Believable Characters

Ign.com posted an interesting article about characters and storytelling in modern gaming mentioning several games discussed in class:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1213415p1.html

There's a certain part of me that doesn't see the video game industry evolving much farther than it already has in terms of story. Games inevitably will improve, change, provide new semblances of gameplay--but there's a certain security blanket that Hollywood has adopted that video games seem to have taken on as well: the blockbuster, the hero caper, the art house, etc. Both platforms/medias have it. Sometimes a game slips through the cracks that blows us all away (an indie sleeper), but even the days of graphical explosions has diminished with the need to garner a wider market.

Gameplay and the ability to better immerse the player seems the way of the console/PC. The new Zelda game has garnered rave reviews and is said to be the future of motion controls. Rumors about the next generation Kinect having lip reading technology has sent the internet abuzz. Has storytelling reached a zenith when it comes to gaming, or are the new ways of telling the same story a way unto itself?

Transmedia and video games

Hey Gang, I was researching Jeff Gomez the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a transmedia company and thought it provided an interesting perspective and learning opportunity on the larger context of cross platform storytelling which includes video games. Enjoy.

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2011/04/11/5-questions-with-jeff-gomez-ceo-starlight-runner-entertainment

Titles

Hey Gang, Does anyone have thoughts on what makes for a great game title? Simplicity? Irony? Vividness?

Principal Office reference images

Here are some images to help us create the principal's office with its judge's bench twist -- just one of the gameplay rooms in our school.

Beauty in simplicity

A lot of you might already know this game, but I was recently introduced to it by my friend and has been enjoying playing this game so much that I wanted to share it with you.
Minecraft


This game is a survival & creative game where you dig and build whatever you want. There are some creatures that come at you at night like zombies, skeltons and self-exploding creature called "creepers".

As you can see, the world is made up with 8bit blocks so the visual is very simple. The great thing is every time you start a journey, the game will generate a new world that is completely original, so no two players have a same world. The world can be as big as eight times the size of the earth. Eight times!!
The game play is very intuitive once you get into it, but it is hard until you get used to recipes of creating tools you need for different purposes. So if you are interested in playing, I highly recommended watching some of you-tube videos that teach some methods. Also here is a wiki page that has all the info about the game. Wiki

There are many things we can learn from a success of this game. For example, customizability(is there a word?) of this game is beyond imagination. People create not only their own castles but models from different films and games from scratch. There are even some people that created some simple forms of computers inside the game. Also, you can make your own textures for each materials so the look of the world could be different. There are no limitation to speak of.
While most games nowadays strive for hi-res images and pretty effects, this game has pretty much went back time. There is something calming about seeing 8-bit images. Even with this primitive graphics, I often find myself scared to death or amazed with the beauty.
You can play on servers with people or play offline and dive into your own world.

As we go into the final polish for our projects, this game might be a nice refresh and pure fun to take your mind off from the work.

Close Combat

The following is a link from a pretty intense boxing game, which was one of my childhood favorites- Mike Tyson's "Punch Out." Could give us some ideas about how characters could defend themselves once they've run out of bullets. Very simple, but I submit it as food for thought. I wasted countless ours of my childhood playing this game.


http://youtu.be/hu69QEH


Dorian

What is Winning?

In most games you follow the traditional story arc: introduction to gameplay/basics, multiple quests in ascending order of difficulty, reaching a tragic low point quickly followed by a final fight against the source of all evil (followed by credits). A game like Skyrim (and most of the Elder Scrolls games), however, has multiple avenues for "success." You can jump into the main quest and perform all of the actions desired of you--or you can ignore it entirely. You can explore the world and take quests as they come to you. Winning becomes leveling up to a certain point, defeating a Daedric god you would have no idea existed if you stuck to the main quest--you have an open world sandbox where winning isn't a one-path-solves-all. Morrowind (the third game in the series) can even be beaten in 11 minutes (you can find a playthrough on youtube) simply because you have the freedom to go wherever you want and create almost anything within the world.

Now, this argument leaves out sports games, racers, etc., but the gaming industry as a whole has adopted the Hollywood structure when it comes to constructing a majority of their games. As Joey said in class, it has become THE industry for storytelling. And yet, what is Skyrim in terms of film comparison? Does it have one?