers are FPS games and both trailers for start of with introducing the situation, almost like a mission brief. And then it shoots of into action scenes and some actual gameplay. The MMORPG game (Wow) starts of with a narrator and a shot of a character looking at the view of snowy mountains with his pet bear. It gives the impression that the character has a very long journey ahead of him and has alot to see.

The influence behind medal of honour pacific assault was based around the fight at Perl harbour. To create the game they would have looked at Perl harbour and re designed the game around it and modelled all the aeroplanes, boats and guns around the ones they would of used in those times.

They would have listened to radios and sounds from movies from those times and re created them for the game. This makes the game feel like it is set in that time and not just looks like it is.