We've nearly hit the end of Capstone now. Last night, every team presented their games to the rest of the Game Studio (and guests), signalling the end of intense development cycles. We've iterated on 3 concepts, settled on one, and continued to polish it over the course of the semester, and if you remember a few blog posts ago, I explored what our games looked like from an outside perspective. Now that we've come to a finished vertical slice, what does Breaker look like from the outside?
Breaker targets both the casual and competitive FPS markets. Players within these markets would likely see the game in it's current state, and not actually realize it is meant to be multiplayer. In this way, our execution doesn't show players what the game is supposed to become, which is a definite weakness. I actually think that our execution is targeted towards a publisher more-so than a player (or group of players), since the vertical slice we've built more-so shows off the mechanics of the game rather than a "method of play", e.g single player campaign or multiplayer. It shows a publisher that we know what it takes to create an engaging, fun FPS, so they can see what we could turn it into, but players usually care more about how the game can be played in this stage.
Speaking of mechanics (the "ideas" of the game), I think players within our audience would see things like grappling and weapon charging, and be excited about them. Grappling in FPS games is difficult to pull off, but we've been getting comments that compare us to Titanfall 2's grappling mechanic, which is regarded as a top-tier example. The charging mechanic should intrigue players in our audience. Most FPS games use standard ammo, so players can roam solo, or in groups. Breaker's charging means that there are specific places that you can reload at, so it changes the pacing and player grouping of each match. Players who recognize this would likely be very interested in trying it out, since it provides some novelty in an otherwise saturated genre. Those who don't recognize this might actually be entirely turned off of the game, since it may be a little too different from the norm.
Breaking away from just the mechanics, our art style is also very different from most modern shooters. Breaker's aesthetic is much more cartoony than your average modern-day FPS game, and therefore may push away some of our target audience, who are accustomed to realism (or near-realism). In the same way, however, it may even attract more players specifically because it is so different. As a non-artist, I'm actually not too sure on how our aesthetic will be received in the current artist, but I think we can differentiate ourselves enough that our style will be easily recognizable as the Breaker style.
The anti-corporation, underground, rebel-unity messaging present in Breaker largely aligns with a generalized political view normally held by younger people. These people are actually right in our main age group, however I do want to point out that this type of messaging is usually viewed as "leftist", no matter what fictional dystopia it is taking place in. This might push some people away; however, I think that since we're framing our multiplayer implementation as more of a sport, we'll be able to offset that.
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