Today we had a lecture from Matthew Applegate, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed this lecture because it is interesting to hear about how he progressed to become who he is today.
The most interesting bit for me was the when he talked about how to get more known within the community you work in and with the communities that are close to what you do. Asking for peoples business cards can be a powerful thing, its not something that you should be ashamed of doing, asking for someones business card is a way to get you more well known, it puts your name out there and means that people will have your name to hand. This is something that just proves the age old saying of, its not what you know, its who you know.
Applegate also touched on how the advertising game works for games, and how you will almost always have to pay people to simply review your game, this gets into the controversial topic of people paying for a good review and getting more publicity through the use of their wallet.
Another interesting topic that Applegate touched on the topic of how large companies treat people like 'property', this is something that he was saying that companies can get people to sign a contract that is basically people signing over everything they create when they get hired. This is something that is pretty interesting, because when you work for a big company they basically own you... therefore you will have different rules that govern what you can and cant do.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the talk from Applegate, it was very informative and enjoyable, I really am glad I went to it.
Monday 16 March 2015
Friday 6 March 2015
Pervasive Games
During a lecture we learnt about pervasive games, these included games such as killer, which is a role playing game played in universities and colleges.
The game killer is where student, in the example of a uni or college, play undercover assassins that have to assassinate other people taking part in the game. At the same time of having a target to assassinate they have to watch out for the assassin that is also after them. To assassinate a participant you can either shoot them with a Nerf gun or use an alarm clock as a pretend bomb. This game can be derived back to the 1953 short story, "The Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckley.
"La Decima Vittima" or "The 10th Victim" was an Italian made film, directed by Elio Petri, which told the story of The Seventh Victim, it was released in 1965 and sparked two sequels by the names of Victim Prime and Victim.
La Decima Vittima was an interesting watch to say the least, with every scene complicating me more and more. That said, I could not stop watching, every bad scene was accompanied by endless humor and laughter, which I cant actually tell if that was intended or an accident. In the film there is a group of people who are assassins and a group who are victims, and as the roles suggest the assassins hunt the victims, but this isn't the key part of the story, the most important part of this story is Marcello Polletti, played by Marcello Mastroianni (easy to remember Marcello plays Marcello), Marcello is a world famous assassin in a world where countries no longer fight wars, they instead have assassins to assassinate the other countries assassins, this resolves the conflict. Marcello is the assassin for Italy and has been payed to assassinate Caroline Meredith, the assassin of America, who just so happens to have been payed to assassinate Marcello as well. They spend most of the film doing a little 'dance' with each other teasing and trying to trick the other person, with more and more elaborate assassination attempts, i think if lost track after i saw a crocodile being put in a swimming pool waiting for someone to be catapulted by a hidden spring into the pool. However, the climax to this film comes as Caroline betrays Marcello by shooting him with his own gun on TV for the advert she was paid for. However.... Plot twist time.... Marcello had changed the bullets in his gun for blanks and faked his own death only to shoot her on TV for the money the same people had promised him.... wait WHAT?!?!? oh it gets better, after everyone chanting that she should have drunk more Ming Tea and Marcello sulks away it turns out that she isn't dead...... and after a light hearted sexist comment about women and a small fist fight, Marcellos ex wife and mistress turn up shooting.
Over all I lost track of the main plot line through out most of the films and felt that half of it was confusing, however i enjoyed it a lot and thought it was an enjoyable film for some laughs, not sure if that was intended or not.
Any way, back to pervasive games, this isn't a film review.
In the game of killer, that i spoke about earlier, there is a considerable overlap between the real world and the game world, this means that the game world, or where the game happens, is in the same place as the real world, or life and/or work and/or education. More simply put, people in a person real world who aren't participating in the game world are asked question about the game world, and real people who are unaware of the game world, may become alarmed about actions happening in the game world, as to them, it is the real world.
This link between the real world and game world has a concept called the "magic circle" as a debated topic around it. The idea that spoke to me most was Montola, who stated that for hard-core gamers, there is no magic circle between the real world and game world, gaming has become ordinary and a 'way of life' so for them, the real world and game world are basically one. Montola cited Pargman and Jacobsson for this and using Malaby he states) Gaming isn't separate from the real world like the magic circle suggest, but has become and more and more so each day, part of every day life, it is become a part of the real world and because of it there are consequences in it.
That last part to me is something i can link back to a blog i did a few days ago about computer games. How a game like GTA can be criticized and sued for influencing people to do all manner of things that they may usually not do. This to me is clear evidence that there is a much larger link between real life and game life that some people don't realize, that games can be something that can influence certain people and that certain people take game life more seriously than they take their own real life.
Even outside of computer games people are considered to be taking game to seriously, and example of this is the street wars that used to happen in London where a group of people would have a massive water fight on the streets of London. This became an issue when innocent bystanders had their day 'ruin' because of people taking the game seriously. Now i am a strong believer that games are important and are something that are going to take a more and more integral role in every day life in the future, but i can agree that they need to be maintained and controlled, a computer game is less of an issue because you mainly play those at your home, however a large water fight, where it might be enjoyable for those taking part could get out of hand and is a lot harder to monitor, and the second it becomes something that gets in the way of someones real life, it becomes and bigger issue.
An answer to this would be a game played in San Francisco where people walk in groups of people and either greet, compliment or point out a destination, to each group and form larger groups of people until one group remains. This game is something that can be played out in the real world and still be something that never gets in the way of people not taking part, it is also a game that could be just as enjoyable as the killer game, hunting people to greet for example. and never have the issue of influencing people to do bad things. I mean who ever greeted someone to death.
The game killer is where student, in the example of a uni or college, play undercover assassins that have to assassinate other people taking part in the game. At the same time of having a target to assassinate they have to watch out for the assassin that is also after them. To assassinate a participant you can either shoot them with a Nerf gun or use an alarm clock as a pretend bomb. This game can be derived back to the 1953 short story, "The Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckley.
"La Decima Vittima" or "The 10th Victim" was an Italian made film, directed by Elio Petri, which told the story of The Seventh Victim, it was released in 1965 and sparked two sequels by the names of Victim Prime and Victim.
La Decima Vittima was an interesting watch to say the least, with every scene complicating me more and more. That said, I could not stop watching, every bad scene was accompanied by endless humor and laughter, which I cant actually tell if that was intended or an accident. In the film there is a group of people who are assassins and a group who are victims, and as the roles suggest the assassins hunt the victims, but this isn't the key part of the story, the most important part of this story is Marcello Polletti, played by Marcello Mastroianni (easy to remember Marcello plays Marcello), Marcello is a world famous assassin in a world where countries no longer fight wars, they instead have assassins to assassinate the other countries assassins, this resolves the conflict. Marcello is the assassin for Italy and has been payed to assassinate Caroline Meredith, the assassin of America, who just so happens to have been payed to assassinate Marcello as well. They spend most of the film doing a little 'dance' with each other teasing and trying to trick the other person, with more and more elaborate assassination attempts, i think if lost track after i saw a crocodile being put in a swimming pool waiting for someone to be catapulted by a hidden spring into the pool. However, the climax to this film comes as Caroline betrays Marcello by shooting him with his own gun on TV for the advert she was paid for. However.... Plot twist time.... Marcello had changed the bullets in his gun for blanks and faked his own death only to shoot her on TV for the money the same people had promised him.... wait WHAT?!?!? oh it gets better, after everyone chanting that she should have drunk more Ming Tea and Marcello sulks away it turns out that she isn't dead...... and after a light hearted sexist comment about women and a small fist fight, Marcellos ex wife and mistress turn up shooting.
Over all I lost track of the main plot line through out most of the films and felt that half of it was confusing, however i enjoyed it a lot and thought it was an enjoyable film for some laughs, not sure if that was intended or not.
Any way, back to pervasive games, this isn't a film review.
In the game of killer, that i spoke about earlier, there is a considerable overlap between the real world and the game world, this means that the game world, or where the game happens, is in the same place as the real world, or life and/or work and/or education. More simply put, people in a person real world who aren't participating in the game world are asked question about the game world, and real people who are unaware of the game world, may become alarmed about actions happening in the game world, as to them, it is the real world.
This link between the real world and game world has a concept called the "magic circle" as a debated topic around it. The idea that spoke to me most was Montola, who stated that for hard-core gamers, there is no magic circle between the real world and game world, gaming has become ordinary and a 'way of life' so for them, the real world and game world are basically one. Montola cited Pargman and Jacobsson for this and using Malaby he states) Gaming isn't separate from the real world like the magic circle suggest, but has become and more and more so each day, part of every day life, it is become a part of the real world and because of it there are consequences in it.
That last part to me is something i can link back to a blog i did a few days ago about computer games. How a game like GTA can be criticized and sued for influencing people to do all manner of things that they may usually not do. This to me is clear evidence that there is a much larger link between real life and game life that some people don't realize, that games can be something that can influence certain people and that certain people take game life more seriously than they take their own real life.
Even outside of computer games people are considered to be taking game to seriously, and example of this is the street wars that used to happen in London where a group of people would have a massive water fight on the streets of London. This became an issue when innocent bystanders had their day 'ruin' because of people taking the game seriously. Now i am a strong believer that games are important and are something that are going to take a more and more integral role in every day life in the future, but i can agree that they need to be maintained and controlled, a computer game is less of an issue because you mainly play those at your home, however a large water fight, where it might be enjoyable for those taking part could get out of hand and is a lot harder to monitor, and the second it becomes something that gets in the way of someones real life, it becomes and bigger issue.
An answer to this would be a game played in San Francisco where people walk in groups of people and either greet, compliment or point out a destination, to each group and form larger groups of people until one group remains. This game is something that can be played out in the real world and still be something that never gets in the way of people not taking part, it is also a game that could be just as enjoyable as the killer game, hunting people to greet for example. and never have the issue of influencing people to do bad things. I mean who ever greeted someone to death.
Sunday 1 March 2015
Iterating Ancient Games:
After learning about a few different kinds of ancient games we were tasked with iterating these games to try to either improve or modernize the games.
Some of these games are the oldest records of games found and recorded, however there could be thousands that were lost to time, even the games we have now could have been played differently all around the world. My take from this is that the ancient games played back then, have them selves already been iterated in the process of understanding, because they may have been miss interpreted. they could be very different, or they could be perfectly accurate. This is something we learnt about when we had a visit to the British museum.
When iterating these games I found that although i could think of many different little things to do to the game, it still felt like the same game at the base, which is something that is carried through the years, games should have underlying mechanics and a base system that means that if the game is tweaked the game will still feel the same, it will still elicit the same emotions out of people, the same enjoyment and the same reason to want to play.
Through iterating the ancient game I chose, and hearing about the ancient games that other people chose to iterating i can easily see how these could both already been iterated versions of the games or be the exact game that was played when the game was invented. This is something that I find very interesting, the fact that people have an innate affinity for playing games. I also find it funny to think that in the year 2015 I am sitting at my computer playing games with friends and having a laugh, yet over 4000 years ago the Royal Game of Ur was being played by people, some of which could have been my age, and they could have been getting the same level of enjoyment out of it as i do my games now.
Even though game have changed drastically since then and no one could ever have imagined what they would become, what the world would become, they still hold the same values we learn about today, they offer a balanced game which can offer both skill and talent to win the game faster, it has the same fiero you get when completing or winning it. This is something i will always remember to take into account when making games in the future, that even over 4000 years ago people we designing games that had the same intentions of today, after you strip away the fancy graphics and the computers, and look right down at the core of the game, they are similar, but different. Where will games go next.
Games Britannia : Joystick Generation
This part of Games Britannia is the third part in the three part series and talks about the joystick generation. This was the part of the series that almost solely based around the video game development of Britain. Something that was touched on was that some games had caused outrage, these games included Carmageddon and GTA. Carmegeddon was a game about running people over to score points, which included blood and gore and a sense of enjoyment, this caused outrage because it was promoting violence. This was a very similar story to GTA a game that had the player killing people and dealing drugs. These are both games that people believe cause violence in the real world when people either learn things or carry violence into the outside world. This is the reason games like this are given an 18 certificate to avoid this kind of behavior from appearing in children.
Despite people thinking these types of games cause a bit of uproar, they brought a different kind of game, a new style of play. This style of play was free roam, it gave the play the ability to do what they want, the player could chose to go where they wanted and interact with the world in a whole host of different ways. This is what made the games such a big success, because each player could play the game in any way they chose.
There are groups of people who have actively sought to take the game to court in an attempt to achieve a higher age rating. Where I can agree that the violent nature of some games mean they should have a high age rating, i don't agree that because of the actions of some people that don't necessarily have any thing to do with the game, that the game should be criticized and removed from the market because of actions of these people.
Despite people thinking these types of games cause a bit of uproar, they brought a different kind of game, a new style of play. This style of play was free roam, it gave the play the ability to do what they want, the player could chose to go where they wanted and interact with the world in a whole host of different ways. This is what made the games such a big success, because each player could play the game in any way they chose.
There are groups of people who have actively sought to take the game to court in an attempt to achieve a higher age rating. Where I can agree that the violent nature of some games mean they should have a high age rating, i don't agree that because of the actions of some people that don't necessarily have any thing to do with the game, that the game should be criticized and removed from the market because of actions of these people.
Friday 27 February 2015
Games Britannia "Monopolies and Mergers":
This second part of the three part series took a look at the way games had influenced Britain over the last two hundred years. Woolley showed us how the board games had been altered as a method of teaching moral dilemmas, which had a surprisingly political and social impact as an outcome.
Once this style of board game was taken to america it had to be changed to fit the american dream style of play that people had come to expect in america. This lead the game developers to make a lot of money. This paved the way for the most popular board game in history, monopoly, a game that came about through the transfer of money between players and the want to own as much as possible during the great depression, This game is part of the holy trinity of board games, Cluedo, Scrabble and of course Monopoly. These three games all have a feeling of reality and aura of real life to them, which was the main reason for their success. This is something that has continued to be used in games today, an example of which is war on terror.
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