The website that I
plan to create shall be a site concerned with information and content relating
to the Final Fantasy series of video games.
Its main purpose will be to provide relevant information to fans of the
video game series. Its secondary
purpose will be to provide an “online community” of some kind to frequent users
of the website.
The main audience
will be most likely between the ages of perhaps 15-30. The Final Fantasy video games however appeal
to a rather broad range of people. The
main themes of the games are their compelling storylines, full of much wit,
humour, “character development”, action and romance in much the same way as a
Hollywood Blockbuster, the musical score of the games are another major factor
in its success. As it was mentioned
above, the games have a broad audience; this is unlike a lot of other video
games that are more action/fighting based for example, these often attract a
mostly young male audience. Final
Fantasy however attracts many female players, internationally perhaps around
45% of all the games’ players. The
games also attract a wider age range too.
In edition to the main 15-30 age range, there are generally many younger
players, there are also some older players who have been known to regularly play
the games. Overall the website will be
designed to appeal to the 15-30 age range.
However, the colours and the general theme would not need to be too
specific. Generally, colours based on
the video game would be appealing as the users would be most familiar with
these. For the type of language that
would be in use on the website, the users would easily be able to understand most
technical terms as they are most likely to be proficient with the games. As most of the users would be young/”not so
young” adults, I wouldn’t be required to simplify my use of language too
much. The knowledge has been acquired
from the range of Final Fantasy fans on the many related online
communities. Therefore it is strongly
suggested that the data meantioned above is correct.
The main content
that the site is to include includes many features, such as solutions to
“tricky” parts of the games, information on the characters, wallpapers, news on
upcoming Final Fantasy games, images and perhaps some music in midi format for
the user to download. It was stated
above about the community aspect of the website, this would be achieved this
through a forum for the site and perhaps a chat room.
www.fantasysquare.com Is one example
of another Final Fantasy website, it is an extremely popular Final Fantasy
website on the Internet. The website currently
has a theme, as far as colour and design are concerned, of “light” or “holy” so
to speak. This may seem difficult to
explain to someone who is not a fan of the game series but the game includes
various “elements” that are used in “magic”, for example, fire, ice, lightning,
holy is another such element. There are
also themes of “hope” in the stories, the general white theme to the pages also
reflects this, in my opinion. The site
used to have a dark mostly black in colour, theme to it, users would have
identified with it as it generally reflects the “darkness” element of the game
and many of the less “goodie-goodie” heros/anti-heros that the stories have to
offer. The site offers many features,
it covers nearly all of the games, it has a forum and an IRC chat (Internet
Relay Chat), relevant news is covered, there are sections for the mythology
related to the game, an online shop as well as free email, hints to the game
and fanart. Now, Fantasy Square indeed
most pleasing, in both its chic design and its extensive features, however, I
plan for my site to differ in several ways.
I would be unlikely to have quite so many features at this stage
compared to Fantasy Square; which is run and maintained by a team of several
people, the features would also be difficult and in some cases unfeasible to
implement.
Http://www.residentevilfan.com is
another example of a video game fansite.
Now unlike the former example, this website is for the video game Resident
Evil. Resident Evil attracts generally
a different audience to Final Fantasy; the games being of the “survival horror”
genre, where the player shoots zombies.
However like Final Fantasy, Resident Evil also has a compelling
storyline to the games with truly human characters. The game attracts a similar age range but a little more male
players, although the game has a fair amount of female players. Now, this site has a mostly dark design to
it, which to the user, would be reminiscent of “night” perhaps. This site has many features, including
information on all the games, vast media content and forums. The media content includes many “movie”
scenes from the video game. This would
of course be unfeasible for me to include such advanced features on the website
at this time.
The “secret”
behind the success of the two websites above are their “loyal” visitors. Many of them have joined the sites’ forums
and are a part of two large online communities, which grow in size and attract
more visitors to the website through word of mouth. Which is why, as such, it is intended to include a forum of some
kind to the website. However, including
an advanced forum to the website would be difficult and expensive to
achieve. It is planned to include a
free forum from a supplier such as Proboards, I also plan to include a chat
room, most likely an IRC channel. Such
a chat format can be accessed from a “script” or from an IRC program such as
MIRC, which is fairly commonly used.
From a design perspective, the site will of course need to be targeted specifically to the range of Final Fantasy fans mentioned above. Due to this major factor, the site is intended to include a general design scheme that generally reflects some of the Final Fantasy themes and colours.
Upon reaching the website the user will be greeted with the entrance page which will include the site banner and an image. The image itself will be of the JPG format, the picture I have in mind shall also be a “dark” “foreboding” image, that a Final Fantasy fan would associate with a “beginning”. Because of these factors, the load time is unlikely to become a hindrance to the user and should download fairly quickly.
A common theme with generally every page is that the site shall have a section on the left side for hyperlinks and another section at the top of the page for the site banner. The hyperlinks will direct the user to various sections of my website, others may provide links to other websites, perhaps ones that have been affiliated with. In addition the hyperlinks section will also contain such information as email, as well as the forums and guestbook. Each hyperlink will flash when the mouse is moved over it, perhaps flash green; this would go well with the intended colour scheme.
The banner will most likely be a collage of some pictures from Final Fantasy. It is intended to use JavaScript so that several different versions of the image will appear at random when the page is accessed. When a page on a specific game is accessed, It is also planned to have the banner customised to the game itself rather than the “general” one that shall be used on the main areas of the site.
The two above items, shall perhaps be “contained” through the use of tables or frames. The site shall use tables rather than frames as tables would be more popular with the users. If the user were using a browser that didn’t support frames, the site wouldn’t work for them, however, most modern browsers do include support for frames. There is the added problem with frames that the user would be unable to obtain a link to a specific page, say to send to a friend to help them with one of the games.
It has been considered to include background music to the website. Some users can find it quite entertaining to listen to music from the game while browsing the site. However, a large quantity of users would find this most annoying, as the music would be in midi format, which, even with the early games, hardly does justice to the superb music. If they were listening to their own music the midi would play at the same time. It is planned to include a section where the user can download midis however.
For the heavily image based pages, loading times may prove to be problematic. The galleries for fanart and wallpaper are especially an example of this. The site is intended to counter this problem through the use of thumbnails, perhaps having the images appearing in JavaScript windows when clicked. In other sections of the website where images appear, for example the pages of character profiles, The site shall reduce loading times by keeping the images relatively small, perhaps using .gif files too. Overall of course, I shall have minimum use of images on most of the website’s pages to reduce the loading time and maintain user satisfaction.
The users who are themselves visiting the website, would
of course do so from different computers.
These would of course vary in the browser in use and the screen
resolution on the monitor. The
different browser dilemma, is these days only a very small problem as every
current browser has essentially the same features, it is also very unlikely
that users would be using old “out of date” browsers. During the site’s development it will be tested in both Internet Explorer
and Firefox. As for the different
screen resolution, this would cause the website to appear bigger or smaller
respectively if the user has a lower or higher screen resolution. It is planned to counteract this by having a
choice of different screen sizes on the main page. Depending on the link they click, it shall take them to a website
designed for their screen resolution.