Week Six - Its All Good Fun

Games design, well this seems like a really fuzzy topic now after reading some of the links, first of all I think I have concluded there is no definition of games design, there blog entry done…. If only.

Games design essentially means the whole game and all of it’s aspect (hmm maybe that’s the definition of games design), but it can be broken down into smaller chunks.

First of all we have gameplay, now gameplay many people say cannot be defined as it incorporates too much, from the way you move a character to physics engine to art style, well that seems like a good enough definition to me. Gameplay is the experience created by the designers that makes playing a game so damn good. But all the aspects have to come together well meaning all the people involved in making a game need to work together to create an overall experience in a game.

Two main factors in this is audio and visual stimulation, these are two things that are very important in games as the other sense’s can not really be created, well yet, such as smell, touch (although you could say the wii is addressing that) and taste. So it is important that the artists can create a visually stimulating game, and this does not mean amazing graphics. Now I’m going to use Zelda Ocarina Of Time as an example here as it will be easier.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Truly The Greatest Games Designer!

This game has an amazing gaming experience as anyone will tell you, you play the game and forget it’s a game and become the role and get really into the story, which brings me onto another point, Plot theme and background. The games story works so well, now this game is a very epic game (and I really do love the epic games), but games don’t necessarily need to be epic (arcade style games like racing games (burnout), side scrolling shooter (R-type)). But the story involves you in a game so someone down in the office has to design story lines, character story’s, scenes environments, list is probable endless, I think a good way of looking at it is it is like a film, if a film has no coherent plot line, badly thought up characters, and lack of detail, you will be left thinking what an awful film, same with games only you play the role.

But with all this there is also a growing demand for freedom in games, it all sparked off really with grand theft auto, although I’m sure there were a few games that had it before. But the ability to do what you want in the game lets you create your own experience, I’m sure anyone who has played GTA has spent hours just driving around aimlessly find new and exciting things to do.

Now as you can probable tell I’m making this up as I go along so I do apologise if it doesn’t read all that well, but don’t worry I am going somewhere with this, sort of.

Anyway back to some more random dribblings. Another thing I’ve got noted down to talk about it the growing in technology and how it’s implemented in games development. A lot of games developers are talking about how these days their physics engines are even more realistic that real physics, showing how when a character dies he falls at the exact speed he would in real life, this is all good and well, an in most case’s does add to the gaming experience (Wii sports has a very fancy physics engine), but without everything else in a game it can all fall apart and result in a very poor gaming experience. So yeah as I think I’ve said before its great and all technology is growing, but unless we can utilise it well and come up with good ideas, it will be become irrelevant, and a dot, chasing another dot, will continue to rule for all of time.

Wii Sports Tennis!

One last thing I’d like to address is two of the questions in the task “Do different genres require different design principles? What's important for you, when you play?” this isn’t set in stone, but my two favorite gaming styles are, the really big epic titles that encapsulate you and keep you wanting to just play and play, and arcade types of game where you can just pick it up and play for a while, try and beat high scores and keep you wanting to just play and play. So yes different genres of games do need different design principles, but it all comes down to you want to play the game and have a damn good time while doing so!(See I told you I was going somewhere with all of this)

Blogger's Rage

I’ve looked back at some of my post, and I have this tendency to rant on a moan about things, even if I don’t care too much about it, I’ve also noticed this with a lot other blogs I’ve started to read around, and have come to the conclusion that blogs bring out rage.

This is like road rage, everyone who drives also has stories about how they get really annoyed with the driver in front, or something along there traveling’s that has ticked them off, resulting in road rage. Now most of these people aren’t violent people in every day life but can really lash out given the chance, and blogging it seems has the same effect. Now maybe it is just a way of venting all the negative energy at the end of a day, or the inner dark side of a person trying to get out, but what ever I think blogs are bringing out the rage in people, just something I’ve noticed.

Week Five - Marks Out Of Ten

Right so New Games Journalism, this new(ish) fangled way of writing where it’s no typical review and your told pro’s and con’s, usually summed up into a “10/10” system. That’s what we’re mostly use to, and to some extent I think it works, ill come to this a bit later though, but this New Game Journalism completely throws that out the window.

Okay I’ll admit it took me a while to grasp the whole idea of this style, and at first I really did not like it, and I can honestly say after reading through a few different articles, I still don’t like it. The main problem I think I have with it is I am so use to your typical review style, now maybe I’m missing the point of these as they are not reviews as such, but more just a story told from a gamers perspective.

Now I use to always read NGamer (right back to when it was called N64 Magazine), so I’ve always been fairly happy with the way these types of reviews/previews work. And yeah Mike was telling us the marks out of ten systems doesnt really tell use anything, which I do agree, I mean if one game gets 9/10 for graphics, and the other 9.5/10, but there two complete different styles, which is the better game. But I think that’s taking it too literally, I think it’s more of a guide line to what to expect a game to be like, I mean if a game gets 3/10, and another gets 9/10, chances are that game that got three isn’t going to have the greatest graphics in the world, same for the other types of scores (gameplay, Lifespan etc.). Just to add to that a bit I do still tend to read review on n-europe, but don’t let the review influence me to decide weather a game is good enough or not. Mostly reviews are written by someone who is getting paid, and so if they write a inaccurate review it doesn’t matter much to them as they still get pretty penny for it, but some reviews that are written by everyday sorts of people are more likely to more reliable, and I find forums are the best place to find out about a game as they are just talking about It for the sake of talking about it, not for the money or anything else.

Anyway back to these NGJ writings. One of the one’s I actually did enjoy a bit more is “Bow, Nigger”. Staring to read it I thought to myself I really don’t like this style, and I kind of did that thing where you read but think about something else thus not really taking in what you’re reading. But then it starting to get interesting, he started telling an epic like story that caught my interest (possible because it was about a star wars game I particularly like). But still while he was telling this it went off course a few times and didn’t read too well, but by the end of the article I was thinking that it was actually pretty good to read, had a good narrative that told the tale well, but as a review was awful. This is mainly because it didn’t explain any part of the game. Now while I’ve been writing this I’ve been thinking more and more I completely do not understanding this and will end up not getting to any point, so I looked up NGJ on wiki. It does say that NGJ is not necessarily a review but more of a narrative piece that describes an experience or journey of a game, now in that sense then “Bow, Nigger” is pretty good (if you cut out about half of it)

Now to do the typical top gear review style, as much I dislike this style of writing, and how it drags on sometimes, goes into some other random dribblings, has that style by where I will be reading it but also be thinking about something else so I don’t actually take in about what I’ve read, despite all of those things it’s actually not that bad. For the style that it uses to convey the experiences in games, like with the “Bow, Nigger” article even know that could of done with half of it cut out, it actually works pretty well sometimes, but I still highly doubt I will ever read one of these NGJ articles again, I think I’ll just stick to my useless “marks out of ten” style.

Games and the Future

So at current time we have the “next gen” of games, being fought out between Xbox 360, PS3, and the Wii. As I’ve said before I think this generation is hard to define, there is on the one side of the battle (Xbox 360 and PS3) where graphics and power are being fought out, and then the other side where innovation and game play are being put forward (Wii). Now this is an age old discussion about which consol and all that, and at this time of night I don’t feel like going into the argument again, you all know the story, Xbox 360 is great, Wii is great, but everyone and anyone hates the other one, but you mention the PS3 and Xbox 360 and Wii join together to down talk it (enter Wii60). But after this generation where are games and companies going to go.

In the literal future (as in the generation after this) it will be interesting to see where the big 3 go. I don’t think graphical power for Microsoft and Sony will be enough to make a big enough difference, plus as the graphics improve from machine to machine the leap between graphics is becoming less a less. If you look at Nintendo’s history the general trend is innovation – improvement (NES (d-pad, start of real home game platform) to the SNES),(N64 (3D, Analogue stick, shoulder buttons, analogue buttons) to the Gamecube). So maybe a graphically improved Wii will be enough to carry them on thought that battle, but I think they will actually do some thing a little more than that, who knows what though. A lot of people reckon if companies want to survive they will need to combine forces, but due to numerous reason this has a very slim chance of happening.

But for the matter of games in the distant future there is really no telling where it will go. But with technology growing and processing power increasing exponentially, it’s looking more likely that the way we play games will become a more interactive realistic experience (the Wii’s innovation and Xbox 360’s graphics are already sparking this off). And after watching the video’s that Chris showed us on technology and humans (human version 2.0, and the 3 part one), it looks as one, it could be very beneficial, but also a very scary world to live, and as excited as I am that I’ll see the this, you can’t help but feel a fear inside after watching them and thinking what could actually be. (Matrix, true this is a film and I don’t think would happen how it did, but it has a fair point about machines and A.I.) Anyway that last bit wasn’t really about games but is interesting to speculate about.

ASIMO, Honda's Human Robot!

So from here games could really go anywhere, we could even end up with another big games crash is we’re not careful, so I hope games stay as games and the creativity of the industry stays true, as I’m going to have to be working in it in the years to come, and I’m not going to be just making water coolers and other office furnishings because there ‘real objects’, I want fun in my games!

http://www.acm.org/crossroads/wikifiles/13-2-S/13-2-13-S.html - Has some interesting ideas