Board Game Production.

A reflection on the brief

 After going through the brief I am exited to see what we can create, whether it be an original game consisting of traditional elements, or a reworking of a popular game. It is required to have a good name, logo as well as colour scheme, these elements allow us to be creative in our game whilst still sticking to the brief. The parameters ( things in which you must not do, the restrictions) for the brief include elements such as the game can not be harmful and it must not exceed the international paper size of A3, taking these instructions it allows us to narrow down our research to games in which are the correct size. The object requirements for the task are those in which the object (board game) must achieve, these include a good name, logo, include traditional elements and a clear target audience.

      For this task I intend to work in a team as that way we can produce more creativity and come up with an original game that can fill all of the key elements, which in the long term produces a completed game that is successful. By working in a team you are able to gather more research that you can evaluate, in addition to this I believe I work best in a team as we can put our ideas together and you can also have a range of opinions and different ideas which when out together create a good project.

Production List

 As I decided to work in a group we can each be assigned individual tasks to complete during the production of the game. These can vary from logos, to moving pieces etc. By creating a table it allows us to individually keep to our jobs and we can also alter the secondary research we do as individuals as different research will apply to different tasks.

Research

     In relation to research I can carry out primary research, field research and secondary research. To start of we explored a few games in which could be played using only a pen and paper ( hang man etc) this allowed us to think of games in which don't include playing pieces. In addition to this I can go out to shops and look at the already existing board games, exploring the size, layout, type/font, and the general idea of how to play the game. By doing this research it allows us to gather ideas from the already existing successful games to put into our own project, and also widens our ideas on the already existing and popular fonts and colour schemes that are used. 

  Once the information and research is gathered we can put our evidence into tables, both using a written explanation as to what we discovered as well as photographs to show what we found out.  Graphs as well as charts can be used to show our research as it is a good way to organise our information and compare and contrast the research we gathered.

   In regards to the type of things we can research, I intend to look at already existing fonts used for the titles, the colour schemes and general visual style of games. For secondary research we can look on the internet as well as use books and/or similar briefs. We can research not only board games, but go deeper into the individual points such as fonts, looking at what types are successful with particular audiences.  

  Currently I do not have any particularly 'creative' ideas however after our research I will be able to look at what already currently exists and take inspiration from these games, and take some of their ideas into consideration with intentions to merge them with my own and others ideas.

Evidence Of Prmiary Research

  After going into Waterstones and exploring the existing board games, as a team we have decided to perhaps do a twist on the popular game Monopoly. In the shop we saw the existing version of monopoly that was a twist of 'Game Of Thrones' and after seeing this we decided to reinvent it and do a twist on the show 'Pretty Little Liars'.  We gathered photographs of a variety of games that had different target audience, as well as logos and fonts etc. 

Here's the example we saw in the shop, it is an alternative version to the classic monopoly board as it includes different names and playing pieces. We can incorporate this into our own version by changing the colour scheme as well as playing pieces and locations.

To the right is another example of an edition of monopoly that we found in Waterstones, this being the retro version, therefore an entirely different colour scheme. In addition to the change in colours the target audience also varies. The Game Of Thrones edition is targeted at an older audience, we not only know this because of the TV show, however by the way in which the colours are used. 

     After looking at these we found games targeted at younger audiences ( 2-4 years) and we could see a clear difference in fonts as well as colours. For example in Snakes and Ladders there are more colours used and they 'pop'. You can see a clear difference between the games aimed at children as opposed to adults, the games for younger audiences are more visual compared to the games for adults, this could be to make it more appealing and more entertaining.

 

   Analysing the primary research that we gathered, we know that we want to create a variation of monopoly aimed at the older audience, therefore our colour scheme will include darker colours such as black, grey, pink. This way it can reflect the story of 'Pretty Little Liars' accurately and also shows the audience it is for older people. In regards to fonts, we will probably take inspiration from the 'Pretty Little Liars' font as well as the original monopoly font ( as seen in the game of thrones version) .

Secondary Research

After carrying out primary research I was then able to use the internet for further research for more specific products that were not found in book shops. These being more versions ( existing versions) of Monopoly. I found THIS website in particular which showed me the existing versions of monopoly and where to purchase them etc. This was useful as I could see what creators had already done ( to ensure the version we anticipate to create doesn't already exist). Secondly I found THIS  website which is near enough the same, however this is in alphabetical order, again giving me good research for my product and how I could alter my idea by interpreting both the original version and alternative ones.

Exploring Design Ideas

 I went onto photoshop to roughly design what the cards could look like. I wanted the card to be an actual iphone template in order to relate to the TV series, and I also changed 'Community Chest' to 'Community Coffin' to relate more to the show. In our group of 4, each individual explored designing something different, for example the actual board, the logo, the money, and the cards. By roughly trying out new designs we are able to put our creativity together for next lesson with the planning of the game. 

   These are good experiments because it allowed me to merge together multiple ideas to see if they work together, however I think it would be a useful thing to use not just an iphone, but experiment with the phone, using different brands etc.