Pre-Production: Time management

Deadlines and how to manage your time:When creating games, you will have deadlines in which you would need to meet. You will need a good structure of how you are going to complete the game and when by. Setting yourself a list of deadlines would be ideal as that means you know that you will have to complete this certain task to move on to the next. If you didn’t have a set structure then your layout for creating the game will be messy and you may not release your game out in time. If you have an idea of when you want you to game to be finished then write it down and stick to that deadline. The more you push the deadline ahead, the likelihood of actually finishing the game would reduce. 
Now that you have a set date for when you want your game to published, you would need to break your game down into chunks. This meaning knowing what you need to do first and when by. Make a list of what needs to be done, for example, sounds, graphics and coding. Once you have written down what needs to be down, break that list down even more. So with the sounds, the list could be; sounds for level 1, sounds for level 2, sounds for when you die, sounds for when you have picked something up etc. Although, you don’t need to break everything down so that the list seems long and unbearable, just break it down until you think it’s reasonable enough and then move on to the next list that you are going to create. This idea is very helpful for each game that you create. It will help you keep your work very organised. After making the lists, move the lists into an order of which needs to doing first. Also group the lists together if they fall under a similar subject. Then assign the people whom you work with, with what they specify in. Giving them things to do in an organised manner helps keep everything under control. A way of managing your money would be to set your money aside for the things you need monthly first and then after that set your money aside for the yearly things around 4 months before you need to pay.

Availability of equipment and personnel:

The availability of the equipment that you use is talking about how long you have got the licenses for that you have bought. For example, Maya costs £97 per month, Unity Professional Edition costs $75 per month and iOS Apple Developer Program for $99 per membership year. You would have to keep on top of when these licenses run out and have to set money aside to pay for them again.
The availability of the personnel is very dependent on whether you work on your own, in a small group/business or a large business. If you work on your own you would need to set time for yourself to work on the game and also revolve whether you work at your job or look after family members around working on your game. If you work with a small group of people you will have to consider what times that they can dedicate themselves to working on the game. When working in a large business you would have to consider when your workers are available and know which days they work on. Furthermore, you may come across that one of your workers are ill and you need to take in mind which other person could take over and if they can do overtime.

Timescales for clearances:

When it comes to finally finishing the game you will need to set a time for when your game can be tested. In this test it will determine what age rating the game is given.
For example, PEGI gets the developer of the game to complete an online declaration form in which is sent to the administrator of the age rating system. The completed form then gets reviewed by the administrator and is used when the content of the game is being reviewed. They choose particular sections of the game to review based off what information the developer has given the administrator. This system is accordingly a more efficient way of rating the game than by playing the full game.
For the delays in publishing you would need to set yourself another deadline after you have your original one set just in case you do not meet your first deadline. For the game to be legal it does need to be checked for plagiarism. To see that it is not the exact same as another game just different graphics. Also you need your game to be tested so that you can receive some feedback and change your game slightly if needed to. Organising this time after the release is essential as you will want this time slot to fit before the final release of the game.

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/1184/

Finance for games

Self-Financing

Advantages	Disadvantages
Quickest and easiest way of securing money	The person who in which started up the business (entrepreneur) may not have the required knowledge or skills to keep the business running or make it bigger.
The entrepreneur gets to spend the money on whatever the entrepreneur needs/wants.	The entrepreneur is the only one at risk, if the money runs low then it is the entrepreneurs roll to sort it out.
It gets rid of any complications of having to add more partners and shareholders.	If an opportunity comes up to expand your business or make an appearance somewhere, you may not have the money to take the opportunity.
It is simple to exit the business.	Possibly be put into debt by taking out overdrafts from the bank.
All of the profit goes to the entrepreneur.

Self-financing means being able to make enough money to carry on supporting yourself/your company. Money that comes from yourself and not from anyone else such as investors and lenders.




http://www.drjeffcornwall.com/2008/08/07/pros_and_cons_of_selffinancing/

Indie Funding

Indie fund is an organisation in which is created by many different independent game developers. The indie fund is to help fund businesses in which are going into indie video game development.
GamesLab Development Fund is a dedicated program in which support and invest in indie game businesses. Companies that are eligible to this program will be granted up to £25,000 to support themselves on. This includes publishing, marketing and distributing.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Simple contract which you doesn’t need negotiation or lawyers. (indie fund)	They don’t publish (both)
Get funded quicker than other funding organisations (indie fund)	Cannot be repaid if your game doesn’t launch (indie fund)
Advisers to ask for advice when you run into a situation or problem (indie fund)	Very selective (indie)
Offers master classes for development which includes pitching, legal workshops, marketing and development. (GamesLab)
Free access to UK events where it is possible for you promote your company (GamesLab)
Opportunity to show your game at the GamesLab event (GamesLab)
Regular contact with an industry mentor who can offer guidance and advice (GamesLab)

 http://indie-fund.com/      
http://gameslab.creativeengland.co.uk/

Crowd Funding

Crowd funding is where you ask a large group of different people for money and then receiving small amounts of money from each person. Crowd funding is very common on the internet.

Indiegogo is accordingly the “largest global fundraising site” in whom help out individual people, businesses and non-profits to raise money online for what they want to achieve. How it works is that you start a campaign and then you activate your community and then wait for it to be funded.

Kickstarter is another website in which helps people raise enough money for them to fund their projects. Kickstarter also builds a community around your work. With Kickstarter, you are able to track your funding progress on your phone with the Kickstarter app.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Free to launch (Indiegogo)	Your project may not get funded at all
“Simply and Easy” campaign editor (Indiegogo)	Collects 5% fee from a projects funding total (Kickstarter)
Multiple payment options (indiegogo)	Pledges on Kickstarter are collected and processed by their payment partner, stripe. They take 3-5% of the processing fees.
100% ownership of your work (Kickstarter)

Grants “Epic has created a $5,000,000 development fund to provide financial grants to innovative projects built in and around Unreal Engine 4. Awards range from $5,000 to $50,000, and there are no strings attached: you continue to own your IP, are free to publish however you wish, and can use the grant funds without any restrictions or obligations to Epic.”

This quote is from the Unreal Engine website. If you are using crowd funding sites such as Kickstarter then you are still eligible to receiving a grant from Epic. Although to apply for the UE dev grant you need your project to already be working in UE4 or for it.

Publishers

A game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either been developed by someone in that company or by someone who has created a successful game. Activision is a very popular video game publisher. It has published series of games in which are extremely popular amongst the gaming community. These game series are Call of Duty, Destiny and Skylanders. They also publish games which are on a variety of platforms.

Game Sketch

Game Sketch: Unicat and the Ancient Ball of String

Unicat: 

Unicat is a magical creature. It is a cat with the powers of a unicorn. Unicat has the ability to kill snakes with its horn. Once it has collected enough power gems in which is contained within a snake, it is able to use its special ability which makes the Unicat invincible for 5 seconds.
Unicat lives in the world of cloud 5 and the world was peaceful until the CatSnake took over and tore apart the ancient ball of string. Unicat must retain all of the string in order to restore peace in the world of Cloud 5. 

The main objective is for Unicat to pick up pieces of string in the game to make the ancient ball of string to restore peace.Also you are to defeat the CatSnake boss who has taken over Cloud 5 and has the last piece of string. Each level has a certain amount of pieces of string for the player to collect and they may have to get over some obstacles which are blocking the path to reach the magical cloud. (I.e. snakes!) The magical cloud takes you over to the next level.

 Snakes: (Villain):
The snakes are CatSnake's minions. They follow CatSnake’s orders and try to stop Unicat from retrieving all of the pieces of string and getting to the castle where CatSnake is based. They can bite Unicat which results in Unicat’s health going down. Unicat can defeat these minions by shooting little rainbow balls at the snakes, this will make the snakes die and drop a piece of string. 

Pixel and Types of Digital Graphics

Pixel:

“A pixel is a point sample. It exists only at a point. For a color picture, a pixel might actually contain three samples, one for each primary color contributing to the picture at the sampling point.” This is a quote from an article written by Alvy Ray Smith in 1995. It explains that pixels are not square in which most believe they are.

Picture Resolution

Resolution refers to how many pixels are in the image. When looking at a pictures resolution, the pixels are separated into two dimensions, the width and the height. The higher the amount of pixels the better image quality you will have. Mega pixels are the width and the height of the image multiplied together, so for example, the image can either be a 2048x1536 image or a 3.1 mega pixel image.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/image-resolution/

Image Resolution

The resolution of the image is the quality of the image. The higher the resolution the better image quality you will have. A high quality image will appear clear and more defined, whereas a lower image resolution picture will appear less defined and blurred. Resizing the image after cropping it will affect the quality of your image too. Image resolution and picture resolution are two very similar aspects. This image displays what a lower resolution image looks like compared to the higher resolution image. 

Intensity

The pixels appearance is determined by the intensity of the three colours, red, green and blue. When all three of the colour beams are set to high the colour goes white and when the three colour beams are at its lowest it will change to black. The higher the intensity of the pixels the better the image resolution.  “This is also sometimes called the bit depth, because the precision of color depth is specified in bits. The more bits that are used per pixel, the finer the color detail of the image. However, increased color depths also require significantly more memory for storage of the image,”

The print screen image shows that you can change the RGB values in which means changing the intensity of the 3 colour beams in pixels.

 http://www.pcguide.com/ref/video/modesColor-c.html

Picture element

Picture element is the smallest part of an image. Picture elements in which are counted on a printed image has increased. Ink dots from a printer have become smaller. The smaller dots have made it harder for us to see the separation of each dot therefor creating a much smoother image and a high quality image.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-picture-element.htm

“The smallest resolvable rectangular area of an image, either on a screen or stored in memory. Each pixel in a monochrome image has its own brightness, from 0 for black to the maximum value (e.g. 255 for an eightbit pixel) for white. In a colour image, each pixel has its own brightness and colour, usually represented as a triple of red, green and blue intensities (see RGB )”.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/picture+element

Types of Digital Graphics

Raster Images

Raster images are very dependent on resolution. They are made up of a set grid of dots and all the pixels in the raster image have assigned values. Photoshop and GIMP is the most common software in which is used to create raster images. When you reduce the size of a raster image or increase the size of a raster image you are shrinking or stretching the pixels in which make the image possibly blurry and pixelated. Raster files are bigger than vector files. Raster file types usually are; BMP, JPEG, GIF and TIF.

https://99designs.com/designer-blog/2011/05/02/vector-vs-raster-images/

Vector Images

When vector images are stretched they still retain the good quality it had before it had been resized. The shapes involved in the vector image stay smooth from the start of the shape and to the end point which is why the image stays smooth when resized. Vector images are good for anything in which needs printing. For example, Logo designs, posters, drawings etc. Vector images are made up of shapes such as lines and curves. Vector files are smaller than raster files.  Typical vector image file types are .ai, .pdf, .eps and .svg.

https://99designs.com/designer-blog/2011/05/02/vector-vs-raster-images/

https://modassicmarketing.com/understanding-image-file-types/

File Extensions

A file extension is what type of file the file is and it is displayed at the end of the file name. There are many different types of file extensions. The file extension is separated from the file name by a dot and then followed by 2/3/4 letters. For example, .PDF, .JPEG, .AI etc. Showing the file extension at the end of the file name in file explorer helps us identify what type of file it is before we open it.

Compression

Compression is reducing the file size so that you have access to more memory than an uncompressed large file. Lossy data compression is where information is discarded as it is “unnecessary” and lossless data compression is when you compress a file without losing any data/information at all. Lossless files lose no quality at all whereas lossy files lose out on quality. JPEGs and MP3s use lossy compression.

http://techterms.com/definition/lossless

Image capturing

There are many different ways to capture an image. You can use cameras, phones, scanners, print screens, tablets etc.

Optimising

To optimise an image, it is rewriting something to improve “efficiency of retrieval or processing.” Optimising graphics is very important as you need to consider what the file sizes need to be, what type of file it needs to be and where you are saving all of the graphics. You need to think about where you want your final product to end up. Bit depth is the volume of a pixel, reducing the bit depth of an image will reduce the size of the file however the image quality will drop. Same with the resolution of the image, the smaller the resolution of the image the smaller the file size will be and the larger the resolution the larger the image. You need to consider which would be beneficial dependant on the situation you are in. The dimensions of the image (the width and height) are there so you make the image smaller or larger, making the image smaller and the volume of pixels with be closer together and vice versa for the larger images.

https://07268grum.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/optimising-target-destination-bit-depth-resolution-dimensions-intended-image-output/

Storage of image assets

It is important to name your files accordingly. If you have quite a few images of dogs but they are all different versions you may want to give them the file name of “Dog V1” (v = version) and then “Dog V2”, “Dog V3” and so on. This will make it a lot easier to find files in which you need and will benefit the person who is going to use them or yourself.
The file size is also something to consider as you may need a smaller file size for particular software. The file sizes are usually in bytes. For example KB, MG, GB and TB.  You can save all of your images on hardware such as a hard drive, an external hard drive and a USB. 

Computer Game Genres

Computer Game Genres

What is a game genre? It is the type of game.

FPS:

An FPS is a First Person Shooter. What this means is that you are viewing the world through the characters eyes. What you would commonly see in first person would be your characters hands and weapon (if you are holding a weapon). FPS games usually include you killing enemies.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is an FPS game. A game in which you are playing as a character where you are part of a “crippled nation fighting not for freedom, or liberty, but simply to survive”. The story behind the game is that the “balance of global power have been redrawn forever” and you are part of a group who are known as “Ghosts”. 

https://www.callofduty.com/uk/en/ghosts/features/sp

The gameplay also takes place in different places. For example, when you first start off the campaign you are an astronaut up in space and then further on in the story line you are under water defeating enemies. 

The engine that was used to make Call of Duty: Ghosts was the IW engine (Infinity Ward). This is an engine was specifically designed for the Call of Duty series. 

Horror:

Horror is a genre in which intends for the gamer to feel frightened, or see something gruesome, tense etc. Horror games usually use music to help bring across the emotions the gamer is meant to feel.

The Outlast is a “psychological horror” game which takes place in an asylum for the “mentally ill”. You play as a journalist who is trying to find out what is happening exactly inside of this asylum. However, there is an outbreak. The mental patients are all around inside the asylum, some chase after you and try to kill you whereas others just do strange things. A common thing you will see in this game is blood, guts and gore.

http://outlast.wikia.com/wiki/Outlast_Wiki

Fantasy

Fantasy type games involve improbable things and actions. These actions are things you cannot do in the real world or contain objects that aren’t real. Fantasy games are very imaginative games, they contain a lot of characters and usually magic (dependant on the game).

Final Fantasy XIII is a hybrid game, falls under the genres of fantasy and RPG (role playing game). In this game, you are playing as a character viewing in 3rd person. The story line uses chapters and you have to complete each chapter to progress. Along the way you will encounter enemies and you will be introduced to the battle system when you first fight. The battle system requires button combinations. Furthermore, whilst battling you can summon "Eiodolons", use magic and weapons. The setting certainly proves a great example for it being a fantasy type of game, you are in an “utopia” in the sky, a world called the Cocoon which was created 13 centuries ago however “peace and prosperity” is no more in that world.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII

RPG:

RPG, known as Role-Playing Game is a genre in which you play as a character and you have a certain role to play in that game.

A good example of a RPG is Pokémon. You create a character at the beginning of the game and you are introduced into the world of Pokémon. It pretty much has the same start in every single Pokémon game. You have to follow the story line in order to progress, to visit different cities and places, and sometimes to even visit a different region (a region in which is usually only accessible in another game). Your role in the game is to simply try to catch every Pokémon and become the Pokémon league champion. 

Puzzle:

Puzzle games are there to test your knowledge and skill. The majority of puzzle games have different levels. The more puzzles you do the harder it gets. Additionally, some puzzle games use the puzzles in order for you to progress. If you cannot complete the puzzle then you cannot move forward in game.
There are two examples in which fall under the genre of puzzle, two very different but similar games. The first example is Portal. This game is played on the PC and you have to buy it from steam. Portal is a game in which you use two settings of the weapon you are given. There is an orange setting and a blue setting. Both settings when used creates a “Portal” in the wall in which you can walk through. When both portals are placed down you are able to access different areas of the room in which you could not access before.  In order for you to progress you have a set of obstacles to get through and you have to possibly open doors and place blocks on things to trigger something to reach the end goal.

 

Another example of a puzzle game would be Candy Crush Saga. This game is commonly played on smartphones. Candy Crush Saga is a puzzle game in which you have to select the same type of candy in a row more than 3. Your objectives do change when you are progressing higher in the game. Your objective could possibly be to reach a certain score or it could be to get some amount of fruit to drop down. 

Sport

Sport type games involve different types of sport in which you can play that you could not possibly play in the real world, such as professional basketball or football. Some of these sport games allow you to play as a professional in which sport their profession is in.

A very popular sport game series is FIFA. FIFA is a sport game in which its gameplay revolves around football. You get to choose which football team you play as and then you play matches. In the match you can switch between football players on your team. You can also play against other people if you want to.

Simulator:

Simulator games are used to mimic what you can do in the real world. These games are designed for gamers in general or for the disabled so they can get a feel of what they want to do in the real world.

An example of a simulator would be the Sims series. The Sims 4 in particularly comes with a lot more features than the previous series. In The Sims 4, you are able to create a character in which can look like anyone, there are so many features you can change about your character. Then you will start off the game by buying a house with the limited amount of money you have. Further into the game, you can develop relationships and friendships with whom you please and then get a job. The money you get from the job is used to pay for food, bills and whatever else you want to purchase. The best feature about The Sims 4 is that now you can actually attend the work place you are working at and do the tasks yourselves.

Another example of a simulator would be the Farming Simulator. In this game, you get to see what it is like being a farmer. What you get to do in this game is tend to the crops, look after the animals and cultivate your land. You are also able to expand your farm. This game is available on a lot of gaming platforms such as Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, 3DS and PS Vita.

http://www.farming-simulator.com/about.php?lang=en

Survival

Survival games rely on you to keep your character alive. Some survival games require you to start from scratch, this meaning you need to build your own home and grab your own resources. Whereas, other survival games (hybrid genres) just rely on you to keep your character alive. These types of games usually fall under the genres horror/survival games.

An example of a survival game in which younger children would be would be Minecraft. Minecraft is available across a lot of platforms. Within this game you start off with no resources at all other than a map. In order to survive you have to keep an eye on your health and your food bar. Players have to build a home/base area for them to stay in overnight as the “mobs” (monsters) come out only at night or in caves. You have to grab the resources yourself and create different objects in which can help you survive. There are also design elements to this survival making it very enjoyable. 

Another example would be Ark: Survival Evolved. This game is about you keeping your player alive on an island filled with dinosaurs. There are many things you have to keep an eye in order to survive, such as; Food, Water, Stamina, Health, Weight and fortitude. The weather can deeply affect your survivor. The heat gradually lowers your health and water and the cold can lower your health and food. You will have to grab resources, level up and make a base for you to survive in. Staying along the coastline is safer than staying the forests and mountains. You can tribe up with other people this allowing them to access the base and any storage boxes you have got. A great way for you survive on this game would be to tame quite a few dinosaurs. It is a lot easier to get around the map with dinosaurs. 

Tower Defence:

Tower defence games are games in which you need to stop enemies from reaching your base/place/goal. You would most likely have to build obstacles to stop them from getting to your area.

Plants VS Zombies is a tower defence game. You either defend as the zombie team and attack the plants or you can defend as the plants and attack the zombie team. There are different plants/zombies that you can play as and you can change the abilities they have. Some of these abilities may be considered as useful for defending your ground, it is up to you to decide which abilities you choose or not. There are different modes that you can, play online or play locally with friends.

https://www.pvzgw2.com/

Dance/Rhythm

These games involve you dancing to some beat and you having to correctly do the moves in which appear on the screen. Your moves are monitored by some kind of device. E.g. a dance mat, a remote, Kinect etc.

A classic game on the PS2 which fits into this genre is Dance UK. With this game you have to purchase a dance mat. You would use the mat to select which song you want to perform. Then whilst the music plays a series of arrows will appear on the screen. These arrows slowly move out towards the arrows which are on the mat, on the screen. When the arrows reach on the mat on the screen then that is when you use your foot on the correct arrow on the dance mat. The difficulty is based on which song you choose. 

Computer Games Graphics

Computer Games Graphics

Pixel art

Pixel art contains the use of 2D sprites and 3D isometric sprites and the characters/objects are made with visible pixels. Pixel art is most commonly used in older generation games such as Pac man and VS Super Mario Bros. The older retro games use limited amount of colours to create a specific feel or mood for the game. VS Super Mario Bros uses a vibrant colour scheme. Pac man also uses a bright colour scheme for the characters and black for the background. Using the black in the background would contrast against the colours of the characters which will make them easier to see and they will stand out better.
Pixel art is also now used in newer games such as FEZ. FEZ is a game which integrates the 2D sprites with 3D sprites. By sprites I mean characters and objects. The character is a 2D sprite whereas the back is actually a 3D sprite as you are able to hop around the cube in the game which rotates the shape. This game has a lot of vibrant colours in which determines a happy environment.
Here is a youtube video which shows the gameplay of FEZ. Around 6 minutes into the video you will see the rotation of the 3D sprite foreground and 2D sprite objects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH2SysTLCPc

Concept Art

Concept art contains the ideas of the game. It contains the designs of the characters and the objects that will be used in the game. For the characters, the concept art would contain different styles of clothes the character might be able to change into in the game, the specific stances it will do and the different facial expressions.
These concept art images shows drawings of the character, image⁽¹⁾ shows the character from different viewpoints, the front and the back, and shows the design of her outfit. Then the concept art has developed into colour and a particular stance. The 2^nd image ⁽²⁾ shows another design idea of the character. It contains a line drawing and then the colouring is added in after with the same image but bigger. The 3^rd image ⁽³⁾ contains different facial expressions of a particular character (Spyro). All these examples back up what concept art contains.  The 4^th image ⁽⁴⁾ displays the final fantasy weapon concept art.

Texture Art

Texture art is recreating the texture from the real world into a game. This computer graphic art is most commonly used in photorealistic games. The reason behind this would be that photorealistic games are the art style games in which are trying recreate elements of the real world into a game, therefor using texture art. A great example to show texture art would be the game Until Dawn. This game is a photorealistic game as it uses real actors as actors.
In this image you can see the texture of the wallpaper that is peeling off the wall, the wooden panels which are shown, you can see the texture of the characters hair and in her clothing. The environment around the characters here is full of texture and that is why this is a very good example of texture art. This decaying effect everywhere leaves an uneasy mood on the player.

Background Graphics

The background in some games are major priority. In some games the background would need to be full of texture and high quality whereas, in other games the background might not be something that they necessarily want to focus upon. The background graphics may contain lots of different elements to it such as trees, clouds, birds, lights, objects etc. However other backgrounds may want to limit the amount of objects in the background to only trees and clouds. A great example of showing a complex and full background would be Ark: Survival Evolved. The background of this is completely full of different objects. There are clouds, dynamic lighting, rocks, bushes, forests and dinosaurs.

In-Game Interface:

In the majority of games, there will be a HUD (Heads Up Display). This HUD might contains stats of your character such as your health, stamina, food, water and lots more. There also might be a HUD for your weapon that you are using (dependant on the game). This may contain how much ammo you have left in your gun and it might tell you what particular gun you are using at the moment. 

This image is a screenshot of the HUD in the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.  What this displays is the usual characteristics of a HUD. The HUD is usually displayed around the edge of the screen so that the player is still able to see what is happening in front of them. This HUD contains ammo, the current score (in the bottom left) the amount of grenades left, the score streaks, how much of the ability is left to use (bottom right) and then the map (top left).

Print Media:

Print media is the media coverage of the game. This includes what the game packaging is going to look like, the box cover, what the manual is going to look like and include, the labeling, what the posters are going to contain and the advertising. Print media is very important for a game. For example, if you produce an advert which contains the best part of the gameplay then people will be excited waiting for the game release. However, they will soon become disappointed as they have come to realise that the parts shown in the advert are the only best parts of the game. The print media needs to balance well. 

What I thought about this game casing is that it is composed structurally well. The composition of where the globe is attracts the most attention. The colouring of the title of the game and the globe both contrast again the dark background thus resulting in making those two objects stand out the most and attracting our attention to it. Furthermore, the simplicity of the design contrasts against the title of the name which I suppose makes it more desirable. 

This is a game manual for the game Skyrim. The text which is used in the game is also the same text which is used in the game manual. This is a design idea which has been thought about when it game to print media. Also on the edges of the pages are little symbols which are used on every page.