Harping On

What gameplay is can vary.
According to the almighty Wikipedia, gameplay is ‘everything that the player experiences when playing the game’. Ergo, gameplay means…everything…
But there are a few different things we can go into detail about.
To me, gameplay always meant the control system or at least it’s what specifically sprang to mind but I agree that it is a multitude of factors.
Fable 2 has a system in place which will visually change the players appearance based what they do in the game, although it is still linear no matter how many choices you have to make.
Mirror’s Edge doesn’t require you to kill anyone and most of the time it persuades you to run away. First time playing this game on the second level you have to out run a SWAT team (again), I didn’t know the building and had about 3 seconds to get moving before screen went gray and I dropped to the floor. Because that’s what Faith (the character) does when she dies, and the only way to tell is to gage how desaturated her view becomes. I got my first adrenaline rush for years when playing that level, bolting over railings and down glass roofs. Which was a positive experience.
Rock Band is the other brother to Guitar Hero and has mostly identical controls, when I finally nailed Muse’s Hysteria to the point of 99% correct I felt like a rock god! I think this is down to the controls, when playing Rock Band on a standard gamepad it is nowhere near as fun and not half the experience.
I still find it hard to nail down what gameplay is.
I think it can be both incorporated and something unintended, but it changes based on what the game or genre is.

Emotional

I don’t watch films unless tied down and flanked on all sides to prevent me from leaving, I don’t watch a lot of television (more so now that I don’t own one) and when I do its usually comedy programs or cookery shows nowadays. Occasionally I watch an American crime program, NCIS being the flavor of the year closely followed by CIS New York. I rarely read ‘books’ as such, the last ‘book’ I bought and read and enjoyed was an autobiography of a little girl growing up in China, it was titled ‘Falling Leaves’ and what made me enjoy it so much was it being a true tale.
Apparently, European people prefer dystopian fantasies; by which it means that everything is totally messed up and humanity is oppressed and depressed and a somewhat crushing way. Whereas across the pond in America they much prefer Utopian stories and I can see why. If I want to read about depressing stories I’ll buy a newspaper but when I read or watch something I don’t want to see the suffering; reading and watching TV is a leisure time and so I want to enjoy it.
I really like reading romance stories but when presented with a happy cheery novel over something depressing where they argue, divorce and fight ; it’s a no-brainer which one I prefer.
A film I watched recently was Donnie Darko, for the first time and it was interesting… Donnie himself is a very intelligent, kind yet weird teenage boy. But he is a real teenage boy, nothing from Saved by the Bell or High School Musical. I found it hard to get attached to him though, maybe because he was weird. I felt the acting was interesting but as I haven’t seen many films my standards can’t be that high so I’m told.
I watched a film called City of Lost Children the other month, and I actually enjoyed it; so much so I wrote an entire blog on it. I think that the reason I liked it so much was because I became very fond of Miette, the small girl who is wise beyond her years. I like characters that don’t rely on others for protection I think; it’s not stereotypical like the damsel in distress.
Going back into my comfort zone of games there are some very emotional events in gaming history. For those who haven’t finished or don’t want to know an important plot point in Final Fantasy 7 it is wise to stop now.
Never before this point has a game ever invoked so much emotion from me and I didn’t even know what was going on. I was sat in my friend’s house at age 13 or 14, never even heard of Final Fantasy VII but I was sat there watching him play it. Then the character Aerith was killed, cold bloodedly by the games antagonist. I cried, I have no problem admitting this. Friends of mine even older than I was have admitted to crying, it’s one of those accepted things. But what was interesting was that I didn’t know her, I didn’t know why she had to die. The graphics were poor, there was no dialogue during FMVs back then so it was the use of powerful emotion retching music which made the film seem like a silent movie. But even though I didn’t know Aerith, the way she was dressed; and portrayed afterwards I knew it was a sad moment in the games story.

Pretty Pretty

A lot of people I know get nostalgic when they go on about their first NES are the ZX Spectrum, the first console I actually got that wasn’t anything that old but the humble PlayStation. Also, it’s only with this generation of games consoles that I finally have them all.
Back at college I did a module about the different kinds of Human Computer Interface, which was interestingly part of the same module as the Second Life thing I talked about before. We looked at lots of different controllers and consoles and it made me think about how much more contemporary newer consoles have become. Now even though I’ve never owned one before I have seen and held an original NES controller, it’s quite uncomfortable a lot like the DS Lite quite frankly. They started to round them off after then I believe but if we may skip ahead to the Dual Shock controller for PS2 I, at the time; loved it. I do remember there was a game where you had to rotate the analog sticks quickly and the only way to do this is to either have turbo charged thumbs or rotate it on the palm of your hand, the latter caused painful bruising which lasted for days.
Nowadays I actually prefer the look of the PS3, it’s just a darn shame that when you get the shiny black grill out of its box; turn it on for the first time every particle of dust from all corners of the room fly to it lovingly. I remember when the concept for the PS3 bananarang controller was released and it got completely ripped into for its shape (by me included) and I don’t know if Sony actually listened to consumer comments (this is rare) because they just scrapped the whole idea and went with something identical to the Dual Shock controller but without actual dual shock, just some copy of the Wiimotes motion sensor.
I was never good at arcade games with joysticks, I never owned one either; I’ve always preferred game pads. Specifically the Xbox 360, it is simply the most comfortable controller I’ve ever held even though I don’t think it works well for fighting games.
I’ve noticed how complicated the PS3 and PSP are to set up or connect in comparison to Nintendo’s even the 360 is fairly straight forward. Although my granddad still can’t grasp Wii bowling…
I am not a fan of the Wii, even though I own one which I think gives me a right to dislike it and this is why. When I have been at work all day, often a very physical job; the last thing I want to do when I come home is flail my arms around in a crazy fashion… I would rather watch a film! So I don’t think that the game pad is a dying technology because even though more ‘people’ buy the Wii and its remote controller ‘gamers’ buy game pads. Joysticks however I can’t really say, they are still used for PC games and can be fun for flight sim games but I find them to complicated anyway.

Storytime!

My all time favorite kind of game is the RPG style of games, more recently the graphic novel style games like Hotel Dusk and the Phoenix Wright series so I personally love a game with well developed characters and a good narrative to sink my teeth into.
But I don’t think that a strong storyline makes a superior game but that is based upon personal opinions on what people like in a game. There are games that I buy nowadays that don’t contain strong storylines or essentially good game play either so when I look back on them now I wonder why I enjoyed them so much. (If any one reading this played Harvest Moon port on the Wii you will understand) I don’t think that for some people a strong storyline is important at all which is evident when you notice how many people buy Football Manager 09 or something along those lines.
When I did my college course we did an entire module about Second Life, strangely enough it seemed to hate any computer running vista so I never got a chance to experience it firsthand but my research informed me was that it was basically an online chat room but with more visual aspects like avatars. I guess you could kind of think of it as a more refined Habbo Hotel for adults. The other side of the spectrum there is World of Warcraft which has a gigantic back story to it, but do believe me you don’t have to know any of it to play the game and I had a stint on a role-playing server before I claimed back my life.
Now, I think that story based games can be split simply into two categories. One of which games like Final Fantasy fall into, even though your character has a written part to be some great world savior the player is still just along for the ride, you don’t have a choice aside from what weapons and armor to pick, Mirror’s Edge is just like this; in fact I found that I didn’t play it for the story just for the levels and game play. This is even present in Fable 2, sure you can choose to slay or save or strangely enough picking between a meat pie and a crispy piece of celery has the same effect but the story doesn’t progress until you go out and do what it wants. But games like WoW, it depends on whether you go on a role-playing server on it but it’s not essential. I find that non-role-players don’t care about the story and my meeting with one of them proved this, specifically they are interested in good weapons and armor and genuinely having a good time. Whereas proper hardcore role-players, the guild I was a part of for example constantly talked ‘In Character’ and were not allowed to run through large cities. It was a requirement that players wishing to join had a characters back story, but I feel that these role-players make their own story in the game even though it wouldn’t make an impact on anyone else.
Whether a story is desirable or not depends entirely on the player.

Anyone interested in the history of World of Warcraft can find the text version here.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/story/index.html#history

Or here for the video.

http://www.gametrailers.com/retrospective.php

Apologies as i don't know how to hyper-link on this.

Early Bird

Most people strive to be promoted in their line of work. Rightfully so, as promotions usually mean more money and a heavier input on projects etc.
There are times however when a promotion will stop you doing what you love, what you went into this line of work to do.
Jobs like the Art Director fall into this category.
Art Directors don’t create artwork but rather oversee the creation process of their team. Typically, they act as liaisons between the team and the rest of the company; this means that they are responsible for objects, characters, levels etc. These people can set the quality and style of a game.
Art Directors also with the Lead Artist review the other Artists’ progress on their team. Since an Art Director is only head of one department they must still answer to someone and call them ‘boss’. I would believe this to ultimately be the Games Designer if it were to be put into simple terms.
Phillip Bossant said that ‘…it’s rare that I get to spend much time painting on the project these days’. Which enforces the point I made earlier, Art Directors don’t get to do what most of them joined this industry to do; create things. On the other hand, because they are responsible for the games assets they need to be creative in order to guide and mentor other artists in their team. Otherwise Art Directors wouldn’t be promoted from Artist positions. Simply walk over a successful manager etc. Because they can do the job in terms of organizational skills and management but would be utterly useless if a junior artist came to them asking what would be the best way for them to improve their work. I think that Art Directors are creative but no in the most obvious ways.
Art Directors in other industries have the same responsibilities as their counter-parts in the games industry; they are largely involved with the administrative aspects of their department, much like the Game Art Director and they also liaison between other departments on the production team.
However, since the film ‘Gone with the Wind’ the title of Production Designer is more commonly used and so this means more responsibilities because they control every aspect of the film visually speaking, including costumes.
I personally wouldn’t mind becoming an Art Director in the future. But they seem to require extensive organizational skills. I think that I could manage but could always improve but most importantly they need to be highly experienced in modeling, digital painting, texturing etc. This is what I would need to improve upon the most but that is why I’m taking this University course. I feel I have the beginnings of the necessary leadership qualities but I’m aware that I need to be more confident when talking to large groups.
I imagine that becoming a morning person who requires little sleep would also help.

Leading Lights

When I play a game, what’s important to me does vary depending on what genre the game is.
For example, the story is of the highest priority when playing RPGs and so the characters are as well.
FPSs or any other shooter really, I feel that gameplay and controls are the most important. For me, bad or fiddly controls can really put me off a game. An experience of bad controls happened recently while trying to play the PC version of Assassin’s Creed left me with my head lying defeated in front of the keyboard.
One thing that will always grab my attention is how a game looks though, if it’s visually appealing I will always give it more time.
Gameplay means the players interaction and experiences with the game itself. I think it could mean things like whether the game is repetitive, how the battle system (if any) handles etc.
From what I’ve learned, the game design team can be comprised of ‘Game Mechanics, Visual Arts, Programming, Production Process, Audio and Narrative. Some games however like Tetris and Bejeweled have no Narrative.
However, it is the Game Designer who writes the design document which can be good or bad and comes in many different forms depending on what the designer is like.
Staff from the different branches of the design team tree will refer back to this document but it is ultimately up to the Game Designer to keep the document ‘living’.
As I mentioned before, Tetris does not have a Narrative and so there is no reason to have this in the design document. The same can be said for some racing games as well.
For Games Designers, I think that I consider them successful if they make a popular game which sells well but I also like innovative games too. Some of which I believe are; Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, Marc Loudlaw, Michel Ancel, Cliff Bleszinski, Paul Cross, Owen O’Brien, David Jaffe, Peter Molyneux, Shinji Mikami, Alex Pajitnov, Ken Rolston, Toshihiro Nishikado…just to name a few.
When I think about buying a game I usually don’t look at who worked on it because I feel that it may alienate new designers and developers. However, after a bad experience with RPGs for the 360, Enchanted Arms made me skeptical of anything. So when I learned of Hironobu Sakaguchi ‘s new company Mistwalker Studios’ new attempt called Lost Odyssey I tried it and loved it. Admittedly I detest Blue Dragon but the point I’m trying to make is that who designed it etc. isn’t vital but it helps.

French Fancy

Well I did have several things to talk about today; most of them are actually film related. Which is strange because I don’t normally enjoy watching films; but I’ve seen two recently which I have very much enjoyed and one of them I went to see of my own free will.
The first was something my class watched as part of our Wednesday afternoon activities was a French film which after forgetting the title didn’t take me long to found out again. Typing ‘French films’ into Wikipedia pulled up a least so short I was able to read through many of them before I found the correct one. ‘The city of lost children’ was its translated name but I did watch the entire film with subtitles but I think I prefer it that way. I find that with subtitles it forces you to pay more attention to what you’re watching because otherwise you will miss the plot. Not that the plot presented itself much in this film, oh no. It was one of those films where you have absolutely no clue as to what is going on until near enough the end, which was a new experience for me as I have a habit of finding out the plot of a film before I watch it, and then in the end seeing no point in watching it since I already know what has happened.
The opening scene was one of Christmas, decorations and presents. A small child eagerly waiting in their beds as Father Christmas descends the chimney. Followed by another, and another; until the room is filled with men clad in red and white, by this point I did mutter “why can’t we watch a normal film?” But as more characters were introduced I found myself getting enthralled with the film, the group of children part of the ‘Thieves Guild’ says Wikipedia (must be true then) reminded me of ‘Oliver Twist’ to some extent with their ringleader ‘Miette’ likeable to ‘Dodger’.
I found Miette a very likeable character because even though she’s only about 12 she was very world weary, cynical even. But still cunning and brave enough for the plot, she isn’t the stereotypical “save me” damsel in distress and even when drowning her head is held high.
Even the antagonist ‘Krank’ seemed like the human life-like version to Mr. Burns I still couldn’t find him totally evil, more like comedic evil.
I thought that ‘the Octopus’, the twin ladies who were so in sync that while one took a drag on a cigarette the other exhaled the smoke was quite comical and even though they tried to murder the main characters many times I still found myself to be fond of them.
Overall I preferred this film a lot to ‘Dark City’, sort of strange because the setting was similar in that everything happened at night, and the people known as ‘Cyclops’ were a bit like ‘the Strangers’. But I found the main characters in this much more likeable than ‘Dark City’ and I think because of the presence of children made things less malevolent.
I think that, one of the reasons I liked this film is that I like comedies; and that because the film is old, its serious areas which were once viewed as that come across in a comedic sense now; much like ‘Night of the Hunter’.
Now I realise I said I wanted to talk about another film, and I shall; in another post. There is a lot floating around in my head and I need some time to get it down before it floats off.

Opinionative

Reviewers. These people seem to be stuck to a very tight schedule; from what I’ve read and heard (I don’t know any personally). They only have 19 days to put together a magazine edition, seems like a pretty stressful job there. Kieron Gillen’s blog (link here) describes them as being lazy because ‘saving effort in one area gives them more time for something that they can’t cut corners on’ which I can understand and occasionally practise. They’re perceived as corrupt by ‘outsiders’ for what was rushed and stupid decision which seems to fall in with them being lazy.

When I’m reading or listening/watching a review about a game I like i’m drawn more towards a review when the person forces their opinion on me, if it’s a game I haven’t played I will more than likely accept it so long as it’s backed up by some sort of example. So for me ‘It’s crap because etc’ is fine but just ‘its crap’ and you’ve lost me already. So in short, when I reviewed something I like to stuff my own opinion in their like a Christmas gift, even it’s one of those unwanted ones. Ultimately, I think their needs to be a balance however.

I have read a few of these ‘New Games Journalism’ and I’ll be honest with you, I like some of it. For extreme examples here; I tried this one (http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html)
and lost interest immediately. The style it’s written in just didn’t interest me at all, it reminds me of some strange crime novel I read a long time ago but can’t remember the title, I just remember I didn’t enjoy that either...

I liked this one though (http://www.insertcredit.com/features/dreaming2/index.html),
mostly because I’ve played the game but it kept me interested with its style. Rhetorical questions, opinions seeping out everywhere; it felt like I was talking to the guy.

‘The worth of a video-game lies within the gamer not the video-game’ sounds kind of epic and corny too, but I believe it. If this is NGJ I welcome it.

My Time

With the development of the Wii being a huge success and essentially ‘creating’ casual gamers everywhere, the industry is under pressure from its own audience; yet I would also consider the Wii a blessing too. It has allowed more casual and ‘quirky’ games to emerge like Wii Music and Wii Fit. Because, let’s face it the big contenders of Europe and Americas ‘hardcore’ gamer market is a draw between the ‘FPS’ and the ‘3rd PS’; generally anything with a gun will do.
Game development costs have soared since 8-bit times, so now development companies have to get money from publishing houses to bankroll their endeavours, this is a strain because publishing houses don’t really care about making the game because they love it, they just want to invest in something they’re sure they’ll get a big return on; which is why they kill all of the quirky ideas in stillbirth. Games also take way longer too finished before they’re ready for sale, which is ok as long as it’s worth the wait. Publishing houses in my opinion on the main reason the market is flooded with sequels to Need for Speed etc.
Technology and its advances play a huge roll here, with the 360 and PS3 in an ‘I’m better than you’ war while the Wii steals the cookies (customers). No matter how great the Ps3 is I’ve heard it’s a pain to program for, which is why I think it’s just a box filled with magic made by the elves.
On my college course we briefly looked into the game interfaces of the future, brain power etc. But I will be honest now, stuff like the Wiimote is cool but if you have another console like a 360 you won’t use the Wii half as much as you’d like and the casual gamers and families that buy the thing will use it while the new games are out and then get bored, as long as they buy games it’s ok but if they’re like me who has never justified buying a Wii game since launch its bad.
I would like more realistic graphics, I understand the ‘uncanny valley’ theory but think of it this way ‘you either cross it completely or fall’ meaning; if you get it so realistic that it’s not noticeable that they aren’t human to the point that the audience doesn’t mind then you’ve crossed the valley.
I saw a spoof advert for ‘PlayStation 9’ which was a glass sphere that contained millions of nanomachines that connected to your nerve system or something.
It sounds interesting, is quite possible by the 9th version of the console, we already have magic after all.

Bit closer to Home

During the 1980s there appeared to be a high influx of home computer systems from various companies, sound cards and of course the genre defining games such as ‘Defender’ etc.



People were finally starting to get personal computer systems in their homes, but I need to be honest here; I know there are some people who get nostalgic or excited when they talk about the Commodore 64 or the ZX Spectrum but I don’t, nope not one bit. To be frank, I didn’t even know what they were until now; well before my time.



Anyway, the arrival of the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga in 1985 marked the progression from the 8-bit to 16-bit era.



Now even I know a little bit about Nintendo’s ‘Game & Watch’, I’ve owned dozens of the copycat LCD games and twas the birth of the handheld.



Even though dedicated soundcards were beginning to address the problems of bad sound quality in the IBM PC compatibles; they were apparently so expensive that they weren’t too popular until the 1990s....when people could actually afford them.



By 1985 we were already on our third generation of video game consoles. With the iconic, (even to me, though I never owned one) NES gracing our living rooms; even I can relate to that.
Something that I consider a significant development was that with the arrival of the NES came the arrival of the gamepad and that much needed (in my opinion) boot of the joystick.



Of course, several of the most popular franchises still going on today (and my favourite) were ‘born’ around the same time: Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda and Metal Gear (Solid). The last instalment of the latter was able to make me justify buying a PS3 which is always a good thing isn’t it?



By the 1990s we saw the rise of true 3D graphics with titles like Elite and Starglider 2, around 2 years later the rise of one of my beloved genres appeared...the RTS.



Even though I’m not a fan, Quake was created and took full advantage of the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for PCS. The 90s were also home to 2 more evolutions in the console generation games.



By the fifth generation the Sony PlayStation and the CD-ROM had become a cause of the CD vs. Cartridge war which allowed Sony to enter the market, I remember how expensive cartridges were and that was the main reason why I wasn’t allowed games or consoles so when the cheaper CDs arrived it was a relief.



Games have changed a lot in 2 decades; the hardware has improved a lot allowing for better graphics, crisper sound and faster processors. Genres were defined in this period too, in some cases created. My favourite games were made during this time, games that have rarely been topped in my eyes.



New blood like Sony entered and dominated the market and the older members were forced to drop out of the race like Atari. Because of higher budgets being assigned to game developments the development times were also longer. Some games for example are still in development; Duke Nukem Forever springs to mind.

Decisive

I’ve decided that the NIMROD was the first coputer to be used for fun and so Ferranti were the first people who decided to use a computer for fun, it was designed purposefully to play the game NIM and was the first computer designed to play a game; albeit if it was a bit of a light show.


Ferranti typically created defence electronics and power grid systems; they were around for over 90 years until they went bankrupt.


Alexander S. Douglas also used a computer for fun when he created ‘OXO’ for the EDSAC vacuum tube computer. According to record he wrote his PhD degree at Cambridge Uni on Human-Computer Interaction so I suppose you could argue that it was more of an experiment to him but it could have been fun.


Since ‘Tennis for Two’ was played on an oscilloscope; which is an electronic instrument I’m going to discount it.


Steve Russell or ‘Slug’ created Spacewar! for the PDP-1 and I consider this to be significant because it gained widespread recognition pretty quickly and it also influenced a number of video games, in fact I remember playing a similar style flash game about a year ago.



It was Pirates of the Caribbean themed and the idea was to avoid the Krakken squid-thing and the vortex in the centre while paddling around in your boat shooting at ships and rescuing people.



Russell’s field was in computer science and apparently developed the ‘Lisp’ programming language; exciting stuff!


It’s very difficult for me to remember the first game I ever played because I never showed interest in them until I was 14 years old.


Memories of the arcade motorbike games are still happy ones in my mind; even if my legs were too short to reach the floor.


I think I was around 7 or 8 when I first got a Gameboy Pocket because the Gameboy Colour had just been released. I got Super Mario Land 1 & 2 which held my interest for awhile.
At some point my brother gave me a PlayStation, with games like Spyro, Croc and Metal Gear Solid but all I wanted to play was Disney’s Tarzan (weird I know).


But the one game that finally got me interested and hooked was Final Fantasy VII and then the RPG genre.


My genres have broadened over the years but I still love a good story based game so my most recent play was Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations and yes it’s quirky but its crime stories with the interactive element, my match made in heaven.


Til next time.

First Name Basis

Carole Brown from Chicago, Illinois is writing and I think that judging from the blogs content it’s more of an objective as opposed to something personal for her, by just reading the blog itself I believe her to be quite a professional woman. Link to blog here http://ctachair.blogspot.com/


The content of the blog itself does not interest me in the slightest, maybe because I have no interest in the CTA Board, maybe it’s because I don’t live in the U.S and this is completely irrelevant to me. I would label the blog as ‘boring and dull’ in my opinion but I can’t deny that this is a unique idea to use a blog to answer the questions of the readers etc. Admittedly, because I consider blogs to be a very casual form of documentation or communication I have found this blog a bit alienating because of the proficient content.


Judging by the post dates, she seems to update roughly once a month; but the time of the month varies from the beginning to the end. I expect another post soon however.


I’m thinking that because of the nature of this blog and it being much more factual in its objective she tends to suppress her opinions on matters which I agree is acceptable because of her job but to me it makes it even more of a dull read. Opinions are what get my attention and so maybe it’s just me but even if I was interested the Chicago Transit Board I think this information would be better and more effective if delivered in a newsletter/e-mail form, as that way I would not have to go and find it manually and may be more likely to take notice and read it.


Carole (we’re on a first name basis now) focuses primarily on what I can only deduce to be information about the funding situation of the CTA, to me however it seems to be a lot of jargon which I care little about.


In terms of me writing this, I have held some form of online journal before and still do even though my updates are sporadic and I’m fairly comfortable writing to an ‘invisible audience’ even though I will see most of you on a 3 out 7 daily basis at least. I prefer to right about things that I feel passionate about, as you will come to see later on; otherwise my input seems very forced and factual.


Til next time.