Gathering research for topics related to Game Design has always been a bit of a challenge. Game design as a field of study is relatively new, compared to fields that have been researched and documented for years, like literature or film. There's also a lot more variation in terms of how a game can be built in comparison to a book or film, and how it can be engaged with, that finding all the documentation explaining how to do certain things and why they're important can be difficult.
Thankfully, if designing your game around a specific topic or theme, a lot of your research can be about that thing. For example, I'm in the process of designing a game about Cybersecurity, and while that isn't a very popular subject, it has enough research and papers written on the subject that it wasn't a nightmare to find very interesting ideas to pull from.
The way to go from there though, is the hardest part. Pulling out meaningful aspects based on the research you've done to build a game around those aspects can be a tiring creative process. As another example concerning my Cybersecurity research, I've found very interesting topics related to cybersecurity that approach it from different angles: One is about remote hacking into cars, one is about overloading and shutting down emergency call centers, and one is about hijacking medical implants to cause harm to the people using them. Even though all of these topics are under the category of cybersecurity, I need to be able to pick out one of them to make a meaningful design out of it, otherwise my focus for what kind of narrative I want to push may be skewed between many different ideas.
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Hello Amy! There's definitely a lot of topics when it comes to cyber security as it is a fairly big overarching word. Where is definitely a large Direction that you could take when it comes to tackling cyber security. I think there'd be a few interesting angles in which you could showcase this to the player. One it could be from the hackers perspective in which it showcases and teaches the player the steps and the mindset that hackers use in order to break into these companies or institutions. The morals that come with these attacks. Or you could view it from the companies or institutions and try to put in measures to defend from these sorts of cyber attacks and what are the steps to actually combat that. I think cyber security is a very interesting topic to explore in the video game space and I'm excited to see what you cook up.
There is definitely a lot you can do in relation to cyber security, I especially like the idea of remote hacking into cars. It could make a very fun experience having the player hack into cars with remote driving capabilities, and then swapping to a different one to avoid obstacles. I look forward to seeing what you end up deciding on as a topic!
I could definitely see a game set in a world where everything is vulnerable to hackers, it's a really cool concept. It is a real problem that I don't think a lot of people pay much attention to. Even now, we have smart home devices like Amazon Alexa, those Ring doorbells, and baby monitors connected to the WiFi. Some of that stuff has already been hacked in the past, and I think exaggerating through a game could be really powerful. Looking forward to the pitch!
Hey Amy, I find cybersecurity quite an intriguing topic and I'm always curious about how exactly programmers are able to hack through these systems to begin with. When I read about remote hacking into cars, the first thing that came to mind was spy movies where they used cars to escape by hacking them. I think this idea has a lot of potential as a game solution and excited to see where you go with this.
I can't for the life of me begin to imagine what kind of situations would call for someone to hijack a medical implant and the kind of scheming it would take to pull that off. Hacking and hijacking in the mainstream sense has been used in video games frequently but creating a game involving any of those examples would be incredibly unique. I'm excited to see what you come up with!
Hey Amy! I find this topic really interesting. I never even considered that people could hijack medical implants, that sounds crazy. I'd be interested to see some sort of action game about that, although finding the right tone might be difficult. Looking forward to your game pitch!
It can be both amazing and overwhelming when a topic has so much to focus on, but even the few you've listed as examples are pretty foreign to me. I would be the most interested in learning about situations I didn't even know existed, and having fewer things to learn from would probably help me retain that information. Either way, it sounds like a really exciting premise!