University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Into the sunrise

(USC Thesis Other)

Into the sunrise

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

Into the Sunrise

By
Zachary Reid Davis

Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
August 9, 2016

Into the Sunrise Davis i
Abstract
Into the Sunrise is a video game project created to explore the unusual hybridization of
simulation and adventure game genres, presented in the framework of an unfolding game. This
paper aims to explore the origin of the ideas behind the game, and discuss its development over
the course of the 2015-2016 academic year.

Into the Sunrise Davis ii
Acknowledgements
This project could never have reached this point without the incredible members of Team
Sunrise: Christo Arsenio, Steven Sugar, Lucas Peterson 3D, Yiwen Dai, Christina Orcutt,
George Luif, Todd Furmanski, Elliott Mahler, Katie Pustolski, Patrick Quah, Gabi Purri, and
Julie Buchanan.

Into the Sunrise Davis iii
Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. i
Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... ii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ iii
Project goals ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Experience goals .......................................................................................................................... 1
Design goals ................................................................................................................................. 1
Contribution to field ........................................................................................................................ 2
Accessibility without sacrificing depth......................................................................................... 2
Genre disruption and/or creation ................................................................................................ 3
User experience ............................................................................................................................... 4
Game phases ................................................................................................................................ 4
Narrative ...................................................................................................................................... 5
Format .............................................................................................................................................. 7
Platform ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Input ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Distribution .................................................................................................................................. 8
User testing and evaluation ............................................................................................................. 9
Early prototype testing ................................................................................................................ 9
Core testing ................................................................................................................................ 10
Feature testing ........................................................................................................................... 10
Works Cited .................................................................................................................................... 11

Into the Sunrise Davis 1
Project goals
Experience goals
● The player will feel driven to complete the experience by their curiosity and the intrinsic
emotional rewards of construction and resource gathering.
● The player will be surprised and delighted by the unlockable mechanics.
● The player will feel at peace, or at least in control, at all times.

Design goals
● Use “unfolding” as a way to slowly immerse players into a complex system.
● Create an infinite
1
terrain system that presents interesting logistical challenges for
players.

1
To the extent practically supported by hardware

Into the Sunrise Davis 2
Contribution to field

Towards a New Sunrise strikes out into new territories rarely or never explored by
games. In addition to minor innovations in individual mechanics of the game, there are several
major ways in which the project as a whole contributes to the field of interactive media and
games.

Accessibility without sacrificing depth
A very common problem I notice in simulation and strategy games is the tendency to
simply present the player with the full force of the system’s complexity from the very start of the
game. This problem extends as far back as the original SimCity, and continues today with titles
like Banished.

While this approach may be desirable for hardcore simulation players, I believe it
alienates most other players. Too many choices leads to confusion and decision paralysis, and .
While tutorialization can help to an extent, if the components of the system are too tightly
coupled, even then it can be very difficult for the player to fully comprehend.

This is why I believe “unfolding” (Portnow) is the perfect solution for introducing
players to a deep, complex system. If the system is capable of being broken into a series of
concentrically-built problems and solutions (or can be designed to have such capability), then the
elements of the system can be introduced one at a time to the player, and the game can wait for

Into the Sunrise Davis 3
the player to master an element before introducing a new one that fundamentally changes the
game. This shifting of the nature of the game as it proceeds is what makes unfolding so much
deeper than mere tutorialization. It adds mystery and surprise in addition to allowing players to
expose themselves to the complexity and depth of a system at their own pace.

Genre disruption and/or creation
As previously discussed, with few exceptions, games of the real-time strategy genre
focus on the elimination of enemy forces, and simulation/city building games create structureless
sandboxes that can be daunting for many players.

While there are many successful games in these genres that cater to these niches,
there is an opportunity to disrupt these genres, or perhaps create some new genre in the space
between them. I assert there is a large, untapped population of potential players who would be
attracted to a relaxed, violence-free experience focused on construction and resource
management that still has a structured progression with a definitive end.

In the best case, the creation of Towards a New Sunrise could even lead to the
creation of more experiences like it, providing some much needed balance and diversity in the
market.

Into the Sunrise Davis 4
User experience
Game phases
As an unfolding game, Towards a New Sunrise will appear to the player to be a game
that builds slowly and steadily with each new game mechanic they master, though individual
moments of reveal may be bigger or smaller than others. However, from a production or
descriptive standpoint, it is useful to split the game into two “sequences” around the point the
player exits the spaceship.

The “introduction” sequence (the sequence spanning from the start of the game to the
point the player exits the spaceship for the first time) starts off quite minimally, with nothing but
a single controllable character awakening in the crashed spaceship. After waking her up, the
player figures out that she is the commander of the ship, and interacts with the ship AI to learn
what happened. The interactions in this sequence are generally one-offs, but are meant to build
up the player’s abilities to control units, operate the 3D camera (a difficult task for players
without much game literacy), and perform research (unlock abilities).

In the interest of scope and maintaining player interest (and simultaneously
preventing player boredom and attrition), this introduction sequence will be relatively short,
approximately 5 minutes for a first-time player and far less for a repeat player. This also ensures
the player gets to the “main” sequence of the game, where most of the content is, before deciding
the game is relatively devoid of content and giving up.

Into the Sunrise Davis 5
Once the player has exited the spaceship with the commander and seen the planet’s
terrain, the main sequence begins. The goal of the main sequence is to find resources out in the
world and bring them back to the ship, where the resources can be used to perform research, or
build units or buildings that can assist with gathering more resources.

However, the difficulty of the main sequence is not constant. The player will quickly
exhaust the resources near the crash site, and will have to venture further and further away from
the ship to find more. The further away from the crash site, the more hostile the terrain will be.
The player will have to spend resources to build bridges, ramps, and tunnels to be able to
navigate the terrain. Furthermore, as the distance to walk will become prohibitively high, the
player will have to invest in vehicles as well.

Meanwhile, the player must also be saving some resources to put towards fixing the
ship. Ultimately, the game can only be won by saving up a very large amount of resources,
researching the final research in the research tree, and building a launch pad and booster rockets
for the spaceship.

Narrative
Narrative is not a key part of Towards a New Sunrise, but it does play an important
role in establishing premise, and in turn, the structure of the experience. In the main sequence,
narrative is primarily delivered through optionally readable text of conversations between
characters that appears in an unobtrusive part of the screen, since at that point it is no longer

Into the Sunrise Davis 6
critical for understanding the game; it simply exists as an additional reward for players who are
interested in it. In the introduction sequence, however, some conversations between the
commander and the ship AI will not be ignorable, to ensure that the player understands where
they are and what their goal is.

Into the Sunrise Davis 7
Format
Platform
Towards a New Sunrise is a single-player game that targets mid-range or better
personal computers, primarily due to performance concerns. However, since the game does not
demand time-sensitive feats of input execution from players, it would be feasible to port to
tablets in the event tablet hardware becomes sufficient to run the game and/or the game is
optimized sufficiently to run on tablet hardware. Because of this, the game will be designed with
an eye towards being tablet-compatible in the future. Smaller mobile devices, however, will not
be considered.

Gaming consoles, while theoretically possible to target, will not be an intended
platform for the project for a variety of reasons, including small market size for downloadable
titles, lack of access to development kits, and desire not to spend development time on fixing
weird bugs that only manifest due to the idiosyncrasies of console hardware and APIs.

Input
Towards a New Sunrise makes extensive use of the mouse cursor, and to a lesser
extent, the keyboard, for input. Depending on the team’s access to touchscreen monitors and/or
laptops with touchscreens, touch input may be supported as an alternative to mouse cursor input
as a stretch goal for the project.

Into the Sunrise Davis 8
The beginning of the game will be controlled solely with the mouse cursor, but once
the player gains control of the camera, the keyboard will be introduced to control camera
position. Future unlocked abilities may make use of other keys on the keyboard, and for power
users, there may be keyboard shortcuts for actions that can be performed with the cursor.

Distribution
The game will be distributed as a standalone executable. Ideally, the game will be
distributed through a digital distribution platform like Steam or Desura, but if it has insufficient
support it can be hosted on and publicly downloadable from the project website.

Into the Sunrise Davis 9
User testing and evaluation
The development of Towards a New Sunrise will have different user testing needs at
different points throughout the project, so the user testing plan is broken down into three types to
reflect this.

Early prototype testing
Early prototypes will have little or no polish, and may require a certain amount of
game literacy undesirable in the final form of the project. Furthermore, if certain parts of the
prototypes are broken (either in regards to functionality or usability), the designgineer
responsible for the prototype will want to be present to assist the playtester or otherwise direct
the playtest.

Thus, early prototypes will be tested informally by team members involved in the
prototype. Generally, playtesters will be colleagues or other game designers, though random
passersby may be used as well. The key for these tests, however, is to get feedback quickly, even
if it’s slightly biased, in order to minimize iteration time and build towards a usable component
of the game.

Into the Sunrise Davis 10
Core testing
Once the functional core of the game has entered an alpha state, core testing can
begin. Core testing will involve formally playtesting the introduction sequence and critical
components of the main sequence.

As a formal playtest, the process will be much more rigid. Playtesters will be brought
in who are unfamiliar with the project, the team members, and ideally games in general. A
dedicated user test administrator will organize and run the tests to limit playtester interaction
with team members before the post-test interview.

Feature testing
Feature testing will be done on the individual add-on mechanics that enrich the main
sequence. Early in the development of a feature, informal playtests on par with early prototype
testing may be run to allow for rapid iteration.

Once the feature has reached alpha-like status, however, it can and should be
formally playtested in the same manner as core tests. Formal feature tests, however, can take
playtesters from the pool of former core playtesters, so that the feature playtesters are already
familiar with the basic mechanics of the game and can go straight to testing the intended feature.

Into the Sunrise Davis 11
Works Cited
Portnow, James. “Extra Credits - The Waiting Game - Why Weird Games Become Cult Hits.”
Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 9 July 2013. 5 April 2015.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Bardcore!

PDF

OCTOBO: the interactive storytelling plush octopus

PDF

Dissonance

PDF

The make of The Surveillant: a thesis project ""postpartum""

PDF

Psychic - an interactive TV pilot: development of a game project for native TV platforms

PDF

Southland

PDF

Moloch: creating games with alternative mental state goals to move beyond flow

PDF

The mountain calls: an exploration of immersive storytelling through art and level design

PDF

The Distance: a cooperative communication game to long-distance players

PDF

Garden designing a creative experience with art and music orchestra

PDF

Installation wizard: how communication makes or breaks a game

PDF

Life On A String: an ink painting narrative game

PDF

The Toymaker's Bequest

PDF

A game called Paako: the challenge of an autobiographical video game

PDF

BONDS: an asymmetrical collaborative adventure game on exploring the player's emotional connection and emergent gameplay

PDF

Manjusaka

PDF

Your presence is present enough: a thesis project postpartum

PDF

Shepherds - cooperating from divergent path: a design exploration

PDF

Tracking Ida

PDF

By nature: an exploration of effects of time on localized gameplay systems

Asset Metadata

Creator Davis, Zachary Reid (author)

Core Title Into the sunrise

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 08/24/2016

Defense Date 04/07/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,unfolding games,video game

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Brinson, Peter (committee chair), Cannizzaro, Danny (committee member), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member)

Creator Email zach@zachrd.com,zdavis@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-302270

Unique identifier UC11281296

Identifier etd-DavisZacha-4777.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-302270 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DavisZacha-4777.pdf

Dmrecord 302270

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Davis, Zachary Reid

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA