This week’s lecture was by Nigel Kershaw. Nigel is a game designer who is currently working on Broken Sword series for mobile platforms. He has great experience in an industry he has worked in for 25 years, working on numerous games. The main subject of this week’s talk was about what a game designer does. A job that is often misunderstood by people from outside of the games industry. Nigel went on to explain that a designers job is to create something that has interactive unlike movies which are a passive experience. Nigel believes that games hold more in common with activities such as football and card games due to their interactivity. A problem with this is that most things can be described as interactive so a game must have different traits; Participation, Structure, emotional involvement, engagement and flow. Most importantly a game designer must create something that is “FUN”. An article on brianwill.net entitled what is fun describes how “the definition of fun gets hung up on the distinction between fun and entertainment”. Brian believes that fun can be generated by different emotions and that plenty of passive experiences have been described as fun. Brian also believes that games push a multitude of different emotions which is what makes them more engaging than a passive experience. This directly contradicts what Nigel believes in that fun can be sourced from both passive and interactive mediums (Will 2012). Raph Koster has a similar theory of what fun is, in his book entitled ‘Theory of Fun’. He believes that fun is source of enjoyment. The source of enjoyment can range from physical stimuli, aesthetic appreciation or direct chemical manipulation. Raph Koster hits on a different point and digs deeper into the point of what is fun and why games are fun and how they become boring. He believes that fun arises from mastery and comprehension of games and the act of solving the game. What Raph is saying is that learning is what makes games fun. An example of this is noughts and crosses as a new player to the game it provides a challenge but an adult will pick up the pattern very quickly. Once the pattern is mastered the game will become boring and trivial as you are no longer learning and the brain is no longer being stimulated. (Raph, 2012) An article on Nils Blog takes a more direct approach and a clear guide on what games have to consist of to be called a game. The article also gives a list of traits a game must have to be fun. The author believes that for games to be called fun it must have goals that are worth the journey, the journey must not be frustrating; the journey needs to keep the players mind busy. It is touch on upon in the article that if a game is frustrating the player is not going to think that the journey is worth making (Nils Blog 2011).
In conclusion to this week’s talk is that there are many theory’s on what a game is and what a games has to do to be fun. A common theme is that most of these people believe that there are differences between other forms of media and games. They believe that a game has more depth than other mediums. ms of media and games. They believe that a game has more depth than other mediums. Will, B. (2012). “What is Fun” [online] Available at: http://brianwill.net/blog/2012/02/ [Accessed 02/02/14] Nils Blog. (2012). “What Games Are” [Online] Available at: http://nilsmmoblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/what-games-are.html [Accessed 02/02/14] Raph, K. (2012) “Theory of Fun”. Scottsdale: Paraglyth Press Inc. P40. Will, B. (2012). “What is Fun” [online] Available at: http://brianwill.net/blog/2012/02/ [Accessed 02/02/14]
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This week Marc Littlemore spoke about jobs in the games industry and how to break through into games. One piece of advice he gave to designers was to develop and publish games while at university. The software he believes is becoming a major part of the games industry and is helping small developers is Unity 3D. Unity 3D is a development programme that allows users to easily develop and publish games to their chosen store like IOS. Currently Unity Technologies claims that they have two million registered developers and four hundred thousand active developers. It has been used to make games from start-ups to big companies, games such as last year’s big hit The Full Bright Company’s “Gone Home” and big mobile titles such as N-Fusion and Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: The Fall. This tool is used throughout the Bolton Games Design course and is currently allowing students to create 2D and 3D games for their Portfolio project. A way in which Unity has supported small developers and students is providing them with free tools to publish to IOS and Android. Previously a developer would have to pay around $800 for the mobile development tools which can be out of reach for some small developers and students (Brodkin, 2013). This has now made Marc Littlemore’s advice about publishing games during the time at university a possibility.
Unity Technologies is currently working with Sony to support the PS4 for release in 2014 (Chapple. 2013). With Sony’s move to support indie development it will only be a short time until any designer can have an idea and publish to a home console with minimum fuss. Another topic Marc Littlemore spoke about was job stability. He showed us how many of the studios he had worked for that no longer exist. This was about 80% of the studios he had worked at which demonstrated how volatile the games industry can be. The CEO of Tantalus, Crago in an interview with Gamasutra explains how situations can change and how a profitable company can run into financial trouble (Gaft, 2013). He tells of how the studio ran into difficulty during a project porting Mass effect to the Wii U and over this time he had to lay off staff to keep the company running, he also blames the fact the industry is transitioning at the moment and he failed to read the change. This is a sad example of a studio that has supported itself for many years and a bad project can have a huge effect on people. In this case the studio managed to survive but cuts had to be made and in an industry with few positions it can be very hard for these people to get back in. Tantalus is a fairly large company with many employees but this problem can effect start up in a similar way. A recent closure of Rivit Studios in Manchester at the end of 2013 had an adverse effect on recent graduates who had never worked at a games studio before. Rivit had been running for a few years and was a team of mainly graduates who put everything they had to release games that they could put their names to. As failed projects piled up and confidence in the studio was lost and the studio had to close its door a week before Christmas. This left many of the staff in a difficult position and left them questioning if a job in the games industry was for them. These two examples of studios struggling are prevalent in the games industry and is something that happens with all business. If the company is using all the available money on the current project and it flops it could spell the end of that business. This means having a permanent position in the games industry is rare. Brodkin. J, (2013), “How Unity3D Became A Game-Development Beast” [Online] Available at: http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/how-unity3d-become-a-game-development-beast/ [Accessed 25/01/14] Chapple. C, (2013), “Unity Come to PS4 in New Partnership” [Online] Avaialble at: https://www.develop-online.net/news/unity-comes-to-ps4-in-new-sony-partnership/0114328 [Aceessed 25/01/14] Gaft. K, (2012), “Mass Effect 3 Wii U developer faced a tough reality” [Online] Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179589/Hardwon_lessons_for_one_Wii_U_developer#.UIUYJeDzXLY [Accessed 26/01/14] Unity3D, (2013) “Games Made With Unity” [Online] Available at: http://unity3d.com/gallery/made-with-unity/game-list [Accessed 25/01/14] Unity3D, (2013) “Unity-Fast Facts” [Online] Available at: https://unity3d.com/company/public-relations [Accessed 25/01/14] |
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