Thursday 29 March 2012

La Decima Vittima

La Decima Vittima is a film based around the idea that money is everything. Characters could fight to the death for £1million, and it shares a distinct relation to films such as 'The Hunger Games' or 'Battle Royale'.
The winners of the event would become a hero and revered across the world, it shows a society based around celebrity and victory. The purpose of these fights is to prevent war amongst humanity as it as seen as a viable solution to the violent sadistic people on earth. The movie itself has a good concept for a story but was very easy to see where the plot was going along with some very dodgy acting. The film shows that humans can't resist the urge to see if they can win and draws on the fact that games are an instinctive part of human life.

Remediation

Remediation:

Is when one type of media is represented in another type of media. eg. Tron.

Immediacy:
- Media that inspires towards transparency
- Trying to draw the viewer into the movie.
- Creating a immersive stage, graphically high quality
- As realistic as possible

Hypermediacy:
- Artefacts that are aware of and wish to show their own constructed nature.
- Computer game interfaces/huds for example
- World Wide Web

'Photorealism' is an example of 'immediacy'. It's not the medium of photography. Hypermediacy isnt the aesthetic preserve of the www, its tendancies have been picked up by news reels.

Overall, i think that the gaming and film industry have alot to learn from each other still about storytelling and interactivity.

Gender in Games

Gender in Games

Segregation in a male dominated industry

The article explains how the gender of the designers directly influence the target audience and the gender of the people playing the game.

As shown by the graphic below, the older you get the less games you play which would be expected stereotypically, but there isn't any real correlation about how many hours they spend playing games.



The article made me realise how male dominated the games design industry and even though people don't want to affect whether games are targetted at boys or girls, it is hard to help when there are no women on the team.

Games Britannia Part 1

Dicing with Destiny

In the first episode, Benjamin Wooley talks about how games are instinctive as human beings.

He starts it by showing an ancient board game found in colchester called "Stunway Game". The game underlined the point above that humans play without thinking they are playing and that socialising is a massive part of playing games.

He then talks about Chess and how it is classed as a war game. There are no hindering elements to the player apart from the opponent sitting across the table. It is a tactically beautiful game that allows players to test their skill and knowledge purely just against the opponent.

Games Britannia Part 2

Monopolies and Mergers

The programme was presented by Benjamin Woolley, and in the programme it goes through the game monopoly.

It introduces monopoly as being invented during the great depression in britain, it was then sent to america where it changed into something that promoted free enterprise and the american dream.It also explained how the main 3 board games in Britain (Monopoly, Scrabble and Cluedo) formed the main stage for british board games.

Finally it also explains how most british game designers have left it to the americans and moved on to making computer games.

Narrative

The narrative of a story is part of 3 closely related elements of storytelling:

Story - All of the elements which end up being depicted
Plot - The chain of causation (the chain of events that happen within the story)
Narrative - The order in which events are revealed

Events in stories are shown either first hand (where the character actually shows you what happens) or second hand (revealed by characters who were either there or not).

The sequence is a debatable subject in games design. There are differences in narratives and interaction, the main point being:


Narrative flows under the direction of the author.
Interactivity is about providing the player with the motive power to act.
Remember Games Ordering, Do, Show, Tell.

Some games have some narrative aspirations: By drawing on the roles and goals of various well known genres, the games seek to orient us to the kind of action that we might expect.

Facade is a good example of a game that uses narrative well, the whole game is based around talking to a couple who are arguing. The game is special because it interpretes anything you say as a player which directly affects the actions of the AI.

Sunday 25 March 2012

Bibliography [ED]

Bibliography

Koster, R. (2005) Theory of Fun for Game Design., Paraglyph Press.

Rogers, C. (2010) Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design., John Wiley & Sons.

Finkel, I. L. (2008). "On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur" in Finkel, ed. pp. 16-32.

Caillois, R. (2006). “The Definition of Play. The Classification of Games”. Salen. K and Zimmermann.E. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. London. 122-155.

Martínez, Katynka Z. (2011). "Pac-Man meets the Minutemen: Video Games by Los Angeles Latino Youth",  National Civic Review Vol. 100 Issue 3. 50-57

Jacobson, J. Hwang, Z. (2002). "Unreal Tournament For Immersive Interactive Theater Volume 45(1)", pg 39 - 42, 3p