Pre-production Essay (George Holt)

George Holt

Unit 1: Pre-production Assignment:

Meow Academy

The game we are going to be making is a satirical, anime-styled dating simulator titled Meow Academy. This game will be released on PC, Mac and Linux (and perhaps Xbox One, PS4 and mobile devices in the near future if the game becomes profitable) since dating simulators are popular on the PC market, and unlike handhelds, PCs are more suited to immersive, story-focused visual-novel games such as this. We may also not be able to make a Nintendo Switch port since Nintendo have rather strict censorship policies. We will be making this game a dating simulator since it will make the game way more versatile for making a touching story.

This game will cost us a complete total of £552,012.59 (If a contingency occurs, an extra £55,201.26 will be added, which will make a new total of £607,213.85). Out of this, a total of £11,622.91 will go towards the monthly fee for the building in which we will be working in (which is in Soho, London), as well basic workplace needs such as chairs, beverages and a microwave, £15,261.92 will go towards all of the hardware and software (including GameMaker, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects) used, £505,127.76 will go towards personnel pay checks (this equates to £63,140.97 a year each for two years for four people) and £20,000 will go towards the specialist designer. Below is a spreadsheet that displays all of the costs more clearly, as well as the quantity/rate of each item.

Requirement	Cost	Quantity	Total Cost
Chairs	£114.48	4	£457.92
Workspace (Soho, London)	£450/month	24 months (2 years)	£10,800
GameMaker: Developer Edition (x4)	£99	4	£396
Photoshop	£240	1	£240
Premiere Pro	£479.28	1	£479.28
Adobe After Effects	£479.76	1	£479.76
Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 Creative	£2,199	1	£2,199
Computers (monitor, main system, keyboard and mouse)	£2866.97	4	£11,467.88
Beverage Supply	£300	1	£300
Microwave	£64.99	1	£64.99
Personnel	£63,140.97/year/person	4 people on the team 2 years	£505,127.76
Specialist Designer	£20,000	1	£20,000
Contingency	£55,201.26	1	£55,201.26

Our equipment will mainly consist of a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 Creative tablet, as well as four computers that all have GameMaker, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. We chose GameMaker for building and programming the game since it is easy to use and more specialised for 2D games. The game’s team personnel will consist of four people; Jordan Tubby, who will be directing the game, writing the story and providing some character designs, Aidan McDade, who will create some of the audio with the aid of Audacity, a microphone and headphones, Harry Lewis, who will provide some additional artwork, and myself. I will be doing most of the programming and developing the overall interior design of the school building. Self-employed contributors to the game will include the specialist designer, the voice actors, the sound technicians, a musician, investors funding the initial game production along with the alpha release, as well as Kickstarter backers.

Setting, premise and gameplay

In Meow Academy, you choose between playing as either Adam Sandler or Kevin James. The two have to go back to acting school after making way too many bad movies such as “Grown Ups” and “Jack and Jill”. However, the school they are sent to burns down, so Sandler and James have to be transferred to Japan (since all of the other acting schools in America are full up and them travelling to Japan was the cheapest option) and have to go to a different school there known as the titular Meow Academy, where all of the students are Japanese cat girls.

The game will take place inside a large map of the school building with several varied rooms and areas to explore, as well as a few surprises along the way, including secret items and journal entries that reveal interesting things about the lore of the academy. The main goal of the game is to make certain decisions during dialogue exchanges between your player character and the cat girls so that you can build good reputations with them. The attitudes that the girls have towards your player character will be mixed; some of them will be willing to talk to you and get to know you, whereas others may be slightly reluctant towards you due to the movies that your character has worked on, and on occasion, it may boil down to which character you picked in the first place. However, if you make the right choices, you will be more likely to be rewarded with the main characters going through good character development and true romance between the protagonist and the girls coming to fruition.

There will also be some puzzle mini-games including within the game that play out and contain features in a similar fashion to games such as Candy Crush. In these games, you need to match a certain amount of three coloured tiles horizontally or vertically so that you can gain enough points to fill up the happiness meter until it is full. If the colour of a match that you make is the girl’s favourite colour, then you will gain bonus points. Bonus points will also be rewarded if you complete the puzzle at a significantly fast rate, or if you make a series of matches within a short span of time. However, you have a time limit, so you will need to act fast when playing these mini-games. Adjacent is a screenshot from Candy Crush that may give you a rough idea of what the mini-games will be like.

Characters

The characters in Meow Academy will consist of the aforementioned Adam Sandler and Kevin James, the main characters who you choose between upon starting the game, as well as other characters such as:

·      Nariko – A young, cheerful student at Meow Academy who always carries bundles of energy wherever she goes. Below the list is a piece of concept art for her.

·         Juno – Another student at the academy. She is cold and distant, and loses her temper when people point out the fact that she resembles an 11-year-old.

·         Yoshino – An actress who tries to make friends but never succeeds.

Funding and development

We shall have the game be funded through Kickstarter, since some of the most popular/critically acclaimed games out recently (such as UNDERTALE) have had the same kind of funding. The funding scheme will be split into three phases. In the first phase, we will have investors fund the initial production of the game as well as the alpha version. In the second phase, we shall start the Kickstarter crowdfunding process, where we will promote the game to potential buyers and make a beta version that will be available for the top backers. In the third and final phase, we will entice bonus DLC for people who pre-ordered the game.

The pre-production stage of development is taking us a total of four weeks to devise ideas for the game and work out the costs. The production stage of the game will take us a total of two years to develop and program everything, and post-production will take us approximately five weeks to figure out ways of promoting and advertising the game before it is ready for release. We will also try and gain help from TIGA (The Independent Game Developer’s Association), a trade association focused on supporting the commercial success of game developers in the UK and Europe.

We shall aim to ensure that the game’s age rating is PEGI 18 in Europe and PAL regions, and rated M by the ESRB in the USA and other NTSC. This is because the game will contain a few sexual themes, and so that we will not have to tone down any of the other mature themes in the game.