Initial Ideas Development

Recently I had a session about speculative design and so decided to try out this method for my own games design. Whereby I thought about how I could make an experience more stressful and so coming up with different ideas from this process, helping to expand out my ideas and thoughts at such an early stage.

From Andy’s feedback the other day it was clear that my idea needed a lot of work for it to be successful as a learning tool. With Andy stating that he felt the colours in the game were a bit of an add on and had no real relation with stress and also there needed to be more information about different de-stressing in the game, for the players to learn how best to control their stress to succeed in the game.

Therefore I decided to develop my initial design out, by combing my main idea and others I had had previously, with de-stressing techniques or how the body is affected by stress (Andy’s methodology), trying to truly connect the game with them and ensuring players understand how to de-stress and how this will benefit their body

Also within the designs I was trying to make the colours have a deeper association to stress too by linking them to the de-stress techniques or outcomes of stress.

Below are scans of the ideas I developed and the process I went through.

Key Points

Colours relate to specific outcomes of stress
When a player is a certain colour they feel that stress eg if the colour they become is red and this is associated with a high heart rate, then the player with pulse errracrly on the screen until healed. The pulsing will affect the players movement and their ability to heal others.

Colours are specific to different bosses are certain colours and they have taken over the world bringing stress to it
The colour the boss is will be determined by where they are in the game world – The game world will be a based off of the design of the the Gamblin colour system which I discovered within my phase 2 research.
The colours of bosses relate to certain de-stressing techniques
Players become stress by the boss
Other members must de-stress their team mates
Once they defeat a boss the player then gets the colour the enemy was and so have a new colour and de-stressing technique to learn about and use.

The Gamblin Colour system is a handheld tool and each colour onto it represents a de-stress attacking
Players must attack the enemies by using colour that will de-stress them and therefore they will no long be a threat

Overall Thoughts

Which idea will I take forward – Idea 2

I have chosen this idea because I feel this design is the friendliest for incorporating learning about stress within it. As I can picture information popping up after each level which explains the colour and so the de-stressing technique they have just gained from the boss and how they can use this method in real life. Therefore helping the game to ensure players are taught how to control their stress levels in a fun and exciting way.

Plan

Form another project proposal document that highlights where my ideas have now moved to – Clearly show the development of my ideas.