MA Games Design Diary

During week 7, I read Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman and The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell and took notes to use for my DE4401 essay.  Book Notes:  After submitting my essay, I returned to project 2 and continued to define my style direction by adding to my  Pinterest board , collecting further  examples of existing UI designs and creating a mood board.   Initially, I came up with the idea to make a crosshair design inspired by a submarine radar which indicated the direction of enemies. Since my game is based within a submarine, I later decided that a radar-inspired crosshair wouldn't be useful to the player as the environment isn't very spacious. Instead, I came up with the idea to create a unique crosshair design for each weapon. I aim for each crosshair design to be distinctive from one another to quickly indicate to the player what weapon they are using/switching to. I also intend for the ammo count of each weapon to be incor...

During week 6, I read The Gamer's Brain by Celia Hodent and Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and took notes which I will use to inform my DE4401 essay.  Book Notes:  I also narrowed down my intended style direction and created a mind map summarising the design characteristics I need to use to achieve a 1980's interface-inspired design style.

During week 5, I researched how UI and UX design impacts player experience by watching 4 presentations ( Bridging the Gap Between UX Principles and Game Design ,  From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention ,  Immersing a Creative World into a Usable UI  and  Leveling Up UX/UI In Game Production ) and taking notes which I can use for my project and DE4401 essay.   Presentation Notes:  Bridging the Gap Between UX Principles and Game Design From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention Immersing a Creative World into a Usable UI Levelling Up in UX/UI

During week 4, I watched 3 GDC Vault talks ( AAA Gaming While Blind ,  Accessibility Best Practices: Mobility Considerations  and  I Can't Hear You: Considering Deaf Gamers ) by EA Sports Accessibility Lead, Karen Stevens. The talks taught me valuable knowledge, such as the industry standards for subtitles and closed captions and how to create UI designs accessible for visual, motor and auditory disabilities. GDC Vault Talk Notes:  AAA Gaming While Blind Accessibility Best Practices: Mobility Considerations I Can't Hear You: Considering Deaf Gamers I watched other talks and presentations about accessibility such as  Designing for Colour Blindness in Games  and  Breaking Barriers: Combat Accessibility in 'God of War Ragnarok' , and discovered useful resources such as  Color Blindness Simulator  and  Game Accessibility Guidelines .  I visited the library again and loaned Emotional Design by Don Norman, User Friendly by Cliff Kuan...