What does avant garde mean?

Avant garde is a term that is used to describe artists and work that is experimental, radical or unorthodox with respect to art, culture and society. essentially work that is out of the box and out of the ordinary, avant garde is considered to be the hallmark of modernism by some artists. In french the term avant gaurd means vanguard or the advanced guard , essentially the peoples ideas are ahead of their time this is sometimes seen in movements in the art such as dadaism or in politics anarchism. The term can also be used to describe something that is cutting edge or something people are new too. usually the art work done by such artists is made to challenge the norm in today’s media, meaning to try and break the boundaries set by society too of what you are able and unable to create. The movement was created in the early 20th century by the artist Dada. The movement was originally created by Dada because of his disgust towards the social, political and cultural values of the time especially the horrors of the first world war, Dada’s work cause massive outrage leading to one of his exhibitions to be closed by police due to his work challenging the norms of society. The avant garde movement was created in France and lead from one artist challenging society to an entire movement of artists and this is now a term used by artists in many countries across the world, this shows how much impact a single artist can have.

(Art by dada on right)

 

Is it still possible to be truly ‘avant garde’?

I don’t believe that it is still possible to be avant garde in current games because of social boundaries that people are too scared to cross, for instance games like GTA have been banned in countries such as Australia because of extreme violence and so on which is why I believe that games like that may not sell as well as games that don’t have that kind of themes, as a game producer I would like to try and make my game socially acceptable and a game that all people can play in every country without fear of it being banned or having a bad name. I also believe that it would be hard to be avant garde in this day since most games seem extremely similar, this is probably because most games are just different versions of the same thing, like the fact that every MMO RPG just seems like the same quest after quest boredom, nothing really seems new anymore to me.

Laura Neal
30/11/2017
Research & Communication Skills Final Week: Reflective Summary
“Please make sure you complete all the question pairs for all 6 topics and upload a 500 word reflective summary for the module to the blog.
As discussed for the 500 word summary really think about how this module and the content will now impact your game making process and your thoughts around game making having been exposed to the topics we have covered.
Some Reflective writing and hand in tips are now on blackboard.”
—
For this short reflective essay on the Research and Communication Skills module, I will be reviewing my progress in my own work and remembering the feedback exercises for this part of the Games Design and Art course. I will also proceed to reiterate and refine my positive and negative outlook on this module.

Before I begin, I believe it is important to note that I have consistently enjoyed attending Research & Communication Skills lectures. I found it very beneficial that each lecture focused on a different subject matter relating to Games Design, from ‘Indie’ gaming to copyright and ownership. I now feel that my knowledge of the subject has broadened significantly. For example, I was not very aware before that Human Computer Interaction played a large role in the games industry. I have also never had a problem with writing, although it was certainly more difficult to write about some subjects than others, such as Artificial Intelligence. On almost all occasions, I managed to complete each question pair task weekly and so did not have a build-up of work to finish by the end of the module.
By far, my favourite and most informative lectures were week three for Interactive Narrative and week six for copyright and ownership. Both lectures did not just inform, but stimulate ideas to explore. That is why I found it very straightforward to go into greater depth on both subjects when writing. There were more examples of games I could examine in relation to the question pairs.

I will now refine my more negative experiences of the RCS module.
What I did find frequently difficult was how to correctly reference academic sources in my blog posts. I have not used a cohesive and dependable referencing system in the past. Therefore, I have chosen to seek advice from my course lecturers and properly learn how to use the Harvard Referencing System for future tasks. Using the Harvard system will also help me to decide whether a source I am utilising is reliable and worthy.
This is not to say I have not been referencing sources, but rather whether I have been properly referencing the ones I have used.
I also found that it would have been very useful to have recommended reading related to each week’s subject matter and question pairs on a professional workspace website such as ‘Slack’ or ‘Blackboard’. The preferred reading could have been placed in a separate area or ‘channel’ so it could be accessed at a moment’s notice as well as remaining afterwards to be referenced or noted down for the future. I believe this is worth mentioning so that I can further improve my work.
If I had more time, I think that I would return to each blog post individually and re-read everything I have done. Now that I am adjusted to the course, seven weeks later, my writing has improved, and I could enhance each post to a better standard, as well as finding more sources to reference.

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

 

Common belief says that the three factors which make the perfect game are stunning graphics, good gameplay and perfect sound, although this description is missing one important thing: well-designed user interface.

An example of good user interface can be found in the Polish game The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. There are three levels of interface. The most basic one contains the most useful information during the gameplay such as health points, super power charge or level progress. All of them are represented by various bars and symbols so it is impossible to mistake them. In the other parts of the screen there is a clear map with player’s current location, weather forecast, list of active tasks and icons of quick equipment.

Entering the second level of user interface means that the gameplay will be stopped but it is still convenient to go there during the combat. Player can choose super powers and see all of the active effects.

The third level of user interface is very vast and consists of several different screens. The inventory panel is very compelling because every single item in game has its own wonderful illustration. There is also a 3D model of our character so it is easy to decide if new clothing suits him from this panel. In the other sections we can find the list of quests, extended version of world map, information about characters, bestiary and much more. The design of interface is black and very simple with only a few ornaments and subtle graphic in the background.

To sum up, I think that The Witcher III meet almost all requirements of perfect user interface which are visibility, affordance, feedback, simplicity, good structure, consistency, tolerance and accessibility.

 

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

 

Humanity becomes more powerful every decade. For example few years ago we were not able to prevent some diseases but we do now. The reason for that is obviously not more skilful people but rapidly developing technology.

Human-computer interaction becomes a significant part of almost every field of life. Starting with very basic abilities such as programming a dishwasher, people are more attached to technology but also able to do more complicated tasks. Furthermore, having a smartphone increases our multi-tasking, and gives us completely new abilities such as continuous connection with other people, GPS navigation in our every step and access to endless source of information which basically set us free from remembering everything.

If we try to look further, we can predict that human-computer interaction will reach even higher levels. Scientists assume that the next big breakthrough after smartphones will be smart tattooes connected to human’s nervous system. All security problems will be resolved with this invention. Another future must-have of every household is the „assistant” which bases on artificial intelligence and organise all life instead of people, take care about their health condition and needs.

In the future a lot of our duties will be handled by computer and it means that people will have more free time and possibilities to focus on issues such as art, relationships and personal development. If we take into account the approaching inventions which will help us to develop our interests it is possible that people will become even more creative, skilful and inventive. Both art and science are likely to be considerably expanded in the upcoming decades.

references:

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/visual-aesthetics

https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ui-design/the-future-of-human-computer-interaction-whats-next/

Click to access a9cc94292332faee0b9e741bc93419d155a5.pdf

The Research and Communication Skills module was not something I was looking forward to, but now that it’s done I think that it has helped me to improve some of my skills and investigate interesting topics that I would otherwise be less informed about.

I was surprised that each week I was able to sit through a two hour lecture in the morning and be engaged with it the whole time. This is down to the great choice of varied topics that were well presented in depth by the lecturers.

I can definitely see progress in my work from week one  in that I researched the topics more thoroughly and didn’t just use information that I already knew. My favourite week was on the topic of Artificial Intelligence because I probably new the least about it initially so I learnt a lot and feel that was my strongest blog post. It was also the first week that I properly referenced my work since I was unaware on how to do this until that point; it would have been better if we were shown that this was something we should be doing from the beginning. That leads on to the only real issue I had with this module: I think it would have been useful to get some guidance on what is to be expected from our writing, especially since I am not very well informed when it comes to writing essays. If I knew some tips for researching, referencing and writing from the beginning it would have been a lot smoother.

Going forward into studio work, I think the knowledge and skills that I’ve learnt through this module will certainly allow me to create work that is more informed and relevant. I now have a much better understanding on ways to develop and improve anything that I make and different ways that I can do this.

 

Session 2 Games 101

• What does the term avant garde mean?

Any artistic piece of work that is new is usually considered “Avant Garde”. So to sum this up “Avant Garde” means to experiment and try new ideas within the artistic community, this isn’t just art itself, but things like dance, theatre and so on. An example of “avant garde” would be a dance piece that involves paint, resulting in two artistic pieces.

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

I personally say no usually because all the great ideas you’ve seen and still see have been done, this goes for the entirety of the artistic community. We’ve come a long way with art and what people do these days is inspire from other people rather than the environment itself. For example Leonardo Da Vinci was inspired by the construction of the human anatomy, but even then painting was still a thing back in Da Vinci’s era so his artwork wasn’t technically original. The thing that he did that was original was his drawings on the human anatomy. Overall it’s impossible to be truly “Avant Garde” since the majority inspires from other people.

Now to contradict myself a lot of artwork can be “Avant Garde”. Yes people inspire from other people’s work but you can take an idea and change it to you own. Any painting maybe a paint but they all have their own unique quality to them that makes them “Avant Garde”. Back to the example of Da Vinci and let’s compare his work to that of Picasso’s. Da Vinci’s style of art was very close to reality where Picasso was had a unique style of art which in result made him famous.

In in terms of the gaming industry. It’s difficult to be “Avant Garde” mainly because of what the audience wants which results in money. For instance the current fad in the gaming industry is RPG’s so the majority of games for this year are RPG’s, these instances make gaming less and less “Avant Garde”.

Games obviously have to stand out and be unique. In the end the RPG aspect becomes more of a rule rather than a unique feature to a game. Although these days games use various gaming techniques to create something “unique”.

Example the Witcher 3 stood out not for its RPG mechanics but how “massive” it is so other games took upon this and did a similar thing such as Final fantasy 15 and Assassin’s Creed origins.

Reference links

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/avant-garde

 

 

Session 3 Skill Stamina and luck

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

The example I’m going to use is “The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt”. This games has a very indepth story due to the fact that this game is based of a book but this is very well translated into game.
To sum up this game “The witcher 3” is an Open World, RPG, action adventure, fantasy game.

How CD projekt Red approach this game in a graphical point of view is that they used an realistic art style but despite this being a fantasy games the concept of fantasy elements use in a real world like setting the realism adds a new element to the game. In this world it isn’t a simple adventure to reach a goal but you’re in a world where you’re involved with politics, racism and so on. In fact this book technically takes a fantasy element and puts it in a real life situation and the game translates this very well.
In terms of story and despite this game being based of the book you can interact with the story in anyway you want, or what options you have. Either way you take control of the story and it has consequences to your actions which in fact affect not only the story but the game. So you interact with this narrative and follow your own views on the world or mess around because you feel like it.
Overall this games does well on interactive despite it not being a telltell game and being based on someone else’s content. CD projekt Red captures the world of the book with the visuals and character interactions and you can truly see how dark this world but they took the extra step to include you in the story by allowing to choose how you approach the game which doesn’t only affect the story but the game.

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

Well Telltell games are games that are designed to be interactive stories. Interactive narrative is very important in game, it gives you a perspective on how the creator wants you to see their world. This doesn’t simply mean story but graphics and so on. In the end this is an art form and every artistic creation has a story behind and luckily for gaming content is made specifically for interaction.

Interactive narrative will always have a role in video games regardless of what kind of game it is. The game may not have a choice system but you’re still interacting with the story.

 

 

Session 4 The history of Indie

• Why would you say that the “Indie” game scene is not a new thing and explain, give examples ?

I wouldn’t say the indie is anything new, nearly all big companies start of as indie companies. Bungie start off as an indie company before they became big, in fact they were a bunch of students eating pizza wanting to make games. Activision started due to a couple of workers getting tired of the company Atari so they started their own company. These examples shows that indie isn’t new, it’s existed for ages in the gaming industry, in fact it’s how industries start, it’s starting from the ground up, like most companies.

Now for companies like Insomniac, they are still indie technically. Despite the fact that their hired by the bigger companies to make games they are still independent, so they have the creative freedom to create whatever they want even if they are the size of a company. CD projekt red is a perfect example of this, they’re an indie company the size of a small company.

Now to sum this up people like  Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes who made super meat boy are indie because they’re completely independent within their budget and making process but this doesn’t mean indie is a new thing because as I’ve said before these small group of friends could or can become a company.

• Has the term indie become meaningless ?

No the term hasn’t become meaningless. The word indie means independent and that’ll never change despite how many people do it. Being independent is a stepping stone to becoming successful, this goes for games, mechanics, technology, science and so on. You always start off with an idea you develop yourself or in a small group and when this idea is recognized then you become can become successful leading to other companies and more people wanting to work with you therefor making you a company. People do decide that they want to work alone and stay being indie but despite your choices being the term indie will never become meaningless weather you decide to stay indie or let it lead to something large.

References

Ash Toner (seriously I found all the information through him over years of chatting)

 

 

Session 5 Human computer interaction

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

As an example I’ll be using a game that I’ve played for a recently. After playing Assassin’s creed origins I’ll say the user interface is good. The reason being is that the game helps you indicate various things you need to do or actions you’ve performed. One example is that your stance changes to indicate whether you have your shield up or not, there’s also a stance to indicate stealth. So the various stances easily show what approach you take but this is more gameplay.

Now in this new instalment of Assassin’s Creed the creators wanted you to be immersed in the world more so they changed the various mechanics such as the mini map. They removed the minimap and made a compass system similar to that of skyrim, I say this works well for what it was made for, this does immerse yourself in the environment as well as gives you a sense of discovery.

As weird as this system is, depending on what weapon you select that weapon will appear on the character. Now for starters this looks weird because it looks like a magic trick of a suddenly appearing weapon but it works well because it indicates what weapon you currently have selected but they don’t have this for the bow system which is odd.

There’s a health, adrenaline and breath bar system that appears when certain actions takes place. I like how this system works are it doesn’t over crowd the screen with bars systems and only appears when needed, for instance the adrenaline bar and health bar appear when you engage in combat.

Overall these systems work well and show great indication to the player and I felt it shows what’s going on within the game.

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

Technology has expanded us as human beings, I see them more a extensions. For instance I see a gun as human augment as of the gun shoots unlike a telephone which expand our communication therefore enhancing a skill we already have. The point I’m making is that the technology created for human is usually created to expand skill we possess.

Lets simplify this. A man known as Hugh Herr lost his legs due to front bite so he designed some bionic legs so that he can walk as well as run and even dance. These legs are designed to be like human legs. Previously before he made theses legs he use to make basic legs so he can continue his passion for rock climbing but what he found out is that he can alter his body to make it better. For example he’d adjust the height of his legs depending on how confident he felt so he can feel taller or become smaller to “give the other an advantage”. This describes human augmentation at it’s finest. As Hugh puts it, him being disabled didn’t mean that he was broken but that technology was inadequate at the time. Hugh Herr also talks about how we’d all be wearing exoskeletons to enhance our physiology, to improve that we already have. This shows that human augmentation not only replaces that what we’ve lost but enhances what we already have.

References

Hugh Herr – Look on youtube. On TED he talks in depth.

 

 

Session 6 Artificial intelligence

• Some definitions state that AI is when a system thinks/acts like a human and other definitions state that it is when a system thinks/acts rationally. Why do you suppose AI developers wish to hold up human intelligence as a standard rather than pure logic?

The reason I can see why people would want AI to act more like a human than rational is because of sensitivity. Logical think is the best foward to a situation but this means you act heartless. For instance imagine a burning building and there’s a higher probability to save an ex convict than a child. Your goal is to save everyone but you’re limited on time so the logical answer is to save the convict, now let’s add emotions to the mix, despite the logic you’d rather save the child rather than a ex convict.

Now by all means the logical answer is the best as it’s rational but then you wouldn’t consider other factor and just go the easiest answer which isn’t always a bad thing. I feel that when building an AI you’d want it to have some form of sensitivity so that the AI may put logic aside so that it can approach a situation that humans consider morally right.

• A lot of people are scared by the prospective of AI. What do you think would bethe ramifications of us achieving true “strong” AI?

There will be consequences like all decisions made. The thing is that what you’re doing is making is another human or in fact another race and depending on how the AI is built whether it’s built to be logical or emotional. Either way it’s how the people respond to this, it’s all about the interaction with the AI and if it’s aware then it’ll response to these human emotions.

 

 

Session 9 own

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

The main and the only good thing I can say about is that it protects your product and gives credit where credit is due, plus you can manipulate this so others can use your product and you set the limitations.
The downfall is that corporations such as Nintendo can be greedy with such products. Now by all means punish those who remake your product, or simply claim your product as your own but in certain situations it can be ridiculous. Now YouTube is seen as free advertisement due to reviews on content and such, so most corporations leave it be since these content creators aren’t remaking or stealing content but showing the public how good this content is which is amazing in my eyes, someone making content to promote others content shouldn’t be punished for it as it helps your business with FREE SERVICE. Nintendo don’t take advantage of this in fact they’re greedy when it comes to YouTube content.  Their policy on copyright on YouTube is that if you earn money from anything that has Nintendo content then that money HAS to go to them which is extremely ridiculous as the content promotes Nintendo’s content for free may I add and in the end Nintendo still get the money.
Overall I like how copyright gives credit where credit is due but I hate how some people take this and make it so other can’t enjoy their content, it’s not productive and it fact ruins their own product for the lack of notice or how hard it is to obtain.

• Is it possible to make anything new?

Technically no because but we do expand our new found discovers and make them better.  As “Tony Kushner” says “the imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions” I fully agree with this statement as anything you see in creative work has some resemblance of the real world or others work.
Now here’s where I contradict myself. Consider the fact that these creations are technically new but the reality is that it’s different puzzle pieces to create a new image. For instance the game “Darksiders 2” is extremely similar to “The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time” but one is very bright and happy and the other dark and gloomy, since “Darksiders 2” is newer that’ll be considered as the unoriginal product. The thing  “The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time” uses aspects that aren’t so original therefor making the game unoriginal. Overall the developers that made the game did make an original product as they use one another as an inspiration to create a good game and as I said before they used certain puzzle pieces to make one new image.

Overall you can’t create new content, in fact it’s impossible as there’ll always be some resemblance to the inspiration.

 

 

Reflective Summary

I’ve learnt a lot during this module and a lot of these topics have helped expand and opened new perspectives on how I can creatively think. These topics gave some insight on the game industry but felt like more philosophical opinions on gaming itself. For instance the topic “Avant garde” and how gaming is considered art. I found questions like this to be very opinion based and didn’t really help to understanding the gaming industry and how it works but it did allow me to understand the term “Avant Garde” and how the gaming relates to it.

The two topics I did find very interesting was “Own” and “Human and computer interaction”. I felt that it related more to the gaming industry. The topics discussed about various things that not only the gaming industry but other industries have to work with but that’s mainly copyright, with human and computer interaction it discussed how technology integrates with humans today which felt like it gave more insight on the gaming industry. The other topics felt like a philosophical discussion on how robots can take over the world or why gaming is art but this doesn’t mean that these topics were bad, as I’ve said the other topics felt more opinion based so this allowed me to open up my perspective on gaming as a medium.

I found this module challenging as I was a little disorganized with the essays and wish to learn  from this experience. I also need to Harvard reference more to support my arguments. I could criticize myself on the amount I wrote but for one I don’t feel like I need to write load about some of the these topics and two If I Harvard referenced more or simply did more research then that way I could write more. Overall I think my main problem is my productivity and how much work I put into these weekly blog. Maybe I could make a schedule of sort to allow myself more time so I don’t procrastinate too much.

In conclusion this module has helped me realise skills that I need to implicate into my overall productivity when making not just my essays but my work in general. With the module itself I now have new knowledge and perfective that’ll help me progress forward as a games design.

Overall looking back on the what I have learnt throughout this module I feel as though the lecture on artificial intelligence had the largest impact on my own opinion. Using what I learnt I believe this could help me move forward into learning about AI programming NPCs for games. AI is becoming a larger part of life as time goes on and is becoming more advanced but I initially I thought the consequences of this would be bad in the future. At first, I was not delving into the topic enough and only looking at the surface which was what I was being told by social media. A dystopian idea about AI had engraved itself into my head. However, looking back, I learnt that AI can be very helpful to humans. Looking at modelling for games, AI becomes an important part of making games seem more realistic and immersive. The best video games make the player feel as though they are truly part of the experience. Emotive modelling is a technique I learnt about during the lecture and research processes and how it is being used to help further video game capabilities. Emotive modelling is a technique that enables developers to capture the essence of emotion within an NPC. This is important because it gives players a connection to certain NPCs thorough feelings. This emotive modelling could be programmed for different situations thereby interlinking a relationship with a player on a virtual level. This has all impacted me on a serious level as I never thought that artificial intelligence could help to improve the video game industry at such a phenomenal level, advancing in modelling came as a big surprise because I didn’t know that AI technology was capable.

In addition, the lecture on history of indie and considering different developers and indie companies changed my mind. I never really thought of indie developers being one person and the scene becoming so large like it is in the market today, looking back I learnt a lot about the history in terms of how far indie goes back. Indie games can be traced back to the 1970s which is unbelievable when you think about how the term has only become mainstream now. These small team’s indie teams are competing with large scale companies and beating them. Many smaller scale teams are becoming household names which helps to inspire me as a developer. The work of Jonathan Blow interested me the most because his success has come from such a small team of developers and his outlook on the game industry was like mine. Blow has a strong distrust in the cooperate greed of companies like EA and sees that many companies are going down a cooperate route i.e. microtransactions. Furthermore, Blow also believes that video games are an art form, this passion for design is something I look for as inspiration when I’m developing. I think I resonate with statements and beliefs of Blow and hope to take these forward into my own work.

Sources

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/ai-video-games-toward-intelligent-game/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/308928/

References

Norman, D. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things.

Lebowitz, J. (2011). Interactive Storytelling for Video Games.

Hudlicka, E. (2009). Foundations for Modelling Emotions in Game Characters: MOdelling EMotion Effects on Cognition.

Bauhaus

What were the Bauhaus main ideas?

The Bauhaus is one of the most important modern art schools of the early 20 century. Initially when it first opened in 1919 the art school was shaped by the Arts and Craft movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is shown by the romantic medievalism shown during the school’s early years. However during the mid 1920s this idea of romantic medievalism disappeared in order for the school to stress on uniting art and industrial design. The Bauhaus was also new and modern in the sense of pushing the ideas of liberal and applied arts in which led to it’s great amounts of influence on modern day art schools.

 

Does the Bauhaus influence modern game design?

The simple answer is well yes, the long answer is that due to games design being considered more of an art form, art schools in which the Bauhaus has the most influence are now starting up Game design courses teaching younger generations of designers and artist in the more creative and artistic side of the video game industry. The video game industry when it first started out had been mostly done by programmers and electronic engineers. This was until the late 1970s and early 80s when designers such as Shigeru Miyamoto started to make games like Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. For the most part the Bauhaus and it’s modern way of teaching the arts and crafts will be a great influence on modern games design due to games design now being accepted as a form of art in which now is being taught as a creative art rather than just a form of computing.

 

 

Interactive narrative

 

The example i have chosen is the King’s Quest series due to the first game at the time was one of the first text adventure like games to be even more immersive with animations and graphics. King’s Quest is a narrative adventure game released in 1984 by Sierra online. The game itself plays like a old text adventure game only with graphics and animations. The key concepts of interactive narrative is to tell a story though giving players choice on how the story plays out. In the case of King’s Quest the game uses interactive narrative to take the player on an adventure though key commands and in some of the games a point and click navigation system.

 

For modern day gaming Interactive narrative i believe still has a place in video games. As of now games are being more accepted as an art form and along with newer technology game designers will be able to create games with the story as the main aspect. Actually it’s already starting to happen today, companies like Telltale games are dedicated to creating games with Interactive narrative in mind. Also companies like Activision have recently revived Sierra for the sole purpose of making Interactive narrative/ adventure games such as the new King’s Quest game created by developer “The Odd Gentlemen” and released in 2015. So in conclusion Interactive narrative is a very important genre of gaming that still thrives in the gaming market just by looking at the sales of Telltale games alone.

 

The Indie game movement

 

Why could you say that the “Indie” game scene is not a new thing and explain, give examples ?

 

The Indie game scene as a whole was around long before 2008 when games like Braid and Super Meat Boy were either released or in development. The Indie game movement started near enough to the beginning of the Video game industry when you had electrical engineers like Steve Russell who made Space war the 1960s. Even companies who are considered to be huge companies now started out as what we would call today “Indie”, Activision for an example started out when 4 employees at Atari named Alan Miller, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan and David Crane, got sick and tired of the lack of credit they got from Atari for their games so decided to form their own company and publish their games on the Atari 2600. The Indie scene was also quite big during the 80s during the rise of PC gaming when games would come in floppy disks in little plastic bags, and all of these games like Zork and King’s Quest would then, going back to my earlier point with Activision these games would transform companies like Infocom and Sierra Online into bigger companies rather than just Indies. In conclusion the Indie game scene is definitely not a brand new thing instead being Indie is just a part of the gaming right from the very beginning and even companies that we would all consider to be these big and “evil” corporations had their start as a small indie company.

 

Has the term Indie become meaningless?

The term Indie technically mean well independent. So basically the term Indie is not meaningless in terms of the video game industry  because  indie games are still operated independently from bigger publishers. The only thing with the term Indie being meaningless is that Indie gaming has grown to the point that the term “Indie” can be overused to the extent that people could begin to feel that the term Indie can be meaningless. Although there are some “Indie” games that use the term poorly like Ubisofts Ode  which is marketed as “Indie” but yet is linked with one of the biggest companies in the industry. This is a great example of the term of Indie being overused as bigger companies like Ubisoft had been marketing their games as Indie when that really isn’t the case.

 

Human Computer Interaction

select one example to outline the key concepts of human-computer interaction. Reflect upon the role of the “human”, the “computer” and the “interaction”.

 

In terms of video gaming i will use the Nintendo Entertainment System from 1985 to help outline the key concepts of Human-computer interaction. The Nintendo Entertainment System when it first came out had given players a new design of a game controller for players, before the NES, games used joy sticks like on the Atari 2600 to control the characters in games. But the NES was one of the first home consoles to introduce the directional pad or “D-pad” for short. This gave players much more control for 2D games at the time and is still being used by modern consoles, which improved the Human-computer interaction for video games. The NES also had improved graphics and sound so then console games could add more complex storylines in games like the Legend of Zelda and Final fantasy just to name a few. Therefore adding more immersion for the human so they can feel like that they are part of the world that the designers had created.

 

discuss the relationship between games design and human-computer interaction

 

For the most part it would seem that the relationship between game design and human-computer interaction would seem to be the way that players uses the controls for the games that they play. Game genres will have different kinds of controls to fit the specific kind of game design. For an example adventure games like Monkey Island might use a point and click control system while games like a 2D platformer will use a D-pad and 1 or 2 buttons for the controls. Human-computer interaction is also used to help imerise the user in the game, say for an example a horror game like “PT” uses sounds and the design to help the user be afraid during play like how the designers intended. If “PT” was to say have more cartoony sound effects then if gives the user  unintended feelings that might make them laugh instead of screaming in terror. So in conclusion Human-computer interaction is a main and crucial part of games design as it is how the user interacts with the game is one of the first things that a game designer must think about during development.

 

A.I

 

Some definitions state that AI is when a system thinks/acts like a human and other definitions state that it is when a system thinks/acts rationally. Why do you suppose AI developers wish to hold up human intelligence as a standard rather than pure logic?

 

I think that AI developers desire to have AI with human intelligence due to the fact the pure logic is extremely flawed if we look into science fiction like Star Trek where a race known as the Vulcans who live with the mindset of pure logic had not been able to adapt to certain situations like a human character would. So if we look into this from that perspective AI needs to have some form of human intelligence so then A.I’s can adapt to overcome any kind of situation an A.I could encounter.

 

A lot of people are scared by the prospective of AI. What do you think would be the ramifications of us achieving true “strong” AI?

 

The problem with a “strong” AI is that if we do create a intelligence that is similar to that of humanity then you had created something as flawed as humanity itself. Furthermore by creating something like a human then society itself will need to answer questions like what are the rights that a AI is entitled to? What kind of jobs do have an AI do ? And do we replace humans with these “strong” AI? Also I personally feel that there is not much of point of having a AI with human intelligence cause if we do create a “strong” AI then wouldn’t we make ourselves as humans redundant as an AI would have the intelligence of a human being but will also never age unlike a human, would also not need to eat, drink and sleep unlike a human being. By making something better than ourselves be just like a human we would then be replacing humanity itself and there would not be any much of  a reason for humans to exist. But most of all if we do create a “strong” AI these AI’s would be missing the ability to be unique in its own right. Every human is unique if we were to try and replace ourselves with a AI but the AI cannot replace us as people due to the uniqueness of every human being which is the one thing that a A.I would never be able to do. Instead we would create a clone army of AI’s that think exactly the same way.

 

Copyright in video games

 

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

Copyright in terms of using copyright for video games is a great way to protect your game to avoid competitors from effectively stealing your ideas. However as far as i know you can’t copyright a game design so if a game had a certain feature in the games design like a health bar you can’t just copyright a feature, you can copyright the content just not a certain part of the games design. However this could cause some problems in the sense of having a bigger company do what you are currently doing with a bigger budget and therefore giving the smaller creators a disadvantage. Copyright however can be abused by large organisations on small content creators on online sites like YouTube as these “YouTubers” lose money that they make from these videos even though it all falls under the legal term “fair use” in which has caused huge amounts of problems legally.

 

Is it possible to make anything new?

Making a brand new thing is difficult from the sense of when a designer or artist tries to develop ideas they take inspiration from either something in real life or from another artist, which makes things extremely challenging for something to come out these days and for people to say that it’s completely original rather than the piece of art or game being compared to some other product that is similar as creators might of had gone to the same place for inspiration.

 

Reflective summary

 

Throughout the module I felt that I had effectively made my opinion known and was able to argue my points with the research and knowledge that I had. However I do think that it was quite difficult to gather good enough research of my own. Overall i felt that the module questions were quite interesting and really had me thinking on how these topics could affect the video game industry as a whole. Although these questions i felt were mostly opinion based so it did make research difficult cause i didn’t want to just write about someone else’s opinion, so what i did was just had my research as simple explanations on the individual topics and my research was also just mostly on the examples i had used to answer some of these questions. Overall i felt that i had gained more knowledge and confidence on these topics and debating about them. However i did find trying to find research a bit more difficult.

 

References

 

Bibliography

Bungie, 2011. O Brave New World. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtG6–4r_qk&t=608s>

ExtraCreditz, 2016. The Copyright Dilemma – On Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents – Extra Credits. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XQdPGV1AJU>

Anon, 2016. G4 Icons Season 4 Episode 10 – History of the NES (2005). [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zueuOYTZ1I>

G4Icons, 2012. G4 Icons Episode #5: Activision. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5reuUXssn4&t=190s>

G4Icons, 2012. G4 Icons Episode #6: Shigeru Miyamoto. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6voK6C10RRU>

Lumb, D., 2017. Ubisoft’s next indie game ‘Ode’ is out in the UK. [online] Engadget. Available at: <https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/27/ubisoft-s-next-indie-game-ode-is-out-in-the-uk/>

TEDxTalks, 2015. Solving real world problems through Human-Computer Interaction | Mandar Kulkarni | TEDxVITPune. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP4AWwp-5qY>

Yzzyxz, 2013. King’s Quest I playthrough (EGA version). [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0TLhR51uGY&t=269s>

coldfustion, 2017. A.I. is Progressing Faster Than You Think! [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQO2PcEW9BY>