week 1
Unit introduction
The computer games industry has been growing year on year and has become a multi-billion pound industry. With the prevalence of computing devices, games consoles and mobile devices, this growth shows no sign of slowing. Many computer games are vast productions involving a range of people such as programmers, graphical artists, animators, level designers, actors and directors. As a games developer, you will analyse the needs of a client and understand the potential and limitations of different gaming solutions.
In this unit, you will investigate the technologies used in the computer gaming industry and the implications they have for users, developers and organisations. You will analyse how user needs and preferences impact on game design and how target technologies affect the design and development of a computer game. Finally, you will design, create and review a computer game to meet requirements and reflect on the skills and understanding applied during the design and development process.
You will apply analytical skills that would be used by any software developer to investigate the available technologies and current trends in order to design and develop appropriate software solutions. The skills you gain through this unit will benefit you as you progress to employment in the computer gaming industry, for example in computer games developer and software developer roles.
Learning aims
In this unit you will:
A Investigate technologies used in computer gaming
B Design a computer game to meet client requirements
C Develop a computer game to meet client requirements.
STARTING POINT
Create a presentation using only images on your favourite game.
A: Investigate technologies used in computer gaming
A1 Social trends in computer gaming
Using the following link produce a simple infographic on what it takes to get in to the games industry
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/games-developer
Social trends relevant to computer games, including:
• popular genres
What are these genres?
bellow are a list of the most commonly refered to gaming genres,
- Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) These games are played over a LAN (local area network) or via the Internet. ...
- Simulations. ...
- Adventure. ...
- Real-Time Strategy (RTS) ...
- Puzzle. ...
- Action. ...
- Stealth Shooter. ...
- Combat.
Using the list above create a presentation on the sucsessful release within these genres, ensure that you use images to help support your discussions.
For extention, research the income that each of these genres contribute to the overall gaming sector.
• players, e.g. age range, gender, casual gamers, immersive gamers, themes
We know that gaming has the ability to span over a number of players from a range of ages and genders, games are no longer steriotyped to girls, boys and infants, we can see this in games like call of duety and Fortnite.
What do you think makes a game a success to enable it to cover all players and genders?
• game production, e.g. mainstream publisher, indie, free-to-play
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHERS
Within the games industry there are a number of big publishers out there, some are,
- Microsoft.
- Nintendo.
- Activision Blizzard.
- Electronic Arts.
- Namco.
- King Digital Entertainment.
- Ubisoft / Vivendi.
These publishers have bought great titles to our games consoles such as, Pokemon, RPGs like the Legend of Zelda series, Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed and a miltitude of other great titles.
Data taken from Zippia gives us information of the annual revenues, number of employees and some of the popular games that some of the top publishers have;
Microsoft
Annual Revenue: 7.79 billion USD
Popular Published Games: Halo series; Gears of War series
Number of Total Employees: 120,849
Nintendo
Annual Revenue: 4.21 billion USD
Popular Published Games: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; Super Smash Bros. series; Pokemon series
Number of Total Employees: 5,095
Activision
Annual Revenue: 3.57 billion USD
Popular Published Games: Call of Duty series; World of Warcraft; Overwatch
Number of Total Employees: 9,472
Electronic Arts
Annual Revenue: 3.49 billion USD
Popular Published Games: Dragon Age series; Mass Effect series; FIFA series; Madden series
Number of Total Employees: 7,645
Ubisoft
Annual Revenue: 1.57 billion USD
Popular Published Games: Assassin’s Creed series; Far Cry series; Just Dance series
Number of Total Employees: 9,000
INDIE
Indie games developers are often small scall "indepentant" publishers that consisit of small teams that develope titles to work on a range of platforms. Theses studios will normally have limited budgets and can in some cases seek funding through the use of crowed funding platforms to enable them to develope a concept for release or approval by large console owners.
Games that were orriginally indie are;
Minecraft, Super Meatbot and Angry Birds.
FREE-TO-PLAY
• multiplayer
• artificial intelligence, e.g. search algorithms, mathematical optimisation, logic
• emerging technologies
• security of integrated services and multiplayer environments, e.g. Steam,
Google PlayTM.
Practical
We will be using Construct 3 to develop our games for this unit. Use the following link to research in to the online based application .
https://www.construct.net/gb?utm_source=scirra&utm_medium=topbar&utm_campaign=topbar&utm_content=c3link
Once you can navigated to the site read through the begginers guide tutorial
https://www.construct.net/gb/tutorials/beginners-guide-to-construct-3-1
These resources are also available in your Onenote unit8 Notebook
Last Updated
2020-07-06 15:35:10
Links to Learning Outcomes |
Links to Assessment criteria |
|
|---|---|---|
A.P1 Explain social and technological trends of computer games. A.P2 Explain how current and emerging technologies impact computer games’ design and development. A.M1 Discuss how current and emerging technologies impact on how games are designed and developed to meet the requirements of the users and the larger computer games industry. A.D1 Evaluate the impact of current and emerging technologies on the design and development of computer games to meet the requirements of the users and the computer games industry. |
English
Maths
How 2's Coverage
One-Minute Verbal Assessment - The teacher asks learners to prepare and deliver a one minute verbal summary of a forthcoming or completed activity, session or topic.
Tickets Please! - The teacher creates two key questions for students to answer before they leave the lesson. Their answers will let her know what to do next.
Question and Answer - Verbal discussion with learners to quantify understanding
Anonymous Assessment - Learners assess an anonymous piece of work containing deliberate mistakes against given success criteria.
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