Rachel Folasayo Oladoyin
Game Designer, Level Designer and Artist
Ubisoft Next Game Design Competition
This is a creative brief I made for the Ubisoft Next Game Design Competition. The design challenge was to design a new human enemy archetype for any Far Cry game. I chose to design a human enemy archetype called an undercover agent, that was based off of the idea of deception.
Project Duration: 2 weeks
Team Size: 1 person
My Roles: Sole Game Designer
My responsibilities
-
Researched the game I was making the enemy archetype for (Far Cry 6).
-
Searched for important features that made up existing enemy archetypes.
-
Brainstormed about different archetypes that could fill existing gaps in the game.
-
Chose an idea to work on and nailed down the different features of this archetype.
-
Made a slideshow to present my findings.
Design Process overview
Process work
My design process involved:
-
Researching the current enemy archetypes in far cry 6 and their features
-
Brainstorming possible archetypes that could fill any gaps in the roster
-
Outlining important features an enemy archetype should have
-
Choosing a final idea, and filling out its features
Detailed Design Process
Research
Once the design brief was out, the first thing I did was analyse the document, highlighting any key words that I needed to take into consideration for the design.
Screenshot from the design brief, containing the design challenge. Click to enlarge.
After I had thoroughly looked over the design document, I moved on to researching the game. I played through Far Cry 6, taking note of the different enemy archetypes, what defined an enemy archetype, and what characteristics they all had to have. When I gathered all this information, I was able to start working on my own new enemy archetype.
Brainstorming
The first thing I did when working on my own archetype was brainstorming. I tried to look at the spots the current archetypes fill and the gaps in gameplay that could still potentially be filled by a new archetype. Considering those gaps, I came up with ideas for new enemy archetypes that could improve the gameplay experience.
Ideas I had for possible enemy archetypes early on in the project.. Click to enlarge.
After I put a few ideas down, I decided to go with my undercover agent idea. The next step after this was to start developing my design document for the new enemy archetype.
Design Document Development
In my design document, I started outlining several features about the archetype I designed that were important to flesh out before making the creative brief. I made a summary of the archetype, outlined its key features, listed what I found were the important features of a far cry enemy, and what made my archetype different, as well as some other small details that would help me make a good creative brief.
Summary of my enemy archetype from the design document. Click to enlarge.
Once I developed the design document, I put the information that was needed for the creative brief onto the slides, keeping in mind good presentation practices and ensuring it was readable and understandable for readers.
Challenges
My biggest challenge for this project was discovering a gap in the game that needed to be filled. Because this was a very complete AAA game, it was difficult to think of an NPC that filled a gap that wasn't already being filled by a different NPC. I initially came up with a handful of different ideas that I had to scrap either because they wouldn't work well with the game, or because they were filling roles that had already been filled by other characters.
Lessons learned
What this taught me was how to think outside of the box, and most especially, think like a player. It made me understand how to look at the game from the perspective of a player and look at what points caused me the most pain, and what aspects gave me the most joy, so I could create an NPC that could both help reduce those pain points, while capitalizing on the enjoyable aspects of the game. It definitely taught me that games are never complete. New things can always be added, and the game can always be improved on.