Hideout!

As many of you know we are currently in the production stage of our game Hideout! Yes, we have undergone our design specifications and planned out our deadlines, now it’s time for the real work! But before we get into the technical issues we will come across in the future here is an interesting look into the little bumps in the road that all game developers go through along the way to perfecting their game.

One major issue that we have decided to tackle in this specific game is gender equality and how international we hope for it to be. We are introducing a number of female and male characters within our game from completely different backgrounds, to promote diversity and equal rights in order to add that educational factor. Our characters have varying hair colour, skin tones, and even personalities that would help children or young adults playing the game to aspire to be smart, educated, and fun individuals in their daily life.

However, this particular feature of the game was difficult to address at times because of the numerous methods and combinations that real people appear as (not everyone wants to be a doctor, not all Caucasians are blonde, and not every female wants to be a cheerleader). Therefore, it was difficult to appease and keep in mind everyones preferences when it comes to those characters, but nonetheless the task was completed and we came up with a useful strategy. As a team we decided that focusing in or having more variety in the characters, which come from backgrounds most seen in North America (primary market), would be the ideal solution as opposed to the less major cultural backgrounds in which you only see one of through out the game. Also the hobbies (or actions in this case) of both females and males are handed out evenly and equally, where some males and females are protectors and others perform more strenous acts. The characteristics of each personality was also carefully examined so that certain cultures would not be offended by stereotypes.

The cultures that we have decided to address: Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Native-American, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Italian. The gender is distributed randomly between the less major cultures like Italian or Middle Eastern.

**The hobbies that each of these characters do is related to the action they perform wthin the game while waiting to be saved from aliens.

Come back to read more interesting insights within the life of people, who for the next few months, will live, eat, and breathe Game Development!

Next Up for Discussion…Our marketing strategy for kids.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.