Getting excited about the second year already!

At first I was just thinking about how good it will be to live in a house next year. I have had enough of living in halls, noisy flat mates that wake you at 4 in the morning and leave you nice suprises in the kitchen and hallway: such as wierd looking stains and other miscellaneous objects scattered around.
So yes definately excited about getting out of their. But just recently I have been feeling really excited about the course especially since I heard about the group project on the queens building. Best of all is that it will be a survival horror, my favourite style of game. "Nice choice Joel!"
In the mean time I know for a fact im enjoying our drawing lessons because were doing character design and it has left people in a frenzy to try and recreate some unusual looking creatures. As I have mentioned before though I couldnt help myself but to give a reason for my character and make a whole background on it.
What I was most proud of with my character was that I got my desired reaction out of chris during the drawing assessment. He found it funny and yet fairly disturbing.
"BRILLIANT A SUCCESS!"
My very first design for a character I can honestly say im happy with. Usually they end with me just giving up cause the proportion is wrong or I cant be bothered to try a 6th time, their are better things to do like play games hahaha.
But getting back to what im looking forward too, I cant wait for when we start doing scenes and landscapes. I dont know what it is I can draw them again and again and I find it hard to get bored. One thing I will say is that im definately my worst critic as I beleive that I have never done a good drawing. You would think that beleiving that would stop me from trying when actually I always just want to make it better than it is.
I actually think it is because I want the drawing to look as it is in my head, but as of yet my imagination wins hands down.
It makes me hopefull to think that a picture like this can be painted so easily using watercolour. Maybe I can too?
Till next time cya.

Just a quick moan.

What are they thinking canceling events on people.
EA need a good kick up the bum if you ask me. In actual fact their now even dumber than i thought they were due to their incredible ability of pissing off their own customers. It would serve them right if no one turned up.
I actually got quite excited about going, I had not been to an event like game on for about 2 years and it was a chance for EA to prove themselves to me but know I'am just annoyed that they didn't even try.
I would of quite happily payed for my seat on a coach, but no that requires too much brain power to muster up a coach.
I think I would very much like to see the look on their face when they realise their sales have dropped because some moron didn't organise a coach properly!
If you never intended to let as many as they were go then why bother having the stupid thing in the first place. They would be better off spending their time getting good at making games, seeing as that is their job, instead of waisting on mindless events they dont have a clue how to organise.
Well I dont know about you but I feel alot better.
If I still feel annoyed tomorrow, I will have to just wind up the guest lecture about the many reasons why it is stupid to even consider calling any game serious.
Next he will be telling me he feels the need to call films serious or pieces of music.
Should make for an interesting day after all ha ah ha ha!

Gaming Culture and how I'am a part of it.

Gaming cultures are what makes up the world around games, such as its influences on magazines, television and even toy sales.
Games have now become so much more than a few hours playing on a machine. It now requires a bit more, well lets say respect as it unfolds into more of a life style.
People now spend most of their time playing games or downloading ringtones of their favourite game theme. My favourite tune is the music from Final Fantasy 7. For those die hard FF fans my ring tone at the moment is The Jenova boss theme.
So I guess this brings me to elaborating on what forms of Gaming Culture I'am apart of then and well, where to start. Their is so much stuff surrounding the gaming industry it would be madness to try and be apart of it all.
In terms of things I get my knowledge from and news of events and releases I would have to say it was mainly taken from the internet for its easy accessability. But for detailed reveiws and insite I like to get hold of the unOfficial magazines for those juicy comments and sometimes hilarious pics of how they have found strange ways to exploit mistakes.
I think my most dominent place in gaming culture for the last couple of years has been socializing with other people. Thats with people I know really well and also with people I dont know at all.
I started to socially play games when I visited my local internet cafe, where tournaments online were played to win a £50 prize. For more info or just plain nozyness, you can visit thier website on www.SKEGZONE.com. Unfortunately I never did win but it was done by frag Loto where you get a Loto ticket for every kill you get and then a ticket is randomly selected.
Good fun though, mainly because of its social aspect. You can talk face to face with other people entering from where you are and have text conversations with others in the country who are entered as well.
Another part of social gaming is MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) a great invention for playing out a life of your custom built hero, while interacting with both real people playing as well and AI computer players. From playing them myself and having my own Guild on Guild Wars, I have had connections with people I have never met in my life before.
I still find myself using Xfire chat and having people from the game ask me for help with their computer or even find that play another game that I do. Where we would team up again on a different game entirely and so on. Before you know it you find yourself in front of your computer night after night playing a game with someone you may never actually meet. Quite scary really!
But the ultimate no no is The World of Warcraft known to the online gaming world as the stealer of souls. The reason for this is that it requires you to play so often that you never play any other game again, and that is a terrible thing indeed.
Another piece of gaming culture is events such as E3 where its a chance for you to go and try out all of the games companys latest ideas in action. And is a chance for the games companys to try bombard you with as much crap as possible. Like telling you that their the best and that this games has the best graphics ever or that it is the largest game ever made.... But you gotta love that enthusiasm! Ha ha ah. Priceless.
My favourite part of events such as E3 are the people you see dressed as their favourite characters. That mostly happens when its in Japan but I see a future that that may start to spread to other places. I think if I had to choose to dress as a character I would be Axel from Streets of Rage. Gloves and All!!!
Till next time cya.

The Game Industry

If the games industry was'nt around, I would never be writing this blog, so in a way im really glad it is, as I feel it allows me to freely express my views about, well things.
In the last 20 years games and their companys have changed to suit their financial situation.
In other words it has been said by Chris Crawford that "video games are dead."
(Chris Crawford is the man standing in the picture below giving a lecture at standford 2003)
Chris Crawford is featured in an interview displayed in full on:
http://gamasutra.com/features/20060612/murdey_01.shtml


In this interview he explains how he sees the state of the industry today as apose to the industry during the 80's.
He beleives that their is no new ideas in todays market and that by producing the same "recycled" ideas they will never encourage new customers to the gaming world.
In his belief and I would have to agree, that looking at the the gaming industry during the 80's. The ideas of which were made and designed were never before seen and the same could be said about all of industrys history before that.
But it begs the question, is the industry dead. I dont believe it is because as I have mentioned in a past blog. Me and sophie had a chat about how far games can go and is their any limit to how far we can push them.
And we came to the conclusion that their had to be a limit to one factor in particular and that was Graphics. We had decided and agreed that the graphics of a game can only get as realistic as real life itself, and that to surpass that was way beyond technology we have todate.
This would then either cause the inevertable death of games that Crawford seems so adament will happen if new ideas are not created, or in some attempt to secure their futures. Companys will be forced to experiment with never before seen elemnts.
In my oppinion I think that that will make for interesting watching and makes me glad that I might be apart of its future.
Working in the industry at the moment can vary not only on your position in it but who you are positioned with. In conversations with various tutors I have heard about a student who went to work for a top games company and then left because he felt it was to structured.
If that is true and they are to structured, does that mean that maybe Crawford is right and because of this strict structure to how a game is made is applied to all of them then they truely are recycling the same ideas and leaving absolutely no room for imagination.
This I find to be very dissapointing indeed as it is my love of just thinking up random things and getting my imaginative juices really flowing that got me into wanting to be apart of the industry in the first place. Which gets me thinking about our drawing work this week about creating a character. It has taken a huge amount of thinking and just plain old imagination to conjer up these wier but usually fantastic ideas.
I over hear people talking and they cant help themselves give these characters an identity and even a whole world around them. I cant talk as I have done exactly the same.
But at the end of the day if that imagination is still their and people are still experimenting, then maybe there is hope for the games industry after all. Maybe?
Till next time cya.