Mighty No. 9 Doc, Ep. 0

So..... Searching the net, as always, and came across this little beauty; Mighty No. 9.
I'd heard about the game a while ago, though with this video I found nostalgic relevance in many job roles of game design that I wanted to explore.
The game's creator - Keiji Inafune - is best known as the Co-Creator of Capcom's Mega Man franchise, and suggests that Mighty No. 9 is it's spiritual successor.

With crowd-funding websites at a dramatic peak, Kickstarter seemed to be a worthy choice for bringing the concept into reality for this game, as it reached it's $900k goal in a matter of days.

The video documentary below has some great key moments that are flourishing with nostalgia-based reminiscing throughout the team; strictly of their previous works that have been with Inafune, or heavily based on his successful career.

There are great individual and personal conversations throughout about previous works, what works, what doesn't, overall aims and pitfalls, and also what they've learnt throughout their career. It's a great watch, and so much so that the conversations had inspired thought and understanding into what indeed could be considered as good practice and good design in such diverse and important fields such as music, character design, level design and game design. Plus; fan and community services that suggest careful thought and consideration throughout the entire design process has YOU in mind.

NOTE: The video is 'unlisted' so until it isn't I can only link it for now. Enjoy.

VIDEO LINK - Mighty No. 9, Ep. 0 - VIDEO LINK

- mlhostain

First Lesson: Different Ways of Thinking/Analyzing

Yo.

I've always been rather fond of nostalgic gaming, as an emotional trigger and also as an emotional study - the why's and how's of past memories and what triggers them have often been a thought and sometimes have even reflected throughout recent gaming experiences.
Sometimes games played as a youngster are better off left as memories; bad games are often easily overlooked when young, and sometimes it doesn't matter how fond you are over a past game or franchise, coming back to them may hinder those memories as older and wiser - in critical analysis terms - trumps younger and immature.

For our first lesson we each had a slight idea into what areas of games design we wanted to tackle throughout the year. This was a simple process in which 'Level Design', for example, was stripped down and analysed into bullet points and evidence-based questioning and reasoning.
It was quite eye opening to see such the misunderstandings of common, personal logic versus the often responded; 'well, why?'.
Space Invaders, for example, a classic arcade shoot-em-up was used to help represent how we individually looked at an object and determined what that object was, based on what we personally saw.
The in-game sprites where drawn to remind us what they looked like to determine, individually, what we saw those shapes as; 'tank', 'shield', 'ufo'. Although in this case we'd actually all along established them as those labels and never questioned it, until the consistent 'well, why?' questions made us think deeper into what we actually were seeing and analyzing.

Tanks? UFO's? Defense Shields? All based on individual assumptions that
 will then require further researching and evidence to eventually determine and evaluate.

Also, a video game's story doesn't necessarily represent it's 'narrative', as a player who plays a level from A to B creates their own personal narrative. A video game like Super Mario Bros. isn't always played the same - be it individually or with friends - as narratives are built from moments within playing the game, creating the players' own personal stories and potential memories to looked back on - nostalgic - from these often emotionally involving experiences.

It was a direct approach into what we'd potentially have to have our minds adjusted towards throughout the year; in order to provide the research, questioning, evidence and potential personal outcome to each task ahead we'd have to begin with potentially re-evaluating our own reasoning when it comes to what is GOOD and BAD design.

- mlhostain

The Beginning

Hello. That's about as formal as I can be for now so absorb it.

My name is Matthew Hoey and I am an aspiring Game, Level and Character Designer from Lancashire.
I just recently decided to pursue a Masters in Game Design after successfully achieving a First Class Honors in July of this year.
With this blog I am able to study and document findings and/or research I come across throughout this year long journey I'm so gracefully about to embark on.
This will serve as a public diary, if you will, of my progress from the very beginning to the very end... of the course, not my life.

I have been drawing and designing since I was very young and have often developed characters and - most recently - level designs, based heavily on two of my earliest childhood gaming experiences;
Doom and Sonic The Hedgehog; juxtaposition in designs huh?!
Throughout the final year of the BA, however, I studied the concept of nostalgia within video gaming and how players - young and old - could potentially benefit to old and new gaming experiences through level pacing, structure and well-balanced gameplay.
This was based within one out of three modules yet I really found this to be the most interesting and certainly something I could potentially invest further study time into in the near future.

I ramble on.
I'll update any relevant features on here often, so don't hesitate to look on, in lust.

Cheers.