Many theming details can be inexpensive - a line of text, a color choice, a sound effect...
Game Design: The Lens of Unification
Consider the reason behind it all.
This lens works well with the Lens of the Elemental Tetrad. Use the tetrad to separate out the elements of your game, so you can more easily study them from the perspective of a unified theme.
(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 53)
Designer Rich Gold describes an elementary example of theming in his book The Plenitude. As a child, he had a book about elephants. The idea of the book was simple: to deliver an experience to children that let them understand what elephants were. The theme was "What are elephants?" The author reinforced the theme with text and pictures about elephants, and cut the entire book into the shape of an elephant.
Jesse Schell worked on a Disney VR game for the Disney parks about the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. They were given the limits of having it in CAVE, making it about 5 minutes long, and following the vague, open-ended theme: pirates. His team realized after riding the ride, taking pictures, talking to guests, and asking the workers that the theme was the fantasy of being a pirate. The ride lacks a story, but it is highly detailed and consists of immersive tableaus of people throwing aside the rules of society and just start being pirates. He reinforced the theme by...
- CAVE shape: Usually square or hexagonal CAVES but instead a new, four-screen CAVE shape better suited for pirate ship simulation.
- Stereoptics: Not every CAVE experience uses it, but they chose to for the sense of depth they give. Letting you eyes focus on infinity really helped it make it feel like you were out at sea.
- Modified 3D Glasses: Most 3D glasses have blinders on the side for reducing distractions in the peripheral vision. To give players a better sense of sailing at sea, they made arrangements with the manufacturer to have the blinders cut off.
- Motion Platform: Produced the feeling of a rocking, swaying boat. They custom built a platform using pneumatics because it felt the most like a ship at sea.
- Interface: Part of the pirate fantasy is steering a ship and part of it is firing cannons. The ship is steered with a ship's wheel control and they had real metal cannons that players would use to aim and fire.
- Visuals: They made things look beautiful, a kind of hyper-real look. They used high-end graphics hardware and rich textures and models to achieve a similar look.
- Music: They got permission to use music from the ride, since it captures the theme so well and connects the game to the ride in a powerful, nostalgic way.
- Audio: Their sound designers created a custom ten-speaker sound system that could play sounds from all direction, making you feel like you were out at sea. Some of the speakers were designed only to play cannon blasts and were placed at precisely the right distance from the boat so the waveform would hit you in the stomach, so you feel the cannons firing.
- A Feeling of Freedom: The gameplay mechanics were designed to let players sail wherever they chose, but at the same time ensure the players have an exciting time.
- Dead Men Tell No Tales: They handled death by having players be invulnerable throughout the majority of the game, but if they took too many hits over the course of the experience, their ship would sink dramatically at the end of the final battle.
- Treasure: Collecting vast hordes of treasure is an essential part of the pirate fantasy. They came up with a special technique to convincingly render piles of gold, making flat, hand-painted treasures seem to be solid, dimensional objects that sat prominently on the ship's deck.
- Lighting: They used special filters on the light to make it look like it was reflected off of water.
- A Place for my Stuff: People need a place for their personal items before playing the game. They created bags out of fishing nets that really looked like they belonged on a boat.
- Air Conditioning: The vents were placed at the front of the ship, blowing back, so players feel a breeze as they sail their ship.
- The Eyes of Bluebeard: They never found a way to style the 3D glasses or get rid of using them, so they gave up. Then, a cast member proclaimed before leading them onboard to try their game, "Before ye board, ye must wear the Eyes of Bluebeard." This was not in the "official script," but was a simple and effective way to theme a detail, and a powerful illustration that when you have a strong unifying theme, it makes it easier for everyone on the team to make useful contributions.
(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 49-53)