Overwatch’s wide roster of fighters

Overwatch is a PC game that came out in 2016. It’s a first-person multiplayer team shooter online game, based in a futuristic sci-fi alternate earth setting. In this analysis, I will explore how space affects or is affected by the gameplay of Overwatch and how it is used to create a game world with its own lore, rules, and story.

An alternate passageway in the Volskaya Industries map. Only flier characters can access it.

In every Overwatch game, the players choose from a diverse array of superhero-like characters and are divided into two teams who fight each other over an objective; escort a payload, protect or attack a zone, etc. The matches happen in a set of different maps based on real-life places; a Hollywood movie set, an oasis in Iraq, a city in Egypt, etc. The maps all share certain points in common; there’s a spawn area for each of the two teams, defensive zones where the players can take cover from attacks, and high platforms where the player can observe the game from afar. But they are all constructed differently; some have more high ground than others, some are contained in a building while others are in open space, and all of them have alternate passageways to the objective. Knowledge of how the maps are laid out gives the player many advantages. For example, knowing the location of health packs keeps you alive, and knowing where the secret routes are allow you to sneak up on the enemy team. As I became more familiar with the map, I found myself improving and winning more matches. Moreover, every character moves differently. Some are slower than others, some can fly, and others can use grappling hooks. The player can use this to their advantage, and some maps cater more to certain characters’ strengths than others. For example, the character Pharah has a jetpack which propels her to higher spaces that other players cannot access. Thus, open area maps with lots of high ground suit her well. Maps with long sightlines and windows are more suitable for sniper characters such as Widowmaker. A character with no movement abilities, such as the elderly Ana, cannot access many spaces of the same map. Thus, playstyles and the experience of any space varies depending on who the player plays as.

Blue lines enclose objective points.

One of Overwatch’s strengths is that it is easy to pick up. In addition to the levels’ architecture, there are design elements that make the goals clear to the player. For example, there are glowing blue arrows on the ground that lead the way to your current objective, red arrows line the enemies’ path. Lines that enclose contested areas change color depending on the stage of each game and which team is winning. Furthermore, green silhouettes show the location of your allies. Along with these design elements, the soundscape also changes to cater to player understanding of the current match. For example, voice lines signal the beginning and end of each match, as well as announcing when objectives are lost, won, or changed so that the player can quickly orient themselves as the match progresses. Other sounds that the player will note are footsteps – the most dangerous enemies have the loudest footsteps, and each of the 27 characters have unique footstep sounds. For example, hearing the loud jingling of spurs alert you to the highly dangerous McCree being nearby. However, the pacifist healer Mercy’s high heels make a hardly noticeable clack. Being attuned to these sounds and other graphical elements such as the shadows of ambushing enemies is crucial to winning, as well as making the game very beginning-friendly.

Table set for one at Château Guillard

Overwatch is interesting in the fact that most of the storyline and lore is established outside of the game, through short videos on Youtube, comics and biographies found on the Overwatch official website. However, knowing the whole story requires playing the game, as many of the in-game details, such as character interactions and the design of each map allow for a better, more immersive understanding of the Overwatch universe. During set-up time before matches, characters interact with each other through short voicelines. Some are comedic, some are heart-warming, such as the dialogue between Ana and her daughter Pharah, in which they warn each other to be careful. Others hint at the relationships that exist between characters, such as the hatred between former teammates Soldier 76 and Reaper. The attention to detail put in the environments as well is incredible and can tell a lot about the characters. One of the maps, Château Guillard, is a castle in France that we can infer from flags on the wall and the black widow spider on the window belongs to the French sniper Widowmaker. The single glass of wine placed on a crate in the darkened basement helps to illustrate the lonely, broken character of Widowmaker better than any sentence can. Another map in Egypt contains a small room stocked with Ana’s medical equipment and rifle ammunition. We can infer that this is where she hid during her time pretending to be dead.  The maps are also prone to change according to holidays (Halloween or Christmas decorations) or in-game events: one of the maps was initially a normal airport in Western Africa, until it was attacked by a villain. This event is once again never shown in-game, but the damage caused to the area and signs of a fight – robots smashed against walls, debris, a broken glass case – allow players to make connections.

The attention to detail in game space makes Overwatch a highly immersive, beginner-friendly game with a memorable universe, unparalalled by any other game of its genre.

For our Spatial Writing Analysis I have chosen to play “Microtrip”, which is a simple mobile arcade game. The  character is a white microbe-like blob creature that travels inside what seems to be a live organism. The control of the game is the phone tilt. The microbe goes through a series of obstacles and always keeps traveling down the body tract. The goal of the game is simple and straightforward: the character needs to go as deep as possible. It is a player vs game kind of a play experience, where an individual is challenged by the game design. Its competitive aspect is individual, meaning that the game keeps a personal high score that motivates the player to continue.

The user has to tilt his/her phone to navigate the space and has a choice of collecting white cells that increase the high score and can help when the character’s life is in danger. The traveling experience is complicated by “villain” characters scattered around the path that either harm you or kill you, so the player has to dodge them in order to continue the quest. Those are live creatures that remind me of the black sea urchin; they end the player’s game when you hit them. There are also smaller needle-like obstacles that harm the player, so that the “life” displayed at the top left corner drops. However, the game is also full of beneficial bonuses shaped like pills. Those pills can help the player collect the good white cells as a magnet, make the microbe grow in size and destroy obstacles on the way, allow it to be immune to the villains for a limited amount of time, etc.

It is a procedural game with multiple levels, however, in the process of playing, it feels never-ending due to its challenging nature and minor differences between the levels. Yet I have to admit that each time I started over the layout was different, which makes the game consistently interesting and unpredictable. I personally love the visual design of the Microtrip. Its graphics are really smooth, colors are very pleasant and the sprites are well designed and coordinated into a coherent game aesthetic. The mechanics of the game are rather simple. It has a certain “gravity” feeling to it because of the tilt control, and the way the game layout and space unfold. Microtrip is a smooth down-scroll game. The created space makes the player feel like the microbe blob is falling/floating down the insides of an organism. Although the game only uses x and y axis for character movement, there is also a sense of depth. The background is contrasting with the sprites because of the clarity, contrast, saturation and color (blue on red/red on blue). It also has organ-shaped graphics that are slightly blurred, which expands our understanding of what this space is and does create a feeling of being inside a body. This means that the space accommodates the meaning or, in other words, the “plot” of the game. The fictional world of Microtrip is simply understood by the user because of its associative graphics. The space in this case is essential for understanding the game’s narrative. The shapes, colors and sprite behavior suggest that the game space is actually inside a living body. The game design is imaginary and unrealistic yet it gives just enough of a hint for the player to subconsciously understand the metaphorical interpretation of organs, tissues, cells, etc. in the game space. In Microtrip, one can observe a well-designed parallel between the fictional and the real world.

I don’t think that the perception of time is affecting the play experience much in Microtrip. The game flows smoothly. The speed changes are rare, however, the game certainly feels more rushed and chaotic when the microbe is trapped between a lot of obstacles and dangers. The desire to go as deep as possible is intriguing and addicting. This game aspect may force a passionate player to feel the need to speed up, however, I find the game’s default flow charming as it is. Also, the concept of time is present when the microbe hits one of the needle-like obstacles, and its life is slowly draining. The character will die if the player does not catch some good white cells before the life icon is completely empty. The risk of running out of time gives another twist to the play experience as it provides another rush of adrenaline (in a sense). It contributes to the player’s understanding of the game environment where danger is present and real.

Earlier in the analysis I have used the word “quest” to describe the Microtrip playing experience. However, I doubt my own choice words, since the meaning of a quest implies a certain end to the game. Yet, in Microtrip, the player does not know why the object is traveling down somebody’s organism, what is there in the end of the tract and whether there is an end at all. This endlessness paradoxically makes this game so addicting (for me personally, at least). I definitely recommend this simple arcade game as a pleasant destress activity.

For this project, the main aim of my game was simplicity. The game is very block based, as we can see that everything is designed in a square or rectangular shape. In terms of the theme ëscape”, it quite fits the description because essentially the main aim of the game is to escape from purple “bully” blocks that will kill you upon collision with them. The main character is a small green square that needs to navigate around a red maze and reach a safe spot, which is a yellow square. To move around, you need to press the arrow keys that corresponds to the direction of the keys (left, right, up and down). I chose this particular type of gameplay as it involves a bit of strategic movement in order to avoid the bully blocks, as they move at a faster speed than the actual player. You get 3 lives, and if your 3 lives are up, then the game is over and you need to restart (which involves refreshing the webpage). You are restricted from playing out of bounds, because the maze walls also take away one life from you upon contact. This may contribute to situations in real life because often we find ourselves in negative situations and we need to find ways to avoid the source of negativity without being caught or trapped by the negativity, hence the description of “escape”.

I designed this game based on an earlier game that my brother and I developed as children using a child-friendly game engine. The interface and controls are  similar, but this version is much simpler as it requires more programming in a language that I’m not very familiar with. The design of this game is pretty much based on blocks, squares, and rectangular shaped objects, very much like the older version that we’ve designed. During the process of designing the game, I would save and test the game every time id add a few lines of code, just to make sure that the game was working properly. creating the maze itself was probably the longest process of designing the level, as each wall in the maze required a separate sprite with located on a different position. The speed of the bully blocks were also altered several times to make the game a little more difficult.

Looking back at the game now, I feel quite pleased with it, but at the same time disappointed. I was hoping I could make a few more levels, but that proved to be quite difficult for me. Also, during my latest test of the game, there seems to be an error in the code which prevents the game from actually running, and I wasn’t able to figure out what was causing the bug. Another issue that I felt a little frustrated with was the concept of mobility in the game. Initially, I was hoping I could find the code that would allow the character to move at a constant speed as the player hold down a button, but I was not able to do that. With more time, I probably would have focused on designing more levels and tried to experiment with more sophisticated types of movements and characteristics that each of the sprites could have had.

An artefact is something that is created by a person that can be utilised and interacted with, wether it is digitally or physically. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, the author describes an artefact as “not stable”and something that changes over time”. I’d like to think that the game I designed is an artefact in that sense because 9 years ago, the game I designed with my brother had a different interface, different ways of movement, it was more complex and  was inspired by different thing. The game I have to present today is a very toned down version of what my brother and I created, hence, the claim that my game is open for changes, editing, adding and taking away certain aspects and all of that is okay, because I believe that this is how many games (or artefacts) have been treated in the past, and I would love to see many different versions and interpretations of this in the future.

Here is a link to my game

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1-ogPkq3oWa92GH480UzSTFwCujel9ma4

We have decided to work on a 3D spatial game. Our main ideas so far have been:

-Graphics: Low poly graphics

-Setting: Desert, oasis, volcano

-Character: One player

-Other characters: Friendly snakes and killer rabbits

-Camera: 3rd person following the character

-Plot: You wake up in a desert, thirsty and disoriented. You must explore around, avoid the enemies, and find the oasis inside the volcano.

Arantza and Hatim

Our group decided that we wanted to do a 3D exploration game. We hope that it could be something like escaping from a dungeon or an island or even a more narrative “solve the mystery” type of game with collecting artifacts. Over fall break, we hope to get a more solid plan together!

Need for Speed – Most Wanted

Need for Speed – Most Wanted is a single-player car-racing game. The car-racing in this game, however, is street racing rather than formal track racing. In Need for Speed – Most Wanted, the overall objective of the game is to race as many times as possible and defeat certain racers in order to climb up the hierarchy of racers and become the number 1 racer in the game. The entire game is played solely with cars – there are no human figures in the game. All choices are made when the user drives the car to certain predetermined areas and presses a key to activate a certain response from the game. Owing to the fact that it is a car-racing game, the controls are fairly simple: the player uses the arrow keys to move the car in the directions of the arrow keys and uses the spacebar to handbrake.

This game does well to incorporate real-world aspects into the gameplay and offers an overall feeling of real racing. Despite the fact that the player is well aware that things that are possible in the game are in no way possible in real life, the player at the same time doesn’t feel too disconnected from reality. This is because, the game space was designed to look like a real city, with buildings, roads, street signs, real cars in production, etc. The striking difference is seen in the kinds of interactions that the player has with the elements in the game. The game is designed to encourage reckless driving in the sense that the player needs to drive at a very high speed and in a very dangerous manner (swerving oncoming vehicles, making sharp turns, crashing into other racers) in order to win races. Also, when a player crashes into a building or any immobile object, the game just restarts from where the crash happened and everything is restored whereas in reality, such crashes may have fatal consequences. Also, time is the game is sped up. In the sense that there is regular day and night, but the intervals they last for is drastically shortened. Day and night each last for approximately 30 minutes. However, there is no measure of days, weeks and years simply because it is not relevant to the game. Everything happens in the moment and there is no need to keep track of dates. In fact, the representation of day and night is just present to offer different racing experiences to the player in that when it is night, there is less visibility and so the player has to drive more carefully in order not to crash. Also, races done at night have a slightly higher difficulty for the same reasons.

Altogether, the fabrication of the game space in this manner makes the game more enjoyable to play since it mimics reality to a large extent minus the fatal consequences. This gives the player more room to explore certain stunts like driving off a bridge or over a rump at high speeds just for the thrill of it. Obviously, this is not something that would be done in real life but in the game, the player is able to do it without the need for second-guessing his/her actions.

The game that I’ve played for the “spatial” topic is called “Torchlight II”. It is an 3 dimensional RPG game on steam and takes place in a fantasy world. The story of the game talks about an alchemist who has become corrupt with power, and your playable character, who can be classified as a mage, barbarian, rogue etc. has to defeat the evil driven alchemist. The game is played by using the W A S D arrows to move, the right mouse button to attack/loot, and the left mouse button to use mana attacks (magical power). Looting items allows you to be stronger, faster and more defensive, while killing enemies and beasts gives you more EXP to level up and grow stronger.

The viewpoint of the game can be described as “god’s eye view” but at an angle, allowing the player to view their character as well as enemies, treasures, and different paths that one can take in the map. The space is view is set so that the player will not have a hard time exploring the vast map and world that is created in the game. In the real world, we can look forwards, backwards, up, down and to the sides (first person), but being put into a higher perspective allows the player to look at the world from more than one angle at the same time, making navigation and fighting off dangers a lot easier. Some of the structures in the space resemble those to our real world, for example, mountains, bridges, rivers, even graveyards, but others, such as bosses. Our expectations are challenged in the sense that we never know when to expect surprises such as enemy attacks and random loots. It also challenges us in the sense that while searching for loot, we never know what to expect, because looking into a pile pf bones for example, two similar piles of bones could disperse completely different loots.

Meaning is created in this game through the story line and the characters found across the widespread location of the map. The player can talk to NPCs and interact with the people around the world, and each NPC has a story of their own and information to give to the character to help them continue with the story. eventually, with the help of the NPCs and items, the player will be able to progress through the game and finally defeat the evil alchemist.

The concept of time in this game is similar to that which is in the real world, however, the only alteration to time here would be that it is sped up so that day and night passes through much faster. A day in the game would go by every few minutes. There is no time limit to which the character must abide by in order to finish the game, and time is not exactly counted. It is really only there to tell which enemies shouldbe attacking at what time of day.