Yesterday I finally met the team at the MA Games Design course that I will be working with. I had already seen and read the idea before arriving so I had an understanding of what the game was about. But I wasn’t sure of the execution or how they were going to make it into an experience.
The people on my team are Jingya and Will. I’ve worked with both before so I feel we will have a good team ethic.
The team of MA students explained their game to me and Jingya as Will wasn’t present which did make it more difficult to create some decisions and begin planning as I wanted his input into the project.
The game’s inspiration is around mental health and how the brain works. They showed us another game called Florence that had similar gameplay. And discussed that this is how the game will be played. No winning or losing but rather an experience that shows educational things about the human brain.
I was interested in how sound could reflect this. Thinking back to my sound for screen lectures and my feedback. I missed an opportunity to use motifs in my sound work and I believe in this scenario it’s perfect to include that to add an additional lawyer towards the experience of the game.
The MA students were unsure of where they were, although they had done plenty of research they were unsure about which option they wanted to take. They had a prototype of one minigame which there will be many. This did make it difficult to begin or think about sound work. Usually, in these processes, the sound comes much later on in the development of games or film. I found that this is something I’m uncomfortable with doing, but I feel I want to push myself outside of my comfort zone.
The main thing I asked them was to create and have the graphics installed in the game. It’s difficult to create sound effects for things that aren’t even there yet. I hope in the next meeting we can discuss exactly what they need from us as I and Jingya are a tad unsure. We also need Will to be onboard and add to the planning and discussions of the project.
I have begun doing a plan for next Wednesday anyway, we created a WhatsApp group and I’ve asked for references of other music from games that will help me in what they want. I’m supposing there will be a musical loop for each level which they have stated five. From the example Florence, the game they showed us. It was predominantly classical, jazz, easy listening coffee shop music. Again I have very little knowledge of music theory and found I wanted to explore more sound design in this module. I have said I will create some music, by recording my housemate Daniel who plays the violin at the university tomorrow. And create some loops to show for Wednesday. The goal is perhaps five different styles of music and then they can listen to the demos and decide if they enjoy them or if they hate them. Sharing demos also allows me to not spend endless time polishing something they don’t want in their game.
Jingya has stated she wants to do sound effects and foley which I said I would engineer for her when the time comes to do it. After they give us a list or show us the game in more context. It’s all feeling a bit confusing at the moment as we are ready to go and begin doing the sound production but the Game designers are at a stage of production where they are unsure of where the game is heading.
I will update tomorrow after the recording session attempting to make some music.