The Skills and Projects that I want to Work on

During my final year in university, I began to go through a list of potential jobs for a game designer on career and employment websites. The search for a job resulted in a variety of companies located all over the world who were seeking to hire junior and graduate game designers. Regardless of the countries the companies were located such as in Australia, Europe, or North America; each employment websites had a list of job and skills requirements that the applicant should have acquired if they were to apply for the position. I immediately began to take notes on the skills requirements that appeared multiple times among the varies job applications. Then, I began to brainstorm the skills I had currently acquired so far and compared it to the list of similarities. I realised that there were fundamental skills that I was lacking and there were other skills that I had developed, but they still needed to be polished further.

According to the list of similarities, 4 skills were a common requirement. The first skill is that a game designer should have great communication skills, both verbal and written. It is evident that throughout my university degree, I have a phobia of writing a design document. This was mainly because I always had trouble expressing and communicating my design ideas to those who I was working with. Therefore, a majority of my ideas were rejected as my teammates would misunderstand my intentions. The second common skill is having great storytelling ability. This is another skill that I am not proficient in as I would always be criticized for my lack of creative and original narrative ideas. A potential cause for this issue was mainly because I would only draw my inspiration from a small pool of sources as well as making only minor changes to the plot. The third common skill is having an eye for materials. This means being able to choose appropriate colours, textures, and aesthetical elements for the game. When it came to composing a design document, I would always be responsible for the gameplay and the core mechanics. The aesthetical side of the game would constantly be left to the artists and animators. This left me with little to no experience in the artistic side of designing a game. The fourth common skill is understanding the targeted audience. Whenever I would begin designing, I would place myself in the shoe of the targeted audience and ask what would I want to experience in the game. However, this is an unprofessional approach to game design. This is because I could be asking myself what a puzzle player would enjoy even though I had never played puzzle games. Therefore, this is another skill that I would need to develop.

Overall, the skills that I would want to work and improve on is on my written communiction, storytelling and narrative ability, having an eye for materials, and understanding the targeted audience. Mastering these skills could help me become a better game designer as well as helping me better prepare for entering into the video game industry.

The project I am proposing to do in this unit is a game design document. The justification behind this decision is that I believe it is one of the few projects available that provided me with the opportunity to work on all 4 of my skills simultaneously. A game design document, for the most part, has a large written component to it. This would help me nurture my written communication skills. Since this is an individual assessment, this would allow me to work on sections within the document that I had never worked on before. Such sections include the audiovisual style This could allow me to gain some experience in having an eye for materials, such as creating mood boards. The document also have a narrative and target audience section. This gives me the chance to develop my storytelling ability as well as properly interviewing those who are part of the core audience of the game I am designing, instead of interviewing myself.

Another justification for a game design document is that my current portfolio only showcases the final products I have designed. It does not showcase the process of designing the games and thus may not depict all of my experience in game development.

For the project description, the game document would include the following sections: game overview, gameplay and progression, elements and core mechanics, narrative, audiovisual style, interfaces, market and target audience analysis, references.

The game design document would describe an open-world action game that is similar to Sekiro and the Dark Souls franchise. The gameplay would be the largest and the most detailed section in the entire document. Because of the vast amount of details, it would have 4 sub-sections. The first sub-section would describe a brief overview of the two character classes and their respective abilities. The second sub-section would portray the basic procedures and rules of the game. For example, what happens if the player dies or what is the objective of the game. The third sub-section would list the enemies the player would encounter, their abilities, and the items that they could drop. The fourth sub-section would display a drawing of the world map.

On the other hand, the core mechanic should be the shortest section in the entire document as there is only the rolling mechanic to dodge enemy attacks and the grappling hook that enables the player to swing from walls to walls. Diagrams and drawing would be used to assist in understanding and visualising the core mechanics.

For the narrative section, a story would be explained as to why the player is trying to accomplish the objective set into the game. Furthermore, a brief lore would be provided to the character itself.

Finally, the market and target audience analysis would explain as to why Dark Souls and Sekiro's player would enjoy playing this game.