Game Design - Brook Driver

7/30/2019 Game Design - Brook Driver

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Theme Nightlife

Brook Driver

Table of Contents (remember to right-click and UPDATE TABLE when

finished editing)

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1Design History ............................................................................................................................................................ 1Vision Statement ....................................................................................................................................................... 2

Logline............................................................................................................................................................................... 2Synopsis ............................................................................................................................................................................ 2

Game Description ..................................................................................................................................................... 3

Formal Elements ......................................................................................................... 4Objectives ..................................................................................................................................................................... 4Gameplay Description............................................................................................................................................. 4

Tutorial ............................................................................................................................................................................. 6Character Selection ..................................................................................................................................................... 7Conflict/Argument ...................................................................................................................................................... 8Challenge/Procedures ............................................................................................................................................... 8Outcomes.......................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Dramatic Elements ...................................................................................................... 9Characters .................................................................................................................................................................... 9

PCs ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 9NPCs ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Story ............................................................................................................................................................................ 10

Implementation ............................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Reflection ................................................................................................................. 10Dissoi Logoi .............................................................................................................................................................. 10Composition ............................................................................................................................................................. 10

Introduction

Design History

This game is based around games that I used to enjoy playing in which you were the

all powerful figure and you create a world that virtual people react to. You build a

scenario/a world for the virtual people to inhabit, your decisions of what to build,

where to build it, as well as numerous other variables creates an individual set of


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circumstances that effect the way the inhabitants react. Your aim is for the most

prosperous outcomes. It is very influenced by games like Rollercoaster Tycoon,

Theme Hospital and The Sims. The actual idea for what it was that I wanted to try to

control came from contemplating the difficulties that a mayor must have whilst

trying to balance a successful nightlife in his/her town with keeping it safe and clean

etc. This came from the amount of people that I hear complaining about nightlife

here in Columbia, so many people have a negative opinion but the reasons stretch

from too many gangs, to not enough diversity in the bars, to not enough live music

to only students being in the bars. I always wonder if these people who complain

recon that they could do a better job of keeping the gangs off the streets and

weighing up all the other variables that go into make a town safe and clean, whilst at

the same time fun and interesting for as many people as possible.

Vision Statement

Logline

Theme Nightlife is an interactive fiction game that teaches the player the difficulties

of building and running a prosperous towns nightlife, players must build a thriving

party scene that attracts a crowded nightlife and therefore a prosperous economywhilst controlling the dangers that come with this.

Synopsis

The basic idea of the game is to make a downtown area of a city as great a night out

as you possibly can by attracting as many people and making them have as much fun

as possible. This is with the purpose of making money, making the people have fun

and boosting the local economy. The player must manage the costs that the public

purse must shoulder in order to keep the sim-partiers happy and to make sure that

they keep coming back night after night. The eventual aim is to make your city

renowned as the best party town in the country. The game is marketed at people

that enjoy the challenge that games like this entail but are also interested in the


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party scene so in general an older audience that might play similar games like

Theme Hospital or Rollercoaster Tycoon.

I say an older audience because lots of the problems that you are dealing with are

things that kids do not know about. Gangs, prostitutes and drug dealers, whilst not a

focal point of the game, could be a potential problem for your society as well things

like people getting too drunk and vomiting and/or passing out in the street. For this

reason the game will have an age rating where kids under fifteen are not allowed to

play.

Game Description

The game starts with a run down, undeveloped area of town with one bar, one tacky

restaurant and a street performer. You start with a bit of money that you have been

allocated and a message from the governor that he wants you to turn this place into

a thriving social area of town. You must spend this money wisely as all of your

income is going to depend on what you build. Each daytime jumps past in a matter

of seconds but is a chance to make alterations to your town, then the night, which

starts at 6.30pm, is when the first people start to turn up to enjoy what downtown

has to offer for the night. At first it is just a few people who come to the restaurant

and a few to the bar but the more attractions you build the more people will come

and the more revenue you will acquire.

The more you build however the more problems you must manage and difficulties

you must mediate, each decision you make causes an effect that you have to deal

with appropriately, a simple example would be that the more people start coming to

town the more trash cans you must build and the more street cleaners you must

employ. The player must manage their funds appropriately to make the experience

of all the sim-partiers as good as it can possibly be, if there is a lot of litter in thestreet then people are less likely to enjoy their night out and are less likely to return.


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Formal Elements

Objectives

Objectives:

- Bring as much local business to your town

- Make large amounts of profit

- Keep the sim-partiers happy

- Keep the residents of the town happy (i.e. turning the whole place into a string of

brothels and strip joints will not keep the locals happy and you will have local

committees of residents complaining, sometimes even marching in the streets!)

- Rise up the rankings as the best party town in the country.

-Not get sacked if public opinion gets too low (this is rare).

Gameplay Description

The idea of the game is that you have complete control over the running of the town

and what can be built. All of the things you can build can be built in different sizes to

cater for the needs and numbers of people, if you build a nightclub too big and there

are not enough people to fill it then the sim-partiers will leave dissatisfied AND you

will lose money, if you build it too small or there are not enough night clubs thenthere will be long lines and again people will leave dissatisfied, HOWEVER you will

still make money but less people might show up the next time. Here is a list of the

things that you can build:

Restaurants:

-More High End : Sushi, Italian, Steak House, Tapas Bar, Chinese

-Fast Food outlets. pizza fried chicken burritos chilidogs - burgers

Bars (College Bars, Irish Bars, Cigar Bars, Hookah Bars, Jazz Bars, Pubs)

Nightclubs (you can choose what music they generally play on different nights

between chart music, disco, Motown, house, Drum and Bass, Electronic, garage, Hip

Hop and Dancehall.)

Gay Nightclubs


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Music Venues: variables on this what kind of music they are playing, how big they

are and how much they pay the acts (bigger acts mean more for tickets but cost

more to get to play obviously)

Casinos

Strip Clubs/Brothels

Liquor Stores

Supermarkets

Temporary Structures (circuses, fares, Night markets, temporary food stalls)

Transportation (bus shelters, train station)

Parking

Taxi Ranks

Cash Points

CCTV

Garbage bins

What you decide to build will have an effect on the atmosphere of the town on a

night out. More nightclubs might mean a younger crowd but could also mean a

larger drug problem which would mean you would need to employ more police.

More College Bars could result in problems like underage drinking and fights in thestreet. More Fast food outlets can result in more garbage and less public transport

can mean more drunk drivers.

Another Variable that you have control over is some of the laws. You get to dictate

what time the Bars and Clubs can stay open until, if there are still big crowds then

you can make them later though this leads to employing more people and the later

the crowds stay the more drunk they become which obviously leads to more

problems, however it also leads to them spending more freely.

You get to decide what the police put their focus on, whether they are lenient with

open containers or strict, whether they spend a lot of time dealing with underage

drinking (which makes money off drinking tickets but empties college bars) or


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whether they focus more on the gangs that could potentially cause trouble that

would scare away partiers from coming to your town.

Something else that you can have an option of doing is holding certain party events

such as st patricks day or Christmas fares. These cost more money but raise themood of the people and can mean more people coming to the town as a result of

them.

Tutorial

There will not be a tutorial as such but more of a series of pop ups that are speech

bubbles of opinions from various people throughout the game. The first one will set

you up for your overall objective. It will say; Verdict from Town Meeting: The town

has decided that the downtown area needs to become more attractive to put us on

the map. $200,000 of state funds has been allocated to renovate it. Get started!

You will have an advisor of sorts who gives you helpful hints and warns of potential

dangers of things that you might choose to do. You will also have less friendly

feedback coming from all angles including bar managers unhappy about things like

open container laws and town committees that want to throw their two cents in.


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Character Selection

The character you play is the omnipotent town mayor/overlord who does have the

power to literally pick individual people up and drop them around.

This image above is taken from Rollercoaster Tycoon and is how I imagine the sim-

partiers to look like. Whilst you can not control what these people are doing you

can pick them up in much the same way that you could in this game and move them

around. This does not change their feelings but is a way that you can move street

cleaners to bits of garbage and street performers to different areas etc. Also when

you click on the sim-partiers you can read a brief report on how they are feeling.

This will say just one of their thoughts, such as there are a lot of shady peoplearound but it will also display their level of enjoyment and inebriation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=4pNwhZSgHsYZcM&tbnid=gjbz012O9r_b1M:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.reddit.com/r/adviceanimals/comments/15w2iw/&ei=a0RwUdecAobu9ASO94CIAw&bvm=bv.45373924,d.eWU&psig=AFQjCNFnVmtGnMUglvWoxnXJ3MtFnQ8apQ&ust=1366398403082929


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Conflict/Argument

There are many conflicts that you have to negotiate in order to keep the town thriving.

Problems will arise trying to make the town as fun as possible but also keeping it safe

and also keeping it profitable. Warding off gangs may cost the public purse but might benecessary in order to keep people from being afraid on the night out. Getting people

drunk by having bars and clubs might keep peoples level of fun high but their level of

safety low and their propensity to either commit crimes, get in fights, vandalize or vomit

on the street will go up. This again costs with more policing and more street cleaners.

Challenge/Procedures

The challenge is to weigh all the factors to keep the town ticking over and growing.

The more money you make the more you can build, the more you can build the more

people will come but the harder it is to manage. The challenge gets harder the

further you get in the game because there becomes so much more going on. At the

beginning you have the opinions of just a few people to cater to whereas by the end

you are trying to cater to so many different people. The beauty is that your town

could be equally successful in two different games but be completely different. In

one you may have focused on drinking culture a lot more and opened a load of big

nightclubs in which case it will be a younger crowd who will party all night. In the

other game you might have made lots of jazz bars and music venues which would

have a completely different vibe. Each has their own challenges and each would

raise complaints (the first from the older generation, the second from the younger)

but it is about dealing with these in different ways.

Outcomes

This is not a win or lose game but rather just making it as best as you can, essentially

you could continue playing infinitely as even when you become the best party town

you can keep playing and things can still go wrong (mobsters could start running

the casino and paying off the police). This could be played online and a ranking


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system made between players based on revenue, number of people the town

attracts each night and how much fun the average sim-partier has.

The outcome of the game is in line with the goal of the game. You do not win but

instead have a constant stream of complaints and complements about the work that

you are doing. This was the reason that I thought of the game because of the amount

of people that have an opinion on the area where we go on a night out, both positive

and negative. It is about creating a balance between these two as, after all, you

cannot make everyone happy.

Dramatic Elements

Characters

PCs

The PC is the omniscient town mayor that you control, the builder and law maker

for the town.

NPCs

The computer controls all of the sim-partiers that walk around the town at night

however they react in certain ways depending on what you have put in your town

and what age or sex they might be or what wexual preference they might have. All

citizens, despite having all of these differences, have no difference in their race, they

are all just an indeterminate grayish colour and race does not effect any decisions

you make. You can click on the characters in the same way you can in Rollercoaster

Tycoon and it will tell you a brief description of how they are feeling and a star

rating out of 10 on what they are thinking of the night out. for example it might say

Loved the Irish Bar! Had a few too many whiskey, Hicup.. Might be sick *****. Or

the music is too loud in all these bars ***. Or those look like gangs on the corner, I

feel threatened **.


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Story

The conclusions from weekly town meeting will pop up as a sort of guideline of

what their opinion is of whats going on. You want to keep them on side otherwise

the town will not allocate you as much money and in the worst case scenario you

can lose your job. Bar owners thoughts can pop up as well telling you their thoughts

and feelings, for example The lack of open container laws means no one is drinking

in my bar, Im Losing Money!.

Reflection

Dissoi Logoi

I guess the idea of the game is to handle your money well and cater to the needs and

desires of people in the community BUT sometimes things that the community are

opposed to might make you a lot of money and make you be able to grow your town.

For example putting in loads of strip clubs and casinos and lowering the drinking

age might bring lots of people to the town but not for the reasons that the

townspeople would want.

Composition

I think that the composition of this game is very simple. The games it is modeled on

were made in the nineties and it would not need to be better gameplay or graphics

than any of these. Their addictiveness was in their simplicity however the more

options that you have the more interesting and diverse the outcome that you can

create. The only thing that makes this great that would need work is the number of

variable situations as ideally there would be hundreds and hundreds of potentialoutcomes.


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Documents

Game Design - Brook Driver