passion4games

LA Noire on Friday

It's been a while since I've posted, mainly due to this second semester proving to be a monumental challenge...

However, Friday 20th is the appointed day for our final game presentations, which also happens to be the UK release date for LA Noire.

I have read (and watched) some online reviews which, while extensively praising the game, seem a little modest in comparison to other Rockstar titles.

I am naturally going to reserve my judgement until I've played through the game, after which I'll be sure to post my own thoughts, followed (hopefully) by an in-depth analysis of what makes LA Noire tick...

MODEL RAILWAYS PROMOTE SEXISM AND ARE AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE!

A guest post from our media expert:

A recent American study has concluded that as many as a million people, worldwide, are highly addicted to playing with model railways. The condition affects mainly middle aged males some of whom are alleged to spend up to eighty hours a week, involved in what experts have described as a ‘dangerously solitary pursuit’ and ‘a compulsion that interferes with normal life.’ A significant percentage of the respondents within the study suffered from agitation when they were unable to play with trains, or missed sleep or meals to tend to their layouts, or source small industrial shunters, online. In the extreme phases of addiction, men may regard personal hygiene as a waste of time, suffer from weight gain and disrupted sleep patterns, avoid phone calls from friends and find themselves lying about time spent tinkering with low reduction gear boxes.  

 The men are perceived to be in danger of losing all social skills and ceasing to interact with their families altogether. ‘We don’t know where this might go in the future,’ said a commentator on a recent television chat show. ‘After all, technology is developing all the time, and we have no idea what this kind of thing might be doing to their brains. These men seem to prefer lurking in their own attics, fiddling with ever more extensive layouts, rather than socialising with the oppposite sex or interacting with other human beings.’

Playing with model railways is admitted to be a largely male pursuit. Although the average model rail enthusiast is a middle aged man, companies make a determined effort to target young children while their parents – ignorant of the dangers – purchase whatever railway books and toys their children request. The addiction is fuelled by occasional conventions at which participants are encouraged to spend large sums of money. On a recent panel show, a media celebrity announced that many mass murderers had confessed to playing with model railways at some point, thus demonstrating an unambigious connection between model railways and psychosis. She further stated that travelling by real trains was infinitely preferable. ‘It’s giving these men access to houses, strange headwear and unregulated model railway kits that’s the problem,’ she said. ‘These activities promote sexism and are as addictive as cocaine. I would never ever participate in any activity which associated model trains with entertainment. It’s an outrage.’

Experts propose that one solution to this serious problem might be to develop online railway simulation computer games, during which addicts could at least interact with others in a more sociable and productive way.

 

Puzzle Design

Was reading a very interesting section of Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design, concerned with the design of puzzles within video games.

After a certain amount of analysis, the book cleverly defined puzzles to be 'games with a dominant strategy'. Stop and think about this for a moment. It is actually very true. Try to find an alternative definition for puzzles, and you will no doubt run into problems along the way...

The chapter moves on to detail ten principles for designers to consider when designing puzzles. While the majority of these are beyond the scope of a single, informal blog post, the final two caveats were particularly interesting.

 

A) Give the answer! 

This concept is counter-intuitive. Contrary to the belief of many, the pleasure of solving a puzzle lies in the seeing of the solution, rather than in the personal completion process of the puzzle. The book does not deny the fact that the player will enjoy actually solving the puzzle him/herself, but it certainly promotes the idea of including the solution to the puzzle within the game in some way, shape or form. The brain is primed for that rush of pleasure at even a subtle first hint of the answer, so it follows that presenting the solution would be beneficial.

B) Perceptual Shifts are a Double-Edged Sword

Jesse Schell illustrates this concept with a simple example. Consider the following puzzle: "Can you arrange six matchsticks so they form four equilateral triangles?"

Attempt this puzzle and you will either see the answer and feel satisfied at your accomplishment, or you will continuously churn over the problem in your head, and make little progress. You may be reminded of Primary (elementary) school problem solving/IQ tests (Recall the episode of The Simpsons 'Bart the Genius'), whereby you were presented with an inordinately complex and detailed scenario, and were asked some obscure, and often unrealistic question at the end. By the time you had gotten to the end of the scenario, you had forgotten the beginning! The truth is you probably had no idea where to even begin. You felt lost and ultimately got very frustrated. Strangely, computer programming is built upon perceptual shift problems, and the natural ability to retain a large amount of information in any one given scenario.

I have actually been trying to pin down the reason for the lack of learning within the computer programming discipline, and I feel perceptual shift problem solving is where the real problem lies...

Professional Masters in Video Games Development

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Living/Digital/article/10210c2/abertay-university-equipping-students-for-the-business-of-video-games.html

Piece in Dundee Courier, all about my Master's Course.

New look for my blog today!

Philip Pullman, The Greedy Ghost and Our Threatened Creativity

In an impassioned speech in defence of our threatened public libraries - you can read the whole thing here, and I can recommend it - distinguished author Philip Pullman spoke of the 'greedy ghost of market fundamentalism' and set this against 'imagination, knowledge, and the value of simple delight.'

Of course, with ambitions in game design, I'm quite keen on profit as well. It would be a foolish designer who didn't want to keep an eye on the bottom line, if only so that he or she could carry on making the kind of games that we all dream about. But Pullman makes a very strong point too and one I find myself identifying with.

To believe that half our libraries can be staffed by 'volunteers' is to denigrate the hard earned skills of professionals. How about a few volunteer politicians? Lots of people would enjoy sitting at Westminster for free. It can't be that difficult. We're all in this together, aren't we? But it also assumes that the world is full of people with time on their hands, people who can devote large chunks of their week to working for no reward except the grateful thanks of the community. In the current climate, when the majority of people seem to have to work twice as hard, just to stand still, you can't help feeling that it ain't gonna happen. And, as Pullman points out, it won't be those communities where people would most benefit from library services, which will manage to keep their libraries open. Yet it is the poorer communities that really need story sessions for mothers and toddlers, free access to books, and good IT and broadband for those who can't possibly afford it at home.

But there's a bigger picture here, and Pullman describes it very graphically. Unchecked, he worries that 'the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life.' Creativity is much promoted these days, by politicians and educationalists alike. We're all supposed to tap into our creativity in all areas of life. But without libraries, without the arts, without government backing for all kinds of cultural or just plain intellectually speculative activities, it becomes very difficult. And I don't just mean in the Arts either. It may mean - for example - that pure maths is seen as somehow less important than applied maths! The Americans use the word enrichment for these cultural extras that make life interesting. In the UK, the humanities are increasingly under threat. Mostly because they are not seen as money spinners. Everything, now, has to be vocational.

The problem is, of course, that nobody knows what will be a money spinner. In the words of William Goldman, writing in Adventures in the Screen Trade - 'Nobody knows anything.' Goldman was talking about film, but the same could be said for just about every creative endeavour. For every major success, there are many failures, and it's virtually impossible to predict in advance which will be which.  Without the humanities, without all kinds of theoretical and speculative ventures, without permission to experiment and fail, without the possibility of reflecting, and exploring and imagining what might be, we and all our works risk becoming a little less than human. Of course profit and viability are very important, but creativity and humanity are vital too, and at present, there's the uneasy feeling that our current masters are hell bent on ignoring the latter while blindly leading us to disaster for purely idealogical reasons.

Computer Games are not all the same, believe it or not!

Here's a link to a post on my mother's blog:

Rant In Defence of Video Games

Charlie C

 

 

Types Of Creativity

The idea for this post came about after a chance remark from my mother during an over dinner chat one weekend. The discussion revolved around our childhood hobbies and pastimes; at a certain point in the conversation, she stated "You liked things that you could use as a spring-board to your own imagination"

This sentence had a great impact on me, to say the least. I feel it is a word perfect description of the majority of activities I enjoyed as a child. I would play with a set of toy dinosaurs, inventing stories and role plays; apparently I invented a RPG-style ranking system without really realising it at the time! I could spend an afternoon pretending that a cardboard box was a battleship. Among other things, I would create my own puzzle books and stories. For some reason it is almost cringeworthy even writing these words, and it certainly shouldn't be. What I have described above is a key form of creativity that tends to be ignored as we move into adulthood.

As a child I wrote and drew pictures constantly. However, I don't think I ever considered myself to be a true artist in the making, because the pictures were always secondary to the story or game which I was inventing. They were in a way illustrations of what was going on in my own imagination, and just a stage in the procedure rather than an end in themselves. In fact, they were more like diagrams than artworks. My family always joked that I liked to draw disaster scenes. Looking back on this, I think I was drawing plans for games before I really realised my love for them.

All of which leads me to speculate about different types of creativity. It is important to recognise that what I have described above may be different to the creativity shown in many other artforms. I did not enjoy Lego as a child, as this involves physically building an object, or creating an artwork. I found this frustrating as the reality of the final creation was never consistent with my original vision. Either that or the object would fall apart before it was even remotely finished!

While video game design is difficult to define, you will no doubt hear many games industry professionals describing the role as 'creating fun'. This is exactly what I used to do when playing as a child; I would create entertainment. It is also interesting to point out that using the creations of another individuals to ultimately make a game, or create fun, could also be a good definition of game design.

Coursework

I feel like I haven't blogged in ages so a lazy Sunday would seem like the perfect time to get back to Passion4Games.

We are now approaching the end of the first semester and so far things have gone extremely well. Our game is nearing completion, my Unreal level is effectively done, as is the essay to go along with that particular module. Over the last few days I have managed to mould my Innovation paper into shape, and during the week ahead I'm going to be focussing on some modelling.

Christmas is going to be busy this year...

From Dust

Thought I'd take a short break from essay writing to post briefly about From Dust. It is effectively a game where the player will manipulate nature - a take on the God game genre. It is designed to remind the player of the childlike emotions experienced when playing and building sand castles on the beach. (As stated in the developer video diary).

The game will not be box released; a download only title. Just goes to show how far games have come, and indeed that the future, or a large part of the future of video games, will be with digital distribution. Apparently, the designers of From Dust stated that Ubisoft would not have allowed the game to be developed for box release.