Once we had a structure in place to provide a strong foundation on which to construct the game design, and once we had finalized Sustainable Tourism as the concept or the theme, we were ready to head to the final stages of developing the game.
After brainstorming about different ideas for the actual game, we once again, were unanimous in selecting the idea that we now call Pigeon Watch.
The Hero
It started with the idea of having a hero, or a star of the game; something gamers could look forward to and easily associate with the game as the key element or figure. We chose a pigeon in particular because in most parts of the world they are considered a nuisance to monuments and cultural heritage sites and thus we wanted to turn it on it's head and use them as the protectors of these sites in our game. On a deeper level, this indicates that anyone can start to be conscientious citizens and tourists when it comes to protecting and preventing these sites from harm, even if we've been nonchalant or even added to the mess, previously.
Research on pigeons showed that they have been used in the past in World War 2, as messengers, symbols of peace and so on, thus providing rich historical significance.
The Pigeon also represents a rather quirky figure for our game. The whole concept is such that we take a serious and often drab topic and turn it into something light and fun, while still being able to get across the message. As mentioned in my second blog post, once we had the structure of a monument-problem-sustainable tourism practice in place, we began developing our game levels.
The Game
Certain elements remain constant throughout the game such as; every game will consist of a monument under threat, tourists- their thoughts, positive or negative will be represented by symbols as a comic strip like thought bubble; the pigeon- it's weapon, a.k.a it's droppings; and something to help the player in each level, called old lady's boosting crumbs.
The idea is for the gamer to control the pigeon to have it take away negative thoughts from the irresponsible tourists while preventing the positive thoughts, so that the negative thoughts don't spread to become a shared habit.
All of these are connected to a points system, and the game will comprise of three levels in total, each with a different cultural heritage site, focusing on the threat specific to that area, thus striving to keep the player well informed and foster a sense of connectedness with regions other than their own. A 4th level will be included if it is detected that the player is in the same region as one of the sites in the game.
The name Pigeon Watch, as the name suggests, is to imply that the pigeon, the protector and guardian of these monuments are watching your every move, ready to punish you if you cause any kind of harm to these sites.
The Actual Design and Presentation
Working on the actual game design was a lot of fun, and we as a team have strived to make it as creative and graphic as possible.
My task was at first, to work on flash to try and animate some of the illustrations that are now present in the presentation. These animations illustrate the flight/movement of the pigeon and the tourists.
After this was complete, the drawings made, and the presentation slides put together, it was time to create the final presentation. At this point we decided we wanted to add voice overs and have it run smooth to help make the process of understanding the game less tedious, and so we edited it in the form of a video.
Finally, as mentioned in the marketing strategy, we decided to make a teaser to promote #PigeonWatch, with the intention of it going viral. Here is a link to the teaser uploaded on Vimeo -
http://vimeo.com/84566990
Thank you! :)
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