Something fishy

Ah, just finished my first digital piece of work for character design project, took the deep sea angle.

-(spectacular pun).



It's a massive picture, I'm chuffed with the detail on the head. Took a while you know..

Art King

The job of Art Director certainly appeals to me, as I'm sure it does to anyone in the field of visual creativity. They get to be in charge of all the aesthetic aspects of the game, that's all of them, every single object, backdrop and character. Now they may not have a direct connection with every little thing, but they certainly take responsibility for it- that's kind of a scary prospect. Saying this they get to have the most fun (in my opinion), they craft the style, the very essence of the game, or as much as the gamers get to see anyway.

Now the Art Director does have to answer to people, he does not own the game that is being made and has positions of authority to kowtow to even in the art field. Art managers set the budget limits and the deadlines (writing that word made me go cold for a second). Also the developers of the game command a certain amount of influence as the idea of the game is theirs, they can pull out if the game strays too far from their initial concept.

You might like to relate this to the job of Film Art Director, but I wouldn't, that'd be stupid. The Film Art Director sets up a basis, but has a completely different level of control, while the founding idea's of film art are important, after that the job seems to spin out to various other areas, whereas in games, the Art Director acts as a constant overseer of the project.

The level of qualification and commitment needed for this job is intense, years of experience and a wealth of talent in a variety of areas. Excellent communication is inexplicably important and the ability to take a leading roll of an extremely pressured group.

Here's the qualifications needed for this roll on a new game in the industry currently (the game is Star Trek Online);

QUALIFICATIONS

• A BFA is strongly preferred.

• Previous Lead Artist/Concept experience on at least 1 full-cycle shipped game title.

• 5 or more years experience in the gaming industry with a minimum of 2 games making it to market, related experience in film or TV is a plus.

• Passion for games, MMOs in particular.

• Portfolio required demonstrating strong traditional art skills and a strong command of the use of lighting, color, perspective, scale, and composition.

• Strong technical aptitude related to 3D modeling tools and game engine technologies

• Expertise working in Photoshop.

• Proven leadership skills: Ability to communicate clearly and effectively; ability to create a stimulating team environment that encourages the ideas of all artists on the project.

• Must be a skilled decision maker, problem solver, and an exceptional communicator.

• Excellent organizational, interpersonal and conflict resolution skills.

• Ability to share techniques and mentor less-experienced artists.

bloody hell, grapes for £3.50?

I was just reading through my blogs and when I got to the last one I was struck by this thought;

"Jesus thats really boring."

Sorry about that, here's why M&S sucks.

- I just went all the way into town to get a banana from Marks and Spencers and I'm not happy about it, bloody expensive. The food section is miles away from the front door and I was starving, I had to walk through a sea of self absorbed bastards desperate to cut in front of me for no apparent reason other than they just have to order their Christmas turkey before the person next to them. I finally get to the food area, about to keel over from hunger and I see seedless crimson grapes;
"ooh, nice" I thought, check the price.. £3.50?!....Grapes!?.....
"Bollocks to that" I decide, then wait- they do look tasty-
"How much money have I got?"
A fiver. Sod it, I grab the grapes and a bunch of bananas, happening to be similarly overpriced at £1.50, I'm not happy at myself at all, I was weak and I was beaten, by grapes, a painful scenario. Anyways I'm still starving so I pick up my pace towards the till, which is surrounded by the hundreds of people that barged past me as I entered, that's it, the customers must come in waves at M&S, that's why they all seem so desperate, a thousand other people all arriving at the same time, all here to throw money at grapes.
So I'm waiting for twenty minutes in the queue while elder members eye me suspiciously, I get to the front and wait for ten minutes longer as the girl at the till stares at the ceiling.
"Can I help you?"
"Yeah, I'd like to be served."
"You paying by card?" - I look down at the banana and grapes on the till.
"No?"
"Cash then." She decides.
"Actually it's change." She looks panic stricken, did she have to do something?
"If you want to sign up for your Christmas goods there's a till over there."
"Great."
"Would you like a bag?"
"I'd love one."
I leave and have to head all way to the front where the door is blocked by a crowd, I push past uninterested by the apparent "scene" that's been caused by someone, I feel like I'm about to collapse, if I'd left a second later I'd be dead. I get home knackered, broke, wet and hungry. I only wanted a fucking banana.

Design this...

Gameplay falls under a few categories in my opinion, it essentially relates to the players control in the game including a load of aspects like freedom, the control system and the players relation to the narrative of the game. I think over the years the idea of gameplay has changed as much as the idea of game design, probably because they're quintessentially the same thing. If gameplay is the users experience within the parameters of the game then the design of the game is entirely responsible for this.
Games design used to be entirely up to the programmers, who were struggling to make something fun out of the limited hardware they had available. As technology progressed the walls of limitation that programmers faced began to disappear and as the game industry grew consumers were wanting more. This is the point where it began to be necessary for companies to employ games designers. Games designers are specifically employed to come up with ideas for the games company. A good, well functioning game with a decent narrative is what people were after, it was up to the designer to visualize these aspects withing the game.
In the beginning focus was laid heavily on level design, as this is where everything takes place and where most of the atmosphere comes from. Now thought is put into all areas of the game and its design is very much like crafting a story, its much like any other media; set design, script writing, projection of characters are all equally important in games.
I'd say that games design is a responsibility of the whole development crew, if a game is lacking in one area, it can ruin the overall experience, if the game has a crap plot you feel no real reason to carry on with the storyline and if the character is an irritating tit you feel nothing when controlling him, wanting nothing to do with the prick. Also the designer or design team need to know enough to carry a solid environment for a decent experience, I think that yes; the design of a game should be related to the theme of it, inconsistency is a constant annoyance to gamers. Personally, storyline is a huge element of my gameplay, I said in an earlier book that playing a game should be like reading a good book, this is fundamentally true with every aspect of the game, also a flexible control system is always a bonus.

free, de-stewed; yo' max

As promised here's my first two crappy pieces of 3d studio max work, 12 points if you can tell what they are.

righting about writing

Here's the thing, I'm supposed to review a group of reviewers who lack clarity and it's 7 in the morning. Now I'm not one to purvey the most opaque of reasoning as it is, but lets look at the problems games reviewers face and see if we can't get through this.
One of the main complications the games industry has with self-analysis, is that it is still a fairly new medium of entertainment- Blaaaaah, no Jow.

Decades have passed, games have grown from whirring toddlers into self absorbed teenagers and yet the clearest thing we have to a checklist on them still seems to be the same percentage rating on graphics, sound, longevity, gameplay and all these prominent buzzwords loosely associated with video games we've had for the last 20 years. Here's where the problem begins- all these terms are relative yeah? How does "GAMEPLAY = 4.5 Stars" mean a thing to a reader? I guess what I'm trying to say is that games in essence are so tangible that in most circumstances the style of gameplay is defined by the person playing it and this truth spills over into most aspects of games.

"Yo Jow, what about graphics? Surely they're ratable?"

Word. But look, since games have existed they've been developing graphically at such a ridiculous rate that critical tick boxes haven't had a chance to catch up. For example just over 10 years ago, games reviewers were hitting up Sonic the Hedgehog with 5/5 for graphics, now a few years down the line they're having to give HD games like Assassin's Creed (path of Neo) the same score, if not less. Until games hit a plateau this is going to continue to be problematic.

The NGJ system (New Games Journalism- NOT - No Greater Joy, this is a magazine on Christian parenting) has in my mind commanded an entirely sensible approach to this problem, which is to subjectively journal the reviewers personal experience of the game- perfect in my opinion! This was the style of games analysis I've always been after, it gives all the benefits of a truthful perspective on the game without the pointless complexities of the "thumbs up". Gonzo journalism hitting the games industry could not be a more ideal solution- for me, ah this shit's all relative son. The sad thing about this is that it is not economically effective for the product, games reviewers are, by and large, at the whim of the massive media based companies who everyone knows have no soul. To get reviews published on any sort of scale you will have to be working for people who have decided that review = advert and opinion = irrelevant. Nevermind kids, you call always sniff glue- Might even make that cold, empty feeling you get from acting entirely on subliminal advertising go away.

To be honest, people generally would (should) much rather experience a more subjective personal and portrayal of the world, it's fun and you get a glimpse of truth in it, but it's impossible to stray from the objective unless what you're writing is a completely incoherent rant about what ever tangent your subconscious has decided to peruse. If given a task, using my own blog for an example, a piece of writing will be filled with specific bullet points you had to hit, I just try and drown them with as much incoherent ranting as I can get away with, playa.

bitothis

I'm thinking I should probably put up some pieces of work, so "tadah"..



Haven't got any 3d renderings yet as I haven't got max at home, I'll get some tomorrow- maybe.

what do I want?

Hmmm, the future of gaming eh? I would like whats probably not going to happen, I'd like games companies to take risks. The market's starved for originality because it's not economically sensible, I'm feeling sorry for games designers coming up with great idea's and having it turned down in favour Halo 14.5. I think Nintendo Wii has taken the right tangent trying something new and interesting, it certainly appeals to a wider audience but it's not there yet. I think graphically consoles are nearing as good as they're ever going to need to be (shit, Tetris still sells), but I'm not sure whats happened to the idea of gameplay. Multiplayer games seem to be the way forward and as much as I love playing with mates, I miss the games you could loose yourself in. I got Assassin's Creed - Path of Neo on Friday (not sure what the whole Matrix take on the game was about) and it got- as all new games have- a resounding "alright" the percentage of game budgets spent on developing ideas pales in comparison with what is spent on marketing. I want genuinely exciting games that you feel lost after completing, I want solo player games that you urge your friends to buy so can share the fun by talking about it. Multiplayer games should be simple, flexible and timeless. The thing I think people have missed about solo games is that they should play like reading your favorite book, you shouldn't want to put it down and you don't want it to end. I guess what i want from the future of gaming, is quality storylines and original ideas, it's pretty much all that's needed really.

Episode V.5

I think I've been jumbling up my weeks, typical behavior for me but I'm going to try and sort it out here before I reference earlier questions in my next blog. 80's and 90's gaming shows the console age, out come Atari's just in time to fall into the game industry's crash of '83- oops, Nintendo puts on some trousers and Sega answers the call of a Japanese/Italian plumber with a Japanese/anthropomorphic hedgehog. The NES is released in '85 as a piece of technological mastery boasting 8-bit hardware the like of which you've never imagined, colours are coming out of the woodwork at such an alarming pace you'd think Monet had gotten into programming and death and blood can now be enjoyed by the whole family. The Mastersystem drops by to promise everything the NES did but in a different shade of code and even has the good grace to slap a preprogrammed game into the console. Next step- we get MEGA and SUPER with the same consoles as before in 16-bit glory and people argue whether Sonic could kick Mario's arse or not. A couple of years fly by and everyones now eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sony's great arrival the Playstation, running at a krunk 32-bits, customers swoon. Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Teken and all that jazz.
"Hey I just got the new Sony Playstation-"
"HAH, we've all got N64's now, isn't that Playstation a 32-bit console? N64 is, well... 64-bit"
"Oh."
Zelda, Mario, Goldeneye and multiplayer madness. Oh I forgot to mention that Sega fell over carrying their Saturn to the conference room making themselves look stupid, nevermind they can always be the first to produce the first ever 128-bit console!- can't they? Well yes, but it looks like they tried a little too hard on the Dreamcast and are now doomed to being everybodies bitch from hereon in. Out comes the Ps2, Gamecube (Nintendos originality was all used up on games apparently) and what's that? Microsoft are making a console? Ahahaahahaaa- oh it's actually quite good, I'll stop laughing.
Nintendo take a back seat for a while at this point and all camera's are on Ps2, with Xbox running at second place. This again has been bounced as the Xbox 360 reaps the joy of an early release with sales seem to piss all over the Ps3 and Nintendo have wandered off someplace else and are doing their own thing with a fancy controller. Graphics are now nearing lifelike, game budgets are nearing that of a Hollywood blockbuster and people seem to have stopped giving a shit about gameplay. What does the future hold? I wonder...

Episode V

Well, having blasted through the earlier stages of computer gaming in my previous blog let me carry you quickly through the age of the arcade. The first arcade game was based on Steve Russell's "Spacewar!" and was creatively named "Computer Space". This gripping title was brought to the world by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1971, a year before Pong hit the shel- well not so much the shelves, but the floors certainly. Bushnell and Dabney then started working for atari to re-release Pong later in 1975, lo, the first generation to wonder how their parents could find such a simple game so difficult- the dawn of home gaming. In the summer of '72 Ralph Baer releases the Odyssey, the first console a previously rejected idea designed when Ralph Baer was still at Sanders Associates in 1966, pow.
Next on my list, looks to be the Fairchild as it was one of the first ever pieces of home kit to use a microchip and allow for a programmable cartridge system, all of this equated to more complicated games to be played. This console quickly changed its name to "Channel F" and immediately started provoking Atari into releasing next generation consoles and spawn the beginning of various arguments about whether or not it was a good idea to let children play these things, another "what can we panic about now?" mentality- boring.
Still on to the '80's, the home computer and entertainment systems were now walking about the place and had said their first words, well on their way to growing up.

I can't help but feel I answered a good portion about myself in the last blog entry, which has left me feeling a little staunched, ah well. My first Windows PC, what an exciting time, bringing on all the fun of Prince of Persia, Dune II, Doom, Hex and god knows what else. This was beautiful time, Dune II sticks out in my mind as the first of a long line of strategy games I would pick up in the future, not sure if anyone else played it, but it pans out like a dumbed down version of the film with three playable factions-Harkonnen, Atreides and the Ordos (who I'm fairly certain were made up to give the game a little more variety). Quality.
Consoles, I remember playing Sonic 3d and being awe inspired with my first glimpse into the world of 3rd dimension gaming, I was wowed at the time and remember thinking, "If the megadrive can run a game like this why aren't there loads of 3d games kicking about?" - nevermind Jow. Anyway whats important is that once a rogue football smacked the console while I was playing it, crashing the game and dislodging the cartridge, I'd gotten quite far into the game so you can imagine the obscenities I screamed, I was distraught, I was going to have to play through it all again, I hate repeating myself. Anyway I finally get a hold of myself and re-insert the cartridge properly and smash the white reset button, the screen goes blue for a minute and instead of the games regular intro, up comes a level select menu.... EH? Happy as Larry I pick up exactly where I left off on the game- (*cough*) maybe a level or two later on, but it was a water level and they're shit. Anyway I'd never read up on any cheats for Sonic 3d but who knew it consisted of smashing your console till it crashed?

"If kids imitated video games, kids would be going around a dark room, munching on mysterious pills, listening to repetitive music" -Head of Nintendo 1983

Next up

The first game I ever played is a memory strain but for the sake of argument (and the fact that I can't find any information on the earlier games I seem to remember playing) I'm posting it as the original Duke Nukem. I was about five and my family had, for some reason, been handed this old computer- a black box with a blue screen and no real OS to speak of, beautiful. For the many that have skipped the originals and jumped straight into Duke Nukem 3d and for those that have never heard of any of these and should therefore go rethink your life while having someone tell you over and over how crap you are, Duke Nukem was set in the near future (1996) and served as a sides crolling platform game, involving the shooting of aliens. I think it was a year or so later and I played my first console game, Sonic the Hedgehog- I've saved myself and the couple of readers that may or may-not drop by the trouble of reading through fifty pages of me verbally humping a hedgehog by giving you the edited version- I enjoyed it. There's not a huge amount of retrospect going on when I think about these games, all of the console games for example i still play on a fairly regular basis, even some of the old PC games I had like "Dune II" and "Prince of Persia" get revived from time to time. I'm writing this in between playing Skate on the ps3 and trying to work out whats kept me playing games this long, I don't want to get into any sort of crap about escapism or fantasism cos that wouldn't be true. I've always loved games, I like to play and I like to be challenged, these aspects have have been channeled into the game culture that I'm now a part of.


As I'm sure everyone who's started this project knows the first digitalized game was made in 1952 by A.S Douglas- naughts and crosses. I'm hesitant to call this the dawn of computer games as I'm sure when it was made there was no notion of fun in mind whatsoever. Also you can't say that without it we wouldn't have the fine-yet-soon-to-be-obsolete range of games we have today. I think one of the first steps towards using a computer for entertainment would be made in 1958 by William Higinbotham with "Tennis for Two". Unlike Douglas' version of naughts and crosses, Tennis for Two was designed to relieve boredom giving it status as one of the first true milestones in genre of computer games. I've actually played Tennis for Two at a history of computer games festival in London (got the high score on Space Invaders!) and it plays pretty well, however the controllers which seem determined on giving you such a severe case of arthritis you'll never be able to hold another controller again.

Now, who decided computers should be fun? Me. Silly question, no one person stood up and shook the world with the unfathomable concept of making computers fun, computer games are a byproduct of exploration, as with anything else I suppose. Using the newest wave of technology as a marketable entertainment product was an inevitability. Pound signs aside though, looking into making this new math-box available to a select few laboratories "fun" was a result of the vigilant programmers who saw its potential, decided to muck around with it and get ideas they wanted to try out. "What if?"
Cheers to the people that make things happen.