How Vein? Ergonomics

It is the same with all things really.
When you buy a coat, we naturally or maybe i should say i naturally go for what looks best on me and not really the coat that may keep me warm in the winter months. Which may explain why i have this cold.
But i feel we are drawn to all things beautiful, but the beauty of that is *no pun intended, that we all find different things to be beautiful.
Which reminds me of one of our drawing trips to the museum with chris. The floor was coverd in butterflies and i heard someone say they were beautiful and i dissagree they disgust me with their pointless exsistence and moth like resemblence.
Consoles have been many shapes and sizes as shown on this timeline http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050523/console_timeline/
It's funny when i think i used think the nintendo entertainment system looked cool but in my oppinion it doesnt matter, because all true gamers know Retro is what its all about.
Im putting this link in because it just makes me laugh looking at that PS3 controller.
http://ps3.qj.net/The-Ergonomics-Behind-the-PS3-Controller/pg/49/aid/503
I only have one word to say and thats Bannanaramma. It has also bin called the frisbe, the boomarang and the jaw bone. All these are fine and relevent i might add. As it is obvious to see from the link that they had not made the controller for looks, but in fact to just sit in your hand better, as shown brilliantly by the little demo video of a guys hands. Which is more than what microsoft have done for people. Their XBox controller should come with a heavy lifting warning like bend your knees or please do not carry for more than 5 seconds or it will cause perminent damage to your lower back. Better still it should come with its own stand. No but seriously what were they thinking.
The controllers for consoles are changing and developing as quick if not quicker than the consoles themselves.
I feel that they are making games to widely spread across the consoles that your never quite sure what sort of game your gonna get. The graphics may be worse than others and worst of all the controller's buttons are different and they may be harder to play.
I was playing SSX tricky at Hicks flat and he has it for the XBox but i have it for the PS2.
The probem is for those of you who have never played the game, you use the shouder buttons to do your moves. Hear lies the problem the XBox only has 2 shoulder buttons to the PS2's 4.
Instead the XBox requires you to ues a different set of buttons which happen to be far harder to use.
This is an important issuse of which seems overlooked time and time again. When companys make games for multiple consoles they have to take into consideration the many assets of graphics and gameplay being effected by controllers.
If they continue to ignore this problem it is only going to get worse as consoles are becoming more individual. The special Wii controller is a great example of things to come and difficultys to over come.
Till next time cya

Story Time

Yeah the storyline of games now that is a talking point, but where to start, at the beginning of course. (sry force of habbit.)
It always been a question of do games need to have storylines or is it that it just happened without us knowing.
I believe them both to be true in a way because if we look at early games such as the classic space invaders, even that as competely basic as the game was had a very simple storyline to it, which was that it was up to you to destroy the invading aliens.
The argument begins when you start confusing storline with telling you how to play. You see the aim would be the same if it were invading frogs except the storline would change.
As games have become more detailed so have their storylines.
Just picking a genre at random erm.... First Person Shooter (FPS) Doom was quite basic graphics and simple story. Just blow up every alien you see and hope for the best was always the best tactic for that game i always found.
If you look at halo or the new Doom3 made some years later they still have very simular gameplay, as in pray and spray! But the story has improved greatly.
This is i feel a good thing as in if the storyline is gripping you become emersed in the game and can start to beleive you are these characters trapped in another world or that it is your team of soldiers thats dying out there. It is this that gives you the insentive to play more and get of this alien world or go and save your team.
The story is what adds just that extra enjoyment out of games that i have come to love so much.
As you are probably aware im a big final fantasy fan and if i was choose one thing i feel is the reason i love them so much then i would have to pick their story. Why else did they feel they could make sequels. They even made one sequel a film, final fantasy advent children, which i might add i was so eager to see i got a Japanese version 1 month before its UK release. It still sounds cooler to hear them speak japanese, but it was cool just hearing them speak.
Going back to the subject i feel that some games need more detailed storylines than others. For example Role Paying Games (RPG)'s are story based games, so without a half decent story they fail before they even began. Games like tony hawk's skateboarding and other sports titled games dont need complicated storys as they are played more for their gameplay and detailed accuracy for real life.
But as i have said time and time again no matter what the game, wether the story and gameplay are terrible, games developers are bent on creating the perfect graphics.
But they dont excist....do they?

testing, testing, 123

What is going on with my blog.???
The blog was saying i cant post...
....get the upgrade....
...upgrade failed....
now you can post. WWWWWHHHHAAAAATTT!!!!!
Anyway at least this will post.
Oh man have i got some catching up to do.
*only a blur can be seen*

Art Director

After listening to the guest lecture i can happily say that i know more about how important an art director is.
The art director is hired to look over and guide the artists. It is up to them to look over the art style guide and see that it is followed correctly.
The artists will naturally have different styles and the art director is their to make sure that the styles of these artists stay consistent and continue to do so through the entire of the game.
If they fails to do so the game will be a mix of styles and will look messy and most of all not get made.
An art director needs to be able to have a strong understanding in the aspects needed for these artists, such as schedules, programmes, understanding someone else's vision and problem solving.
I believe that it is important that the director can see and evaluate each part of the process. It would also be impossible for the director to solve any technical problems the artists may be having if he is unaware of the software they are using. This becomes more difficult when you consider the forever growing industry of games and how more advanced and sometimes ever so much more complicated developing games has become. The director must make sure they are aware of these changers and alterations as much as if not more than the artists themselves.
This in turn shows that being an art director is a difficult one at best and to be one is to be the best. The importance of their job is obvious, they are essential in keeping your team of artists working as one rather than 6, 10, 12 different styles all thrown into a game engine.
It makes feel i would enjoy being an art director in some years to come, as i can get as excited about my own ideas as much as i can someone else. But as i see the workload they have to deal with i know im a long way off being ready for that job just yet.

From Pong to Next-Gen?

Games have come so far and done so well to be considered a buisness in its own right but do we actualy know what it means to own a game.
I have always asked this question as i have ever since i was small, classed many things as gaming, for instance just paying a game of football in your garden can be considered a game.
But it was not untill the creation of multi-media gaming that a true meaning for playing games truely arrived. You thought i was goingto say that football was great too, wel you would e wrong. Some dare to say it is foolish to play computer games but my question for them is then why do millions apon milions of games get sold every week?
Going back to what i said their are some games that have even originated from board games, like Dungeons and Dragons, which has seen the release of games like Baldur's Gate and NeverWinter Nights. This connection is important but should never ever be mistaken as the same thing.
What is gameplay?
How i would answer this is that i beleive this to be how games keep and continue to keep their connection to every other type of game, the fact that this is a muti-media gaming society makes this simple. It is what describes the interaction with the machine and person. In simple if games are'nt fun no-one would play them and the game would fail.
This is a perfect chance to use the Wii again as an example, with the great and new ways of interacting with the games it has to offer it shows that they have a good chance of having better gameplay. Or at least thats whats on the minds of all the Nintendo fans as they have to try and ignore how much that name SUX!!
When i went through some of the links for this task i was quite suprised to find this:
"Fortunately, direct recourse to paleontology is unnecessary. A trip to the zoo will suffice. There we find two lion cubs wrestling near their mother. They growl and claw at each other. They bite and kick. One cub wanders off and notices a butterfly. It crouches in the grass, creeps ever so slowly toward its insect prey, then raises its haunches, wiggles them, and pounces. We laugh at the comedy; we say that the cubs are playing a game, that they are having fun, and that they are such fun-loving, carefree creatures."
This is one thing i had never thought about, it talks about why we play games and that we were wrong to think that we were the first to make them as shown very well in the extract above.
So if we did not event games because anything that is fun is a game, then we deffinately get a tropy for how we developed ways of having fun. These interactions create the fun and that is exactly what the gameplay means is a game fun.
Most maybe 9 out of 10 games fail to be successful if they lack on gameplay.
This is the most interesting comment i found when doing my research on Gameplay as a word. It is such a common used word that it was hard to pin-point an exact meaning but this was deffinately the one that stood out the most.
"Many current game design theorists from the background of art theory argue that gameplay is a largely meaningless or empty term, superseded by other concepts established in the repertoire of perception, anthropology, and general diversified psychology."
I would say from a personal view of games i find it hard to pick the perfect combination for my perfect game, but if i were to put myself on the spot. The first thing that just lately all i seem to hear from people is the game was'nt long enough and it ended to soon. This is the first thing that i would try to fix but my only fear is that when games are made to be longer the story suffers.
I find for me to dicover the story and interact with the characters is my form of fun. I feel the acomplishment of unlocking the story as you progress than that of a film with no interaction at all. I think for that reason it was people like me who created DvD board games.
So as to keep games in check through their development they keep to a set design principles, this so that a game does not go off track and hopefully gives the desired result but my fear of this standard way of constructing games is that it is destroying the creativity of games. When new games come out that have tried something new, the media ignore it and let it pass by. This is wrong they should be praised from the mountains, but instead they are forced to go back to the same usual tactics of game development and develop the same old stuff.
Dont get me wrong we need structure without it we would fail but they forget they are just guide lines and not gods law. I would like them to mix it up a bit like an RPG-first person shooter, a Tekken style fighter with the limitless free will of games like GTA San Andreas.
They are all the types of games i would love to try. All we need is for companys to realise what gamers really want rather than worrying about graphics ike the 360 or whimpering on about how powerful their console is like Ps3. WE DONT CARE! we want games that are fun and playable. Im not sure we even have a leading light in game design but i love the Final Fantasy's as they are the closest i have seen to my perect game.
Till next time cya.

Game Journalism

I wasnt sure how to start this one so i thought i would start with a comment by Kieron Gillen:
"The games press is often painted as corrupt, lazy and – as I mentioned – fundamentally stupid. This is because we tend to be corrupt, lazy and fundamentally stupid."
I would have to agree my oppinion of games press comes pretty close to his description. I have read so many pieces of journalism in magazines and on game sites that i feel quite familiar with the usual bantar. The one thing i have come to realize through my own experience is that the official game magazines have terrible rewiews on low budget games and great cant fault them reviews for high budget games. But i just think their in each others pockets. I always find that some of the best games are those that get past by because its been made by an unknown company trying to get on the market.
Thats why i go on all the un-official sites and go out of my way to get certian mags that i can trust their judgement.
But like Keiron said on his work-blog, the games press are like developers they have too many redicoulous time limits on which they have to keep. But in result dont actually give an accurate account of any game.
In a small conclusion of what i just said games press are lazy because they dont get enough time to write accurate reports on games. And so some fools who cant think for themselves follow all these stupid wabbles of mindless dribble thinking it the complete truth.
You just cant beat good honest gaming where you get the chance to play it and make your own mind up.
In their diffence they have alot to contend with, like games themselves they have alot of competition and if i was writing a review of a game i would like to think it was taken seriously.
Alot of these things occur due to the publishers of magazines and wesites as they are who pay them for doing their review. If the publisher does'nt feel its good enough then the journalist is out of a job.
In the end this is good for the industry as it keeps it fresh and makes people work harder than usual to achieve something great. The bad points are that on occasion it has got tiresome to hear about about the same 3 games again and again. But having said that the oppinions of the game every time you hear it begin to vary and that allows you to make your decision based apon what they have said and what you feel they told was the truth and not something they now sounds like a good story soneone would want to read.
Most reviews are written subjectively as they dont really have much fact about them due to them being a form of oppinion. Though it is possible to make a review of a game entirely subjective it would be very hard for you to make on entirely objective review as to use entire fact you would have to be inside the mind of the person who made it.
And lets face it thats not gonna happen now is it...
Cya next time