Week 16 Task

Games culture is as varied as any other kind of media. I personally am a member of several types of game culture including basically any kind of multiplayer gaming culture with my favourite type of games being cooperative ones. Before I came to uni I played Final Fantasy XI (a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG)) on a more than regular basis. It was the closest thing I had to a social life as my home is a village on the boarder of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire with closest town being Swindon and my nearest friend being a decent drive away. If I wasn’t doing work or helping out around the house (or even on the odd occasion spending time with a friend/friends) I was playing FFXI. I made a good number of friends online who I’ve never met, most of which live in America and many I was introduced to by some of my real life friends who live in various places around England (most of which live several hours away by whatever form of transport you use).

What little social life I had that didn’t consist of FFXI involved me going over a friend’s house for a day or so or vice versa. The occasional small LAN party also occurred on the rare occasions when I could get more than one friend with a computer in the same place at once and would involve long FPS(first person shooter) or RTS(real time strategy) games. Failing having enough computers wed play Xbox and Gamecube games till the sun came up or enough people felt the need to pass out.

Since I’ve come to uni I’ve hardly played FFXI, partly because I somehow never seem to have time and partly because I’ve discovered what a real social life is like and I simply prioritise spending time with real people rather than their virtual avatars. I still keep in touch with friends from FFXI by means of MSN messenger while I’m doing work or something but these days I do most of my gaming where I can see the other players.

Week 15 Task

The games industry continues to grow as it has done since the industry started and will most likely keep growing for a long time to come although the speed at which it continues to grow will most likely vary. The increasing game production costs are making it more and more necessary for companies to out source certain aspects of their games. I think this increasing cost will eventually either slow the growth of the industry or hinder the advancement of computer games in general.

One of the biggest challenges the games industry seems to have at the moment is originality in the kinds of games that are produced. This is due primarily to the fact that the vast numbers of titles that have been out on the market have covered a hell of a lot of things. Some time last term I remember having a conversation with someone about how tough it is to come up with an original game idea now, the person in question then responded with a wacky game idea involving the world being taken over by mutant vegetables. It was then that I informed him he almost exactly described the game “Tonic Trouble”.

An opportunity to make more original titles has come about thanks to the introduction of movement sensitive controllers but ultimately it will only really alter the way in which games are played rather than generate truly original titles. Developers also seem to be afraid of trying to create original game ideas and opt more for tried and tested ideas that will guarantee at least a small profit rather than take a risk on something new.

Employees in the game industry need to be prepared to work long hours and even longer hours as the product deadline gets closer and closer to the point where the entire team is working sixteen hour days. This has lead to a number of disputes between employees and the company they work for but that’s how things work at the moment and will most likely continue to work.