Mayple

Take the degree if you want to learn. Not because you want respect.

 

I agree with this, but also disagree with it.

 

I feel the respect factor goes both ways. Not so much as a brag factor, but the respect of someone going to school and completing the system by dedicating their life into doing so. It is the same reason you respect someone going to Yale vs an online Chinese get your degree in 10 hrs school.

 

I agree though that you take the degree to learn and build off. You explore alot more than you think using a degree learning style. It also shows that your able to start something, stick with it even though its not enjoyable or a burden and complete it. Most game companies that I know of usually use the line of BS/MS or Equivalant experiance. This isn't just game design, this is about the field and the supposed knowledge you would have gotten at the school should you have attended the courses. They ask for that because the bare min that these offer will at least help push you in the right direction since you have the implied logic.

The problem your having is your controlling the element of gameplay to much.

 

War, unfortunatly is something that players love to do. The reason being is competition. Mind you not everyone wants to do it, but there is 0 competition in your game right now. You need some element that keeps everything at bay, keeps you holding onto the game, keeps you coming back for more. Right now as it seems, what you do in the game is...well nothing. There is no penalty for not doing anything and no penalty for just doing things. The progressional chain that you have reeps no rewards towards a show off system.

 

You could add some way to make it so you earn items, collectibles etc that give an advantage. Or hold a social aspect of voting for best town, house, farm something. What you need is a socially driven magnet on making someone better than the joneses. Or add in PVP and allow people to kill eachother off. That will form alliances, guilds. Maybe accelerate your time a little, you said you wanted it close to historically accurate right? Why not have contributions towards a war that happened, have people make blackmsiths, do missions making weapons etc. You can have alliances that attempt to make more resources for the war.

Honestly, there are a ton of text-only RPG games on mobile phones. The problem is they aren't marketed as a book.

 

Not sure if you remember the game Mafia Wars, Drug Wars, there are even more that are medival.

 

Mind you some of these examples use graphical clues to keep the player interested, majority if not all of the games components are stats, math and story that is text based. You will see that alot of these have graphics to appeal to the larger audience. As for pure text, with the distribution of media these days, e-books and the fact that real time story mud's isn't used as much its a very very small market. However adding a little flair with some attractive graphics as eye candy help break the barrier of entry for players getting into the Text only style gameplay element.

What level of Details should be posted to the GDD? Answered OTHER

I wrote other, though I was leaning towards Clarity and End Goal. I say this mainly because a GDD is a reference, not a final cut dry statement. It is something that is used from beggining to end and helpful as a reference if anyone has questions for clarity sakes. Is one required, nah its not. I have seen some single page GDD that have 1 liners for how they want things. I have also seen very percise level of detail GDD's because of how the information will be handled and worked on as well as the future goals and why something is setup like it is. I believe the answer to the question is:

 

As much information is needed for the referencing material to be clean, easy to understand and able to be dechipered by the individual looking at it. Think of the GDD as an API library. If you have a question on how, why, what it does or you wanted to see why its implemented you can look at it and understand without having to dig in the nitty gritty. Examples help clarify key points. Over documentation is a bad thing in my opinion but sometimes its needed.

 

 

Is it important to include artwork? ANSWERED OTHER

Both. Images can be useful and they can be just a pain because they really don't describe anything. I feel its a hit and a miss. If I wanted to convey to you that I want the screen to be dark, like looking through sunglasses at night time, do you need a picture I took of what it looks like at night through sunglasses? On the other flip side if I was describing a mechanical monster and how it has 7 tenticles that look like Axes with carved out engravings on the hilt. You may want to see the clip-art. 

Is the GDD a living document? ANSWERED OTHER

Yes the GDD is a living document and it should be changed. But NO it should not be changed every time theres a new iteration. You would be there forver. As I stated before its a reference document. Because of this you look at it when its time to use it and make a decision on what your making and how your implementing it. You may not be able to make that auto aiming reloading minigame it says in the GDD. However do you delete that entry? No, don't touch it. Make a note saying who/what/why and move on. Readdress it during a meeting and ensure you leave it in the GDD for future iterations you don't pull a dummy move and just remake the same idea you scrapped.

What you have here is a story.

 

A game needs game play. This is where your going to have your meat and potatoes of a story get chopped down into 4$ steak with some instant mash potatoes.

 

To be blunt and honest, its a decent story-ish... almost like a HALO meets PROTOTYPE meets aliens style. But how are you going to convey this. What are your plans? What mechanics are you going to use to carry the story forward. If your character is introduced too early and being full of life to early your game gets stale because there is no challange. Yet, if you do it too late you have the issue of boredom from non-character progression.

 

The story could work, but the arc of the story vs the gameplay is going to have to be redone. I say this because your going to have to make some decisions on your game play elements and ensuring your making a game and not  just an interactive movie (AKA FF13.)

 

Since this is in the Game Design forum,

 

You told us the story, start discussing the ideas of play. What format are you exploring? An interactive story? A top down survival shooter? What year is this set in? Is it a flight simulator? Maybe a Parkour style like Mirrors edge..

 

Give a little more on the subject of the game and a little less on the story. Remember, in games everything has to be flexible. Including the story. It will more than likely change from iteration to iteration based on gameplay and how it flows.

 

As cool as this dramatic story line is, the attention span of players is how fast can I hit the X button bypass this story. Story games seldom get the attention they need/deserve mainly because people just don't have the patience to explore it. So how can you translate your story from Story to Game.