The Brand Principles of The Wayfinder -
- The Wayfinder is a single player experience where the player leads a community of robots through a perilous enviroments to an end location.
- Guide A.I compainions and avoid dangers in the world
- Invoke empathy of the player for their fellow Robot companions
One note that was brought up at the branding workshop by our course leader is to have the games intro purely be a boot up screen of an old PC to relate to the tech the main character is based on. Personally I love this idea and want to look into older PC boot ups for reference.
The typical boot up for computers at the time would be simply lines of text running system diagnostics being displayed on the screen. In my personal opinion the distinct aspect of the boot up is how the text is slowly displayed line by line and the sounds that can be heard during this process.
If this was to be an aspect that was implimented into the game, I do see one possible way and thtat is to have it run as an overlay on the player camera just the game starts. This would visually be close to how most modern online games display chat logs on their game, though instead this would be a boot up sequence and have a more significant place on the screen.
Another area that was noted was to use social media to tease the devlog of the game through images showing the old computer parts with got hold of for reference of the robot characters. One thing I wanted to look at before this was how other marketing campaigns have done their own ways of teasing. The most notible things I found when looking into previous marketing campaigns was they all usaully work by uploading several post that build up to a reveal, either through countdowns or images that add or remove components to show the reveal.
Another area of advertisment that teased its final product was the trailers for the current generation of consoles. In both the trailers for these consoles they both had slow reveals of the final consoles with abstract cutins of close ups of the consoles. I think this exact same technique used for revealing the main character would be an amazing way to show the character off on social media and would add to the overall brand of our game with there being a focus on the robot character and the mysterious world that is presented in The Wayfinder.
A thing that was brough up during this workshop was to build out the world further through the way this world is hunting down these Robots and eradicating them. One way to do this would be through media campaigns such as ones that are presented by movements such as Extinction Rebellion.
The branding for extinction rebellion is bold and experimental in my opinion, with many aspects and shapes overlaping and bold imagery. It really does feel like something that could exist in the world present in The WayFinder. Either if its something created by the Antagonists of the game with an Anti Robot message or from a group alot like Extinction Rebellion that want to save the robots. Another possible and in my opinion more interesting avenue to go down is it being propaganda from the robots them selves, this could be shown in perfectly AI created paintings and signs or alot like the image that is shown below which is created by an artist Katsu Bot, paintings created by drones with spray paint cans.
Along with the points Ive made already, we where also refered some artist to possibly look to extra reference for this bold branding centered around "Save The Robots" (a phrase that was thrown around during these discussions). One of these artist was Saul Bass, an American graphic designer, best known for his work and designs for film advertisment and corporate logos. His style fits into the same abstract look that Extinction Rebellion went for though in my opinion pushes the designs it presents further into that look. The lettering is of personal note, as I feel if we went down the route of creating these designs made by robot drones painting, this is how the lettering would look. Another thing for me is the overall colour pallette his work follows is beautiful though personally could transfer into the bleak world the game presents.
Another Reference that was given was of the Atelier Populaire, a group of French art school students who would design and produce free posters that would support striking workers. The art they produced feels like in my opinion that its quite crudely made and feels very underground in a sophisticated way. I could definitley see this style depict the savagery of the antagonist in the game from the robots point of view.
Overall this workshop I feel has truly helped narrow and at the same time expand other elements of the brand and the overall game idea and excites me to see visually where The WayFinder will go now.