IGB400 Project Pitch

In my final year in the Bachelor of Games & Interactive Environments degree, I am completing the IGB400: Game Studio 3 unit. In this unit we are creating a project that innovates on and fills a gap in our portfolio and skillset.

Reflection Of Portfolio & Selection Of Project Space

The projects on my portfolio highlight that my skills as a game developer mainly lie within the domains of design and programming. Looking towards my future in the industry, I would be happy with either a design or programming oriented developer role.

Leading on from that, it seems there is a need for programmers/engineers skilled in networking and developing multiplayer game systems. Looking at websites like LinkedIn and Seek, many of the listed game development jobs were programming oriented. Quite a few of these programmer job listings involved experience with multiplayer systems. Within Australia, Playside and Gameloft—two of the largest studios in the country—are offering a Multiplayer Software Engineer and Online Programmer role respectively. 

This aligns with a gap in my portfolio seeing as I have little to no prior experience with making a multiplayer game or networking, and it is an area I am interested in learning about. Therefore, I’ve settled on making a multiplayer game for IGB400.

Industry Justification Of Project Space

Developing a multiplayer game also aligns with industry trends. Kim Soares, CEO of Social First—a game studio formed in 2022 that create multiplayer games focused on social elements—stated that pursuing their development makes commercial sense since they provide a platform for socialisation, which in turn increases their life span (Partis, 2022).  Their COO Mikko Kähärä was also quoted saying that “there is no better user acquisition or retention driver than an invitation from a friend, no better first time user experience than your friends showing the ropes” (Partis, 2022), further strengthening their desire to develop multiplayer games from a business standpoint.

This correlates with findings shared in a MiDIA article (Severin, 2022) reporting that the younger the gamer, the more likely the preference for multiplayer games increases, indicating an increased demand in multiplayer games over time. This is speculated to be due to the element of socialisation they provide, as well as it making commercial sense for developers since gamers are likely to spend more time and money on them compared to single player experiences (Severin, 2022).

Considering the leadership of new studios wanting to pursue multiplayer game development due to its commercial viability and report findings showing a trend that supports that, it further justified me showing a capability to develop such games in my portfolio.

Intended Outcomes & Technical Considerations

My focus for this project will therefore be on learning some basic competencies of multiplayer game development which include: using networking frameworks, creating game sessions, data synchronisation, and efficient handling of data across the network. The expected output of this project is therefore a small, polished, and engaging multiplayer game. Due to my prior familiarity with Unity, I will be using it to develop the game.

I intend to use Unity NetCode For GameObjects (NGO) as a networking framework. This is because it is Unity’s official networking solution that integrates well with its first-party services like Relay and Lobby (Unity, 2024a), which I plan to use to set up connections and the hosting of game sessions across the internet. If I were to use something like Photon or Mirror, I would likely need to make use of another third-party service to host game sessions since Unity Relay is designed to “relay all technology based on Unity Transport” (Reeve, 2024). Therefore, using something other than NGO would require me to focus on ensuring smooth communication between these different components, taking away time from learning the basics of multiplayer development.

Unity Relay makes use of relay servers to allow for secure peer-to-peer communication between players (Unity, 2024b). While using peer-to-peer relay servers is less costly than a dedicated server architecture, it comes at the higher risk of desynchronisation of the game state, and in certain scenarios can give the host an advantage in gameplay (Ivashchenko, 2024). Real-time competitive multiplayer games make use of a dedicated server architecture for this reason, since they would need to synchronise the game state quite frequently to ensure consistent and fair gameplay. Therefore, the game I develop will need to have a slower pace or more turn-based gameplay to account for this model.

Project Game Concept

Putting that all into consideration, I’ve come up with an idea for a social multiplayer party game called Collagionary. It would be a twist on word-guessing games like Pictionary, where players take turns making collages to represent the word that the other players have to guess in order to earn points. The ‘Collager’ would be given a library of different bits and bobs called ‘collage pieces’ that they can place, scale, and rotate to create their collages. The guessers would then have to type in guesses for what word the collager is trying to represent, with points being awarded to who correctly guesses first.

The core gameplay of Collagionary is simple enough that it would facilitate focusing on the learning and development of the networking components required to make the game function as detailed in the table below:

I could then extend upon the game and its networking by implementing game session customisation by enabling or disabling different collage piece categories to allow for more creativity in their collages. In summary, Collagionary’s simplicity lends itself well to the scope and intended outcomes of the unit.

Aesthetic Considerations

I believe the doodle sketch patchwork aesthetic planned for Collagionary will allow for the quick development of assets or potentially use third-party assets of slightly varying style since it will fit within the collage theme of the game. In this regard, it shares a similar aesthetic to Little Big Planet (Media Molecule, 2009), as it also features assets of varying art styles, albeit in a 3D format.

Industry Justification Of Game Concept

Collagionary’s genre also aligns with current game market trends. In recent years, social multiplayer games such as Among Us and Lethal Company have been extremely popular, with both having high peak player counts on Steam. Among Us is also among the top played party game on Steam despite being released 6 years ago (SteamDB, 2024).

Draw & Guess (Arcuerus, 2021) is also in that top 10, which features similar gameplay to what is proposed for Collagionary. Comparing it to another multiplayer game released in March of 2021, Overcooked! All You Can Eat (Ghost Town Games, 2021), Draw & Guess had both higher all-time and monthly peak player counts.

While Draw & Guess’ popularity seems to be centred around Chinese-speaking players, it highlights that its simple gameplay and genre appeals to players, further justifying creating Collagionary, if not strengthening it, as the reviews on Draw & Guess’ Steam page suggest a demand for a game in a similar vein that caters more to English-speaking countries (Bailey, 2021).

Project Timeline & Scope Considerations

Shown below is my proposed development timeline for Collagionary.

If the core gameplay/networking components take longer than expected to develop, their development will extend past Week 10, at the expense of less playtesting and refinement or cutting less necessary features such as game session customisation.

Conclusion

I therefore believe Collagionary will provide the opportunity to showcase my design and programming skills, and demonstrate skills gained in developing a multiplayer game experience.

References

Arcureus. (2021). Draw & Guess [Video Game]. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483870/Draw__Guess/

Bailey, D. (2021). Steam’s latest surprise hit is a party game called Draw & Guess. PCGamesN.  https://www.pcgamesn.com/draw-and-guess

Ghost Town Games. (2021). Overcooked! All You Can Eat [Video Game]. Team17 Digital. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1243830/Overcooked_All_You_Can_Eat/

InnerSloth. (2018). Among Us [Video Game]. https://store.steampowered.com/app/945360/Among_Us/

Ivashchenko, D. (2024). Unity Realtime Multiplayer Part 6, Game Network Topologies. Medium. https://medium.com/my-games-company/unity-realtime-multiplayer-part-6-game-network-topologies-f99c412f8497

Media Molecule. (2008). Little Big Planet [Video Game]. Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Partis, K. (2022). Social First on building a new wave of multiplayer games. GamesIndustry.biz. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/social-first-on-building-a-new-wave-of-multiplayer-games

Reeve, A. (2024). Using Unity Relay. Unity Multiplayer Networking. https://docs-multiplayer.unity3d.com/netcode/current/relay/

Severin, K. (2022). Single player vs. multiplayer | A generational changing of the guards or a bifurcation of gamer behaviours?. MiDIA. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/single-player-vs-multiplayer-a-generational-changing-of-the-guards-or-a-bifurcation-of-gamer-behaviours

SteamDB. (2024a). Among Us Steam Charts. https://steamdb.info/app/945360/charts/#max

SteamDB. (2024b). Draw & Guess Steam Charts. https://steamdb.info/app/1483870/charts/

SteamDB. (2024c). Lethal Company Steam Charts. https://steamdb.info/app/1966720/charts/

SteamDB. (2024d). Most played Party Game games Steam Charts. https://steamdb.info/charts/?tagid=7178

SteamDB. (2024e). Overcooked! All You Can Eat Steam Charts. https://steamdb.info/app/1243830/charts/

Unity. (2024a). Build multiplayer games with Unity Netcode. https://unity.com/products/netcode

Unity. (2024b). Connect your players with Relay. https://unity.com/products/relay#features

Unity. (2024c). Relay servers. Unity Documentation. https://docs.unity.com/ugs/manual/relay/manual/relay-servers

Zeekerss. (2023). Lethal Company [Video Game]. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1966720/Lethal_Company/