During the course over the past couple of weeks, I have put time into researching different aspects of game design, different artists that I can use as inspiration and going to the barbican has broaden my sense of understanding for design and creation it has taught me to be more aware of the things around me and how little I take them for granted, I have grown as an artist in the past couple of weeks, usually I would never do a blog but there is always a first time for everything and I enjoyed most of it.

During my research process I would use google scholar to reed different books done by people in the games industry and by artist and how they overcome different obstacles that I have spoken about in my blog posts. One research bit I found the most interesting was the emotional and behavioural modelling and why that is important to have in the game, I also researched about the technical aspects of game design and the creative part, most developers spend many years researching before they start creating the game and how important that research is.

I have also learned that if you want to find out something it is not always on the internet sometimes the answer might be outside, it might be with another person or sometimes in a book, and I have taken that mindset when doing my blogs and doing my work in university, because often when you think like you can come up with very creative ideas that could become something better.

Overall, I have learned many things throughout my weeks being at university, I have learned to overcome many obstacles and make my work better so for next time I will not have made the same mistakes as I have done before in the past. I wanted to ensure that my work was up to a good standard, so I spoke with a couple of my classmates and roommates on how I can make my work better and how to ensure that I keep that consistent flow throughout all my work. So, I want to take these principles and apply them into my work so that I can become a better artist and designer, I have done things that I would not usually do, for example do observational drawings, read books and research artists so that I have a better understanding on the work that I have done. So overall, I would say that in week 1 and to the last weeks I have changed for the better becoming more pro-active and making sure my work is up to a good standard and doing these blogs have ensured me to make sure that I keep on doing what I am doing now so that it helps me in the future to overcome any obstacle or work that I will have.

Reflective Evaluation

“You have to talk about ‘The Terminator’ if you’re talking about artificial intelligence. I actually think that that’s way off. I don’t think that an artificially intelligent system that has superhuman intelligence will be violent. I do think that it will disrupt our culture.” 

• – Gray Scott

A major factor that played into the difficulty of this module was the effect of financial problems, and the necessity of having to sort them out, taking time away from my work. I feel that this was unavoidable however, yet was still a big issue I see fit to note down for future reference so if something similar comes up, I learn to try and juggle the two things and still be able to get on with my work.

I feel however that during this module I learnt a lot of new things about a number of different aspects within the games industry and related fields, such as AI advancement as well as the interactions between humans and computers, which all in all have helped me when it comes to formulating ideas for games, or something similar. For example, the discussions on human computer interaction have given me ideas for different kinds of mechanics within video games, or different ways of presenting a story and so on. The discussions on AI, though it may not be related to games, expanded my point of view on the ethics of the advancement of artificial intelligence and also expanded my own knowledge on the subject which has raised a number of themes I found to be intriguing such how society will adapt and change to incorporate AI such as androids and so forth in the future, and how rights and ethics would work, etcetera etcetera.

During the discussions and work process I have noted a number of flaws in my methods of work and have begun to develop a number of different methods to replace these. One being that I will allot myself an hour or so a day to drop everything and get on with my coursework, as life the past four months has been the definition of hectic. I need to improve upon my ability to micro-manage situations, as well as improve upon my ability to articulate a point further, because I feel that it is evident that whilst the questions posed in these essays are answers, they can be very short, some being only two hundred and fifty words at most. The necessity of micro-management is a major topic I have focused on when reflecting upon this module, something that until now has been somewhat uncommon in my life. I feel however that as I work, the more I will learn how to overcome these problems and discover new ways of dealing with them and overcoming adversities.

All in all this module was beneficial to me as a sense of inspiration and influence. I took from a number of these lectures numerous interesting points that I have in my own time researched and learned more about in order to better understand the circumstances behind them, for example the ethics of Artificial Intelligence advancement and so forth, and it has opened by eyes to a number of practices that whilst beneficial to me a year or two ago, need to be adapted or changed to better suit my situation at University.

Bernard Marr. (SEP 21, 2017). 28 Best Quotes About Artificial Intelligence. Available: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neustar/2017/09/21/attackers-are-thinking-about-your-application-layer-security-are-you/#4f797c0b4066. Last accessed 7/12/17.

Copyright

Copyright has been an immensely beneficial piece of legislature that has protected and promoted the personal rights of innovations for the last few centuries, allowing individuals to own the rights to their own products, instead of those rights falling under the absolute control of a ruling monarch or class. Copyright has allowed individuals to build themselves up from nothing, opening the gates to a higher level of living, instead of that level being restricted to those individuals born into it. It also, as mentioned before, has promoted the innovation by decreeing that said innovations will not be taken from the innovator, but will be theirs for either their life, or a certain period of time.

Copyright has had a number of setbacks however, as individuals have found numerous loopholes through the legislature, allowing them to begin and continue using dirty business practices in order to take control of certain copyrighted pieces of work and take them as their own through law, as well as attempt to claim the copyright for a number of trivial things for example the FineBrothers from the website Youtube attempted to copyright the word “React” in order to protect their own video format in the early months of 2016. I think it’s impossible to stop these kind of practices in their entirety without contradicting the legislature itself, thus is has become just another fact of life that individuals need to be careful when it comes to copyright and copyright law.

When it comes to making something original,I mentioned in my Avant Garde piece that everything comes from something and nothing comes from nothing; it is difficult to make something truly unique in its own right, however I believe it is possible to make something different, in a sense. If copyright law had been developed to be more stringent, that only the unique and completely different would be allowed through, the world would be a very different place. Ideas have to come from somewhere, whether they’re from a book, a piece of art or a movie, to penalise an individual for that is wrong in my eyes. So in my eyes, in the strictest sense of the term, no it is not possible to make something truly new in terms of the games industry of other types of media.

Chris Foxx. (1 February 2016). Fine Brothers spark fury with YouTube trademark attempt. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35459805. Last accessed 7/12/17.

Artificial Intelligence

I believe that AI Developers uphold the human brain as a standard for AI based on two factors; one that we are the smartest thing we have even encountered thus far, and two logic can only take you so far. Adaptable AI may be used in numerous different fields to expand the horizon of humanity which it itself can adapt to numerous different situations on the go. An AI capable of thought on a level with the Human brain would be able to perform numerous tasks simultaneously whilst also being able to adapt to certain situations, giving it an increased edge over the single minded AI dedicated to a single task. Though this would also run the risk of coming with the flaws of humanity, I personally believe that it is these flaws that have allowed us to come as far as we have – our ability to fail, learn and make better.

I believe the scare and fear mongering behind the “Skynet” AI is unfounded, to an extent. Though the possibilities of a rampant AI may be possible, it is likely they will be extremely slim. The individuals making these AI are smart people. However, there would be a number of founded drawbacks from the implementation of “Strong” AI in our society. Two examples being that AI are able to be hacked (however hard) which poses a serious risk depending on the AI’s placement and function. The other being a serious unemployment problem as “Strong” AI make for a disposable workforce, forcing large swaths of people into unemployment.

Human – Computer Interaction

“Human–computer interaction researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people and computers.”

Though the Witcher games are considered to be among the best in terms of their story and later on their gameplay, Witcher has suffered from a number of ups and downs during its long run. Witcher 2 was renowned for its terrible UI for the PC, with CD Projekt Red developing the UI specifically for Xbox and not for PC’s or other gaming devices. The UI was clunky, awkward and just down right terrible. The same could be said for the first Witcher game as well, which suffered from some of the same problems. The UI suffered from a number of problems, mostly due to its poor inventory and other aspects attached to that, leading to an awkward process to access certain parts of the game which were supposed to be used on the fly.

The ability to use the computers and more so the internet has opened mankind up to an unlimited, digitalized Library of Alexandria. With such a wide array of information at our fingertips, technology is already augmenting humanity not in a physical way, but also psychologically – which has it’s pros and cons. Humanity now is smarter than it has ever been, but due to our reliance on technology certain social changes have occurred, especially over the last two decades. Though we are connected through the power of technology, we have also become disconnected from each other physically in some places.

It is possible that in the future this may be built upon and expanded, or perhaps not. It may be possible that we are able to link our own minds to the digital plane in some kind of pseudo-digital world similar to the Matrix, or that we ourselves shed our corporeal form for that of an android, or even a server network.

Wikipedia. (). Human Computer Interaction. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_interaction. Last accessed 7/12/17.

The History of Indie

The term “Indie” within the game’s industry isn’t a modern concept. Indie developers have existed since the early 80’s in a number of different forms. To be an Indie Developer, the developers themselves need to be independent of any kind of publisher, self publishing their own content. In terms of Indie being a modern concept, I personally believe a distinction can be made between the Indie developers of the 80’s and 90’s, compared to Indie developers from the early 2000’s to now based upon changes in the industry witnessed within that time span.

The term Indie has become far from meaningless. Despite the fact that there are numerous AAA developers in the game’s industry as of today, the Indie scene is still strong and thriving, and from my own personal observation has only grown in strength with easy access to once privileged pieces of software and hardware that make creating a game much more of an easy feat. Anyone can make a game with the free industry standard software now available, compared to the 80’s and 90’s when to be a games designer you needed a number of degrees and qualifications in order to enter into the industry.

So in conclusion no, I don’t believe the term “Indie” has become meaningless, if anything it is among the last bastions of the Gaming Industries beating heart, which as of late has been drowned in poor buisness practices and scandals by a number of AAA companies and corporations.

Oddtales. (). The Last Night. Available: http://oddtales.net. Last accessed 7/12/17

Interactive Narrative

The Witcher Sage is a series renowned for intricate and in depth story telling which changes depending on the stance or action of the player in certain scenarios. These attributes; the actions and effects are key components to interactive narrative within video games. However, the term can be much broader, broad enough to encompass any video game with semblance of a story line, for the simple fact of the player playing is an interaction within the universe the story is taking place. Taletale games are considered to be among the vanguard of the interactive narrative genre due to the focus on player choices and the effects they have upon the game’s narrative, taking the course of the story in completely different direction.

Personally I believe that interactive narrative still has a big place within the games industry. It is a brilliant and sometimes astonishing way to have an individual interact and engage with a narrative on a personal level, different from that of written narrative, television or cinema. Though this may not be a celebrated reason for the interactive narrative genre, the stories and worlds they create enable individuals to escape the monotony of life for a brief few hours, taking them from their sofa in rainy Southampton into the war torn regions of the Witcher fighting all sorts of monsters, or into the depths of space saving the galaxy in games such as Mass Effect or Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

Avant Garde

The term avant garde means in the literal sense; “new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature.” In short, something ahead of its time. In the sense of games design, avant garde could possible be used to describe a game’s art style, mechanics or all round presentation. Two good examples of “avant-garde” in video games would be The Last Night and Ashen. These two games are considered to be ahead of their time based upon their presentation and art style as well as game play mechanics, vanguarding a number of gameplay or aesthetic choices which have since been used to inspire a number of other similar games.

Personally, I believe that the ability to be truly “unique” within the games industry is impossible. To be truly unique within the world itself is a challenging task, for everything comes from something and nothing comes from nothing. So it may be possible to be so out there to truly be   “avant garde”, but in my experience everything can be traced back to somewhere, especially within games design; either it be a previous games that has influenced the mechanics of your own, or a piece of media or literature that has influenced the aesthetic style or the nature and themes of the story you are trying to tell.

Oddtales. (). The Last Night. Available: http://oddtales.net. Last accessed 7/12/17.

Aurora44. (). Ashen. Available: http://www.ashen-game.com/. Last accessed 7/12/17.

What do you see as the positives and negatives around copyright?

The positives behind copyright law is that it allows peoples work to be protected from other people trying to duplicate or take their work without their permission, because of the copyright law if people do anything to break that copyright law, the persons work that was taken, they have the right to act and take action upon the person who broke that law, so this law can be beneficial to artists, writers, musicians and any other business that create creative work. The negative part of copyright is that the copyright law restricts free speech, it restricts you from, painting, doing performance, writing and anything else that people might do to create something and because of this restriction people are sometimes scared to make something new because of this copyright law.

I think that the copyright Law can be improved upon, as of right now it is not perfect and it can use some fine tuning, because right now the copyright law is very strict and it has not leniency on people trying to create new content so I think that it should be toned down a bit to allow people to be creative and give people a chance to show off their work without having to worry about them breaking the copyright law.

Is it possible to make anything new?

I think that at times the copyright law can sometimes encourage and discourage people from being creative and creating something new, sometimes copyright laws can encourage people that are protected by copyright to create new pieces of work that have not being done before and it encourages those people more incentive to create better pieces of work. On the other hand, copyright laws can discourage creativity in people that are new to a certain industry for example Music is the worst when it comes to copyright infringements because there have been many lawsuits that have gone on a long time and have cost people a lot of money.

But I think that the copyright law forces people to be different and create new things, because as time has gone on people have created new things and that is not going to change, people might take inspiration from other people but that is good because then with that inspiration people can create new things that were not made before and as time goes on more and more things will be created, I think that because of the copyright law it will force people to think differently. copyright was originally designed to restrict publishers from exerting too much control over information; today it constrains individuals from creating new works. This is because, in America at least, the duration of copyrights has increased (from 28 years in the 19th century to as much as 95 years today).
http://www.economist.com/node/2592996

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Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games. Should emotive modelling be part of that development?

Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games and it has grown overtime. What it does is add character to the game you are playing, behavioural modelling impacts the player experience and how satisfied within the game, behavioural modelling also crosses over with interactive storytelling, the reason why this is that behavioural modelling is mainly focused on giving the NPC high levels of AI. It also creates a basis for game developer to give their game, their own twist on the game.

I do think that emotive modelling should be part of that development process, the reason why I think is that everyone has emotions, that is what makes us human, therefore if I play a game and the character that I playing has not emotion or facial expression what so ever it makes the game really dull and sometimes a chore to play and video games should not do that, as the whole point of video games is to have fun and forget about everything else and be immersed into that game universe that the developers have created. I think emotive modelling is an important part of game design, Game AI agents today do not reflect the affective aspects of human behaviour.  Sometimes games do not reflect the effects of human emotional state on an agent’s decision-making behaviour.  So, I think developers should focus more upon emotive modelling as it could have a bigger impact upon the game that they are creating.

Consider your favourite video game. If it contains AI controlled agents how individualistic are they and their behaviours, and, how might you set about improving them?

One of my favourite video game is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt created by CD Projekt Red has very connected and complex open world and different elements and it always changes every time that you play the game, and the game revolves around the decisions that your character ‘Geralt Of Rivia’ does and that is all up the player decisions made within the game. The Witcher 3’s AI is very complex and very well done there are monsters in this game and they react to everything that you do, at times if you don not want to face the monster head on its own lair you can always try to lure them into a town/village, but it is extremely difficult and at times monster would know when they are in danger and they tend to flee back, even at times the towns people would also help or some of them would run away, which I think is awesome. There is time even animals and monsters fight each other in the distance and that had nothing to do with the player, the world has a mind of its own and it can sometimes be punishing or rewarding and that is makes the game fun to play, overall, this is a living world, it interacts with itself as well as with the player. One AI element that I would change is the combat between human’s opponents as it is very easy because they always do the same thing and it is very easy to counter, so the way I would change is that the humans adapt and find different ways to kill you rather doing the same thing every battle and making it easy.

The Witcher 3 CM Explains Advanced AI and Why Decapitations Might Not Be Physically Accurate