LO3 - ARK : Survival Evolved analysis

ARK Survival Evolved

ARK is a adventure, survival game with dinosaurs. It represents survival as you have a lot of things to keep an eye on to stay alive such as warmth, hunger, thirst and diseases, also you have a significant amount of dinosaurs out there trying to kill you. It is one of the top survival games apart related titles such as Minecraft, but ARK has other variants that others don’t have going into the prehistoric dinosaurs.    

There is no narrative to the game but you have an aim of staying alive and taming dinosaurs to help you along the way, building bases and collecting and creating supplies to help you stay alive and allow you to do more things. You’re creating the story as you go, and everyone’s is different. The audience controls the game, there fore allowing them freedom to do what they like, free roam games have grown in the past few years in popularity. 
   
The player is able to create the character themselves, it is fully customisable, you are able to change everything on the player, there are no other characters with in the game such as an NPC, the only other characters are the dinosaurs, which are skinned to look like the actual dinosaur it is meant to be.  The customisable character doesn’t affect the players attributes and symptoms of the players. All the characters are exactly the same apart from the appearance. The characters are meant to be like real life people would be, but time is sped up so the character gets a lot hungrier and colder quicker than normal but this is because it gives you more of a challenge to watch out for while you play. 

The challenges in the game are to keep yourself alive against the environment and dinosaurs which are out to kill you   

LO2 - Comparisons

Review Analysis

Game – Call of Duty : Ghosts

Genre – FPS / Action

Target Audience – Adults and young adults (16 – 21)

Narrative – Based on all other Call of Duty games

Characters –

Gameplay –  High quality on PS4, next gen consoles are no different to pre gen consoles, the gameplay has not changed

Platforms = All platforms but biased towards playstation as it is a playstation magazine and it favours the ability of PS4 being able to play in a better quality.

The written game review and the video review both stated Call of Duty: Ghosts as being an FPS/Action game. In the written review the author writes in a formal way which portrays it to be aimed at an older audience while the video review is less formal and the reviewer speaks his own opinions whether it is negative or positive and he does not limit the vocabulary he uses, so he swears in most of it. The author doesn't focus his piece on characters in game but e reviewer on-line uses characters from the previous games and the new one and combines them together to make jokes and to prove points. The on-line reviewer talks about the game play as if it is a joke along side it being the same in every other call of duty but they have added one extra addition, while the author has to give positive standings about the game as he has to be professional and he can not republish the magazine. With the introduction of the next generation consoles the gameplay is different due to the different capabilties of the consoles. The PS4 version on Ghosts is alot more advanced and can with stand alot more high def material while the xbox one can't handle the same as a PS4. The previous generation of consoles such as Xbox 360 and PS3 have to be made with different capabilites as they can't withstand the same amount of graphical capabilities as the new ones.

LO1 - Structure of Sumo DIgital

Sumo Digital is a game developer based in Sheffield UK. It was co-founded by a group of men called Carl Cavers, Paul Porter, Darren Mills and James North-Hearn. Sumo is part of the Foundation 9 Entertainment group. They are an independent company with more than 270 staff members. Before Sumo was created both founders worked at Infrogrames and Gremlin Graphics. Carl Cavers was promoted to the Studio Manager and Paul Porter managed the creation of the cross platform development system. Darren Mills is also a co-founder of Sumo Digital. he is also involved within the Art Director position.

Different key staff members came from backgrounds relating to the business,
Ash Bennett who is the Technical Director at Sumo Digital. His career started off at Gremlin graphics, where he wrote video games. In 2008 he became the Technical Director at Sumo Digital.

Sean Millard started to design video games in 1993, he started in Sheffield then moved the London, he then returned to Sheffield in 1999 where he worked for Gremlin Graphics along side the others. In 2003 Millard started working at Sumo Digital and in 2011 he was given the title Creative Director, he has the responsibility to over look designs on the videogames.

Two other members of staff Gary Edwards and Gary Moore are both Development Directors. In 1996 Gary Edwards was a programmer for Gremlin Interactive. In 1997 he worked on remastered versions of the companies games which were previously made.

Steven Zalud, who has been working in the games industry since 1995, started off at Gremlin where her was a producer, he then proceeded to move to Infrogames where he worked in management and director. He specialised in Game and Technology Development. Now Steven is the working at Sumo in Product Development.


Platform Technology & Games on Multiplatforms

Sumo have published games for a wide range of platforms, ranging from consoles such as Playstation 2, 3, 4 and portable, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox one. They also made games on Pc and Mobiles devices. Some games were made for multiple platforms and some were made for a particular one. Sega all-star racing, this was made for mobile devices but it spread across IOS and android and even to Blackberry. While other titles which are more known such as Little Big Planet is only made for the Playstation and like wise, Forza Horizon 2 - Fast and Furious was made for Xbox only as it was an add-on for the Xbox game Forza Horizon 2.


Game Types

Sumo Digital create a wide range of different games, but they mainly like to create games within the racing category, some examples would consist of OutRun 2, Sonic and Sega All-Star Racing, Forza Horizon 2 and F1 2009. They have also made games which are arcade games and also some more games aimed at older people such as Dead Island 2 and Dead Space Ignition.

Regulatory Bodies

EA

Sumo make games which mainly fall under the PEGI ratings such as PEGI 3, 7 and also 12. As most of the games they produce are racing and sports games, nothing much can be done to make a game inappropriate for anyone over the age of 12, These games consist of minimal violence, bad language and graphic content. But a recent game from 2010 'Dead Space : Ignition'  was given a PEGI rating of 18 as it contains a large amount of  graphical violence and strong language.

Development Software

Sumo use a wide range of different software when developing a game. They use a range of 3D packages in their own personal engine. Also they use software such as Mudbox, Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Studio Max and Maya. These would be used by the artists who design characters which are in the game, A lot of the work in Sumo when developing a game requires 3D design software