Week 24 Task

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the course so far and although there have been things I haven’t enjoyed, on the whole think I definitely chose the right course.

The things I’ve enjoyed the most have been the modelling and character design and I’m actually beginning to enjoy 3-D modelling with max despite a fairly rough start learning and getting used to the 3DS Max software. I think the only thing I have to add to the things for next year that haven’t already been mentioned is some form teaching on how to use Photoshop to digitally enhance 2-D work and textures for 3-D models. I’m not sure about everyone else but I’m still very shaky when it comes to producing texture and as far as enhancing 2-D work I barely know where to begin.

I can’t think of anything else that hasn’t already been suggested so I think I’ll finish there.

Week 22 Task

This particular blog as well as my last two are more than a bit late but this one is supposed to be about the GDC and what particular bits interest me before it occurs (or at least that’s how I interpreted the task) and since the GDC has been and gone all the information on the lead up to it has been mixed together with the results of what actually happened there so I'm going to add some on what happened as well because 1) I want to 2) I want to make sure I’ve cover the task if I misinterpreted what we needed to do.

In general the serious games talks look quite interesting. We had a lecture on serious games or something similar a while ago and I really didn’t think much of but I spotted a session titled “Labyrinth: Keeping the Play in Learning Games”.

“LABYRINTH is currently being developed collaboratively by MIT’s Education Arcade, Fablevision, Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Johns Hopkins University. LABYRINTH is a multi-player puzzle adventure game, promoting math and literacy skills, and targeting middle-school students. The game will explore new approaches to storytelling, player collaboration, and pedagogy. Delivered both online and on handheld devices, it will also represent a new distribution model. Unlike many learning games that attempt to recycle classroom activities in interactive form, Labyrinth seeks to engage students in authentic play, and to help them build intellectual scaffolding that will benefit their formal academic learning.”

My preferred type of game is one I can play with friends and a multiplayer serious game is an idea that’s never actually occurred to me before. The setting of a labyrinth also interests me because of the potential variety of gameplay that could be included.

When I was at school although there were educational games I found only a few of them that were actually educational and fun. I think this game idea has great potential and I’d like to find out more about it.

I’ve now spent a good amount of time looking through a load of websites and so far all the extra info I’ve been able to gather on “Labyrinth” is that it’s played online. So I'm going to talk about something else from the GDC instead, the Maverick award winner Greg Costikyan.

Greg Costikyan founded Manifesto Games in late 2005 with Johnny Wilson. Manifesto games, an online PC game retailer founded to enable small developers to publish and distribute their own independent and experimental games. Costikyan envisions a world where game design is a recognised art form in a similar way to film and novels have been and that vision is not going to come true if the games industry continues as it is.

The GDC Awards. Some of the videos don’t completely work and there do seem to be bits missing. Greg Costikyan is in the Maverick chapter.

http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/video/2007/

These are volumes one and two of “Death To The Games Industry”, an article Costikyan wrote in Escapist Magazine outlining some of his thoughts on the industry and how it needs to change.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/9/4

Week 21 Task

To be completely honest I hardly did any reflection on any of my work before I started at uni. Even my main art projects received very little reflection and what generally happened was I’d come up with an idea that I really liked but then I was told I need to do more development work and come up with more possible ideas. In the end I would always end up reverting back to the original idea because the others just didn’t seem nearly as good and were sometimes just there to fill pages in my sketch book.

Since I’ve come to uni I have begun reflecting and improving my work and the result is that what I do reflect on does seem to be improving. However I do have trouble when it comes to reflecting on work that I wasn’t that enthusiastic about to begin with as my lack of interest leaves me impatient and I end up not spending as much time as I should on certain aspects of the work.

I’m steadily getting used to reflecting on my work and the class critiques do seem to be helping as well. I’m hoping to get my reflection and critiquing skills up to a suitable standard by the time I finish the course and lets face it if I don’t I probably won’t manage to finish the course or at least not with the grade I would like

Week 20 Task

What is creativity?

It is new, old, simple, complex, strange, bizarre, normal, big, small, genius, obvious……creativity is everything.

Creativity is essential for progress in any thing you can think of and can manifest itself in a solution to a problem, a random idea or anything that would get someone thinking.

Creativity can be both helped and hindered by technical constraints. If the constraints are introduced mid way through the creative process the thought gone into the idea up to that point may need to be altered to fit the constraints in the event that the idea doesn’t already fit to them. This can result in the idea becoming completely unreasonable. On the other hand the addition of constraints both before and during the creative process can cause an even more creative idea to occur.

Everyone is capable of being creative but it’s easier for those who have nurtured their creativity to come up with creative ideas on a regular basis rather than just every now and again when the right inspiration happens to pop up at the right time.

“Creativity without craft is like fuel without an engine - it burns wildly but accomplishes little...”

I believe this statement to be one hundred percent correct. Being creative without being able to express that creativity will only result in frustration.

There is a video of an excellent speech on creativity and how it needs to be focused on more in education here (http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson&flashEnabled=1)

In games creativity can manifest in any aspect of the game be it programming, art or gameplay related. It could be something so small that you barely notice it unless you know what to look for or it could be so big that the game is marketed on the idea itself.

Everyone working on the game can “do” creativity if given the opportunity although I suspect that the higher up the chain of command you are the more opportunity you have to be creative.

Creativity can look like anything and doesn’t even have to be visible although in that case its effects will be. In games it could be a new way of making something look or behave, it could be a something completely original that’s never been seen before or it could be a new way to interact with the game or something in the game.

In my opinion high levels of creativity can be found in games like the Final Fantasies, Doom, Halo, Black and White and practically any best selling game franchise although not just limited to them.

The bottom line is that creativity is a big part of games design and production. Without it all the games being produced would all be mediocre and similar and the games industry would grind to a halt or at least slow to a crawl as opposed to its current behaviour which is to advance with leaps and bounds.