Deciding on a concept...

We thought it might be a good idea to start this project by listing our favourite games (and in my case, anticipated upcoming games), and talking about what we liked about them and why. We also decided that we should try to put ourselves in the minds of the creators of these games in an effort to see how they maybe came up with the concept.

My list of favourite games would be too long, but here is a quick list of ones that come easily to mind:

• Bioshock (overall an incredible game)
• Fallout 3 (any game where you want to play for 50+ hours just to complete all the missions has to be awesome!)
• Oblivion (love the medieval feel to the game, massive open world, awesome game-play when it doesn't glitch!)
• Portal (such a simple concept, but so amazing! Messes with your mind. Very funny dialogue.)
• F.E.A.R. 1 & 2 (Scary game - probably scarier than most movies out there. Awesome atmospheres!)
• Fable 2 (love the choice of melee, magic and shooting. Nice graphics. A little short for my taste - I've finished this one about 4 times.)
• Viva Pinata (a simple concept of taking care of a garden and pets - but these pets happen to be pinatas. Very cute and addictive.)

List of upcoming games I can't wait to get my hands on:

• Dante's Inferno (the art is AMAZING! Being a fan of the poem, I can't wait to play through the circles of hell)
• Brutal Legend (again, the art and design - especially world design - is unbelievable. As a fan of heavy metal, this is obviously going to be a winner)
• Assassins Creed 2 (the first game wasn't very good for several reasons, but it seems as though the team has tried to fix these problems. A game set in the Renaissance where Da Vinci is your friend is quite appealing though!)

Looking through this list of games, the recurring theme seems to be darkness/evil etc. so we think that we might stick to something similar.

When we looked at these games (and the favourites of the other team members), we came up with these ideas:

• We could base our game on some part of history (Assassins Creed 1 - crusades & 2 - Renaissance).
• We could base it in a post-apocalyptic world where everything has been destroyed and creatures have been mutated (Fallout 3, Bioshock etc.) This would also be fun when character designing!
• We could base a game on people's fears/beliefs or prophesies/literacy etc. Something that many people are familiar with (Dante's Inferno).
• We could create a world around something we are passionate about, e.g. a hobby. (Brutal Legend). This could perhaps be art - a world made of art where trees are paintbrushes and the world is a canvas. We thought that maybe the character is running through the game drawing doors to go into and objects to use etc. After further thought, we think this particular idea might have been done before.
• A game based around a very simple concept (Viva Pinata, Portal), e.g. we thought that basing a game around a creature generally considered unimportant and insignificant might be interesting. For example, a game where you are a flea on a dog's back or a bedbug inside a pillow or mattress would not only be potentially comical, but also would create very unique looking worlds.
  

With all of this in mind we decided to consider some of these ideas on a deeper level, also considering world's we are interested in:

• The idea of using part of human literacy/theories/folklore etc inspired the idea of creating a game around the concept of "Pandora's Box." Perhaps the game could be about each of the seven deadly sins being released onto the world and the protagonist having to recover them. This idea seems very similar to "Dante's Inferno" though, and is probably not as original as we would like.
• Someone mentioned that creating an underwater world would be interesting, perhaps having the characters as mermaids.
  
• Another idea was using the Mayan prophesy of 2012 as the basis of an idea. We all really liked this idea and decided that we should take it further.