Here I will explain the thought process behind the assets in my video which are sourced elsewhere as well as reference them appropriately at the bottom of the page.
:: Industry Mood-board ::
I chose the game industry for my project as I find this industry particularly exciting as a rapidly growing and still young one. First, I researched the games industry market audience, finding statistics breaking up the populous by age groups and education level. This taught me just how widespread the industry is amongst the public and led me to look into comparing the games industry value compared to film.
When I looked into the value of the games industry, I found that it stands at over double the value of the film industry. This means that whatever idea I later plan to pitch within this industry could be very financially successful if well received.
Games industry mood-board
While looking into the finances of the games industry I found an interesting diagram of the popularity of various game platforms. What I found most interesting is that mobile games form just over half of the most popular gaming platforms, however these games have a very different financial model to console and pc games, making up 45% of the overall gaming market.
Next, I searched for the popular video game conventions as these would be where I would announce my idea when fully formed. Also, I show some of my own 3D work as I am certain that whatever idea I develop will be a 3D based game.
:: Game Idea Mood-board ::
The ‘Fifa’ titles have been hugely successful ever since there first release in 1993 (EA, 1993). In this time, they have cultivated a huge following of football fans globally. This story is apparent across almost every sport, with yearly released game titles pulling in huge numbers of players. The ‘Football Manager’ games are even older than the ‘Fifa’ titles (Toms, K 1982). Both series of games offer a kind of career mode where the player can take control of a club and hopefully bring that club up through their chosen countries football leagues.
Both series have very dedicated fanbases and both approach the idea of a career mode differently. The ‘Fifa’ titles have the benefit of 3D graphics, where the player can direct their team’s players directly on the pitch (EA,1993). However, the ‘Football Manager’ titles, while graphically unimpressive allow dedicated players to delve much further into the back room running’s of their chosen football club.
With both games firmly established in the gaming market it is extremely difficult for any other titles to compete. For example the ‘Pro Evolution Soccer (PES)’ titles have never been able to draw the same kind of audience attention as either the previously mentioned titles despite attempting to find a middle ground between the two series selling points. (Konami, 1995)
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a full contact sport like boxing, however combining aspects of all martial arts into a competition. In recent years the sport has seen a huge boost in popularity amongst widespread audiences. However, there is currently only one MMA game released every two years, namely the ‘UFC’ title games. (EA, 2014). The ‘UFC’ (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is the largest promotion in MMA and is the promotion through which MMA has become popular globally. (NEED TO REFERENCE ORGONISATION).
This sudden interest in the sport, coupled with the only game related to the sport being both only available on console and only released every two years means that the market is ripe for another MMA based game to be released.
My proposal is to create the ‘Football Manager’ (Toms, K. 1982) of mixed martial arts. My title will take on a much more analytical approach to the sport than that offered by the ‘EA UFC’ titles (EA, 2014). My game would not be able to acquire the license to the ‘UFC’ (REFERENCE), which could be a big issue as the sports headlining organisation. However, by making my title more of a MMA simulation game as opposed to simply a fighting game I don’t feel like this will be too detrimental.
My game idea board
In my title, the player will take control of a small, struggling mixed martial arts gym. They will have the opportunity to sign fighters to their gym from a very small pool of talent at first, which will then grow as their gym’s reputation and facilities improve. The player will need to train their fighters, keep their personalities happy and negotiate fight contracts with various unofficial promotions. For each fight the players fighters compete in they will receive a cut of the profits their fighter receives. The exact cut of the profits will be decided between the players gym and their fighters when negotiating contracts.
The player will have the ability to turn down fights offered by the promotions their fighters are signed too, however this might anger relations between the fighter and the promoter which could cause issues for the players gym. The end goal of the player will be to make a world class gym, and collect divisional championships in the various promotions in game. I would also like to have the fights performed in full 3D where the player can instruct their fighter on techniques or even take control of the fight directly, possibly as a togglable option.
:: My Logo ::
Mixed Martial Arts has in recent years tried hard to be taken as a serious worldwide sport in line with the sport’s sudden popularity growth. As a part of this new professional image every promotion is striving for, they have each left behind the more complicated 3d logos for the more modern style of simple 2d logos with a focus on legibility.
This is good for me in two ways, it is easier to make an effect but simplistic logo for my project and also it will allow the logo to look professional in front of any investors I may be pitching my idea too.
Fig 1. Rizin Fighting Federation Logo 
Fig 2. One Championship Logo 
Fig 3. UFC Logo 
Fig.4 Bellator MMA logo 
Fig.5 Bellator MMA Logo 2
I quite like the Bellator logo in particular as it can be used as both a square design (Fig.4) and stretched out to make a header logo (Fig.5). This would be nice as official documents could have the horizontal logo as a header or the square logo in a corner of the page. Also, while this design is still flat and simple, giving it legibility. It does include the nice detail of the spartan helmet in profile, this is a nice subtle touch, but I feel it really helps make the company image stand out more than other logos where it is literally just the name of the company. By using something like a spartan helmet but making the design subtle its obvious to the viewer that the company is occupied with some kind of masculine occupation.
:: My Design ::
I wanted to use heavy, masculine fonts for the logo as that is something present across the logos of all the large MMA promotions. I used two fonts, both of which were found on dafont. Naturally as I would be using these fonts in a commercial setting, I would need to contact the copyright holders of these font and pay for the right or ask for permission to use the fonts.
Fig. 6 Logo font 1 
Fig. 7 Logo font 2 
Fig 8. Octagon reference
I did also use a reference to give me a nice birds eye view of an octagon, however I did change these significantly so shouldn’t run into any issues with copyright with this part of the design. Overall, I like my design however, I felt like I needed to add a solid colouring to the background in order for the logo to look professional when presented on a video game introduction screen.
Fig.9 
Fig.10 
Fig.11 
Fig.12 (my steel texture) 
Fig.13 (sourced steel texture) 
Fig.14 (final logo design)
I wanted to use a steel texture to fill in the background in order to both make the logo more legible and help brand the title. I did start with my own image of a steel texture (fig.12) however found it didn’t look distinct when cut out to the size I needed (fig.11). so I found an image of a brushed aluminium texture (fig.13) which was notably steel even when shrunk to the size needed for my logo.
:: Royalty Free Audio Used in Video ::
I chose this audio as it was inoffensive, copyright free and wasn’t so upbeat that it would make my subdued tone of voice seem dispassionate.
References:
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