Select one game of your interest and explain why does it have a good/bad game UI:

I am going to go with a game that I am very fond of on this one, which is ‘Dark Souls 3’. Not all of the UI in ‘DS3’ is horrible, but it needs to be improved in a lot of areas.
This screen shot I took in game of one of my characters. This is the so called “statistics” screen. It displays to you all of your character statistics, but, I feel it is just too confusing. Especially for new players. It’s full of numbers, different names, weapons slots, and all these other confusing things. The worst part about it, is at no point in the game do you get a tutorial where it goes over any of these or what they mean.

They did include a help button at the bottom, however, it doesn’t help. It just describes to you in little details what a few of they stats are, mainly the attributes. It does not explain to you where the numbers come from, how to change the, what they mean for you, etc.
Example number 2; this is another screenshot I took. This time I am in the “Equipment” menu. This one is better in my opinion than the “status”. The thing that I think is bad in this is how it displays some status elements from the other menu.

On the right hand side you’ll see the same confusing words and numbers from the first one, I can see why they would have done this, but I don’t think it works. This is meant to be an inventory menu, so why not just have the inventory screen that is one the right hand site, the “additional effects”, “number held/stored” and “equipment load” status as that is all they need to include.
I feel that the additional status on this screen not only makes the menu too cluttered for the player, it also reminds them and adds to the confusion on the game. All of this leads to a bad UI in this game.

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

“Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging technologies have started to provide us with the ability to interface directly with the human brain. This ability is made possible through the use of sensors that can monitor some of the physical processes that occur within the brain that correspond with certain forms of thought.” (link.springer, 2017)
I have seen a lot of things on the internet mentioning or talking about BCI, which is Brain Computer Interfaces. This is where a computer is controlled only by a human using their brain.
It’s not something that is amazingly complicated at this time, but It has seen some good progress, especially with games. This image is from the video that is probably the most famous scene of a BCI in use on the game ‘Pong’.

It doesn’t necessarily augment human abilities, but more along the lines of; makes them easier. It takes away the use of hands from a computer and allows them to use it with thought alone, which to some people, seems like something from the future and amazing. But to me, it seems like another gimmick for money, a lot like ‘VR’ was. It even resembles a ‘VR’ helmet…
However, I feel that developments like this will have a big impact on the future of HCI (Human Computer Interaction), as it opens up new ways of people using computers. Image turning your pc on with your brain, then using Youtube or Spotify by thinking about it. It would revolutionize computers on a global scale.
Not only computers. Mobile phones, laptops, game consoles, calculators, watches, vending machines, even cars. Anything that has or is operated by a computer, that can be interacted with by a human, will then have a new interaction method opened up by this. So imagine “Brain Car Interface”. You want to start your car? Just think about it. It’s go future written all over it, and it isn’t a fantasy.

Bibliography:
Tan, D. and Nijholt, A. (2017). Brain-Computer Interfaces and Human-Computer Interaction [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].

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

Emotive modelling should most definitely be a part of NPC development as where the universe games are set in can be crafter down the to most minute detail for the sake of immersion, all that can go out the window if the NPC’s the player interacts with are flat, lifeless characters. It makes the game so much less enjoyable and can give the player the feeling of the game dragging on if they have to regularly interact with NPC’s who have all the personality of a lump of wet soil.

An example of how emotive modelling failed is Fallout: New Vegas’s character Benny. He is characterised as being a charismatic, suave guy but any trace of that is lost with the flat voice acting and little to no emotive modelling making his character come across as flat and emotionless. Benny is an antagonist to the player so it would only make sense for the creators to want to make it so you hate this guy but when playing the game I only found myself at an annoyance with Benny, wanting to skip through as much of his dialogue as possible as I found interacting with him to be so dull.

That being said, Fallout: New Vegas is a somewhat older title, being released in 2010 but that doesn’t excuse Bethesda’s lack of emotive modelling. New Vegas is an open world RPG game, one that relies heavily on character interactions with a large number of NPC’s that fill the wastelands of the games world so with that, it’s hard to remain immersed in the game with such a lack of character in the characters.

B) 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?

Though I’m sure many have already spoken about Skyrim when it comes to discussing the AI’s and character interactions but there’s fair reason for that. In the world of Skyrim there are hundreds of NPC’s dotted across the towns, cities and spaces between making for countless encounters with the player providing they don’t try to kill you on sight or visa versa.

Of course with the sheer number of NPCs across the whole of Skyrim there will be NPC’s that share the same voices, same lines of dialogue or same reactions to the player as scripting entirely unique behaviours, dialogue and hiring as many voice actors to fill all the roles would be insanely expensive and the effort would be wasted on the casual player. On the one hand, the NPCs can remember if you’ve wronged them or the town they’re from, reacting negatively towards you for being a terrible person in the past or react to the groups in which you’ve aligned with or status condition you may have. But on the other hand, it’s a well-known fact that the smallest thing can suddenly turn all of the characters of a town into an angry mob trying to kill you such as in my first playthrough of Skyrim when I killed a chicken hoping for xp or food and then the majority of Riverwood’s residents were chasing me down, baying for blood.

To improve the AI of Skyrim I would definitely work to have not quite so strong mood swings among the people of Skyrim or have levels of aggression dependent on what the player was doing.

(2016) Let’s talk about voice acting. [online] Reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv/comments/5a4wk4/lets_talk_about_voice_acting/ [Accessed 3 December 2017]
Jay Green. (2014) The Making of Fallout New Vegas Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scqESZbRNkU [Accessed 3 December 2017]

Choose one of the indie designers / developers and outline why there work and approach is of interest to you:
Larian Studios have recently gained a massive success with their game ‘Divinty Original Sin 2’ which is a Role Playing Game developed for Pc and Xbox. “Larian Studios is an independent RPG developer founded in 1996 in Gent, Belgium.” (LarianStudios, 2017)
The first time I encountered Larian was when I saw their kickstarter for ‘Divinity Original Sin’, in 2013. It was a prequel to another game they made called ‘Divine Divinty’. I personally do not trust kickstarter anymore as there has been a lot of scams and wrong doings happening on their, but, given their history and proof of game development, they got their money and made the game. It was a huge success. So much so that they later produced ‘Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition’ in 2015.
What I like best about Larian is how they kept the fans up to date. They would post daily updates at first, then as the development got more demanding it turned to weekly updates about the game. They also provided all the fans, backers, etc with an alpha and beta build of the game everytime is was update to ensure that what they were paying for was worth it. They also treated their fans and people who weren’t fans very well. They had a few backers who weren’t happy who were immediately refunded and apologized to.
This is something that is very important to an indie developer, customer interaction. Because you don’t have a father company to fund or make you, the only thing keeping you going is the players. So having them like you and your creations is vital to your success. This is something that I would want to happen in my own indie company, whether I am just an employee or the employer.

What do you think could be the most exciting indie projects that are in development:
I am very excited about an upcoming indie title called ‘Ashen’, in development by ‘Aurora44’.
“Ashen is an action RPG about a wanderer in search of a place to call home. There is no sun and the natural light that exists comes from eruptions that cover the land in ash. At it’s core, Ashen is about forging relationships.” (ashen-game, 2017)
I saw this game on the E3 livestream earlier this year and it stuck out to me for a number of reasons; Firstly, it has an amazing, simplistic low poly visual style to it, which I love. Secondly, it has clearly taken inspiration from the ‘Dark Souls’ series, heavily in terms of gameplay. I love the ‘Souls’ series so to me, this is a big plus.
Now that I have read more into the story behind the game, it has made me even more excited. Especially the part about their world having no sun and little natural light. This immediately sets the tone and mood of the game for you, before it has even been released.
None of the other indie games I saw on the live stream peaked any of my interests, not because they weren’t different but simply because they were not any of my favourite genres of game, so this one is the only indie game I am currently exited for at this time.

Bibliography:
Ashen. (2017). About. [online] Available at: http://www.ashen-game.com/about/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].
Larian Studios. (2017). Larian Studios. [online] Available at: http://larian.com/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].

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

The most recent one I can think of is “Life is Strange” created by Don’t nod Entertainment. It is an interactive narrative game, about a young girl called Max, which gives the player the ability to rewind and change the past and future. “The idea behind interactive storytelling is to reconcile narrativity with interaction.”(Ercim.eu, 2017) It features all of these points that make in an interactive narrative game; a well written and engaging story that is told to the player as they progress and narrative choices for the player to engage in.
But a game doesn’t have to include them to be interactive and narrative. It just lies in them two words. First being interactive; it has to have some way for the player to actually interactive with the game, such as; moving, deciding, figuring out, etc. It also has to include narrative, usually in the form of a story. I don’t know how else you could include a narrative without a story, but I am sure there are ways.

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

Yes it does. Ever since TellTaleGames started producing and saturating the market with interactive story games, such as: The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Tales From the Borderlands, etc. Players, such as myself, have realized how fun them types of games can be. I don’t agree with the amount of games that TellTaleGames have produced, but I do want to see more, especially if they are anything like The Wolf Among Us. TellTaleGames, do interaction the best (so far) that I have seen, they make you feel really engaged with the character you are playing as, and you feel as if you have a big toll on the story. However, I would prefer it if the games produced were original an entirely created by the developers, because obviously all of TellTaleGames productions are of someone else’s work, so more along the lines of Life Is Strange. To date, I think that is the best Interactive Narrative game ever produced. And I would openly welcome more games of it’s type into my library and so would thousands of other players.

Bibliography:
Ercim.eu. (2017). Interactive Storytelling: the Rise of a New Game Genre?. [online] Available at: https://www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw57/cavazza.html [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].

 A) select one game of your interest and explain why does it have a good/bad game UI 

The Crypt of the Necrodancer is the game that whose UI I will be looking at as the layout is one that one an average game may seem cluttered but within the context of the game works so well. Now good UI has been described as something that “tells you what you need to know, and then gets out of the way.” (Desi Quintans 2013) Now with Crypt of the Necrodancer, the UI tells you what you need to know but doesn’t really go away as most of the information remains on-screen at all times, the only part of the UI that will ‘get out of the way’ is the pause menu screen. This approach isn’t all bad as there is still a good majority of screen dedicated to where the player and the world is.

Considering that the gameplay is made to be played in-time with the tempo of the music, having a UI like say Morrowind would be impractical and would make the game harder, possibly throwing players out of time with the music. The only brought up menu, the pause menu, stops the music whenever summoned and resumes the music at the exact point it left off when gameplay is resumed.

Everything on the games UI is necessary information to the gameplay and although a little claustrophobic the lack of boarders or boxes surrounding the UI prevents the screen from being too enclosed and tight, allowing the player to still be able to play the game and access the information easily.

B) discuss how technology augments human abilities. Reflect upon the implications of the future of HCI. 

Browsing through related articles for this question I stumbled upon an article on an article from a technology news website that explained how technology, specifically mobile phones and cameras augment humans and the weakness that is our memory. I thought that that was an interesting statement and the article explained itself very well saying that “nearly every human technological invention was designed to augment a fundamental weakness of human beings.” (Ben Bajarin 2017)

Expanding from that, cameras, video recorders, GoPros and other mobile devices are all, in some way, a form of memory augmentation. Why? Because they make better our ability to remember by capturing the image, sound and movement of the scene which can later be looked back on or posted to social media for others to see. Just from the evolution of cameras from large devices that had to be propped up on stands, with limited capabilities and constant errors to HD quality cameras that are in-built into most smartphones we can only assume that the technology will only become more adept to the active lifestyle humans leave.

A possible future for the devices that augment our memories could be the ability to record and keep track of actual memories from the perspective of the user much like the implant technology found in Black Mirror’s Season 1 Episode 3 ‘The Entire History of You’. The implant in that records memories which can be rewatched and reviewed like video clips on a phone. Sure the show has a darker take on technology and our relationship with it but the idea of this kind of technology being physically possible isn’t too much of a stretch.

Quintans, D (2013) Game UI By Example: A Crash Course in the Good and the Bad. [online] Available at: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/game-ui-by-example-a-crash-course-in-the-good-and-the-bad–gamedev-3943 [Accessed 2 December 2017]
Bajarin, B. (2017) Technology is created to augment the fundamental weaknesses of human beings. [online] Available at: https://www.recode.net/2017/6/20/15841086/smartphone-camera-sensor-augment-human-memory-technology-mobile [Accessed 2 December 2017]
Lamble, R (2011) Black Mirror episode 3 review: The Entire History or You [online] Available at: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/10738/black-mirror-episode-3-review-the-entire-history-of-you [Accessed 2 December]

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

Copyright is a system that allows people to have total ownership of their own intellectual property. This already sounds wonderful as a concept and if you take the definition given by The UK Copyright Service it seemingly gets better as it states that “ It gives the author specific rights in relation to the work, prohibits unauthorised actions, and allows the author to take legal action against instances of infringement or plagiarism.”. That’s great right? Anything new I make is protected and belongs to me. The problem with it is enforcing copyright law is expensive so if something you do does get copied, if the company is big enough, it’s probably not worth the time and resources to sue them for it. The obvious plus is that you have the right to sue them of course, but I wouldn’t call it time well spent unless you’re able to make a considerable amount of money from doing it.

References

Unknown (n.d.) Summary of intellectual property rights. The UK Copyright Service. Available at: https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/intellectual_property

2. Is it possible to make anything new?

Absolutely. The easiest example is to shuffle a deck of cards. There are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 possible permutations of a deck of 52 cards and based on the number of potential outcomes It is stupidly unlikely that the order of the cards in your hand has ever been seen before in all of human history. The same theory goes for simply drawing a line on a piece of paper. Has there ever been a line like it in history? There are more than likely many very similar lines but maybe the length or curvature or line weight of your line varies from them making it unique. But that is all small generally irrelevant stuff. It is definitely possible to make new things but bare in mind there will always be similarities to many other things as our minds take inspiration and ideas from everything we come across in everyday life, whether we like it or not.

References

Unknown (n.d.) One of A Kind, Quite Interesting Limited. Available at: http://qi.com/infocloud/playing-cards

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

For human NPCs, the exact emulation of human nature is the ultimate goal. It is a seemingly impossible goal as much of the human mind is still not totally understood and human nature doesn’t have one way of working but still developers will try their very best to create characters that represent people as closely as possible. In the interest of creating as accurate a representation as possible, emotive modelling should definitely be a part of NPC development. Currently developers make characters appear human and often work around giving characters emotions by programming them to respond specifically to scripted events. for example in many RPGs killing a passive character will anger certain characters causing them to attack where as other characters will become fearful instead and run away. Both of these are portrayals of emotion however it is very noticeably scripted where emotive modelling in combination with the normal behavioural modelling would make the response seem more natural and representative of an actual human.

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

Taking Civilization V as an example for individualistic AI is like taking Brian May as an example of a ‘good’ guitarist. Each character in Civ V is a world leader from history and they were all thoroughly researched to create an AI that truly represented that leaders personality traits as accurately as possible. That said there are definitely many things wrong with Civ V. In fact there was one bug from the original civilisation game that was so wrong and so humorous that the developers decided to play on that bug in every game following it.

The bug as described in these images causes Gandhi, arguably one of the most peaceful leaders in human history, to become more aggressive than what should be possible within the games restraints. Immediately there is room for improvement to this AI however I also personally love this bug and it’s hilarity within the flow of play is something I quite enjoy.

Unknown (n.d.) Tumblr

Aside from deliberately kept bugs there are still many things wrong with the games AI. For example the AI characters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy as they will often tell you not to settle a city near to their land but will then settle right next to you very shortly after. In the latest iteration, Civ VI, this action can be used as a reason to declare war on an opponent however the act still occurs far too frequently and is something that I think could be improved upon, not necessarily by removing it completely but by making it a more deeply considered action by factoring in how close the nearest non-friendly city is.

Reference

Various Unknown (n.d.) Tumblr, available at: https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/78145553694/chaz-gelf-sixmilliondeadinternets-gandhi-has

What does the term avant garde mean?:

From what I learnt in contextual studies when I did games development at college, the term is someone or something that is not accepted as normal. “Avant-garde is originally a French term, meaning in English vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes forward ahead of the rest).” (Tate, 2017)
To me, it seems that people who produced avant garde creations were simple just people creating something knew, and unseen before. This forced a shocked response from people, which then generated this avant garde term from them.

Is it still possible to be truly ‘avant garde’? and if so provide game examples:

In the games industry, I don’t think it is. There is no game anyone can make that will be totally unique. It will always have similar parts to another game, such as and RPG will have the same leveling system, any shooter will have the same gun mechanics, etc. However, I think there are some areas where people can be unique to an extent. Art styles, lore and game mechanics are the biggest three that stand out to me. For example, Doom 2016 plays like any other shooter, however you have to perform finishing moves on the enemies to gain health picks ups, and you have to kill enemies with a chainsaw to gain ammo for your weapons that require no reloading. This added a level of avant garde to the game, as it is something that has never been seen in a shooter before.

Bibliography:

Tate. (2017). Avant-garde – Art Term | Tate. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/avant-garde [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].