Week 1
Audit
To start off this unit, I created an Audit that goes over all the Theory topics I have gone throughout Unit 9 from the lessons to the live debates. Each topic I talked about whether I liked it, consider it as a possible one I would use and what kind of question I could ask and answer with it.
Group Mind-map
Next, we got into groups in class to make mind maps on the different things we are interested in, then discuss with each other on why we have a passion for them in order to help craft more abstract ideas. For each, I thought about how they could be integrated into a game.
The things I brought up in the group were;
Health
This is an important part of daily life and something that I think about often. Often people misconstrued being healthy by simply the foods they eat wheres it's actually much more complicated than that as a lot of factors goes into it. Good health can result in better lifestyles, better daily mood and can decrease many illnesses and negative conditions while also increasing life expectancy. So the promotion of it is a good thing.
Debating
Debating is one of my hobbies and something I really enjoy. Its only something I believe to be important to society and just daily life. It's something that can bring attention to serious topics and can spark change for the better. It's also a good way to test and build upon different perspectives and viewpoint on things.
Playing Games
Games are also a hobby of mine and one that I enjoy the most. Games play a big part in my life and also the lives of many others. One of the main reasons I like them is because of escapism. Games are s great way to enter a new reality and interest your mind in a different place. It's for this reason why many people seek comfort in them, as it can help relieve boredom, stress and even anxiety.
The other things mentioned in the group were mainly based on everyone's personal interests, such as certain shows, programs and art-styles they use and genres they like. This kind of things can be sub-themes for my overarching subject.
Game Dev Research
With links provided to me, I did secondary research to help further expand my ideas and also to try to see if there are any game developing principles that I could adopt. I began watching a video called "The Design Philosophy of Famous Game Designers" which I noted down the terms and statements that intrigued me. These are not only their principles but also their influences that they use to aid their work and ideas.
1
"Desing by Subtraction" is a principle that is heavily used by a developer called Fumito Ueda. What it means is to analyse the core theme of a game and then strip away with anything that doesn't reinforce the mood, tone or story of it.
What I like about this way of thinking is that it would effectively assist in ensuring that the point your game is trying to get across is very apparent and practices the mindset of eliminating irrelevant and unnecessary factors of your project.
I will definitely use this for my project by creating a full game-flow story of whatever game I choose to make, with every abstract idea that I can think to add to it. Then proofing it and eliminating them up until I have the core features that all out to my games meaning.
2
"Hidetaka Miyazaki" is a game dev who apparently didn't base the difficulty of is game on arbitrary decisions but by the theme of the game. Such as if the game is meant to be about a person stuck in a violent and unkind world, the difficulty may be high throughout to reflect upon that.
This is quite interesting as it makes games go beyond the generic trope of just having games have a simple gradually difficulty format thus making them more unique. It also adds a lot to the projection of the theme of the game as the mear gameplay itself would be seamlessly be juxtaposed with it and allowing each to tell the same point by themselves.
I can apply this to my FMP depending on what kind of project I make. If its a game with action or competitive gameplay then I can adapt how hard or easy it is based on that. But either way, this will definitely be something I will use and develop in my future of game design.
3
"Backward Scriptwrighting/Photothinking". YokoTaro has a unique way of constructing the stories of his games. Before he writes his scripts, he chooses what he wants the end/goal to be and then writes backwards from that.
Something like this can have large assistance on of seamless events in a game/animation are juxtaposed to lead to the end. As when writing a game, new ideas and opinions changing can result in your product striving away from its initial objective.
For me, I sometimes tend to get very expansive with my ideas while I'm working and as new ideas come to me I end up adding them and strive away from focussing on the main parts of it. Working backwards definitely can help circumvent that issue as I would be getting into the mindset of making sure everything relates to the goal.
These are all intriguing and inspiring principles that I believe adopting can increase my general skill with game design and I will at least refer to one of them when I start my FMP. This has also shown me how useful it can really be to learn from people already in the professions, as most everything they say will come from experience. this has given me the idea for a possible research trip, which can be a game studio, such as King. This is because as I mentioned, learning from people in the industry can be very helpful for developing ideas and adopting useful principles and influences. So this is the kind of trip I most definitely want to try and go for.
1
"Desing by Subtraction" is a principle that is heavily used by a developer called Fumito Ueda. What it means is to analyse the core theme of a game and then strip away with anything that doesn't reinforce the mood, tone or story of it.
What I like about this way of thinking is that it would effectively assist in ensuring that the point your game is trying to get across is very apparent and practices the mindset of eliminating irrelevant and unnecessary factors of your project.
I will definitely use this for my project by creating a full game-flow story of whatever game I choose to make, with every abstract idea that I can think to add to it. Then proofing it and eliminating them up until I have the core features that all out to my games meaning.
2
"Hidetaka Miyazaki" is a game dev who apparently didn't base the difficulty of is game on arbitrary decisions but by the theme of the game. Such as if the game is meant to be about a person stuck in a violent and unkind world, the difficulty may be high throughout to reflect upon that.
This is quite interesting as it makes games go beyond the generic trope of just having games have a simple gradually difficulty format thus making them more unique. It also adds a lot to the projection of the theme of the game as the mear gameplay itself would be seamlessly be juxtaposed with it and allowing each to tell the same point by themselves.
I can apply this to my FMP depending on what kind of project I make. If its a game with action or competitive gameplay then I can adapt how hard or easy it is based on that. But either way, this will definitely be something I will use and develop in my future of game design.
3
"Backward Scriptwrighting/Photothinking". YokoTaro has a unique way of constructing the stories of his games. Before he writes his scripts, he chooses what he wants the end/goal to be and then writes backwards from that.
Something like this can have large assistance on of seamless events in a game/animation are juxtaposed to lead to the end. As when writing a game, new ideas and opinions changing can result in your product striving away from its initial objective.
For me, I sometimes tend to get very expansive with my ideas while I'm working and as new ideas come to me I end up adding them and strive away from focussing on the main parts of it. Working backwards definitely can help circumvent that issue as I would be getting into the mindset of making sure everything relates to the goal.
These are all intriguing and inspiring principles that I believe adopting can increase my general skill with game design and I will at least refer to one of them when I start my FMP. This has also shown me how useful it can really be to learn from people already in the professions, as most everything they say will come from experience. this has given me the idea for a possible research trip, which can be a game studio, such as King. This is because as I mentioned, learning from people in the industry can be very helpful for developing ideas and adopting useful principles and influences. So this is the kind of trip I most definitely want to try and go for.
Week 2
From the secondary research I did along with my constant thinking of ideas, I managed to come up with different game ideas that help aid different possible theme to write about and I debated with them to myself to determine if any of them would be preferable to explore upon. They were;
Jogging Simulator
A game where the character is going for a jog but underestimates his ability due to his misconception to whats makes a person healthy. Which would make the theme about "What Makes A Person Healthy".
However, after thinking I believed that this topic would be too broad as it includes a lot of variables, both physical and mental, I would be easy to go off on tangents and get lost in the research
Walking Simulator
A game where you have to walk home in the dark in complete silence and you have to get home safe, avoiding all dangers while all of the sounds play on the players natural fear. I got this idea from playing the game "Night Shift" from the website Itch. In that game, there was no music in the background and it used sudden sounds to play on the fear of anticipation on players. I thought this was a very interesting game feature. This could also allow me to research and explore the physiological side of how games draw fear from players.
I decided to put this to the side as a possible idea if I didn't think of a better theme.
Being Stuck On An Island And Having To Survive
The theme for this could have been how games can help people prepare for cretin situations for educational purposes as this can go against the idea that games are a waste of time that some people have.
After thinking about this topic more and more, it morphed to an even broader topic. Everything I have thought about cater to what games can provide and how they care a uniquely creative product. They all come to the topic "Are Games Art".
This kind of topic would allow me to talk about games as a whole and due to how broad it is, it will allow me to expand my research on not just games, but the media/art industry as a whole. However, I shied away from these ideas after more contemplate as I feared this would be too broad of a topic as well
On the weekend, I went to an open day at a University, and when hearing one of the teachers their talk about different topics about games I managed to pick up two possible ones to explore. One is about where does the inspiration for games come from, analysing where people draw their ideas from and how people can use that to help inspire their own future creative work. The second was to answer the question of "Why Games Aren't As Accepted As The Other Media". Talking about why to the mass public films and music tend to have more fame and less shunned upon. I liked both these topics.
After thinking about all the ideas I developed last week, I realized. Since all these topics are base on "Are Games Art", I saw that I could embed most of these other ideas that I liked within it as they can all be used to answer the question as neither of them has to be done as individual topics. This was the best choice in my opinion and using the other topics as questions to answer is a great way to break the whole essay down. So this is will be my chosen topic for this Unit 12, "Are Games Art".
I began the week making a moodboard that presents the mood, tone and theme of my topic as I had to present it to the class.
I found presenting it quite easy and calming as this was less of a formal presentation and more of a natural discussion about my topic itself. My class seemed to like the topic, showing some interesting in the question I,m trying to answer and explore. In terms of feedback, I was given suggestions, such as how I should do some primary research with people with no background in any type of media, that way I can compare it to the people who do and help aid my analysis on it. And the other was to be very clear in what I mean about art, as some people could possibly get confused and think I'm referring to specifically drawing/painting.
I do believe that this discussion has helped, It has assisted me in being more clear in what I writing about and has given me a couple of pointers to look out for this task.
Jogging Simulator
A game where the character is going for a jog but underestimates his ability due to his misconception to whats makes a person healthy. Which would make the theme about "What Makes A Person Healthy".
However, after thinking I believed that this topic would be too broad as it includes a lot of variables, both physical and mental, I would be easy to go off on tangents and get lost in the research
Walking Simulator
A game where you have to walk home in the dark in complete silence and you have to get home safe, avoiding all dangers while all of the sounds play on the players natural fear. I got this idea from playing the game "Night Shift" from the website Itch. In that game, there was no music in the background and it used sudden sounds to play on the fear of anticipation on players. I thought this was a very interesting game feature. This could also allow me to research and explore the physiological side of how games draw fear from players.
I decided to put this to the side as a possible idea if I didn't think of a better theme.
Being Stuck On An Island And Having To Survive
The theme for this could have been how games can help people prepare for cretin situations for educational purposes as this can go against the idea that games are a waste of time that some people have.
After thinking about this topic more and more, it morphed to an even broader topic. Everything I have thought about cater to what games can provide and how they care a uniquely creative product. They all come to the topic "Are Games Art".
This kind of topic would allow me to talk about games as a whole and due to how broad it is, it will allow me to expand my research on not just games, but the media/art industry as a whole. However, I shied away from these ideas after more contemplate as I feared this would be too broad of a topic as well
On the weekend, I went to an open day at a University, and when hearing one of the teachers their talk about different topics about games I managed to pick up two possible ones to explore. One is about where does the inspiration for games come from, analysing where people draw their ideas from and how people can use that to help inspire their own future creative work. The second was to answer the question of "Why Games Aren't As Accepted As The Other Media". Talking about why to the mass public films and music tend to have more fame and less shunned upon. I liked both these topics.
Week 3
I began the week making a moodboard that presents the mood, tone and theme of my topic as I had to present it to the class.
I found presenting it quite easy and calming as this was less of a formal presentation and more of a natural discussion about my topic itself. My class seemed to like the topic, showing some interesting in the question I,m trying to answer and explore. In terms of feedback, I was given suggestions, such as how I should do some primary research with people with no background in any type of media, that way I can compare it to the people who do and help aid my analysis on it. And the other was to be very clear in what I mean about art, as some people could possibly get confused and think I'm referring to specifically drawing/painting.
I do believe that this discussion has helped, It has assisted me in being more clear in what I writing about and has given me a couple of pointers to look out for this task.
Week 4
Now that I have chosen my topic and clear with how I will conduct my research, I started my 1500 word essay.
Writing this essay was very intriguing, insightful and has opened me up to know ideas and has been very fun. My only issue was not overweighting as a lot can be said in this topic and it was difficult not going past the limit. But other than that I believe I made a successful essay.
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