Task 10 Elements of game design, part three: Character

Hey people this week I’m going to be talking about characters and what they can bring to certain types of media.

When I read books (which isn’t often) I like to visualise the character in my own way so a book with important descriptions of character in it is perfect for me. Normally when I read books I can emphasis with the characters more than in films. I’m currently reading a book by Andy McNab called Zero Hour, I really like Andy McNab books due to the realism, language used, important character descriptions and history behind the main character. In Zero Hour as you find out about the character. (Spoiler alert) as I continued to read I found out that the main character has a terminal illness, this made me empathise with the character more due to the raw human emotion that surrounds terminal illnesses.

A film that I really liked and found it easy to empathy with the characteristics was inception to be a really good film due to the script and actors. I started to believe that the dreams and its intruders could actually happen due to the great acting and also that our dreams are private and the script bends that theory completely. Also Leonardo de Caprio plays the main character because he has lost his wife which is very traumatic experience.

The Directors/Writers use our human emotions to empathise with the characters, also putting the characters in certain situations will provoke different responses.

When Directors/Writers choose to create a character they need 6 key points and here they are.

1.       Speech: The content and manner of speech can help evoke personality such as shy, aggressive and anxious.

2.       Motivation: The character ought to have good reasons for their actions.

3.       Concreteness: Everything has to be realistic your character, giving your character specific beliefs is one way another is to create more information about your character for instance, specific brands from certain supermarkets this could show his social background and income.

4.       Change: A character should react to their responses either by changing or avoiding the change. The character needs to grow and develop throughout the story by adapting to situations.

5.       Behaviour: A good way to show a characters behaviour is to put the character under stress which can reveal certain traits. The behaviour of the character needs to be regular with what we already know of the character.

6.       Symbolic association: The mind associates meaning to an image/event thus making it symbolic. So if I was to choose the colour red as the colour of my characters jacket it could show that he is angry.

I’ve recently watched the whole series of The Walking Dead and it is a fantastic TV show, but it was first a comic book and I’m looking to buy them to. The Show is directed by Frank Darabont who is also known for directing The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. The camera angles used help me feel as if I could be in the show its self. The character Rick Grimes is played by Andrew Lincoln who is an English actor and plays a quintessential American cop his acting is amazing in the show. The main story line is Rick is a cop he wakes up one day from a coma to find the earth is overrun by walkers (zombies) and he doesn’t know what has happened to his family so he tries to find them.

So overall I believe that a character needs a history and we need to know a bit about it to fully understand a character. Using traumatic or stressfully events can show a character in another light and can also help us empathise with the character.

General Chat

This week I am going to chat about the course that I am studying which is Games Art at De Montfort University. In the past week we have been studying some of the master artists of our choice.

I chose to study Egon Schiele I found out about his work from a book called “the art book” the book contains lots of influential artists and was published in 1994.  I really liked his portraits due to the realistic look to the figures but on closer inspection you notice how he distorts the human form and proportions. I also love the colours he uses for the skin tones these colours to me seem quite dirty and on purpose. We had to recreate the masters piece of work in any media we liked it had to resemble the original trying to emulate the brush strokes, here is my final outcome.

We also had to complete a painting on the study of another master, I chose Frans Hals. I really liked the quick, precise brush strokes and the very similar colour tones. I decided to use traditional media for this piece as I haven’t painted on a canvas before. I am really pleased with the final outcome, if I was to change anything I would use a similar pallet to the original.

Task 9: Elements of game design, part two: art direction for games

This week’s task is to write about art direction this involves what is an art director and what’s the difference between media with art direction.

An Art director in the media of games is in charge of the art team and what the team produces. The art director makes crucial decisions like which way should the art style go, what visual elements should be used, what the team should be working on and a lot more. As an Art director you need to lead your team into creating concepts and then forming them in the media. The art director will be in charge of lots of smaller groups normally managed by lead artists he/she would arrange frequent meeting with all groups to see if they are heading in the right direction he/she is looking for. The Art director will look out for anything that does not merge with the art direction he/she is looking for, and you would have to change it to his specifications. Art directors are responsible to the Game designer and the publisher.

I believe that the Art director has a very creative role in making a game. As the Art director gives critical analysis and feedback on the way the assets look, to the overall art direction. This analysis should be given back to the creator responsible and should not be negative unless the object in discussion is completely wrong haha. When I say the feedback should not be negative I mean that you shouldn’t be rude and impolite, you still need to give crits telling them if something is wrong. The Art director needs to be positive otherwise the studio will be a horrible place to work as the staff will not put any effort into the assets.

The Art director in films is a very important job you would work under the production designer and you would be in charge of the whole art department and collaborating with the Set director. If you were an Art director in this field you would have more of a managerial role. You would have to work with other departments such as Locations Department and Special FX.

In advertising the Art director is not the head honcho but is a part of a coalition with another role called a Copywriter. They collaborate with each other creating the initial concepts, the Copywriter is in charge of the textual content and the Art director is in charge of the visual design. The overall outcome should be a joint effort.

As of now I’m not sure if I would want to be an Art director as it seems to be more of a managerial role in the games industry but down the line in my carrier this might be more suited to me? Who knows haha? If I wanted to become an Art director I would need to have impressive skills and experience in video games and I would have preferably been working in the games industry for a while. Although there are some circumstances in which people have got the job even if they haven’t studied or worked their way through the game industry they have studied courses such as fine art and photography.

Controller layouts and custom mapping

Hey guys, this week I saw a video from PAX the video showed a disabled man asking developers why a lot of their games was not catering to him and other fellow disabled gamers. The reason why the gentleman could not play certain games on consoles was due to the button layouts they provided he could not press specific buttons at certain times. His aim was to get the console developers more aware of people in his situation or similar situations.

PC developers have a reputation for allowing their players the freedom to customise their setup and even the game its self through mods. Games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft allow their players to customise their own control schemes, for instance there is a mouse from razor that has 17 programmable buttons that means if you mapped all the controls on to the mouse you wouldn’t have to touch the keyboard for certain games.

Games like Call of Duty and Halo have been giving their players control pre-sets for a while this has been helpful for players, especially those that play other games with similar pre-sets. A new game from Bethesda/Splash Damage is called Brink, Brink will have custom mapping for consoles. This is great news but why is Brink the first game to do this? As it seems stupid to alienate a potential consumer.

Here are my thoughts on why game developers might not want to allow custom mapping for consoles. Consoles have game controllers with a specific amount of buttons and the amount is normally quite small, therefore the developers could be thinking that they are giving to many options to the player who then could get confused. Other developers believe the layout they have given the character is the best layout to play the game.

Overall I believe all games on consoles should allow custom mapping but I believe we should still keep the specific pre-sets, they should be packaged together.

Task 8: Elements of game design, part one: from Pong to next-gen…

In this week’s Blog post I am going to talk about Game design and some of the choices made in the process. 

Gameplay is the interactive aspects that a player is allowed to execute in a game. These aspects could be obstacles tasks or others, you need good instinctive controls that help the gameplay. A good plot/story and if the player can relate to at least one character in your game you are on the winning path. I see good gameplay as, the player fully immersed, felling emotions like empathy hatred, with a well thought out control system and new/unique more complex challenges to keep me playing and entertained. As a player I like rewards and being punished for the decisions I make during a game, unlocking weapons/upgrades keeps me playing a game due to the changes.

Here are some of the most recognizable and talented game designers, I have chosen these designers due to me loving there work. Hideo Kojima was best known for the series Metal Gear Solid, Hideo in 2008 was given the award show's first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for a game designer at the MTV game awards and was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 GDC. Clifford Bleszinski helped create one of my favourite Xbox 360 title Gears of War. Here are the obvious Sid Meier and Will Wright both talented guys between them making games like Civilization and The Sims.

Game design takes can take occur in a number of places, you will need a quick over view of your game this is thought up by your lead designers or an employee this will then be shown to the publishers and may follow the constraints set by them. The programmers and artists then go away produce design documentation so that they can set them self-goals to achieve and so they know what they have to complete within the specific time schedule.

If you are a third-party developer you will usually work with game publishers to develop a multiplatform title. The publisher and the developer both have a say in the design and content of the game. The publisher's normally has the final say over the developer's due to the fact that the publisher is paying the developer to create the title.

I am a first person shooter fan and yes I like call of duty but I also play lots of different genres and styles of games. I am waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out so I can play my first massively multiplayer game as I’m interested to find out how MMO’s keep the players immersed in the game. As I find FPS get me involved a lot more and I also feel empathy with characters in the game, a 3^rd person game doesn’t normally have the same effect with me. So I would say that different genres of games have different design principles.

When I play a game I look for a good story that keeps me interested hours through the game and the story must make me empathies with the characters. I hope that there is no on the rail sections as it breaks the level of immersion for me.

Next time you buy a game...

In our culture we are told to think about where our clothes come from and not to buy certain brands due to the exploitations of child labour. Now I know this isn’t on the same level but should we care about how our games are made? Should we support publishers and developers if they are undermining their staff or us as a consumer?

The back and forth fight between Activision Blizzard and the duo that used to own Infinity Ward Jason West and Vince Zampella is still continuing. Jason and Vince were told to leave due to “breaches of contract and insubordination.” Activision filed their huge lawsuit due to the Jason and Vince’s lawsuit against Activision, which argued against their sacking and they wanted $36 million in royalty payments. As they didn’t receive their full amount for making the game plus they didn’t get any bonuses for creating the most successful entertainment release which has grossed over one billion dollars as of January 18^th 2010.

Jason and Vince left Infinity Ward and created Respawn Entertainment which is currently working on a game (fps shooter) for EA to publish. In December Activision bought EA into the law suit claiming that Jason and Vince had signed a deal with EA when they were under an exclusive deal signed in a contract. Also the claim was that EA were using go-betweens to persuade Jason and Vince to create their game. The lawsuit all in total reaches $400 million against EA and the executives.

Jeff Brown EA spokesman said in a statement. "A PR play filled with pettiness and deliberate misdirection." "Activision wants to hide the fact that they have no credible response to the claim of two artists who were fired and now just want to get paid for their work." Jason and Vince are saying that bringing in EA to the lawsuit, Activision are trying to setback the actual court date. Jason and Vince say “any delay of the trial in this lawsuit would increase the financial and non-financial burdens and would continue to distract us from running our business and earning a living.”

So should we continue supporting companies that are taking advantage of its staff? Just a thought.

Task 6: Writing about Games, Previews, reviews, commentary and lies

Hey guys this blog post will see me analyzing key links about game reviews and previews. To get your game in the media you need to build up hype and a certain buzz around your game. I have read both blog entries by Kieron Gillen, I have learnt the media coverage can be bias and corrupt but also be completely impartial depending on where you look for your reviews. For example when you are search online for good review of a game that you may buy is a hard and very lengthy task as there are thousands of review sites. When you find one good review that tells it like it is you want more just to make sure the game is getting properly reviewed.

I have figured out from the websites that the publishers and game companies pay the wages of the journalists. The game websites also pay the journalists with some of the money they get from advertising which occurs on the website. Sites like IGN and Gametrailers are heavily influenced and write a good review for the publishers in return they get exclusive interviews, gameplay and moneys. Whereas independent review sites say what they want to say and are completely impartial also they do not advertise games on their websites. For reviews of games I will go to smaller known websites or buy a magazine where as if I want the latest news I will go to well known websites. I also look for review sites that do not have a ranking for their games mainly because you cannot have specific numbers for graphics and presentation. Also the game engines, consoles and software are always being updated so I do not see that a ranking system is very fair.

I’m a big fan of magazines due their professionalism their review styles and their big pictures! In magazines like GAMES^TM you can find humor and experiences, Here is a sentence from a quick over view of a game called Endless Ocean 2 “If the first one was endless, why a sequel?” Also having a magazine involves you a lot more than reading a review or watching a 2 minute review on the internet. I love hard copies of things (except music) including games I really dislike the idea of cloud gaming but I know I will have to come around to it eventuallyL.

I like the NGJ and the style of writing due to the fact that it is more about experiences and not about this game has good graphics and this game has alright sound. NGJ style would be like “when I switched the game camera to inside the off the car I noticed how realistic the graphics were. The steering wheel and dashboard looked crisp and well textured.”

My own writing style at the moment would be objectively as I find writing altogether hard, I focus on getting the information down on the paper that I think is the most important to the reader and then triple check my work to make sure it is all correct and sounds right. I would like my writing style to be more subjectively as I want my blog to be more personal and more about my experiences.