Christmas

Christmas wasn’t the same as it used to feel this year it just didn’t have that special thing about it this year it was just a time to relax and receive a few presents. This could be because I am getting older or Christmas becoming less and less a huge event. However it was still fun on Christmas day and those days after, unfortuatly my nephew wasn’t feeling the best and ended up puking his way through Christmas day but hes only 2 and still doesnt understand the whole “Christmas “ thing yet.

As we all know board games have to be played at Christmas and this year was no exception, we broke out the old favorite cluedo and the one I dread trival pursuit. I lost trival pursuit predictably but came 2^nd in cluedo but I seemed too cautious as I thought I had the correct murder, weapon and room a few turns before the end but wasn’t certain, ah well there was always the Logo game the family received. My dad and I played the Logo Game and I won just even though quite a few of the brand names and companies were before my time, the next day I got beaten right at the end twice by my mum. I wasn’t too pleased as I was one question from winning twice, the game made me think of the supposed to be finished group board game which we are making for our group project as you move around the board without dice and via a colour question system.  It wasn’t so bad after all once we finished that game we went onto Personal Preference which was seemingly long but fun as my sister isn’t brightest tool is the shed :P. We had to cycle through multiple celebrities until we found a popstar which was famous for a crappy old song 5 years ago or something like that; even Louis Armstrong was apparently the first man on the moon lol.

Moving on from that Christmas wasn’t too bad in the end, I got the new Xbox 360 elite I think its called, the slim 250gb, so im happy with that there seems to be more and more games coming on the consoles than PC these days so I wanted a Xbox as I was familiar with them and was a huge fan of the original Xbox. Being an avid football fan I was given FIFA 11 and one of the best games of the decade according to many reviews Red Dead: Redemption. I was a big fan of the GUN game on the first Xbox so I had a good feeling about this GTA esque Western, that’s it for another year in terms of Christmas. I fully expect the Xbox to be played with but the board games will probably be shut in the cupboards until next year even though I have felt more and more inclined to play them.

Costikyan and " Don't be a Vidiot"

Greg Costikyan published a transcript of a speech he gave at the Games Developers Conference in 1998. This may seem a long time ago for some people but things can still be relative to today’s world of games.  He shows his own opinion about 2D games and how they are the same according to playability and enjoyment to the modern day 3D games, 2D games solely rely on gameplay and usually for 2 or more players which makes the players more involved and sociable too. Whereas most 3D games are focused on people playing on their own and they are also becoming more and more reliant on graphics, for example I was reading a review IGN did about Call of Duty: Black Ops and many people were slating the game because the graphics were “terrible and worse than mw2” these type of comments show that games are becoming less about gaming and more about graphics in some cases.

Costikyan also states that the imaginations of the last 5 years of video games have been constrained as nothing has exploded and opened up a whole new genre or style of gaming. I feel this is the same now as it was back in 1998 when he made the speech as there are multiple brands and series in gaming which release a new game every year with near enough the same content and graphics. Take FIFA series for example every year a new version comes out with the graphics only changing once the console has been upgraded (ps2 to ps3, xbox to xbox 360 etc..) the game play has the same principles too you pass a ball around until you are near the goal and then shoot. Even though there may be some small features each year such as the “Be a goalkeeper” in FIFA 11 nothing majorly different to the game which should warrant a whole new game. Other games are just copies of ones that have been successful in the past, how many first person shooters just like Call of Duty and Battlefield have we seen.

He also says that software is “plastic” and easily moulded to the crafters imagination, which these days seem to be lacking. As well as saying software is “plastic” he goes on to say all genres of gaming have been found and anything released will slot into those “pigeon holes”. Even though the ever advancing software and technical world have made games easier to make the imagination stays the same with no really brand new outstanding games which have defined a whole new genre or reinvented one. Developers and publishers are so keen on sticking with what is seemed to be popular and will sell rather than taking a chance and making something which has never been done before. In my eyes this is a financial reason as the publishers won’t be willing to invest loads of money into a project which may or may not succeed whereas a good looking first person shooter will be guaranteed to sell well.

Costikyan praises 2D games because of the multiple ways in which they are played and with people all gathered around a table all at the same time. The many different types of 2D games include, board games, Card Games (both collectable and normal), Live action roleplay and tabletop games among others. These games have been played by millions of people over and over again, which shows how lasting they can be, just like Warhammer or Pokeomon or Monopoly for example, all totally different types of games but all still popular and exciting for the audience as they can be played on a table in the living room with a few mates physically rather than everyone sitting around a TV screen button bashing.  

He goes on to explain about RuneQuest, Dungeons and Dragons and Magic all very popular games which have been adapted over time. Magic has been adapted into every language basically which shows that a simple card game can be hugely successful and it is even an official sport in China. However never playing Dugeons and Dragons myself I can seem why it has lasted so long and been popular by what Costikyan has said about the 2D games as he goes on to say “the nature of role playing lent itself to more sophisticated gaming styles with real stories in which the character interaction became important” and “this was an appealing gaming style, because by playing a role in a fantasy world, you could experiment with all sorts of personalities and action you’d be hesitant or unwillingly to explore in real life” For me I am not too keen on RPG style games both 2D and 3D but they are very popular as costikyan said they are a good way to make a new personality and get lost away in the game. It can been seen a bit like the internet and online gaming now where people act differently online to what they do in the real world.

Overall I enjoyed reading the article and agreed with the opinions that gaining your whole understanding of games from 3D video games is stupid and as he puts it you will be a “Vidiot” if you do.

My retro game

We were asked on Thursday to think of a retro game to review for a 1500 word essay. At first I thought of bomberman and liked the idea of reviewing one of the classic games, i played it again on the internet and loved it. I then saw the 1984 version was nothing like the popular 1987 version which made the game so popular. With this in mind I set out to find an new game to review, there were so many possibilities such as excite bike, duck hunt and the likes, however I picked one of my all time favourite retro games which is still good enough to make it into Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros Brawl which shows it still has some significance in the world of gaming.

This game is Ice Climber which features two characters Popo the boy Eskimo wearing a blue parka and the girl Eskimo wearing a pink parka called Nana. You play as Popo unless you pick 2 players in which case the 2^nd player gets to be Nana. This game has been around since 1984 when it was part of the Nintendo Arcade vs. series. It then got released on the NES/Famicom in January of 1985.

The game’s objective was to reach the top of the ice tower and collect the eggplants or other fruit once you get to the end and then try to get picked up buy the bird flying around right at the top. You had to hit spaces in the ice layer above you so you could jump onto that line and there were usually 6-8 layers. There was also various enemies which harmed you and took away one of your original three lives, these could be destroyed with the famous hammer, Popo and Nana carry. This was the only way to lose a life there is another way to end the level without reaching the ultimate top though, once the bonus stage at the top of the mountain has been reached you can jump up to the top on non-breakable platforms and floating clouds and if you fell and missed one of the plaforms the level would end and the next mountain would load up.

Popo and Nana are still big in terms of Nintendo whether it being that they were made up by the legend Shigeru Miyamoto or just the nature of the game but they made it into the latest release of the Super Smash Bros. This was released on wii. The Characters came in a pair so you could only pick them both together and they used the hammer to attack opponents. When i personally played the game i preferred to play as them due to the fact there was twice the power and i just remember them from the original game.  Well Ice Climber is the game i have chosen and i hope to write in a lot more depth about it in the future and for the essay itself as for now thanks for reading.

Game Iterations (Board game and KeyStage one flash game)

My Board Game

We were asked a few weeks back to create a simple board game in 15-20 mins and see how creative we are and how good we are at designing a simple game. I decided to go down the path of the traditional board game where you move however many you roll on the die.

 I made it a pirate/ninja theme where the players raced towards the centre to get the treasure; I also had many traps and other spots along the way which involved the players such as having cards when you land on a certain square. One other feature to the game I thought of straight away was to allow the players to roll then they can either move forwards lets say 5 steps or move the other players back 5 steps, this would keep the players constantly thinking where everyone is placed and whether they can be sent back to get into trouble or if it is safe to move forwards.

The first time I created the game did not have the cards and other special squares which allows the player to have more fun and adds some twists to the game. These were added when we were told that we had to make some changes/ additions to the game so I thought this would be a good feature to add.

KeyStage One Game

We were asked to think of a game idea in pairs, I teamed up with Artyom and we thought of a game called Missing Arrows. Our game was fairly basic as it had a word appear with one missing letter and the player had to shoot down the correct balloon with the missing letter on it. 

The story was that there was an evil wizard who stole all the letters from the people of the surrounding villages. There was an archer who got caught by the evil wizard and was taken back to the castle where he/she sent out balloons with the letters on them. Whoever the player chose to be at the start (male/female) would be the one they are controlling and the other sex would be the one trapped in the castle.

Once we got into the groups of 5, we rehashed the story along with the overall game design; the first thing that changed was taking the quiz element out of the game. We done this at first by allowing the player to choose a any three letter word at random and shoot down the balloons which spell that letter. One of our group members (Garry Fox) tested this by asking his daughter to spell any three letter word and that didn’t work out too well. An idea that maybe we could provide visual aids to the child playing which could well help them spell the word. This idea developed into what we have at the moment which is simply the player shoots an arrow at a item which should not belong within that particular scene for example a cup in the middle of a forest. There is going to be around 20 items on each scene and the player will only have to get 10 to progress but once they have shoot the item it will glow to tell them it has been selected, once this happens magical bubbles sent from the castle will come across the screen with letters in. The goal is to burst the bubbles that spell the word that they have just chosen.

Once the level has finished it will advance through another level with mini bosses on the way to the final evil wizard. What we have so far come up for the evil wizard is to have some sort of catapult of slingshot and all the items which the player previously spelt in the levels before hand will be the ammunition. The player will have to select an item out of the basket at the bottom of the screen and then spell it in order to destroy part of a bridge that the wizard is standing on, if a word is typed in correctly than part of the bridge you will be standing on disappears. Whoever’s bridge gets destroyed first wins, and the evil wizard will fall into the lava below or the game will end for the player.

Another thing we decided was the style of art which was discworld in according to the playstation one games as we found the covers of the books were a bit dark for children. The sort of thing we found would be suitable is the following type of characters in the foreground.

We are constantly iterating the design and story so the version I described may not be exactly what we have at the end.

Paidea & Ludus

When speaking about Paidea and Ludus in games, it means linear Ludus and non-linear Paidea. These words can be used to describe certain games that allow the player to wander around in a sandbox style way or follow the story directly and not be able to rear off the path the developers have chosen.

Games that have Ludus can either seem to boring and follow the story perfectly or if the story is magnificent and involves the player a lot and makes them feel part of the whole game. The Call of Duty series (Singleplayer modes) do not offer that much freedom to the player as they just strictly follow the story and design of the game without letting the user explore the area or take another route. I would say that these games do not excite the imagination as you are constantly told who to shot and where to go. The actually gameplay may be good however the stories in these type of games have to be rock solid and enjoyable in my opinion as otherwise it may deter people from playing it if they are not allowed some freedom.

 

Most games these days have loads of freedom allowing the player to do whatever he or she chooses such as the Grand Theft Auto and Assassins Creed Series. Both of these games offer a story which can be followed directly but at the same time in Assassins Creed II for example you can complete a mission then spot a guard bellow and want to use a poison dagger and watch him swing his sword around attacking the people near him. This has nothing to do with the story what so ever but it allows the player to mess around and experiment what is fun and the best parts of the game. Many people like GTA and Assassins Creed because of these elements, you can mess around in the new GTA for hours on end without completing a single mission and still have loads of fun. These in my opinion are usually the best type of games as if you are stuck with the story or are getting board completing some missions on GTA you can just grab a car and run over some pedestrians and shoot some cops. 

Both style of games work very well for different audiences and are very successful still. Its really a matter of how you like to plays games to see which you prefer.

BBC Bitesize Keystage 1 game review (KS1 Maths, Shape Lab)

We were asked to review a simple keystage one maths game which was about shapes. It can be found here!!

Interaction
There was basic interaction that the user would make, which is choosing the correct shape to move on to the next question. However the game does not tell you why you got the answer right or wrong it merely sends you to the next question or simply repeats it again.

Goals
The two goals within the game are to get the answer right to move onwards and to reveal what is behind the curtain to complete the game. This can give the child playing a sense of satisfaction when the robot is made and shown to the user at the end of the game.

Struggle
Struggle within the game is not a huge thing as the game is pretty basic and only allows the user to pick 1 out of a possible 3 shapes, this can however be struggling if the child does not know the correct shape and would have to figure out the correct answer. 

Structure
Again with the structure of the game, it is basic as you choose a shape and that can either advance you through the game or reset the question so you can have another go. 

Endogenous Meaning
There can be an endogenous meaning to the game as there can be knowledge taken from it, such as the amount of the sides to certain shapes or what the line of symmetry for the shape is. Once the game is completed however the robot does not mean anything in reality and has no meaning.

Evaluation 
The game isn't the best in the world but for an educational game its ok but there are some improvements which can be added, such as having a mini game involving the robot which the user creates during the game so they have a sense of achievement. There could also be a point scoring system where the user gets a 3 points for getting the answer correct the first time, 2 for the second and obviously 1 for the third time. These points could add to the sense of competition which could arise if there are a group of children playing in the class room or it could allow a mini game or special video at the end to show they have completed the game with maximum points. Overall its a pretty basic and easy game for a keystage 1 child but as above there are some improvements which would certain teach the child more.
I should have another review coming soon!

Can a board game be as entertaining as the latest video game?

More and more people are becoming involved with games particularly video games with the latest consoles such as PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and the various portable consoles, but can the old school board games be as much fun for example the latest Fifa game or the brand new Call of Duty?
 Well I believe that board games have unique mechanics and perspectives which video games don't have, such as the excitment of buying a whole set of houses on monopoly and watching your family and friends give away all there money, slowly winning you the game. Monopoly is certainly one of the biggest selling board game of all time and all it's made up of is a few people moving around buying houses, which everyone seemed to love years ago before the likes of the Nintendo Wii and various other new gen consoles provided digital entertainment. Ever since video games have become easier to buy and play within the household the market for board games has slowly decreased, most family may only play board games during the odd holiday such as Christmas, Easter etc...  In my opinion video games have become easier to just pick up and play from and 5 year old child to a 65 year old pensioner along with the fact they constantly change and provide more visual entertainment for perhaps a few members of the family.

Board games can also cater for any age not forgetting card games too, a simple game of Pay Day or Monopoly for example can go on for hours on end with everyone gripped into the game and not noticing how long they have been playing. This can happen for some video games but most of the time the whole family cannot sit down and be so deeply involved for a fair few hours playing the same game, maybe the Wii and possible now as Kinect and Playstation Move have been released it could be possible but for the entire family to be so excited about these latest inventions for the console gamer. Well I think not, board games will take a hard beating and for the time being nothing can match a board game, some people may prefer Fifa 11, Sims 3, Football Manager MW2 etc... but i very much everyone likes them and they are not a very family friendly game. In my own personal opinion I would very much prefer to play the latest video game but won't usually say no to a game of Dingbats, Monopoly and such. Some big names have made it on to the famous board game from the video game sector such as the Mario world, this shows board games haven't lost that edge and are still a decent means of entertainment.  Its really a matter of personal opinion of the people playing but I just don't think board games have been beaten just yet. I hope you enjoyed reading my post and i hope to add more in the near future about some games i play as well as some thing i do such as attend performances, review games and many more

Andre Bolton

Introduction to Critical Games Studies - The Interview! :-)

Hello! I'm Andre and just started to study Computer Games Design and was asked to set up a blog to track my activities and so i can try and get more inspiration as well as trying to become more aware of movies, art galleries and other means of finding inspiration for the games i will help to design in the near future. The module which we set this up was Critical Games Studies and we were asked to kick the blog off with a few simple interview questions to find a little bit about another student on the course. The Questions I was asked are bellow along with my answers enjoy! =)


Interview Questions-

 What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading (or the last fiction book you read)? To some this may be a bit geeky but heck its Star Wars: The adventures of Darth Maul :P. Its a novel where you follow the escapades of the Sith lord before he met his match in Episode One of the famous move series. Nevertheless i am not a "book worm" and have been reading this book on and off for about a year but I am still determined to finish it no matter what!

What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading (or the last non-fiction you read)? I don't tend to read many book fiction or fact but i recently picked up the new QI : Quite Interesting book which is full of fascinating  facts and statistics about near enough anything you can think of. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes the program or just reading about facts and other interesting pieces of information.

What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended? 
I'm not the type of person to attend these type of performances but i will be looking into going to some in the near future. I personally would like to become more involved and interested in going to see some of these performances as they could prove to be a good source of inspiration for my designs.


What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema / or online or watched on dvd?
The last film i saw was 300 which was on TV Sunday 26th September 2010 which was excellent as always, i have seen it about 3-4 times now and the whole feel of the movie and the story gets better and better. I tend not to watch too my TV as i used to as i spend more time on my PC than i ever did before, I occasionally go to the cinema to watch the latest releases if they particularly look exciting. Ever since i have got my computer which has a blu-ray in i seem to watch movies on that as they are all in glorious HD, my blu-ray collection may still be a bit on the small side but hopefully it will forever increase.

How often do you read a newspaper? (Which one)?
Yet again im not the type of person to read newspapers that much but my dad tends to do so and he gets the East Anglian Daily Times and The infamous The Sun newspaper. I pick these up when they are in the house and have a read but i am not an avid reader so I don't go out and buy them.

Which art gallery / museum / exhibition did you last visit?
As with the live performances i am not one to attend these events but will be looking to visit some events in the near future. 

How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?
I spend a fair bit of my time playing games on my PC as I am an old school gamer and not a real fan of the consoles, i spend most my times playing games on steam and that is about 35 hours a week i feel that isn't a great deal but still isn't too much and im satisfied that I get enough from what I am playing at the time. I am really into any type of game i feel like playing weather it be the new Football Manager game or the latest Call of duty, as i said i play most of my games on the pc so i tend to stick with strategy and fps more but I am always open to playing any game.


How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?
I don't really play games other than video games too much but I may pick up a pack of cards and have a game with someone but nothing major certainly less than 1 hour a week. Everyone in our house used to like board games but since we have computers all over the place it seems that we barely play at all maybe the traditional game at Christmas or Easter apart from that they gather dust in the cupboard as well as most of the countries board games i assume.