Quotes of the week -

I see now that the circumstances of ones birth are irrelevent and it's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. (Mewtwo, Pokemon The Movie)

Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, it's never easy when so much is on the line. (Power of One, Pokemon 2000)

Outside the battles maybe tough, but the friends are real. (Misty, Pokemon The Movie 3)

Yes, I do still like Pokemon, :p

And this like has recently been reignited by Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, in whish you get turned into a Pokemon after taking a personality quiz.

The scary thing is though, I didn't get the same questions each time I took the test and yet I ended up as a Charmander on BOTH my versions of the game, and even when I tried to restart my Red Advance Version, I still ended up as one, lol, brave and couragous, I can deal with that... if I'd been a Psyduck however...

But on my Blue DS Version I've completed the storyline, and it's summed up quite nicly in a one shot on my ff.net account, and now I'm no longer just a Charmander. I am Charmeleon and soon I'll be a Charizard.

Then people better watch out, cause this Fire/Flying type will let nothing stand in her way.

Fairlight Studios

These are is just two of the photos taken when I went to Fairlight Studios in London for my complimentary photoshoot organised by Miss England, that took place in London last friday.

It was great fun, and me, Dave and one of my flatmates were able to go sightseeing afterwards before I came back early and they went to a show in the West End, the Producers I think it was. I have about 29 other photos that were sent to me as a photo portfolio and these are two of my favourates.

There on the day, was a stylist, a professional make up artist and professional photgrapher, all of whom did thier best to make sure that I looked good for the photos that could get me my place in the Miss England line up.

Lol, like my luck is that good.

Ah well, good things come to those who wait.

Joey.

Week 8 - Storytelling in games

After meeting the real life Game Art Director, I think I will follow his helpful advise and work in the games industry for a while before I statr my own comapny to get the contacts and make friends in the industry, he was helpful and answered all my questions and it really helped mme with planning for the future as I now know what I need to do.

It also gave me a plan for when I do get my own companmy as to what the sort of timelines we would have for games art design per game.

It was an awesome expericance and I look forward to the next guest lecture.

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Now to week 8's task -

Stories are often the part that holds me at ransom in a game.

David Freeman was once quoted as saying;

""Emotioneering"™ is the term I created to describe a body of over 1000 techniques for making game emotionally immersive. That is, they evoke, in a player, a wide breadth and depth of emotions. I believe that all techniques to make games emotionally engaging fall into 34 categories. These categories include:
* Techniques to get a player to identify with the character he plays;
* Techniques to get a player to bond with an NPC (a Non-Player Character)
* Techniques to give an NPC a quality of emotional depth, even if the NPC speaks just one line of dialogue.
* Techniques to take the player on an emotional journey
and many others. Those are just a few categories of Emotioneering techniques. There are 30 others."

This is true, a good story in a game will capture a player, forcing them to play on and lose themselves in the game, forgetting concepts like time and food as they're drawn ever deeping into an emotional rollercoster that only ends when the story is over, and the THE END screen is sat starting at you and you're left thinking, now were did the last seven hours go?

And to achieve this you have to hire a writer that knows the genre and can write a good story, and works well with your creative team, if they don't then problems can arise.

As an author I know all to well that to engage an audiance you need characters that seem real and alive, as opposed to flat and lifeless, and no MARY SUES, characters have to seem human, to have human flaws and weaknesses instead of seeming invincble, a fighter will lose sometimes, a mage will drain themselves... etc.

In some games the storyline is quite liniar, and in others things you do in the game change events in the future and it is these games that draw the bigger crowds because everyone gets different endings and so everyone borrows/lends/steals it from th eothers and discusses it leading to others buying it and the cycle goes on and on.

Storylines play a big part in most games, though no one really cares why the hell you're racing arouond the tracks in a racing game, and as such they are really important.

Week 7 - An introduction to Art Direction for Games

"Art Direction -

In professional game art departments, the art director is the captain of the ship. Art directors are generally responsible for setting the visual tone, quality, and style for the game. They are at least indirectly responsible for every object, texture, level, character, and effect that appears in a game. This is a profound responsibility.

A good art director must consider how each character, prop, set, and location will look from any possible place in any level of the game. Even things like plants, trees, paving stones, cracks in the walls, and graffiti must be carefully designed to support the story, feel, and illusion of the game. Sometimes, the individual props and furnishings can be as crucial to the story as many of the characters the player encounters."

Wow, short and sweet, but conveys a lot about the duties a Game Art Director has to his team, and to the game. An Art Director is responcible for the style and atmosphere in the game, for if he does his job right, the backgrounds and items within the game can support itself, providing the feeling and atmosphere that you want to fit in with the genre of the game, for example making sure the graphics are right to provide a creepy, slightly gross background within a horror game. He or she makes sure that the artists keep everything to the Art Style Guide and that everything is as it should be for positions and colours and effects and it sounds like a huge job...

I'd say that drirection in that respect is very similar to film directing, where a bad director will not make a good film, not matter how many highly paid actors he has, like them, an Art Director has to be prepared for anything and able to keep things running and looking smooth and prefect... poor guy...

And yet saying that, I either want to get a job in a games company, or start a Game Art Company all of my own, of course not on my own, I have my eyes out for people to recruit if/when I do start my own company. The question would be, would I be an Art Director, and if so what skills would I have to develop?

The obvious ones would be drawing and modelling...

No, not the Miss England type modeling...

Skills like 3D modelling in engines like 3DMax, and perfecting my skills in Photoshop.

Also I would need good people skills, something I never used to possess, (Thank you Robin), and be able to handle eveything at once, managing people and time and money and companies that want our work... Now I'm getting ahead of myself... it's got to be better then getting behind...

Anyway, I'm getting distracted, the thing will be to listen to the guest speaker, later on today, since it's now 1 am, and work out where to go from there, maybe he can give me a few clues.

See ya later,

Joey

Week Six - An introduction to Game Design

Wow, I'm behind...

Alright then, week six :)

First of all, english is appreciated Mr Crawford.

However, I do think he has a point, games have been a part of our culture since long before we can remember, and that a good game has many outcomes, not just one linar pathway, and that a good game needs conflict of some form in to keep the players interest as it keeps the player interacting with it at all times, for example, Call of Duty, if you look away from the screen for more then a second you will die, or Final Fantasy XI, again real time battles meaning real time deaths.

Games have been a part of everyones lives, to help them with work, play, learning, living, since the long, long before Ancient Egypt, and gameplay has played an important role in this too.

Chris Crawford says that "Game play is a crucial element in any skill-and-action game. This term has been used for some years, but no clear consensus has arisen as to its meaning. Everyone agrees that good game play is essential to the success of a game, and that game play has something to do with the quality of the player's interaction with the game. Beyond that, nuances of meaning are as numerous as users of the phrase. The term is losing descriptive value because of its ambiguity. I therefore present here a more precise, more limited, and (I hope) more useful meaning for the term "game play". I suggest that this elusive trait is derived from the combination of pace and cognitive effort required by the game. Games like TEMPEST have a demonic pace, while games like BATTLEZ0NE have a far more deliberate pace. Despite this difference, both games have good game play, for the pace is appropriate to the cognitive demands of the game. TEMPEST requires far less planning and conceptualization than BATTLEZONE; the demands on the player are simple and direct, albeit at a fast pace. BATTLEZONE requires considerably greater cognitive effort from the player, but at a slower pace. Thus, both games have roughly equivalent game play even though they have very different paces. Pace and cognitive effort combine to yield game play."

Apperently that talks about Game Play, however each individual gamer has thier own ideas, to me gameplay is the interaction between player and game, and how involved you are in the storyline, if the story grips you, making you play till the end credits roll and you think, "Let's do that again!" To me, that is good gameplay.

Games development isn't up to just one person anymore, people have to work together as a team to make a game that is playable and enjoyable, and differnt genres require different techniques and styles, after all, you wouldn't put the sort of graphics that go into say Devil May Cry, or a horror game, into something like Final Fanstay or games of that genre, the graphics would look out of place and disturbing, when the player doesn't need to be disturbed.

(I'd say half the gamers back home are plenty distrubed enough as it is, lol)

When I play a game, the graphics aren't half as important as a good storyline that has me hooked, like a good book that you can't put down, and easy to master, but absorbing interaction with the characters, and heroines and heros of the games, and if the game happens to look absolutly awesome at the same time then yeay!!!!!

So heres week six's thing, a little late but sorry.

Joey

Duellist Desperatly Seeking Challenge!!!!!!!!

HELP MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

As a Duellist used to playing a game (or four) of the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game against my friends, every day, coming here and not duelling anyone for weeks is really really weird.

And now I need somebody to duel really badly, cause if I don't get a challenging game of Duel Monsters soon, I'm gunna go mental. I'm so desperate for a duel I will play semi-nicely (I never cheat), and I will take my Egyptain God Monsters out of my deck for the first three duels against a person.

Anyone at Demontfort University who's willing to duel me comment here, and I'll try to arrange a time and place for the duel.

Thanks,

Joey

Week 5 - Writing about games... Things that need thinking about...

Why is the games press often written as if it was written for idiots?

Seriously, unless you know the best places or magazines for reading games reviews and press, it isn't hard to find a review or critic written in 'games for infants' language.

However reading the links we were given and looking at the questions we've been set, I must admit that maybe my bias is wrong, and that maybe my worry should be the fact that money-men (I like that term) are thinking about dumping professional games writers for nOObs barely out of college. Then the quailty of the good mags and sites would go down the toilet as these nOObs would not have the experiance needed to write intelligently for thier audiance.

As regards to who pays thier wages, I would think that the money-men who do that, probably get quite a bit of the profit from the games mag buying public. After all I doubt that the people who back one mag would do so without edging thier bets, and to do so would be to 'sponcer' more then one mag, say like Nintendo Offical Magazine, and then to back one of it's unoffical counter parts.

An objective ranking system is impossible I feel, after all, all games reviewers have to play a game first and if it isn't thier normal choice of game genre, then they will be biased against the game unless they are very very very open minded, and still there will be a slight bias against the game.

Reading the NGJ reviews, I think they are great and show a lot of the writers personality and interest for games which isn't found in normal games reviews, my favourate being http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackout/zangband.html , which I can sympathise with in games, since I used to play quite a few games that worked in this fashion and grrrr. NGJs seem to be personal and go off the actual expericance, instead of giving a review of the game which seems as if you have only watched someone else play a game. It also talks about how the writer responded to the game. Other forms of writting reviews are normally objective and don't always make you feel interested in a game, it's information that was put on a page, and doesn't always sink in.

In my own writing, I don't like to write without having part of myself in the writing. I have having to write objectivly and perfer to talk about my opinions and write subjectivly. This is reflected in these blogs which blatently show quite a bit of me and my personality...

Okay, questions answered, now I have to go panic about the 17th and my photoshoot for Miss England. Just under two weeks to go, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Lol,

See ya later,

Joey