Final Designs

To mock up my trailer concept, I used Photoshop to illustrate a simple storyboard.I really like the way that it has come out and I think it successfully portrays my idea of a 360 video.

• The viewer sees a blank blueprint, on which lines start to get drawn to eventually make up the exact plans for a tank
• The viewer then starts to see pieces of tank get banged together. Pieces of tank get built around the viewer, as they get put inside of the tank being built, which is more effective as a 360 video
• As the viewer looks around the crew start to appear and start to work on staring up the tank. Sounds start to creep in of engines and loud explosions outside the tank
• The camera moves over to the window, allowing the viewer to look out and see that they are now moving across a battlefield, seeing other tanks outside moving alongside you and firing shells
• The camera pans back inside the tank and the viewer sees the crew shouting and moving around the tank, creating a real feeling of being in a warzone
• A crew member loads a shell and the camera pans to the inside of the barrel, allowing them to see the shell get fired out of the barrel
• The camera then pans up out of the barrel, showing the battlefield out in front of the tank. The camera continues to move upwards into the sky, panning down and giving a birds eye view of the battlefield with the World of Tanks logo appearing to have been carved into the ground

I think that this is a very strong idea, and I think it definitely fits in with my initial thoughts about keeping in tune with the game, and creating an experience that mirrors the technologically/statistically accurate, and true to life aspects of the game. I also think that this would be a more successful trailer, as the 360 aspect makes it far more interactive, and therefore far more enticing to the viewer; especially if they have a VR headset, although they do not need one to see the video. I think the idea of placing the audience inside a working tank, in a war zone, creates a more personal experience and in turn, makes it even more engaging, and hopefully drawing the audience to continue through to the website and eventually sign up to the game.

As for the website, when the audience come to the site the trailer that I have mocked up would ideally be the first thing that plays, immediately immersing the viewer in the experience. When the video ends, and the last scene is showing with the WoT logo on the floor of the battlefield, this would then become the header for the site itself, with buttons appearing to replay the video, to sign up or log in, or to scroll down into the site. As for the design of the site itself, I chose to create a static mock up in Illustrator, although if the site were to be made live I would want to include parallax scrolling elements, with the imagery and text moving in from the sides of the screen. I took aspects and colours from the existing site, although I wanted to make the site a lot simpler than the existing one.

Rather than include news and lots of information, I chose to take 3 key parts of the game and split them into three, simple and bold boxes the appear beneath each other as the audience scrolls through the site. The first simply being an explosive, attention grabbing image and the information that the game is free to play, with a large call to action button where the audience can sign up. The next section is about the Tankopedia. This section is interactive, whereby the audience can see 3D renders of different tanks in the game with some of the important statistics about each tank placed below. Information is displayed about the tanks and the viewer is able to move the tank around, and also scroll through to more of the tanks available in the game. The final section is a simple part about the WoT community and the social side of the game, with information about the amount of players, links to social media such as Twitch and Youtube, and a video player so the audience can view game play examples straight away.

I think this mock up is very successful, and is much stronger than the game’s existing site. I think the interactive aspects of my site help to make it much more engaging, and help to draw the audience in more successfully, encouraging them to actually sign up and download the game. I feel I have done well to keep true to the brand, whilst simultaneously creating a design that is different enough, and simple enough to work as a new, strong website design. I also really like my trailer concept, and I think that the way that it seaways seamlessly from video to website is strong, and helps to create a more flowing, engaging experience for the audience. Overall I have really enjoyed working on this brief, much more than I thought I would, and I feel I have come out with a strong and evolved outcome.

Initial Ideas

At this point, I felt I had gathered enough research and generated enough ideas to start thinking about creating a final piece. As well as creating a homepage for the game, I wanted to also look at designing a trailer/video for the game, based on the ideas that I have looked at and also in the format of a 360 video, as I feel that this would be a much more engaging way to approach the trailer, and I think it would work very well for the idea of telling the story of a tank, from blueprint all the way through to the battlefield, which is the story I want to tell in my trailer.

360 Videos

360 videos have blown up in recent years, and are a pretty cool thing to see. They are videos that are captuured from a 360 degree view, meaning that the viewer can move the camera in the video and see everything around them. This is a very interactive, and far more engaging way to view videos, as opposed to simple watching a flat, 2D video. One thing that is especially great about 360 videos is their compatibility with virtual reality headsets. VR works especially well with 360 videos as it allows the viewer to watch the video and look all around them simply by turning their head. This creates a much more immersive experience, and allows the viewer to feel as though they are in the video, and part of what is going on. This is something that I think would work very well in the context of World of Tanks, as the feeling of perhaps being inside a tank would be very engaging for the audience, and it would be a much more interactive and fun approach to advertising the game, and I think it would definitely help to draw new players in to the game.

World of Warships: Lightmaker Site

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When speaking to Adam from Lightmaker about the brief, and the different possibilities we could use, he showed us a temporary version of a sit that Lightmaker had been working on for World of Warships, a similar game from the same company that make World of Tanks. The main concept behind this site was the video that can be played by clicking the ‘Get On Board’ button. This plays a short video/advert taken from World of Warships, showing a sea battle and highlighting some of the key elements of the game such as the different ships, the huge artillery, and the planes flying around. What Lightmaker have done however is take certain parts of the video and slow them right down to an almost stop for a few seconds, allowing a button to appear which takes you through to read more information about the game and its elements, before returning to the video. I really like this idea, I think it is a very successful way to present information about the game and I really like the interactivity of it. This is a very engaging approach to take and it is an idea that I would love to experiment with in my own design.

http://world-of-warships.lightmaker.co.uk/en/

Battlefield 1 Adverts

After looking into websites for other war based games, I found the Battlefield site the most interesting and I started looking into the trailers for the game, as I knew that they were fairly impressive. I really like the trailers and I think the are incredibly successful. I think that have a very strong impact on the audience because they feel so real and gritty. The idea behind Battlefield 1 is to show the First World War in a way that is as horrendous, and true to life as possible. I feel that they have kept this in mind when creating the trailers, which I think is why they work so well and why they feel so engaging and enticing.

There are a lot of  shots throughout the trailers which show tanks and various other pieces of machinery from the war, which I think has been shown very well and definitely relates to my personal practice. I love the way that the trailers have been put together, and the ideas behind them are certainly ones that I can implement and integrate within my own work; as the idea of a trailer or short video is something I would like to experiment with myself.

War Games

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After looking at various World of Tanks resources and assets, I decided to take a look at some websites for other war related games, such as Battlefield, Call of Duty and Counter Strike. The thing that I took away immediately from the sites was that the simpler sites were more more interesting, and had much more of an impact than the sites that were full of information and news on the homepage. Of course, I understand that for some sites this format will work best, and some games, such as Call of Duty, are so big that they don’t need to necessarily attract new players, and so it is potentially more useful for them to display news and updates on their homepage. For a smaller, perhaps more niche game such as World of Tanks however, I don’t feel that this format would be as successful; and as the brief outlines that the aim is to attract new players and make people want to sign up, I think that a simpler, and more engaging, impactful approach would be much more successful.

https://www.battlefield.com/en-gb
https://www.callofduty.com
http://blog.counter-strike.net

Tanks.gg

Through researching World of Tanks, I came across a site called tanks.gg, which is a site set up around the game. The site serves, essentially, as an extended Tankopedia, providing in depth information about all of the stats for each tanks and a simple to use tech tree. As well as this information, the site has 3D rendered models of every tank in the game, and features overlays and information about things such as armour thickness/weakness and barrel depression around the tank. This site provides a more interesting, easy to use, and much more engaging way for players to learn about the tanks and how they can be used in the game, and it is something I will consider in my own designs.

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World of Tanks Ads

In stark comparison with their fairly plain homepage, I looked at some of the World of Tanks adverts, and they are far far more successful. It is clear that the game has put a lot of effort into creating powerful, entertaining, and captivating adverts, and I think it shows. The game has a number of different adverts, and they come from different angles such as emotional approaches, as well as the simple idea that; tanks are cool as hell. I found it very interesting to look through the numerous ads, and also inspiring, and I think there are a lot of ideas in them that could easily be translated to a web format. This is something I will definitely take into consideration when designing my own website/campaign for the game.

World of Tanks

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World of Tanks is a free to play, online multiplayer game in which players drive tanks in team vs team matches, with the goal to eliminate the opposing team or to capture their flag. The game is one that I had heard about before and knew a little about, but not a lot, and so my first port of call was to actually download the game and play it myself.

I definitely enjoyed playing the game, and I found it a lot more engaging than I thought it would be. One thing that I found about the game, from playing it and also watching streamers play and talk about it, was that as you reach higher ranks, the game gets more and more technical. One thing that World of Tanks prides itself on is the fact that it is as true to life as possible, with the tanks’ statistics being as realistic as possible, and with the tank models being as detailed and accurate as they can. And with over 300 real life tanks featured in the game, this is a huge selling point, especially to people with an interest in tanks or war. This can be seen especially well in the Tankopedia, found on the game’s website.

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As for the World of Tanks website itself its design is fairly uninteresting in my personal opinion. It provides a lot of information about the game and about the huge community around it, however I don’t feel that it necessarily pulls me in. I don’t find the homepage very exciting to look at, and I don’t feel that it would, by any means, compel me to download the game. After looking at the homepage, my first impressions are that it could easily be made much simpler, which I think would make it much more effective in drawing potential players in. I feel that it needs to be more exciting, more engaging, and perhaps more interactive, all with the aim to attract new players and simply get people to sign up.

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