Select one game of your interest and explain why it has a good/bad game UI

One game that I really enjoy is the Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt, When the game first out the game’s UI was not at all bad, but it was not the best the wild hunt had received many updates and patches throughout its life span, but a huge update came about when CD Projekt Red was about to release their final DLC they decided to change the UI. For me a good UI is simple, clean and easy to navigate around they are important to me in game because I do not want to have to spend time learning the way the UI works, that is not the reason why I purchased the game, I purchased the game to play not spend my time in menus, that is why those factors are important to me when it comes to a good user interface, and CD Projekt Red really cleaned up their UI (as seen below) and it made the game much better and you can customise your character to the way that you wanted it to.

Discuss how technology augments human abilities. Reflect upon the implications of the future of HCI.

HCI is re-examining itself. No longer just about being user focused, it has set its sights on pastures new, grasping a significantly more extensive and sweeping arrangement of interests. From passionate, eco-accommodating, encapsulated encounters to setting, constructivism and culture, HCI explore is evolving apace: from what it takes a gander at, the focal points it utilizes and what it brings to the table. Some portion of this is as a response to what is going on the planet; pervasive innovations are multiplying and changing how we experience our lives. We are ending up more associated and more subject to innovation. Our reality is getting to be suffused with advances that can possibly significantly change how we live. PCs now barge in on our lives and additionally vanish into our general surroundings; they screen and guide us; and they pressure and additionally help us. They are progressively winding up some portion of our surroundings, out in the open spaces, for example, Airports, car parks, and shopping centres and additionally in the private spaces of our homes and workplaces. As a component of this change, our brains are broadening more into the world. It is typical for individuals to utilize online logbooks to remind them to send a birthday card to a companion and Google data on their portable amid continuous discussions at supper parties. The future has a long way to go, as it will take a long time for humans to fully augment themselves and become an android.

https://www.computer.org/web/computingnow/archive/september2014

“We find you need to make a game wrong at least two or three times before you find the right path. We took a lot of time to design and explore, knowing that a lot of it would be thrown away.” – Monument Valley lead designer, Ken Wong

I am someone who has a multitude of ideas, a lot of them go wrong, but I always come out with something that works. This isn’t only apparent in game design it’s self though… it happens in my written work, presentations and everything else I do.

I think my overall progress in the question pairs has turned out rather well. I answered them all as best I could, included all the necessary references, images, and even my own images in some of them. I like that the questions were each about their own subject which led me to research into other subjects. For example; in the ‘HCI’ answer, I talked about ‘BCI’ (Brain Computer Interface) which I didn’t know much about until I researched into it more. This went rather well for me as it’s not something I have done much of before. I usually only researched into to things I already knew about as I was scared of looking into new areas that I may get wrong. But this research really helped me to understand ‘HCI’ and ‘BCI’ in a better way.

Copyright was a very interesting and beneficial lecture for me. I didn’t know much about this subject and was scared to look into it as you always hear law suit horror stories, especially in the industry of game development. This lecture with Adam, especially the questionnaire at the end, really opened my eyes to what copyright actually is, and how miss-informed most people are to it, myself included. I have learned how important copyright is in the games industry, especially indie developers. It not only protects my own work, but stops me from plagiarising anyone else’s.

The Barbican project has changed my thinking a lot. Typically I would research areas, things, places, etc that I like. However, I didn’t like The Barbican a lot. This showed me that in the industry, whether you are indie or more well known, you will still have times where you are working on things that you do not enjoy. This is a bad way of going about tasks. If I worked in a game company as was told to 3D model a plain, boring box, I couldn’t just complain about it and get assigned something else, I would have to get on with it, otherwise I would be out of a job.

In the end, I enjoyed the Barbican project. I got a really good idea from it, made some concepts that I am really proud of and would of loved to take the idea I had further. I do not think my presentation was all that successful though. It fell short compared to some people’s. If I could do it again I would include more of the concepts from my book and expand them even further to block out my idea, but I would also need to take a step away from my comfort zone of concept art and take a step into the verbal aspect. I didn’t talk a lot about the idea, I just briefly spoke about what was on each slide. This was what made my presentation fall short I think. So I would also make sure to note down some rough “selling” points to talk about on each slide, sort of like a rough script for myself. This would greatly improve my presentations in the future. I would also try not to go into a project with a bad attitude towards it. This just leads me to not putting my full effort into it, leading me to eventually fail. From now on I am going to go into all projects with a neutral outlook towards them, to keep me from shooting myself in the foot.

Choose one of the indie designers / developers and outline why their work, and approach is of interest to you.

The indie developer that I have decided to talk about is ‘Hello Games’ they are the developers that created no man sky, the reason why I decided to go with Hello Games is because they created an indie game but they made it like an AAA game and because of that this peaked a lot of interest in a wide variety of people, including people that only play AAA standard games, since its E3 2014 debut this game got a lot of people excited in the game. Since this being an indie developer, the game was published by Sony therefore giving it a AAA price and it was given a lot of high profile marketing therefore ensuring that a lot of people know about the game so that there is more a higher chance that more people will see it and increasing the amount of copies sold.

The reason why No Man Sky peaked my interest is that it was a big project for the developers and the game took a long time to develop, also the game got a lot of its inspiration from science fiction writers for example: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein, their work was considered fantastic, vibrant and unexplored and the developers took on those pillars and put it into their games and this got me excited because this game could be really good as I am a huge fan of science fiction so this game would be right up my alley but unfortunately the game did not live up to my expectations, as most of the planets were a copy and paste and most of the time you would be doing the same thing over and over game and this got very repetitive and I stopped playing within an month as I got really bored and there was no end game content and nothing to grind towards, this game really let me down, the developers are still updating this game to its full potential but there is still a long way to go but I will still give it a chance.

Developers of No Man Sky

What do you think could be the most exciting indie projects that are in development?

One indie project that I am really looking forward to playing is Super Meat Boy Forever, this game is the sequel to the original Super Meat Boy, and this game has been in development for a while and it has been long awaited by a lot of people including me, while holding the tasteful and foolish appeal of the first (and the Flash amusement that went before it), Super Meat Boy Forever will play in an unexpected way. Rather than giving full flexibility of movement to the player, Super Meat Boy Forever is a sprinter style amusement that just requests that you control Meat Boy’s hopping and assault control. Inclining toward components that are regularly utilized as a part of versatile amusements (, it’s coming to phones alongside PS4, Xbox, Windows PCs, and Nintendo Switch), you can hop and assault as you run however levels, sliding under obstructions and again attempting to beat your foe Dr Fetus, who’s presently abducted your kid, Nugget.

https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/indie-games-in-2018

Select one example to outline the key concepts of the interactive narrative genre?

One example that has an interactive narrative, which in this case is a game, beyond two souls, the key concepts of this game and its interactive narrative genre, Beyond two souls first came on the PS3, this was the follow up from multiple game of the year awards for its ground breaking interactive narrative. To some people “Interactive storytelling” can be a bit of a dilemma, the interactive part of the game is done through storytelling and it is about uncovering a character through multiple choices put in your way.

Therefore the story is mainly done as a structure, a non-linear structure so that you are not always going done a set path so it is often structured  to put the person through different scenarios and almost force them to become someone that they might not be, and that might be because of the decisions that you might make in the game and that can often be at times a representation of the of the player playing the game, so in some cases its like you have given your personality to the character and a lot of people might enjoy doing the game because they how the player may fair if they were put into the game universe. Some games for example in the Dragon Age franchise the game gives players the ability to choose how the characters mortality be in the game and have different mortality affects how the game is played and sometimes so the core gameplay at times and this might get the attention of people that not played dragon age games and try and bring that player base into a new game that they might not have played but might enjoy playing because of the different scenarios that your character might be in.

Structure for Narrative

Does the interactive narrative still have a role to play in video games today? Give exemplary examples?

The interactive narrative does in fact still have a role to play in the video game industry, in fact it has a huge role as there have been games that have taken this interactive narrative and implemented it as a main game play mechanic and most of these games are well done and have won multiple game of the year awards for example: Beyond Two Souls, The Walking Dead (Telltale Games), Heavy Rain, Until Dawn, The Wolf Amongst Us and Remember Me. These games are extremely popular, and they still have a big impact upon the game industry, and I do not see them going any time soon as they type of games are becoming more and more popular, therefore the type of games will still be relevant to this day, As these games have set the pinnacle for interactive narrative games and they give inspiration to the game industry so developers can make really good  games, for there is this game that been the making for a while, Detroit Become Human and it seems like that game has a very intensive interactive narrative.

Another Narrative Structure

What were the key ideas of the Bauhaus?

The Bauhaus is one of, if not the most influential modern art school of the 20^th century. The key ideas and concepts of the Bauhaus was its approach to different methods of teaching and understanding the meaning behind art and how to relates to society and technology. The motivation behind the Bauhaus started in the 19^th century in that time people thought that art does not have a purpose in society and it was rejected, therefore the Bauhaus bring together that creativity and manufacturing and bring them together again because they were going apart, so they wanted to bring it together and create better designs and bring it back to life and create a fresh experience. Their focus was to bring together fine art and techniques to a modern society. The Bauhaus brought down the hierarchy for different types of art and placing them on a level field and leading the way for different artist. The Bauhaus is in fact all about new techniques and a different attitude and state of mind and new construction and bring them forward, because this way artist start evolving and evolutions therefore leads to unusual, new and interesting pieces of work which influenced the development of graphic design, the Bauhaus also emphasized how important simple designs were because the best designs were often the most simple, The Bauhaus often sways towards more pure forms and clean designs and that should be the main characteristic when It comes to design.

The Bauhaus School

Examples of a piece of art that came from the Bauhaus school

Artist: László Moholy-Nagy

Artwork description & Analysis: Moholy-Nagy worked with engineer Istvan Sebok and technician Otto Ball to realize the Light Prop. Uniting the artist’s enthusiasm for the look of machines, and for material innovation, it is one of the most famous early examples of kinetic art.

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-bauhaus-artworks.htm

Artist: Josef Albers

Artwork description & Analysis: Josef Albers described his most famous series, Homage to the Square, as “platters to serve colour.” He began the series in 1949 and worked on it until his death in 1976. This early version demonstrates his systematic approach to investigating the optical effects of colours.

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-bauhaus-artworks.htm

Do you feel that the ideas could have an influence on contemporary games design?

Yes, I do feel like the ideas could have an influence on contemporary game design, because the Bauhaus represents a movement and this was extremely important for design and art and bringing it to the modern ages examples of the Bauhaus influence can be seen in the 21^st century as seen in products such as the iPhone, as it was a simple but elegant design and when it was first unveiled it was ahead of its time, so I think the Bauhaus can have influence on game design, if designers take influence from the Bauhaus and how simplicity is often the best as there is beauty in simplicity and if designers take upon that mentality it can result to really good end products which could revolutionize the way we think about game design the way the iPhone did.

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

The copyright system is one that allows people to complete and total ownership over their intellectual property, which is fair as it’s something you made so you should have control over it. The .gov.uk page on copyright states that “Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission.” Which is fantastic for the creators as it means that their work can’t be used, copied, distributed, adapted or even put on the internet without their expressed permission. The problem with having all this copyright protection it does make content hard to share, which I know is contradictory because surely you don’t want your intellectual property to be shared, that defeats the point. But from the point of view of a small-time artist or writer, sharing is one of the only ways to get their work out there to an audience and if their work does get copied or used without permission then there is little they can do about it as taking copyright infringement to court is expensive which not a lot of smaller time creators can afford.

– Is it possible to make anything new?

Yes, but that’s somewhat down to what your definition of new is. To explain my statement, imagine a robot made up of part of old robots, no part comes from the same robot, but they are all put together to make this new robot. Though the robot is made from parts of previous robot designs, it is still something new because the parts have been repurposed and put together in a different way giving a different look and feel, that is what I mean with my statement. One can argue that nothing can ever be new, and in some aspect yes, that is true because everything has already been done before but it’s taking what has already been done and working it with other ideas, other concepts to form something new. There will always be something similar to what you produce, but that does not mean that what you’ve made isn’t new, or what the other person may have made isn’t new, there’s just some similarities and that’s okay.

How copyright protects your work -GOV.UK [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/copyright [Accessed 6 December 2017]

Reseach and Communication skills was a module that involved skills that I have had little experience with. However, this module has definitely helped me improve these to a point where I am happy and confident to complete a similar task. I had written essays before, but never in the form of a blog so this challenged me to create a blog post that I was not only happy for myself to read but also every other student at WSA.

When choosing the question pairs to answer, I made sure to plan in my mind how I could answer each question. In the end, it often came down to the question I understood the most. I always felt somewhat confident with the question I chose as I didn’t want to end up answering the wrong question in my blogs or to ramble about something I wasn’t entirely sure on. I did notice, however, that some questions, such as HCI, I started writing and realised that the question was a lot harder to answer than I initially expected. This pushed me out of my comfort zone and I found it harder to get my point across.

This module has helped me think a lot about aspects of video games that I hadn’t really thought about before. The interactive narrative blog really got me interested in how games can be based on the narrative and the dialogue and not just the gameplay. I enjoyed writing about AI as this is something that I had an interest in before and also, it gave me a lot of information to write about as the topic of AI particularly broad.

I have improved a lot in researching skills and I had noticed that there are a lot more places of information than Wikipedia pages. I had used Harvard referencing before at A-level however not to the extent that I have on these blogs and this has really helped me improve on this. I hadn’t really ever written in a blog format before either, so the module has helped me improve my writing skills so that much that I feel I am writing in a much more professional way.

In the future, I’d definitely complete each blog before getting a new set of questions. This would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about extra work and would also mean that a potentially better quality blog post could’ve been produced.

I have enjoyed this module a lot more than I thought I would as writing and researching weren’t  my strongest skills when starting the course. I found that the lectures both informative as well interesting which really helped to develop these skills.