Game Media Industries: The beginning of the fun bit!
Week 3: Pitch
As detailed in my Pitch, for my DA I’m working on Concept Art this semester, using the MDA Framework. I can’t wait to share more about the project!!
Week 7: Progress Report
Subnautica is a game about a lot of things: Crafting tools and building a base, uncovering secrets on an alien planet, and saving both your own life and the lives of the other inhabitants of the planet 4546B. The game is easy to get deeply invested in, and engagement can range from fluid to extreme (Leorke, D. 2022), depending on the player. Within my DA, I want to look at how the game engages players by looking at the production process- its concept art and the methods of design Unknown Worlds used to create the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics within Subnautica.
But what exactly is MDA?
The Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics framework (MDA for short) is a framework of analysis intrinsic to our understanding of games and how audiences interact with game media (Hunicke, Zubek, 2004). It breaks down games into three distinct parts:
- Mechanics, the function of the game itself- what players can or cannot do within a game.
- Dynamics, the feedback systems in place that keep players engaged with the world and story, and how changes in both interact with player choices and actions.
- and Aesthetics, the player experience, their motivation, and how the game may be categorized (ie. Genre). (Hunicke, Zubek, 2004)
To take Subnautica for example, you need to find resources in the game to craft anything, a core mechanic of the game. The environment is full of rocky outcroppings you can destroy to find metals, plants to harvest for food and crafting supplies, and fish to hunt and kill. That player interaction with their environment produces a response, starting a dynamic feedback loop that teaches a player they need to go to these particular plants, biomes, and creatures for specific materials. The aesthetic design of said plants, biomes, and creatures then tells the player what they’re looking for, rather than 1,000 identical garryfish (actual fish name) and sandstone outcroppings that would significantly limit the player experience.
We can apply these ideas to pretty much every part of game design, as long as it has a connection to function, feedback, and response. This, then, places it as the perfect framework to analyse the role of Concept Art in video game production.
Analysis example: Early Art “The Pillars of Silence”
This piece of concept art (above) seems to be one from quite early in the process, as its black and white style points to it being a more developed thumbnail sketch- a simple drawing at the start of the design process used for the rapid prototyping of ideas. (Honkanen, 2017)
Looking at the image and written context below it, we can see the intended MDA of the environment. “The Pillars of Silence” were intended to be a biome important to finding resources, with the added layer of danger with the acid you would have to get through to reach anything useful. The art is eerie, and seems to imply a similar colour palette or environment to that of the lost river- a late-game area also featuring acid and needing to overcome it to find materials- with much more developed concept art pictured below.
Image cr.
Above: The Pillars of Silence, Anonymous, Unknown Worlds, n.d. Text reads: “Env. Haz #5 “The Pillars of Silence” – A massive field of sink holes that send off a pillar of acid… animal that got caught melt to bones in min… the bone are suspended there for ages. But if you can find ways to withstand the acid… what special treasure of creatures await in the sinkholes??..”
Below: Lost River concept art, Anonymous, Unknown Worlds, n.d.
When looking at concept art from an outsider’s perspective, we can only make educated guesses on a lot of the intended function of areas unless they made it into the final product. Concept art then, to an extent, becomes primarily focused on dynamics and in particular aesthetics, which makes sense given the visual and design-based nature of both art and the aesthetics part of the framework.
This flow chart outlines the feedback loop that can be applied to many games, such as Subnautica. Player actions based on the context they are in within the game world causes effects both immediately for the player and the world of the game, starting a chain of cause and effect as these effects change the player context and therefore their decisions (Fabricatore 2018). While not in effect in concept art due to the medium being strictly visual, a lot of development of ideas as to what these effects are happens within this stage.
Concept art is an intrinsic part of the game development cycle as it fills a major role in several parts of the process. It’s important for rapid prototyping with thumbnail sketches and continues to have an impact on game design as it influences not only mechanics and dynamics, but is also affected by them- the art style and some technical elements in particular are impacted, as mechanics impose restrictions on what can or can’t be done within the aesthetic sides of the game (Höök, 2023).
Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics influence each other just as much as they influence other elements of a game, and concept art is a significant part of all of them. Without visual development, most games would be a lot more boring and challenging and most people wouldn’t bother playing them. With how vital games are becoming to all kinds of contemporary media, the role of concept art and MDA will only continue to grow in relevancy.
So What About the Digital Artefact?
My digital artefact (DA) has changed somewhat since the Pitch, as they tend to do. This time, however, there’s a couple of distinct features of it that have changed, instead of the entire project:
- The subject of my concept art:
- Initially, I was working on art for my friend’s D&D-esque tabletop game, and while I still intend to do this in my free time, I found it was difficult to work within the restrictions of the assessment itself. Being unable to get feedback from people outside BCM215 due to ethics concerns, I would be unable to communicate with the friend running the game as I would in an industry context.
- The goal of my DA:
- This sounds like a major element, but really all that’s changed is that instead of looking specifically at atmosphere, I’ve shifted my goal to moreso look at how the production of concept art functions within the design process and game development cycle. This turns the more qualitative assessment of the previous idea into a quantitative one, being objective about the time it takes to produce, as well as the actual purpose of production art, as a game can’t be built entirely on it.
- I’m also shifting the final product slightly! Instead of just having a collection of artworks, I’m aiming to produce an artbook similar to that of Wizards of the Coast’s Dragons of D&D book (Herman Et. Al., 2024).
My new project will be focused on an idea for a video game I had back in 2023, currently called BILBY. Following the titular Bilby character through a 2D platformer, players will use physics (as in the science subject)-based puzzle mechanics to bend reality to their will and progress towards the end of the game.
The current story is that Bilby is trying to escape a black hole which is slowly eating the world they live in. They make progress with the help of a mysterious moth friend who knows more than most moths should about the mechanics of the universe and the goggles Bilby found that let them see the layers of said universe.
The concept for my DA has obviously expanded beyond the scope of just one semester, so I’ll be presenting an incomplete artefact at the end of semester. The main goal, however, is to make a smaller artbook on the character design process for the game! This is a far more reasonable goal to reach, particularly considering character design is an area I’m most experienced in when it comes to design and concept art.
As for what I’ve done so far, due to edits made to the project I haven’t yet made it past the thumbnailing stage of my project, but I took two different approaches.
These were the extent of my work on the initial idea, halted early due to the sudden realisation I couldn’t do what I intended with my DA. These are of two separate districts within the world of the tabletop game, and my main goals were to use lighting and scale to really make the world feel foreboding and unforgiving. I had a description I was working off, as well as my own knowledge and ideas, so I started on colour immediately which isn’t usually the case in concept art. Despite that, I still consider these thumbnails due to how sketchy and loose they are- they each only took me around 30-45 minutes.
In comparison, the much more recent BILBY concept art took around an hour, and focused much more heavily on shape language and silhouette in the main character’s design. I’m still not fully happy with them, but this initial page of exploration is also only the first step towards a more complete design and concept, so I’m happy with where I am. Over the hour I spent on this page, I made several quick sketches of the character, taking notes and bringing those elements into the next iteration.
Overall the project is going smoothly, and I’m interested to see how it progresses over the next few weeks. The intent is to post updates here every other week, so I’ll see you then!
Bibliography
Anonymous & Unknown Worlds n.d., SN LostRiver Large, Fandom.com.
Beat Suter, Mela Kocher, René Bauer & Fabricatore, C 2018, Games and Rules Game Mechanics for the»Magic Circle«, Bielefeld Transcript Verlag, pp. 87–111.
Honkanen, T 2017, Creation of concept art for an action role- playing game
Höök, E 2023, ‘Gameplay Mechanics and Character Design Considering Climate’, Thesis, South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences.
Hunicke, R, Leblanc, M & Zubek, R 2004, (PDF) MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research, ResearchGate.
Leorke, D 2022, ‘Post-casual Play Affect, Demand and Labour in Digital Gaming’, Digital Culture and Society, vol. 7, no. 1.
Ostrowski, A & Vacala, P 2024, Dragons Of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, pp. 1–63.
Parish, S & Bush Heritage Australia n.d., Bilby, Bush Heritage Australia.
Wu, Y 2012, ‘ the Style of Video Games graphics: Analyzing the Functions of Visual Styles in Storytelling and Gameplay in Video Games’, Thesis, Simon Fraser University, pp. 87–96.