Week Seventeen Task

A Graphics Engine combines elements such as models, sound and textures and creates an environment. A Game Engine involves other elements such as calculations of scores, health, hitpoints and other programming that makes the environment into a game. Most of the programs that we know as Game Engines, are in fact a combination of Game and Graphics Engines e.g. Unreal Engine.

Subtractive and additive are different creation methods for worlds within a Game Engine. A Subtractive creation method is where you ‘cut a space out of a solid world’, a additive creation method would be ‘building a space in an empty world’.
Game Engines known as ‘Game Middleware’ are reusable. This reduces costs and the time it takes to get a game on the market. Building a Game Engine is a complicated process, so it is a real advantage to reuse them, especially in such a competitive market. It could be a disadvantage that the Game Engine does not meet the requirements of the game at hand, but they sometimes come with customisable features. The main advantage of starting from scratch is that the Game engine will be entirely suited to its purpose.

As technology advances, the standard of games is increasing. Therefore Game Engines need to be developing at a similar rate. There is a lot of competition in the games industry, this reflects in the technology companies will buy into.

Week Sixteen Task

When thinking about Game Culture, I immediately think of MMO’s. I cannot pass much judgement on this subject because I have never experienced the desire to continue playing one for more than twenty minutes. Granted I haven’t had the opportunity to play some of the more popular ones such as World of Warcraft of Everquest. There are other Game Culture that I am a part of. We have created a Game Society by coming together on the Game Art Design course, which has introduced us to Blogging and writing about games, a culture in itself. When we go out to the pub and talk about game related topics, then go back to someone’s flat to finish the evening with some games, we are reinforcing a different form of Games culture.
There is an overlap between the real world and the virtual game world. Dr. James Rosser conducted a study on trainee surgeons researching the positive effects on video games he found that ‘The performance of trainees in surgery was significantly improved when they played Super Monkey Ball for twenty minutes immediately prior to performing surgical procedures’. This shows that the world of games plays a part in many aspects of society.


At the moment Game Culture is a huge part of my life. It is my entire education and career and a fairly large part of my social life.

This quote is relevant to games if you think about it...

'What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal' - Erich Fromm

Week 15 Task


The Games industry started life as a niche marketing the 1980’s and was spurred on by hobby culture. The industry has grown tremendously up to the present day, but rather than being driven by interest it is driven by profit. The increase in size of the industry has gone hand in hand with technological advancements.


As time has progressed more specialist areas are appearing, this has increased the amount of specialised learning available e.g. our course. Which is good for us, but on the other-hand the amount of outsourcing has also increased. Outsourcing is giving work to non EU or US countries for lower labour rates. This illustrates the fact that the Gamers themselves are not really involved in decision processes in there own industry. There is a very unsettling relationship between developers and publishers, with each wishing to achieve a different goal. It is important for developers to retain a good relationship with publishers as they are the source of funding. This means that the publishers have a large amount of creative control and decide to follow short term market trends. Developers would be more willing to takes risks to produce risky, yet original games, but they barely get the opportunity.

'I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven't had any moral compass, who've just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they're losers.' - Michael Bloomberg

Arden

Edward Castronova is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University. An article about him had recently been published in the New Scientist (October 2006 issue), which is where I discovered him.

Castronova used to be a college professor, in his spare time he liked to play MMORPG’s such as World of Warcraft and Everquest. He began to notice the potential of having these fantasy worlds, as fantasy worlds also have fantasy economies. Castronova began to study the economic activity within the synthetic worlds. He discovered that Everquest’s GDP per capita nearly equalled Russia’s. (GDP is a method of measuring the size of an economy, it is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time).

Castronova’s discovery made him extremely popular, and he has been given a grant of £122,500 by the MacArthur Foundation to build his own game which will be used to test economic theories.

The Synthetic Worlds Initiative site has some information about the new game, though it hasnt gone into great detail at the moment. It is going to be called Arden, and be based around the works of Shakespeare. This is Castronova standing infront of a concept drawing for the game.

If we get that rep notice board thing going, I will put up a photocopy of the article so other people can have a read.

Week Eleven Task

When given a word such as Gameplay, it can be very difficult to define what the word means. Terminology like this is used regularly, and people using it seem to know what they are talking about, but what does it actually mean?

I have said previously that Gamers could have some kind of intuitive knowledge behind the word that comes as a result of experience. It could be that Gameplay is self-evident to the people who use the word, and they have never felt the need for a greater explanation.

Another idea is that the word Gameplay has no meaning at all. As there is no true definition behind the word therefore any use of it would be invalid and meaningless. The word is used so frequently, that it is hard to believe it could be meaningless. It obviously means something to people, as they continue to talk about is as a true element within a game.

A factor that should be considered when thinking about Gameplay is the culture in which we live. This is because definitions of words will differ from place to place. This could be why different versions of games will be produced according to where they are going to be released. This would mean that the definition of Gameplay is relative according to the circumstances.

The term is also not used to talk about any other part of our lives, I have never heard the word Gameplay used when referring to a board game or a game of football. It is specific to Computer and Console games, therefore a vital part of our studies.

When I was just a young lass, I remember watching my brother and my next door neighbour playing various games. One day they were playing a Tomb Raider game, I can’t remember which one, but that’s not important. Lara was stuck in a room, that had a door that wouldn’t open and a few plants in it. She walked around the room for quite a while without a hope of finding a way out. Eventually I was handed the controller and after a few minutes found a lever and opened the door.

The important thing about this story is that Gameplay could also be relative to the player. It seems that Gameplay is a thing to be rated, it can be good and it can be bad. Therefore whether the Gameplay is good or bad would be down to personal preference.

If Gameplay is relative to the player, I could then describe what I think makes a game.

I think storyline is an essential part of a game, it must keep the player interested and entertained. I also think that a sense of achievement is important, for me this is would come as a result of solving a hard puzzle, or defeating a difficult boss.

This is a very simple description of what I think makes a game. But to me that is essentially what Gameplay is. It is the level of enjoyment that I receive from playing the game. This information could be used in the industry by thinking about what different types of people enjoy, and keeping focus upon a target audience.

‘The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by play instinct’
– Carl Jung