Limited creativity versus limited technical skill. The finite balance is a war waged between the highly skilled graduates and the highly imaginative creationists. Game orientated educators have the problem of creating courses which can teach technical skill without extinguishing the students own style and creativity. Focusing on one topic namely their artworks technical aspects can get the students hung up on the little things and kill their styles. The major problems that arise are because of this. The finite balance must be reached to encourage growth and development as an artist but still leave them enjoying creating their artwork. The other problem faced is that too long on a particular piece that they are asked to do can make them become unmotivated. A better approach may be to guide them towards creating their own projects based around what is being taught at the time.
The solution! The students need to be encouraged to play games from all areas not just electronic and encouraged to redesign aspects from it according to their own style. They need to have many motivational workshops! Workshops which will inspire them to further develop their talents, these should also include going out and trying many things how else can they get a better grasp on say running through a forest or rock climbing if they have never done it? Open projects which include a list of requirements but of which the subject is open for them to decide. Once the skills have been developed then set projects can be introduced. As everyone knows that it’s easier to learn things whilst doing something you enjoy.
Enough ranting for now I think.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Week 18: sound
Sound is emotion! Even when the gamer is unaware of it the soundtrack of a game is shaping his play, in times of quiet the music is peaceful, when the action picks up so does the music. For example in halo: combat evolved, as you make that final run to the pelican drop-ship the music is playing full blast until that final crescendo when it goes to the end cut scene. Looking to key composers some of the greatest are from the east, Nobuo Uematsu (final fantasy), and Hideki Naganuma (jet set radio future), and the west’s Martin O’Donnell(halo: combat evolved). Their works have lead many gamers to inadvertently enjoy games more than they would normally expect.
Some important points in my sonic game history, hmm, they would have to be the victory music from final fantasy vii, the end music of halo, and the sound track of jet set radio future. Many, many hours have been wasted on those games intricacies.
But of course! Sound is not limited to just music, looking at games like left 4 dead where you learn quickly to listen out for the sounds that enemies make so as to avoid as much trouble as possible. Cause let’s face it if you have a huge scary looking enemy running at you shouting “Cheerio pip pip and what not” your reason for shooting it is kinda different, it also detracts from the overall gameplay.
Some important points in my sonic game history, hmm, they would have to be the victory music from final fantasy vii, the end music of halo, and the sound track of jet set radio future. Many, many hours have been wasted on those games intricacies.
But of course! Sound is not limited to just music, looking at games like left 4 dead where you learn quickly to listen out for the sounds that enemies make so as to avoid as much trouble as possible. Cause let’s face it if you have a huge scary looking enemy running at you shouting “Cheerio pip pip and what not” your reason for shooting it is kinda different, it also detracts from the overall gameplay.
Week 17: game tech: engines.
A game engine is usually defined as the code skeleton which has been made to render everything you see and interact with on the screen. The fun stuff! Subtractive versus additive. Subtractive has the method of infinite solid. By this it means you have basically a huge block which goes on forever and you cut out the bits you want to work in. This can also be used as an additive type, in that you can cut out a large cube to create an artificial void.
Additive begins as all good things do with nothingness. This is called the void, with additive you fill the void! (and people say doctors are playing God), first you need to create a container for what you want usually a large hollow cube. Holes into the void are called leaks, as the void leaks in. Advantages and disadvantages of buying proprietary! Advantages: There is a guarantee as to what you get to work with, they usually have most bases covered, it has a market standard of capabilities, the debugging has already taken place, and finally it comes with its own built in handling for every instance, also cheaper time-wise. Disadvantages: it’s not customisable, you are stuck using what is provided by the engine so you can’t add your own physics, costs a large amount of money, requires understanding of the game engine.
Additive begins as all good things do with nothingness. This is called the void, with additive you fill the void! (and people say doctors are playing God), first you need to create a container for what you want usually a large hollow cube. Holes into the void are called leaks, as the void leaks in. Advantages and disadvantages of buying proprietary! Advantages: There is a guarantee as to what you get to work with, they usually have most bases covered, it has a market standard of capabilities, the debugging has already taken place, and finally it comes with its own built in handling for every instance, also cheaper time-wise. Disadvantages: it’s not customisable, you are stuck using what is provided by the engine so you can’t add your own physics, costs a large amount of money, requires understanding of the game engine.
Week 16: Game cultures
Game culture is a rather weird statement. Usually people will classify people as gamers and leave it as that. BUT if an R.P. gamer where to walk into an fps party, they would be stood in a corner twitching. Ok so that was a little exaggerated. My point being that being a “gamer” is only a loose classification, there are many “cliques” of gamers from strategy to fps to rp, not to mention the new arguments as to whether or not the wii “games” count as games and if you can call them a genre or even call the people gamers. Many hardcore gamers believe this to be watering down the stock, and view the wii to be nothing more than a party game console. I have friends on msn who I have met purely through MMO’s and only talk to them online.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?story=8885 I think I shall be reviewing this particular sub link. In my opinion the people who wrote this are acclimatised fools. The soulcalibur games where decent enough, but that’s only because they threw money at it until they could get a decent game. The controls as ever are awkward and unmanageable and take a long time to get accustomed to. The character creation is laudably bad, all it is, is dressing the basic move lists of the stock characters up in pretty costumes. The addition of the star wars special characters was a poor play to raise sales, I agree that after the initial fun of hitting guys with a lightsaber it gets old fast. They should stick to their own ideas and not rip off big titles for more sales, as it will inevitably lead to less.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?story=8885 I think I shall be reviewing this particular sub link. In my opinion the people who wrote this are acclimatised fools. The soulcalibur games where decent enough, but that’s only because they threw money at it until they could get a decent game. The controls as ever are awkward and unmanageable and take a long time to get accustomed to. The character creation is laudably bad, all it is, is dressing the basic move lists of the stock characters up in pretty costumes. The addition of the star wars special characters was a poor play to raise sales, I agree that after the initial fun of hitting guys with a lightsaber it gets old fast. They should stick to their own ideas and not rip off big titles for more sales, as it will inevitably lead to less.
Week 15: introduction to the industry.
The industry at the moment is in a state of decline. Many companies via for the top spot, but as a result the market is flooded with poor quality games. One of the major reasons for this is because the companies are willing to put the money in but not the time required to pull off a decent game. A particularly bad example of a console this has happened to is the wii. The wii suffers from a lack of originality where virtually all the games on it are cheap knock offs of past games or of other wii games.
Jobs in the games industry seem to run on the time scale. A project for a new game may start with as many as 3-4 people and as the need requires more are hired. This is something which was openly admitted in lionhead’s podcast based around the creation of fable 2.
Some of the major problems facing the industry is producing a decent game or series of games which will keep the gamer coming back for more, doing it within budget, quickly, and to get it noticed.
With the influx of cheaply produced sub-standard games on the market at the moment the future looks bleak for the games industry. Certainly for Nintendo. The Wii may be popular now but it is merely another fad, but in this risky endeavour Nintendo alienated the majority of its followers. Though that may not be much of a worry as more and more people are losing interest with the poorly produced flak of today.
Jobs in the games industry seem to run on the time scale. A project for a new game may start with as many as 3-4 people and as the need requires more are hired. This is something which was openly admitted in lionhead’s podcast based around the creation of fable 2.
Some of the major problems facing the industry is producing a decent game or series of games which will keep the gamer coming back for more, doing it within budget, quickly, and to get it noticed.
With the influx of cheaply produced sub-standard games on the market at the moment the future looks bleak for the games industry. Certainly for Nintendo. The Wii may be popular now but it is merely another fad, but in this risky endeavour Nintendo alienated the majority of its followers. Though that may not be much of a worry as more and more people are losing interest with the poorly produced flak of today.
Week 11: Gameplay & christmas creativity
Finally the good stuff!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay
This is completely useless. It basically says it exists but doesn’t even attempt a reasonable explanation as to what game play is.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11137
This highlights some of the riskier endeavours of Lionhead’s new game. Fable 2 took a lot of risks with removing the GUI and adding things such the human emotive response hook, otherwise know as the HERH or for those of us with no imagination. A dog. Yes that’s right there’s a dog. There was a great amount of difficulty making it a worth while addition to the game. BUT with added features to it such as when you ignore it and it is injured people around you start to comment about it. The fact that the dog is customizable and trainable makes it something worth investing in, though at the start it is of little use to the player and seems more of a hindrance than a help. The other risky endeavour of theirs namely the removal of the GUI. This was a great risk, because come on lets face it how many games do you remember enjoying without a GUI? Not a lot personally.
So Game-play, what is it and how do we use it in our games? Does it matter if we do? Personally I think game-play is the wow factor, it’s the immersion into the game through the involvement of the plot and character and a smooth control system and camera. Who need all this malarkey about game mechanics and things, back to basics! If you can’t pull off the basics then you shouldn’t try anything fancy.
Christmas
Creation has been a hotly debated topic for aeons. There is no such thing as an original creation, if you listen to many religious fanatics everything is a spinoff of whichever deity they believed created the world and universe. Originality isn’t so original it’s just new to the people viewing it. Chances are it was refined hundreds maybe thousands of times before hand. Take Einstein’s theory of relativity he spent the entire second part of his life trying to make it work and never succeeded. Everything he did was based off prior knowledge. Though he is quoted to say that the biggest obstacle he had was his education. Many people have said that creativity comes from thinking of the abstract and the uncommon. But how would we know what these are without having experienced them in the first place? And how would we know how to express the new ideas if we didn’t know the old.
In actuality the way that we know things does shape how we express things, but we shouldn’t let them limit them. People always believed that humans couldn’t fly. Now we have many different ways of flying. People used to think you could never reach the moon. But through ambition and hard work it happened.
The major point is that creativity is not limited by what we know, but what we don’t know.
Creativity unfortunately must be backed up with what we can do. If you look at a lot of the ancient scientists works, things like Archimedes screw and laser which where centuries ahead of their time but where the materials to make them work wouldn’t have been available.
Proving that creativity is not limited to prior knowledge, but the implementing of creativity is.
As to how I’m going to show it in my work. I’m not sure yet. Obviously my own style and understanding of what I have to do is going to shape the work more than how creative I can be. But with hard work I shall be (hopefully) looking at producing pieces with a high quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay
This is completely useless. It basically says it exists but doesn’t even attempt a reasonable explanation as to what game play is.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11137
This highlights some of the riskier endeavours of Lionhead’s new game. Fable 2 took a lot of risks with removing the GUI and adding things such the human emotive response hook, otherwise know as the HERH or for those of us with no imagination. A dog. Yes that’s right there’s a dog. There was a great amount of difficulty making it a worth while addition to the game. BUT with added features to it such as when you ignore it and it is injured people around you start to comment about it. The fact that the dog is customizable and trainable makes it something worth investing in, though at the start it is of little use to the player and seems more of a hindrance than a help. The other risky endeavour of theirs namely the removal of the GUI. This was a great risk, because come on lets face it how many games do you remember enjoying without a GUI? Not a lot personally.
So Game-play, what is it and how do we use it in our games? Does it matter if we do? Personally I think game-play is the wow factor, it’s the immersion into the game through the involvement of the plot and character and a smooth control system and camera. Who need all this malarkey about game mechanics and things, back to basics! If you can’t pull off the basics then you shouldn’t try anything fancy.
Christmas
Creation has been a hotly debated topic for aeons. There is no such thing as an original creation, if you listen to many religious fanatics everything is a spinoff of whichever deity they believed created the world and universe. Originality isn’t so original it’s just new to the people viewing it. Chances are it was refined hundreds maybe thousands of times before hand. Take Einstein’s theory of relativity he spent the entire second part of his life trying to make it work and never succeeded. Everything he did was based off prior knowledge. Though he is quoted to say that the biggest obstacle he had was his education. Many people have said that creativity comes from thinking of the abstract and the uncommon. But how would we know what these are without having experienced them in the first place? And how would we know how to express the new ideas if we didn’t know the old.
In actuality the way that we know things does shape how we express things, but we shouldn’t let them limit them. People always believed that humans couldn’t fly. Now we have many different ways of flying. People used to think you could never reach the moon. But through ambition and hard work it happened.
The major point is that creativity is not limited by what we know, but what we don’t know.
Creativity unfortunately must be backed up with what we can do. If you look at a lot of the ancient scientists works, things like Archimedes screw and laser which where centuries ahead of their time but where the materials to make them work wouldn’t have been available.
Proving that creativity is not limited to prior knowledge, but the implementing of creativity is.
As to how I’m going to show it in my work. I’m not sure yet. Obviously my own style and understanding of what I have to do is going to shape the work more than how creative I can be. But with hard work I shall be (hopefully) looking at producing pieces with a high quality.
Week 10: The elements of game design: Story AND character.
Back and back again!
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Workshop/CharacterWorkshop/characterworkshop.htm
This site gives a good brief overview of what happens during a character design session, and Stressing the importance of the lead developer and the communication between the artists. It gives a good run down of the jobs of each member of the team.
http://gamasutra.com/features/20060324/cifaldi_01.html
This gives good perspective into the use of characters points of view to effect how the character views the game. The in depth talks about how the over the top fight scenes are subtly underplayed by the story line. The emphasis on the game is put more onto the use of different view points but it only gives it from the 2 “main” characters. This is a bit of a downside as it doesn’t give much insight into the other points of view available on the game.
Upon the use of multiple view points it shows that they are more useful than mere cut-scenes in the involvement of the player.
In house on haunted hill (a movie I watched recently) there weren’t any characters that I particularly connected with. I think this is not due to the acting but more to the script. The lines where lifeless and seemed forced. The plot left a lot to be desired in that for a horror movie there was little suspense. I chose this and not one that I enjoyed because I thought it emphasized the point that no matter how good the acting, the storyline and direction need to be spot on else the viewer will lose interest.
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Workshop/CharacterWorkshop/characterworkshop.htm
This site gives a good brief overview of what happens during a character design session, and Stressing the importance of the lead developer and the communication between the artists. It gives a good run down of the jobs of each member of the team.
http://gamasutra.com/features/20060324/cifaldi_01.html
This gives good perspective into the use of characters points of view to effect how the character views the game. The in depth talks about how the over the top fight scenes are subtly underplayed by the story line. The emphasis on the game is put more onto the use of different view points but it only gives it from the 2 “main” characters. This is a bit of a downside as it doesn’t give much insight into the other points of view available on the game.
Upon the use of multiple view points it shows that they are more useful than mere cut-scenes in the involvement of the player.
In house on haunted hill (a movie I watched recently) there weren’t any characters that I particularly connected with. I think this is not due to the acting but more to the script. The lines where lifeless and seemed forced. The plot left a lot to be desired in that for a horror movie there was little suspense. I chose this and not one that I enjoyed because I thought it emphasized the point that no matter how good the acting, the storyline and direction need to be spot on else the viewer will lose interest.
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