Nick Rutter Matt MacKnight HAR 313 18 Dec 2012 Game Proposal: Dodge! Introduction Dodge!

will be the first videogame to be based entirely around dodgeball. Its ultimate experience will harken back to the players nostalgic days in gym playing the game, lots of thrill, yelling and movement, combined with a story that will have the player be responsible for creating this sport and subsequently becoming the very best at it. Rules Going by unofficial dodgeball rules at this time of development, a team can have up to eight players on the court. There are eight balls in play. A player who is hit or has his thrown ball caught will be moved to the back of the opposing teams side of the court, known as jail. They can get out of jail by catching a ball thrown to them by their team. The losing team will have all their players in jail. A player cannot handle two balls at the same time; players cannot throw two or more ball simultaneously at an opposing player (they will both be sent to jail). Controls At this preliminary stage, our team has only developed comprehensive controls for the XBOX 360. There has been much discussion on expanding our controls to include the motion capture technologies of every console: Wii, XBOXKinect and PSMove, however this will require much more time. It is our contention that these features be optional if developed, keeping the focus on use of the controller. For a more in depth look at how the game controls function, refer to the attached game manual

Rutter 2 Story Premise After creating their character in the gym locker room, the player will walk out and meet their friends, which are characters yet to be developed. The opening scene will establish your entourage as a little nerdy, cynical, and unathletic, as well as establishing a group of characters known as The Athletes not exactly pure evil, but definitely another side of the same coin. This scene will transition into introducing the game of dodgeball to the player via stereotypical gym teacher Coach. Your friends form one team, the athletes form another. This first match will serve as only a basic tutorial for the rules and how to move and throw the end result is the athletes completely dominating you and your friends. This humiliating defeat motivates the player and their friends to start training for future matches, eventually leading to the decision to create and recruit people for an underground league for like-minded people. The player and their core group of friends will be known as The Founders in this document. The underground league ends up being legitimized by the school as an intramural sport, which the same group of athletes join, and invite the player to become part of their team, introducing the first split in the narrative, seeking out the school championship as part of the founding team or the athletic team. After the intramural becomes very popular, rivaling Friday Night Lights in the town, it grabs the attention of a teamless manager and a managerless team from the National Dodgeball league. Both try to recruit the player. The manager wants to build a team around them, letting the player choose to either The Founders, The Athletes, or to mix and match them. The team only wants to recruit the player as an addition to their already established lineup. This is the point where the narrative splits into four options, seeking the national championship with one of four teams. Structure The story will be structured in a string of pearls narrative style; the sections of the game will actually be displayed on screen in the form of a flowchart similar to True Crime: Streets of LA. Each game event will be an episode bookended by cutscenes the opening scene is episode one, which leads directly into episode two, where the player starts recruiting people. At certain points, the character can make a decision to branch off into a different direction in the narrative. Each split has its own checks and balances, both statistical and story-wise. An example of these checks and balances occurring is choosing to pursue the school championship with either The Founders or The Athletes. The Athletes will have access to better practice facilities and more stat bonuses. However, staying with The Founders allows you to keep developing special team moves as well as the stats and load out of each team member. The player can play out both threads however they wish and discover which mode of the story they liked better.

Rutter 3 Settings There are three main settings, each with three spaces within them: The Court, The Training Grounds, and The Surrounding Area. The training grounds allows for a custom soundtrack and sort of a hangout area where they can engage in some minigame exercises to increase their stats, buy moves and items, customize their character, organize their team and check their progress in the narrative. The Training groundss appearance will change based on the progress made in the narrative. For example, the backyard will go from just the player and the Founders to a lot of neighborhood kids after recruiting is done. The Court and the Surrounding Area are not under the players control however they can interact with people and objects in the Surrounding Area and sometimes in The Court. Setting one: The School (Lyndon Bates Johnson High School) Court: The Gym Training grounds: (Athletes) Football field The Surrounding Area: Bus dropoff, hallways, campus, cafeteria LBJH, home of the fighting Rapids, is your standard-fare high school. Lots of pedestrian traffic, a casual air of school spirit mixed with cynicism provides the player with a middle-of-the-road energy and look. The school is a little plain, but clean, with a little bit of graffiti and vandalism here and there to add character. Setting two: The Neighborhood (Cheery Acres) Court: Unfinished Basements and/or Cul-de-sacs Training grounds: (Founders) Backyard The Surrounding Area: Neighborhood streets, woods, downtown Cheery Acres is a quiet nest of suburbia, home to many bored teens looking to validate their newfound uniqueness. As a result, the area is much quieter and low tempo, but there is an underlying sense of an intense drive and focus. The equipment and courts are scrapped together from household junk: milk crates, traffic cones, and so on. Setting three: The Big Leagues Court: Various stadiums/convention centers Training grounds: Personal weight room The Surrounding Area: Just outside the stadium, downtown, at one point, a TV studio. When the player gets to this point in the game, their surroundings will not depend on their team, only how the story unfolds. Everything is glitzy, bright colors, fancy equipment, and the tempo is loud, face-paced, and official.

Rutter 4 Game Modes Mission mode In the spirit of the Tony Hawk franchise, the dodgeball mechanics will be attached to actions outside of competitive dodgeball play after the fourth match. The player can roam around The Surrounding Area and/or The Court to interact with labeled NPCs or sections of the setting that will both give the opportunity to increase stats and move the plot along. After a certain mission or amount of missions are completed, the episode concludes. Practice mode This is limited to The Training grounds, where the player can interact with areas that will have minigames, shopping and customization, but the story doesnt progress until they activate the flowchart and choose the next episode. Refer to games like The Warriors and Saints Row II with similar hangout spaces/modes. Match mode Whereas the previous two modes are standard third-person oriented modes, the actual dodgeball matches have the camera angle similar to tennis. This game mode will also be expanded beyond the narrative story mode into its own quickplay, franchise and battle modes, where players can customize their teams and unlock moves and stats within those modes. For the narrative, each match mode has to be won for the story to progress. Character Roles Main Character Ultimately, the character that the player creates is responsible for not only creating the game, but also winning at it, no matter what team they choose. The outcome of winning is the only thing thats constant: they may lose their in-game friends, make new ones by way of bonding with the not-so-bad athletes, or even reconcile differences between the two. Team Leaders The main character also serves as the team leader, though the Founders and the Athletes have their own back up leaders: the initial leader of the athletes and the best friend of the main character. Both characters have not been developed currently. All teams have a leader which serves as a unique aesthetic representation of the teams visual and playing style they are the most talented and are co-ordinating the rest of their team. A comparable example are gang leaders from The Warriors. Team Backup The remaining players on the teams are less colorful, but nonetheless unique characters with their own specialty. They also reflect the playing style of that particular

Rutter 5 team. All players are well-rounded but do have different statistical advantages: throwing, catching, blocking, and so on. Final Considerations Strong Points As a development team, we are satisfied with the initial control scheme proposal, further detailed in the attached excerpt from a drafted game manual. It is unconventional and involved, but the amount of core functions and affects are limited at five, creating a simple, juicy dynamic to develop with the function(s) playing up against another. We also feel our straightforward, yet splitting narrative structure is balanced between having enough convention and simplicity for gamers to adopt, yet flexible and explorative enough to stand out and blend the lines between ludology and narratology. Finally, our inspiration is drawn from highly successful franchises and games: mainly Tony Hawks Underground, Bully, and The Warriors. These are games that are accessible enough to take a look at periodically and adjust the game development around. These games have sustained not only a large and diverse audience, but a returning one as well. Weak Points We are actually unsure about the dynamics of traditional dodgeball and are wondering on whether to adapt a formal set of dodgeball rules and regulations, or keep to the hybrid of self-created rules and conventional household ones. We hope that developing the different modes outside of story mode will provide us with backup contingencies. The story in of itself may be a little too convoluted, and certainly needs more development between matches. Taking a closer look at the narratives from the inspiration games and getting them on paper, will certainly help us iron out a specific story outline. Finally, finer details such as game items, examples of out of match missions, and specific characters have not been applied to this proposal, mainly because these aspects are not integral to the initial development stages. As the game develops, new opportunities to edit, add and restructure involvement of items, missions and characters will appear. We are very excited to develop an entire universe for this game if given the opportunity. Bottom Line Dodge! has the great opportunity to step into the spot of ailing Tony Hawk franchise, as well as to step in between the grey area between casual, younger gamer to serious, seasoned veteran. However, this boundary blurring will not cause Dodge! to blend in, but rather to stand out as a game that is feels fun and familiar, yet is unique and challenging.