PATRIOTIC RETRIBUTION
An Open World Game
By Matthew Boyd
Overview
Patriotic retribution is an open world adventure game with elements of fast pace action games
mixed into it.
• It best described as a mixture between GTA V, Red Dead Redemption and Assassins Creed.
• The main selling point of the game is its diverse story with is constantly evolving. This means
whatever the player does will affect the story in some way and some times drastically
changing the outcome of the game.
• Another big element to the game is its interactive world with random events such as caravan
hijacks and robberies which could be available at any time. The NPC and AI will also interact
with you in different ways depending on what you do or how you treat them.
What I did?
• I did a lot of research for my game.
• The objective of this is to try to understand the market, audience and the competition that I
would have to face when making this game.
• I searched for any and all useful information which might be useful when making my game.
• I kept an eye on all forms of competitors which are making a similar game such as GTA V and
Assassins Creed. On top of these games I also looked out for less known indie games in this
genre.
• This type of information is useful as it gives results of games which are doing well or poorly in
todays market. Using games which were sold over 5 years ago could be regarded as irrelevant
as the times change. By understanding today’s market you can create nearly exactly what the
community wants and understand what they don’t want.
Research methods
Primary research – is research carried out by a researcher with knowledge of the subject
through secondary research. This is usually carried out for when more information is needed or
the secondary research is unclear. Other times it could be used is to target a specific area such
as individual companies. This type of research cost a lot of money but is the safest and most
accurate method.
Secondary research - is research which is already been carried out. Secondary research can
be found in newspapers, online, in the library and on videos/ images (documentaries). This type
of research is free and easily accessible but could be faked easily.
Self-generated research – is research carried out by themselves and no external help. They do
this by creating questionnaires or online forms for the general public to fill out. This is the
simplest form of self-generated research.
Research methods
Quantitative research – is research which relies mainly on quantity. I.e. facts and figures.
This mean it relies mainly on cold hard logic through numbers and comparisons. This type of
research is mainly carried out by big cooperate companies as it’s the easiest thing to
understand and control.
Qualitative research – is research which relies mainly on quality. I.e. the personal opinions of
the target market. This means it relies on the opinions and thoughts of the general public
through questionnaires, likes and dislikes. This is used mainly by smaller companies which are
trying to improve there product instead of increasing sales directly or cutting prices.
• All of these forms of research where used and applied to my research. I discovered a lot of
useful information about the publics opinions of my game and compared facts and figures
with other games. I even created my own questionnaire and published it. Here
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CFqWfluxpZkh_CH2gVJrB31IxcYhNPunH777CGHPjxo/edit
Secondary research
Date
30/01
/15
30/01
/15
6/02/
2015
6/02/
2015
13/02
/15
• The image above is of
Pie charts which
display the answers to
my questionnaire.
• The left image is a
comparison between
two different games
and there game covers.
13/02
/15
Sources of the Information
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/661788-2d-vs-3d-costanalysis/
http://www.edge-online.com/features/watch-dogs-and-whythe-open-world-genres-biggest-success-story-is-also-its-ownworst-enemy/
Description of the
Information
Obtained
2D vs. 3D
Failures in the
market which we
can learn from
http://whatculture.com/gaming/15-best-open-world-videogames-time.php
Top 15 open world
games on the
market
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.833859Ubisoft-Says-Open-World-Games-Are-the-Future
Research from
Ubisoft
Magazine name “the greatest games of 2015”
Date of release: march 2015
Page 24
pages 15,16,17 and 19 page 60 “Elite:
Dangerous”
Magazine article on “the crew” Page 84-87
Date of release: February 2015
“PlayStation official magazine”
Top 100 games of
2014, various upand –coming
games (open
world games
relevant to my
game)
Information about
“the crew” and
how well it has
been doing
Notes
Also some
information
about the cost
of product
Maybe useful
information for
the future
By popularity
by the vast
majority not
just the general
demographic
Why open
world games
are the future
GTA, Minecraft,
crew, the new
order and other
new games as
well which are
highly
anticipated.
“TTG”
Failure as it
doesn’t have a
very enticing
story as you
are not
interacting with
any actors just
the vehicles.
• The Table shown above displays online
research which has been carried out and
recorded. It give brief and relevant
information which could be useful.
My analysis of my research
Key information – I learned that most big game companies focus on their past
successes to try to get safe profits. This is less risky as they know that people liked it in
the past so it’s likely that they will still like it. This can back fire as people can get sick of
the same repeated idea or game. Example: “Call of Duty” have a habit for creating a
similar game as a sequel with minor changes. Yet it is still one of the best selling game
franchises.
Information which changed my outlook – The gaming market doesn’t have a lot of
companies focused in the open world genre. There are only three companies which
dominate this market. (Ubisoft, Rockstar and Bethesda).
The most practice and useful method of gathering information – in my opinion the
most useful method of gathering information is self-generated with questionnaires as it
give an idea of what the market wants at the current time, the more people being
questioned the more accurate the research.
Conclusion of research / final thoughts – I should employ previous successful ideas
as well as including new content which it believe will spark the interest of the market.
WHAT WILL I DO NOW WITH MY
FINDINGS?
I have decided to evolve my game toward the markets wants from the results of my
questionnaire. Example of this is that many of the people questioned wouldn’t buy a
game for 1- 2 hours of gameplay and would want to buy a game with 10-20 hours of
game time and then replay ability as well. (Multiplayer is where I aim to involve this.)
The research changed my outlook on the amount of indie (independent) open world
game. It turned out that there aren’t many indie open world games as they usually take a
lot of time, funding and a large development team to create. Yet a lot of the larger open
world indie games are really popular even though they require less work through
randomly generated terrain, resources, event sand character.
Sometimes less is more.
CONCLUSION
Strengths – I focused towards recent games and learnt form the different success and
failures of similar games. I used these to figure out if my game would be received
similarly.
As most of my research is recent it is more accurate as the gaming market hasn’t
changed.
I got research from magazines, online articles, statistics, questionnaires and video
podcasts.
Weaknesses – If I were to redo this research I would focus less on open world games as
there are a lot more games which could resemble my game other than open world
games. I would also increase the amount of people answering the questionnaire too a lot
more as the questionnaires mightn’t be accurate.
RESEARCH SOURCES
•
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CFqWfluxpZkh_CH2gVJrB31IxcYhNPunH777CGHPjxo/edit
•
http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Open%20World/#p=0&tab=NewReleases
•
http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Open%20World/#p=0&tab=TopSellers
•
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-22-linear-games-going-to-suffer-in-the-market-far-cry-4-dev
•
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/2014/videogames
•
http://www.gamespot.com/watch-dogs/
•
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/661788-2d-vs-3d-cost-analysis/
•
http://www.edge-online.com/features/watch-dogs-and-why-the-open-world-genres-biggest-success-story-isalso-its-own-worst-enemy/
•
http://whatculture.com/gaming/15-best-open-world-video-games-time.php
•
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.833859-Ubisoft-Says-Open-World-Games-Are-the-Future
•
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqfiv6-p5lc
•
The greatest games of 2015 - Page 24, 15,16,17,19 and 60
•
PlayStation official magazine - Page 84-87
Q&A
Any questions?