Moral Combat

Moral Combat is a documentary presenting both sides of an argument on the subject of video game violence and their effect on modern society.


Shot entirely in high-definition video, the full-length feature documentary studies the controversial, polarizing subject of the video game controversy through a series of interviews with experts on both sides of the matter – some believing that violent games should be banned, others supporting their protection under the First Amendment.The film makes extensive use of green screen technology to blend the subject matter being discussed (games, characters, archival news footage) in the background, while keeping the interviewee actively in the shot.


The trailer was uploaded to YouTube on December 27, 2006 and was met with overwhelming concern and dismay from gamers around the globe who felt it sensationalised the topic and serves as a rhetoric piece for anti-games and anti-gamer activists and political figures. The trailer was viewed over 100,000 times in the coming weekend and spurred debate on scores of websites.


Interviewed in the film are leading politicians, journalists, academics, consumer advocates and special interest group executives, game developers, retailers, trade associations and publishers.

                                                                                       - Wiki


My own thoughts on the documentary were that it was fairly unbiased, though I am still sure myself that video game violence is only as bad as the parents of the children playing the games let it become, and that the actions of one radical individual who may take the influence of a video game too far do not accurately represent the majority of gamers. I grew up drawing pictures of people getting their heads cut off and all sorts of violent things; I played violent video games and watch violent films. Yet I'm the least violent person I know, and I have a sense of self responsibility; I don't drink, or smoke, I'm not unhealthy and I see video games as an inspiration. It isn't proper to blame the video game when it is the responsibility of the individual player to decide how they react to it. 


Firstly, game violence is reacted to much more negatively than violence found in any other media; films, books, comics and radio to name some examples. The problem with people buying underage games lies with the parents, and as reported in the documentary, 80% of people playing underage games do so because their parents bought the game for them. It is the parent's responsibility to make sure that the games they are buying are adequate for their child to play.


I myself am familiar with this; my brother's copy of GTA San Andreas was taken back to the store by our parents after they read an article about how the developers removed a sex mini-game. I didn't agree with it back then but I can respect my parents decisions now.


The documentary did provide some good points though. Violence in video games like Postal 2 is agreeably pointless, and does not contribute much to the game. I am a firm believer that violence is dramatic and often necessary for story and narrative, or as part of character development, but when it is involved in the game for nothing but the violence, it shouldn't be involved at all.

Concept Art

This was the first piece of concept art I produced for my environment. I made it gray scale, dark and atmospheric, using silhouettes and generic lighting to portray a story of a feudal land in Japan. I hadn’t worked with Photoshop to make art all that much and it was an advance in the development of my game environment as much as it was an advance of my skills. I had ideas for assets I wanted to make already; torches, buildings, trees and a misty fog.

This was second piece of art I produced and features much of the same I made in my last piece. However, I feel that the sky I used in this one created a much better effect than the gray / black night sky in the last concept art. I acknowledged here I would probably never base my whole environment on one picture, but take the best parts of each picture and utilize each of them in the environment when I would come to make it.

This was the third piece of artwork I made and I decided to test a different source of light to portray a different time of day. This environment is portrayed at sunset, and I kept the theme of using silhouettes and black against the gold light of the sun. I knew I here I wanted my environment to be atmospheric, and I started thinking about sounds – the ones I would like to include and the ones that would be best left out.

My fourth piece of concept art I decided to set in a different landscape; high up in the mountains with rope bridged connecting the temple on each mountain to each other. I feel that this would make a very atmospheric environment and I do not feel up to the challenge of trying to re-create this realistically enough for my own liking in game format. I also realized that the scene does not appear as dark and brooding at daytime and decided I would have it set at night.

My last piece influential on my design philosophy for my environment; it is very atmospheric, and I decided the scene would be set at night, and that I would have a nearby lake in the scene and have assets such as a Shinto shrine introduced into the environment to better reflect the theme of Japanese culture in a fantasy environment. I also liked the idea of a house isolated on the top of a hill, and wanted an isolated home in my own environment.

Environment Music / Inspiration

Whilst developing my environment I did not solely refer to pictures; I listened to relevant and fitting music. As I like to mention, I believe the power of sound is very often underestimated, and music has always been a great source of inspiration for me, often more so than visual pictures. Music can trigger ideas and creativity in me and rather than question it, I simple nod my head and get on with it. It's hardly something to complain about.

That said, many songs I listened to were from the video game I played in my youth, Tenchu 3: Wrath of Heaven. It was a very fun game to play and pretty much cemented my interest in everything old-Japanese for years after, and even before I had an active interest in historical figures like the Shogun and samurai.

I listened to this music whilst developing the level and would like to think that it added atmosphere. I originally planned to include one of these songs in the scene but thought that a more simple song would suffice because it sounds more local and solemn, more appropriate than a fully orchestrated musical ensemble.

Assets I Didn't Use

There are a few assets I made that saw very little or even no use at all. This may have been because of a change in ideas, a realisation when shaping the scenario or simply a lack of necessity. I used a wide ranged of assets and developed some late in the project, whilst some I worked on early on never ended up seeing any use.

Many of these were very insignificant; boulders, rocks, and bits of trash I originally planned to have strewn around the landscape to make it looked more lived in and rural. Some remain in the final scene but not as many as I originally planned. This was an asset I did use, but one I didn't use as much as I originally wanted to.

The bridge was one of the first assets I made. I was sure at the time that I wanted to have a small pond with a bridge over it. The player wouldn't be able to walk over it themselves so I made it as I made my 2D tree plane assets for distances to cut back on polygon usage, and made the bridge out of just three planes.

In the end I didn't end up using it because I had nowhere in the scene I had settled for to implement it, and I did not want to compromise the design of my environment simply to use this one asset when I felt I would have been just as fine without it, as it did not make that much of a difference.

Looking back I think I could have made it cross the lake in some way but I still think my environment turned out fine without the bridge.

I did use the shinto shrine at each end of the bridge, however, at the top and bottom of a set of stairs that I made that lead up to the nearby temple in the game environment. It's fair to say that I did make use of half of this asset after having made it, and the 2D plane imaging I also used in the trees and temples I used for distances. Whilst I didn't use the original asset, I used pieces of it, and the knowledge I learned after I made it came in useful later on.

Unity - Importing Assets

Introducing custom assets into Unity after making them in Maya is an easy process. After making the asset, freezing transformations and combining the objects if the asset consists of more than one object (this way the asset is not as memory heavy), the file can be exported as an FBX and saved into the asset folder within the Maya project folder. This can then be imported as an asset directly to be used in Unity.

Unity - Particle Effects

Unity's particle system allows you to create many different animated effects using customisable particles. These can be made to move along specific coordinates at designated rates, and can be made to look like many common things seen in games; water, fire, smoke, or substitute for magic effects in fantasy environments.

The amount of settings available means that people are able to tune their particle emitters to act almost exactly as intended. Whilst the level of settings take some getting used to, once you know what each is for then it becomes easy to create simple particle animations, as only complex particle animations would require a lot of fiddling around.

The shape the particles take can be edited with either an imported package or a self-made particle in photoshop. The colour of the particles can be changed as can the rate at which any specific coloured particle occurs during the animation.

Game Development - Game Concept

If by circumstance your game concept has been approved and a wealth of reference material is gathered, the time has come to develop it. Rather than tackling the game as a whole, this entails breaking the idea down into it’s component parts and identifying their individual development needs. 

Creating the concept drawings of the game assets like characters, levels, vehicles and so on is a job for the designer or artist. This process is similar to the visual work undertaken in the film industry to develop the look and feel of a film. This activity will produce a great deal of concept art - both traditional and digital. This is used later by the modellers and animators when they are creating the 3D assets.

All digital games have an interface to enable the player to use them. At a basic level, this begins when the player loads the game and must navigate to the point where he starts to play. On-screen information is also presented to the player during gameplay - this is the graphical user interface (GUI). This may take the form of a head-up display, quite common in first person games, or information such as statistics and hits. The design of this important information is crucial. A well designed interface can add to the mood of a game before it is played.

Game mechanics are a crucial factor of design as well. There is always an opportunity to develop existing ideas for game mechanics, deploy them in different ways, or even develop entirely new ones. Remember though, that the game mechanics directly affect the way a player experiences a game - perhaps more so than other factors. Games with poorly designed or over-complicated mechanics are unlikely to be successful.

Sound within a game is a critical aspect. There are specialist musicians and sound technicians working in the games industry, and it is their role to help build and implement the sound in a game. A designer’s role at this stage is to suggest sound effects and dialogue to give the sound engineers direction in their work.

If the game is an adventure style game with a story this will need as much care over its development as a film script or novel would. Game players as a film script or novel would. Game players can be very critical of poorly thought-out or naive plots when the story may take the form of a write up of a typical game noting all the points a player may go through.

Games consist of stages or levels. As the players progress through a game, the levels generally increase in difficulty and the story develops. The designer must create a series of challenges for the player as they progress through the level. This means that the design of individual levels is closely linked to the design of the game mechanics.

Game Development - Research and Development

Many people will have ideas for games, the first step on the path to that idea becoming a reality is to undertake some basic research and development in order to expand the idea into a robust proposal. There are several ismple considerations that the designer can make in order to turn the idea from a whim to a solid concept. A word of warning - it may be tempting to jump straight into designing characters and levels and icons and other details. This is best avoided, as if the game changes in the early development stages such work will be wasted. Good practice is to spend a relatively short but valuable length of time at the outset of making sure your idea has the potential for development.

Look at games similar to the one you have in mind. Usually there will be something comparable in the same genre. If there is nothing truly similar out there you may have a new idea. Look at themes and mechanics. Keep notes about the good and the bad, not just one or the other. What games fail to deliver the promised experience, and why. Have other people’s reviews of the game noticed the same thing? You can build upon your own game by asking the right questions and questioning the philosophy of not only what makes the game work, but what doesn’t.

Re-using the same game engine for many different game titles is not entirely unheard of. The engine is the unseen code which drives the visual game action on screen. Within the engine are rules to the way the game world works; and how objects and characters behave. It is a fairly simply task to remove the visual aspects of a game and replace them with other visual and model data, to create a new game which is very different. Due to the fact that a game’s code is usually very expensive to develop, the starting point of working with an existing game engine makes excellent financial sense for a game developer. An example of this is the re-use of Valve’s Source engine for Day of Defeat; more famously used in Half Life 2.

A strange but efficient way to begin the design process is to ask several important questions to answer, to give your concept form as a game and avoid a poorly defined idea. 

Can you describe your game? Can it be described in one paragraph? When selling an idea you need to grab attention and a good description will include the premise of the game, any unique features and it’s potential market. 

Can you summarize the story? The story is different from its description. A story summary should be a short paragraph which captures the essence of the story and allows others to appreciate and enthuse about it. 

Which platform? Is it more suited for consoles or is it PC exclusive? They may be specifically designed for hand held games consoles, or even mobile phones. It would be best to focus on the platform the game would feel most natural on, rather than stretching it to fit everything.

What’s the target audience? Does your game appropriately target the audience, and would there be any compromises in your game if you had to change it in some way so that it was? 

Does it fit a genre? Can it be categorized, easy to understand?

By listing description, story, platform, genre and target audience in a concise document you will compile a quick reference tool with which to answer questions arising during development about the game should be - and what it shouldn’t.

Game Development - Starting the Design Process

This refers to the ideal way in which a computer game should come together. From ideas to finished code handed over for manufacturing, this process can be complex, even for a small game. There is no set order for an end result, and each company will have it’s own preferences regarding how they go about organizing their resources. Companies change continuously and refining their development processes to suit their games. The start of a design process comes when there is an idea. This spark can come from one of many and any sources.

Existing intellectual property means that the game is intended to embody a previously existing idea. Possible sources include TV, comics, films and previous installments of games. Development of an existing storu or concept is quite a common feature of the modern game development world. It can be a lucrative proposition. Competition for rights to certain intellectual properties can be fierce; deals between the cinema and Marvel industries for example allowed a select group of producers to make films with an entirely new basket of ideas. 

Working with similar themes are a common start for games. As an example, if one game company has a successful title concerned with classic racing cars, then as the director of another company, you might ask your designers to come up with a similarly themed game with enough differences to avoid copyright issues. This could be criticized as a lack of imagination, though sometimes this second game is better than the first as you can take existing ideas, in some form, and re-shape them to be better. 

New ideas can come from combining old games with new inspirations, that can stem from a ‘what if?’ conversation. Mixing and matching ideas both old and new can lead to new interpretations of older stories through different mediums, such as Lego Star Wars. Warhammer 40k introduces races like Elves typically found in fantasy settings rather than sci-fi setting.

Brand new ideas are the riskiest propositions. Few games designers have achieved critical acclaim with entirely new ideas. As a result, developers are weary that gamers will not accept new titles as readily as titles that are already well established. There are many puzzle games out there but only one Tetris. Mario is perhaps the most iconic original character. However, even if you don’t develop an idea for a whole new game, the ideas might come in useful in some other way.

Ideally, games development teams should be structured to work collaboratively. Having a designer involved at an early stage can generate some new concepts whilst a programmer can point out technical opportunities that might be applicable. As a number of ideas take form and the teams expand, the majority of the work is for the designers and animators, with the programmers closely following, developing the code to bring the game to life. As the process goes on, so does the need for 3D asset generation, level design and the implementation of the programming that will make the game run. Alpha and beta testers will then go through the game and find any inadvertent faults before declaring their satisfaction. Throughout this process, the relevant managers and AQ staff monitor, guide and enable the process to its conclusion.

Designers are responsible for the look and feel of the game; they generate the concept, the story, gameworld and mechanics. They are concerned with the aspects of the game that grab public attention and hopefully make it a success. Roles like game designer, script writer and level designer can fall under this name. Posts in seniority can range from junior to leads, who manage staff.

Art and animation staff give visual form to the designer’s ideas, from 2D drawings right up to the 3D models and animations. These visualizations are necessary to develop the game’s unique style. These roles overlap with that of the digital modelers and animators who create the assets to be included within the game.

Sound and music engineers are very important; I frequently uphold the opinion that sounds in games are more often undervalued than not. These roles may cover that of the sound effects producers, musicians and may cover technical aspects such as incorporating the soundtrack into the game.

Programmers create the code for the engines that deliver games. Despite coming from highly technical backgrounds. programmers have a very unique creative aspects when implementing their skills to the creation of a fully functioning playable environment. Though creating code may be an unforgiving logic exercise, if it is to deliver the sound of a delicate breeze, or the effect of a football kicked through the air, the code must be created by someone with sympathy for the subject matter.

QA professionals and testers make sure the game works and that it meets specifications. Testers have a pivotal role in achieving this, finding and locating problems that developers may have overlooked for whatever reason and can then work on fixing or correcting or improving upon. 

Beta Testing My Level

The feedback I got from a beta testing session of my game level yielded mostly one result; I needed to introduce some box colliders to stop people falling or going into places they shouldn't go, and places I don't intend for them to go. Most of the criticism was this suggestion alone; I'm hoping people did not simply repeat what was said above unless they believe it needed re mentioning and was truly the only criticism they could see, aside from other small inconveniences and quick fixes such as cubes I had attached sounds too I had not disabled the mesh renderer on so they were still visible.

 I added a bit more lighting as some said it was a bit too dark, and expanded the play area a little as some said it wasn't the right size. Most fixes were quick and it was otherwise alot of positive feedback. Other feedback got was positive; atmosphere was praised as were textures. Sound and use of minor, trivial, but contributive assets was also noted.

I have since introduced a bump-mapped asset or two to simply demonstrate I'm capable of doing it as well as it looking a bit better than being un-bump-mapped. 

I have acted on all the feedback I've gotten and now my environment is a much more playable, and interesting place to be, with most of the annoyances and bugs corrected and fixed.

Game Environment

Two early drafts of plans for my environment depict a lot of what hasn't changed besides perhaps the arrangement and the scrapping of some ideas. In the end I didn't implement a valley and make an abundant forest because I did not have the polygon count to account for these. I could not make the landscape as large as I wanted. I still feel I made a good achievement in fulfilling what I could of these plans.

The first one is an overview of the entire scene; everything that would be in the project. This consists of the locations of the village I originally wanted to include in the distance, notable mentions of a large cliff drop. As mentioned however, not much as changed; the player is still confined to their playable area.

In this second picture of the plan, it focuses solely on the playable area. This remains very similar aside from arrangements and locations of some assets, albeit I also scrapped the lowered down area on one side of the pathway. I also swapped the firefly lamps with flame lit lamps. Assets and props such as ropes and pots I made but didn't include or deleted in order to preserve polygons. Some props I did include as I felt they were necessary, such as the shrine and the shack, which I decided should be a more appropriately build house in itself.

This is a more accurate and finalised layout of my entire game environment, including the locations of hills, heavily forested areas, the locations of temples, shrines, lamps, the pathway, the fencing, the nearby temple and provides a very clear layout detailing the locations of anything notable. Another version of this focused on the player only area as done above I feel would be irrelevant as just about everything is covered here, aside from trivial assets such as rocks and flavour assets such as the paintings and chairs.

Unity - Sound

Introducing sound to Unity projects is also a simple process. An MP3 file can be directly transferred for use in Unity, and assigned to an object, usually a cube which through disabling the mesh renderer can be made invisible. The sound can be a 2D or 3D sound; a 2D sound will occur universally wherever the player is and is suitable for ambient sounds such as wind. 

3D wounds occur only at a certain area and are surround sound, better suited to sounds for fireplaces. The sound file can be made to loop repeatedly, and either happen when clicked on or interacted with, or to play immediately and automatically if Play On Awake is enabled. The volume at which players hear the sound at whatever distance can be adjusted through the Rolloff Mode editor. 

I have used both 2D and 3D sounds in my game environment for fireplaces, musical instruments playing, wind, and the sound of crickets at night - all of which breathe life into the game environment and make it much more immersive. I believe the power of sound in video games is very often underestimated or not used to it's fullest potential.

Unity - Terrain

Creating terrain and landscapes using the Unity game engine is a very simple process despite the ease of use. A use of tools that can be uses easily mean that anyone can create, raise, lower and smoothen and colour landscape to whatever end they want.

These settings are the base settings off which many things on the terrain will adhere to; specifically, I use this menu to control the settings for trees which I place down. For example, the distance at which they billboard, and the level of detail that can be seen after or before the player has approached or retreated a certain determined distance away from the tree. This is useful when wanting to lower polygon CPU usage in an environment, or increase CPU usage if desired.

Using this menu you are literally able to select a seamless texture to paint onto the terrain like a brush, using one of many brushes. Here I have a hillside grass texture and a rock texture that I use in my own environment that when used together can effectively create an aesthetically convincing terrain. Settings are adjustable so the opacity / clarity of the texture can be adjusted as well as how strongly it is applied to the targeted area; as well as how large the targeting area is. Other textures can be downloaded and added.

Gathering Material

88-91


"Once you are committed to designing your game you need to consider the details. To develop the idea you must start to gather material that will inspire your work. These pages suggest some valuable reference sources."


Ganasutra often has post-mortems of game production, written by game designers. Making further use of the internet is something I'm confident enough in already, I know many places to look in order to gathering information about games and gathering information that may help when designing my own.

Gathering first-hand material is an excellent practice to develop. Images, local surroundings, see things put into a different context, turned upside down, enlarged or reduced inside. Thinking of dimensions in this way is not something I do often although I do recall it being effective at manipulating ideas and information. I have used cameras to take pictures of poses, textures and architecture that I have made us of in later projects and intend to carry on doing so.

Mood boards are something I am very familiar with although in all honesty I do not refer back to them all that often, but the times I have I have found to be useful. I try to make the moodboard mean something and inspire small fragments of stories, tiny ideas, vague scenarios that will stay in my head that I can dwell on and think over however long I like, ask myself questions about the feasibility of such locations and what role it (whatever it might be) will play in my game, and why it plays this role, and how, and where and when.

The Computer Game Design Course

Pages 78 to 83

Opening with a paragraph explaining the process of inspiration for games and how important it is to be both original in a market crowded with companies that want to jump on the same popular bandwagon, and how in the cases of case studies such as Deus Ex, real life experiences and interests by the developers of the game contributed to the overall polished feel of the game.

"The problem with inspiration is that the more you seek it, the more it can seem to elude you. There is no magic formula that you can follow to make you creative and give you the ability to have good ideas on demand. The best practice for any would-be designer is to seek out as many different kinds of experiences as possible. This doesn't simply mean playing a lot of games - you will only end up making more of the same, but entails looking far and wide into other cultural activities such as literature, art, philosophy, and history. Getting that illuminating flash of inspiration is always a rare occurrence, but with research and preparation it is possible to give the sought after insight and a little help."


Case Study one details some of the thought processes and influence behind decisions made by Warren Spector and Harvey Smith, designers of critically acclaimed Deus Ex. Warren started originally with table top games which influence the story. There are real world environments and monuments such as the Statue of Liberty. There is the option of choosing a violent or non-violent way of getting through a level, for additional freedom of choice for realism. I would also add that from my own experiences, the player can relate to the character more as the player is using the in-game character as a medium of expressing their way of interacting with an otherwise fictional reality, meaning the game is more immersive.


Case Study 2 regards Nintento, introducing designers Satoshi Tajiri and Shigeru Miyamoto, who attributes his inspirations to be the countryside and it's wealth of natural features, which provided the material for design in the future. Satoshi on the other hand enjoyed collecting bugs and a discovered love of games meant that he came to love the Nintendo GameBoy, and his desire to allow people to enjoy collecting weird beasts from the surrounding countryside and trade them gave rise to the concept of Pocket Monsters, and I'm sure just about everyone knows where that idea has gone since then.

Pokemon features a collective element meaning the character is rewarded for time dedicated to playing the game and amassing a larger collection, a concept also reflected in RPGs and MMORPGs, and other games lately that have introduced achievement systems such as Gamer Score.

Sketchbooks and notebooks have been where I have both noted ideas and inspirations that have suddenly popped into my head, or have given inspiration in the form of a randomly drawn shape or object that may spark an idea and develop into something else. As the book states, 'a sketchbook or notebook is a place where you can let your imagination run riot', which is always great and always has been and always will be! It can also be used to demonstrate early initial thought processes that can be reflected on or built upon.

The 'Question the status quo' segment I found myself in agreement with despite never fully thinking of it before, especially when detailing the part about the health packs. It didn't occur to me when this change occurred and it has almost become the norm, now. Call of Duty 2 introduced it, where instead of unrealistic health packs being applied by moving over them, the edges of the screen would flash red and connotate danger. This segment alone has definitely made me realise one thing: I will be keeping an eye open on all future games and comparing it to the genre and it's predecessors, noting any changes that challenge the status quo.

The best example of this I have at hand is an upcoming title, Guild Wars 2, an MMORPG, is not going to feature end-game raiding content, unlike most, if not all other MMO games, including long-time kingpin of the MMO market and arguably most successful MMO of all time, World of Warcraft. This change I feel to be very strange, but I feel very intrigued as to how ArenaNet, the developers of Guild Wars 2, will overcome this and how end-game content will play out.

Independent Games Developers are on the rise again. As detailed, there are still many smaller developers that employ a small number of people and develop games either by web browsers, PCs, or the mobile phone gaming market. Because these independent developers are not tied to making large profits and therefore do not need to develop sure-fire hits they an experiment by making games that explore themes that are not normally explored.

I find most games developers have been bought out by larger companies or by merging, but this segment also made me realise that when you are not focusing on profit, there is more room for experimenting as there is less of an expectation and demand. Whilst larger companies are compelled to deliver, smaller companies are boundless, to an extent - their funding may be their only limit.