This week was primarily concerned with going over the brief and making sure we understood the purpose of the unit. I feel quite confident in my interpretation of the outcomes after going over the brief independently.

The Game Design Studio unit is concerned with getting us to work iteratively, collaboratively and professionally. We will need to respond to briefs on tight deadlines and make sure we are balancing our workload sustainably. We are also working at creating a professional identity and with that comes the need to work towards our interests and present our work.

In my case this will mean advocating for writing roles whenever possible and continuing building my skills in creating intuitive documentation.

Next we were given the time to chose our briefs. I decided on the 21GRAMS game concept for mums with PND because I knew it was something that my mother struggled with and it was a games design concept so it worked better with my skill set. I have decided to make my design researched based so I will be reading papers on CBT and PND and I would like to incorporate aspects of a CBT workbook, like a mood tracker, so help those who are playing it regularly. In accordance with the brief I want to create community features, but with low effort, maybe allow people to leave messages or afterimages like in games like Journey. I would like the gameplay to be mobile based and one handed, maybe utilising the vertical space like space jumper, but without the harsh punishments for failure or distraction.

My initial inspiration are: Journey, Flower, GRIS and Space Jumper, however I plan to do some formal reading and the 100 ideas exercise before returning to then in order to make sure I’m pushing myself towards my most interesting ideas.

My plans for the week are: write up notes, research, brainstorm from research outcomes, complete the 100 ideas based on my thinking from the brainstorm. Then I will be in the position to start describing my gameplay and creating prototypes/design guides. I think this is achievable by next lesson, but it is something I will need to review through the week.

Over the week I worked on research and ideation. Unfortunately I didn’t get to read as many papers on the subject as I would have like, but as time was short I had to move onto Ideation. After completing 30 minutes of idea generation I came across a different theme from the galaxy platformer into an RPG that placed a new parent as the hero. I thought it was fresh and different enough from usual wellness apps that it might not be off putting to people who weren’t already inclined towards mindfulness as a practice.

I then wrote up ideas for the mechanics, created a mood board and made some concept art for review for the week two lesson. Although I don’t necessarily think my game concept is groundbreaking I am doing much better with creating coherent and interactive documentation this term, which was the bulk of my feedback from last term, so I am happy with the direction my practice is heading.