Game Design : Week 11 - Additive and Subtractive Design

Not all video games are perfect, some might be, but not all. Some games are downright terrible and some have potential but aren't quite fully realized and just need to be tweaked.
And that's where additive and subtractive design comes in. Through the development of a game, several prototypes are built and tested, to see if the game works, and the games design is altered as a result of this testing, through this you can add or take away from the game to hone in on the experience you want from the game. This is in essence what we are talking about, but to add and remove content from a game doesn't have to be exclusive to during development or testing.

Due to games having greater online connectivity than ever before games can be updated and developers can even create "DLC" aka DownLoadable Content (I don't get it either). While updates are used mostly to patch bugs and correct errors, and DLC is to sell bonus content that often doesn't effect the mechanics or the way the games plays overall and is usually new avatars or levels.

But of course there are some exceptions to these rules, games like Overwatch and MOBA's like League of Legends, are constantly being re-balanced and tweaked in their updates in a constant attempt to keep the game as fair as possible, and not everyone agrees they make the right decisions, so some of these choices they reverse. Warframe and Rainbow 6: Siege are examples of two games that succeeded only because of changes made to the game well after launch.
That does not leave this adaptive design in purely the hands of developers, it can very often manifest in three more ways that are driven entirely by player involvement. Games such as Halo offer many in depth options for customizing and altering game types, objectives, weapons, vehicles and even maps in some of the later games, several fan made gametypes have also been later integrated into the series by the developers making them official gametypes, such as infection a mode where each player has to survive as long as possible and infected players attempt to infect the survivors, where the infected have modified movement and only close range weapons, and Griffball, where two teams have to place the bomb at the other sides post, much like assault, but within a small square arena and only using melee weapons to resemble games similar to rugby or gridiron, the person carrying the bomb also turns yellow to resemble the character from the Rosterteeth webseries

 made as a Halo machinima,  Red vs Blue, Griff.

Another way players can make the later alterations is through modding. Modding refers to players making modifications to a games raw files, whether its assets or code and so on in order to change the experience, for prime examples of this look to any of the recent games developed by Bethesda as they are famous for near limitless mod support. Modding can include stuff as simple as cheating in extra items, to stuff as complicated as your own worlds, stories and possibly even your own game within a game, the potential is endless depending on you ability to make such a thing happen and the support the game offers for those mods.

The final (and most fun) addition (or subtraction) a player can make, are their own homebrew rules. People are most familiar with this idea showing itself as drinking games. Everytime you die, take shot. You must finish your drink before you finish the race, and your kart can not be moving while you drink. Every shot with a power weapon is a shot you must take at the end of the match, every kill you get reduces a shot. This is what I mean by homebrew rules, they don't have to be alcohol related, it's just making up rules on the spot, to make the game more interesting or leveling the playing feel to give weaker players an advantage.

You can add and take away from a game at any point and generally it is a good idea to do so, just don't forget what the core of the game is. Keep it balanced and keep it fair, in the end the player is just gonna screw it up and find a way to get plastered while playing it anyway.  

Game Design : Week 10 - Social play

Games and what they are to people has been up for question for many years, but they have undoubtedly existed as one of two things, individual and social experiences, kind of obvious since they are the only two possibilities on that scale. But you would be mistaken for assuming that the social side of gaming is only a recent development along side modern multiplayer and large consumer focused conventions, and assume that aside from the odd Mario Kart and MMO that before 2001 games were purely a solo event.








Games have been primarily a social affair for majority of their lifetime. The first experimental computer games were nerds killing time and showing off what they can do with the ridiculously costly university computers. In arcades you'd be crowded around friends giving you advice, because if they were good they'd be playing. Controller swapping in Super Mario Bros. Split screen in Mario Kart. Online multiplayer in early RTS's and early shooters. The creation of the MMO with Ultima. Console LAN parties in Halo. There is a visible progression of social play, and all of it is dearly important to the overall experience of the player.
Strategies of playing against a human instead of a computer change, players are on an even field, same advantages and disadvantages as you, they are unpredictable, every action wilder and crazier than the last, or cunning waiting for you to make a mistake before striking. The nothing resembling the gameplay of punchout where they follow an exact pattern, no matter how well you know the opponent. There is real ever changing challenge to the game.
But there is more to it, that wasn't as heavily mentioned in the reading material, bonding. To sit down with a bunch of mates, an esky of drinks, a plate of nachos and the smallest tv you can think of cut into four even smaller segments. Those are some of the best memories I have playing games, and aside from a few instances I can barely recalled what we played, because it doesn't matter. The design of the games, aesthetically and mechanically, didn't matter, it was irrelevant, who cares if the maps/tracks/levels were designed for that amount of players, or if the balancing was right. All that mattered was that between myself and those friends that I have had for a decade we had fun, and that's all that matters.

Game Design: Week 9 - The three player problem

Have you ever been playing a three player game and noticed that the better or more successful player is set upon by their opponents in unison.This is a symptom of the three player problem, the three player problem is simply referring to the extreme difficulty one can have in balancing a three player competitive game. This particular example of two players teaming up on the lead can result in a stalemate as the pairings rotate to account for each new player taking the advantage or if the game is limited by time or score than one player may make the decision to sabotage someone else's victory rather than pursue their own.
This is why most competitive games are made for two or four or more players, as when the number increases each players individual actions make a smaller effect on the game as a whole and thus either everyone would need to collaborate to bring down the lead or risk teams breaking out.
Sometimes a game might just work better with only three players, so the challenge is for the designers to find a way to around these pitfalls.
Sometimes something as simple as the type of game can completely negate this effect, take a first person shooter for example. Say its three people playing what ever your favourite shooter and they are playing the deathmatch mode and two players have agreed to team up on the leading player, not many shooters are made with three people in mind so many maps are too large for you to really control when and where you are going to come into contact with one of only two other players so the the leading play is likely to never be outnumbered in a gun fight, so all that has effectively happened is that the teamed players have limited their potential scoring options by refusing to attack each other and have created a more efficient pipeline to get shot in the head since they are hunting down a player we are assuming is potentially better than them. This creates a scenario where you are better off taking an 'every man for himself' stand and just kill whoever you see. To counter the attitude of those who just choose to sabotage an opponents win, how can they? If you are that bad to be that far behind you can't hope to hunt down and repeatedly beat one of the other players, and it's pointless to just run around let the other guy kill you, there is no fun in it and secondly you are likely to give as many points to the leading player as the person they wanted to.
So sometimes the answer to this dilemma can be simple, or at least accidentally solve itself through coincidence. But that shouldn't be relied on, solve the issue if it comes to fruition, but don't fret over it if it ruins the game. Trios may be a film quote but you should really have more than two friends.

Game Design: Week 8 - Simulation through Games

Simulation is a game genre that has no specific mechanics, aesthetic design or a shared purpose. Now that I think about it, simulation is more of an adjective than a genre. Forza is a racing simulation but has more in common with need for speed than Sim City. This genre/adjective is less about how a game is played and more about why a game is played; the generalized reasons people play them outside the standard reasons for anyone to play anything, might mostly boil down to, some more grounded fantasy or just wanting to see what would happen if you tried some really stupid stuff but there is some greater uses of simulation games than just seeing how long it takes your sim family to set themselves on fire.

Depending on the level of simplicity the game applies to any given scenario, a scenario should be able to reflect reality if such a scenario were to really play out. In racing simulators such as Forza or Gan Turismo, the cars supposedly behave as realistically as possible in any given scenario; if you and a friend is arguing about which of your dream cars are better, race them. Games like Sim City are supposed to show you vaguely how to run a city, minus a lot of red tape of course. Military sims such as Arma give players are more refined and realistic experience than a shooter like Call of Duty, instead of mowing down every Russian, German or Middle Eastern in sight like an Arnold Schwarzenegger knockoff, you can't aim to save you life, all of your equipment is too complicated to use in a gun fight and you are cowering in a tool shed hiding from six guys from a morally ambiguous nation state and praying to god back up gets there soon, just like the real military.

The idea for a simulation game can come from two trains of thought, making a game more realistic for fun or for training. Now the simplest introduction to simulations for training, aside from hearing the american army has been playing games for years as a form of training (even making a Doom mod for it), would be the training simulations everyone knows about, flight simulators.
Flight sims weren't made to be videogames, they were made to train pilots without the risk of crashing a real plane, they don't even seem to use the same technology, even the ones the ADF use still look like crap, but they get the job done. The entire cockpit has been built to be the exact copy of some real aircraft so when the pilot in training enters a real plane, they know exactly what they are doing.
The idea of using simulations for training is not a new one; remember back to any war film where they are moving little tokens around a map to represent troops, well that's basically a game of risk. Using a form of board game to assess as many actions and outcomes is a form of simulation, of course its not a very accurate one as for it to work properly one would need to think like the enemy, which we all know would require some kind of mind swapping device like from a cheesy 80's movie.

In conclusion, the best movie ever would be a WWII Freaky Friday, Lindsay Lohan running around acting all like Hitler, behind the scenes it would just be her taking acid before stepping on set.

Game Design: Week 7 IP's

When talking about an IP or intellectual property, in the realm of games and media generally refers to a title or franchise, in reality an IP is really anything that someone thinks of and claims as their own, but in conversations discussing an IP they are generally referring two a specific game or series.
Pre-existing IP's are just games and franchises that exist already and usually have amassed some amount of popularity.
Working with established IP's has both advantages and pitfalls that can make either ridiculous amounts of money or destroy the franchise in the long run.

Working with an established and popular IP almost guarantees your game craploads of sales at launch and generally quite a decent amount of continuous sales later, for example, no matter how much everyone bitches about Call of Duty it still makes a ridiculous amount of money.
There is still one major obstacle with popular IP's and that is to keep the game popular with its fanbase. A sequel or even a spin off is supposed to remind people of why they love that game to being with and putting too much of your original flair in can and often will spoil that.
A pre-existing franchise can have years of built up history, lore and most importantly gameplay standards, and while it can be easy to create a cookie cutter sequel, people can get tired of that and the difficulty is in innovating the franchise. To change the game to much is sacrilege and to not change it enough is boring and stale, to hold you ground with a poor decision is a big fuck you to the fans, to cower and go back on the change shows a week. Are your changes your own ideas to revitalize a dying game, or put your own spin on it? Or are the changes soulless cash grabs from corporate owners of the IP?

Halo is easily one of my favourite video game titles ever, I am very biased I will admit that. I am good at it and I've put countless hours into it, I know what makes Halo, Halo, I also have common sense and can tell what destroys a games art direction and cracks the lore wide open. 343 industries though? not so much.
343 is supposedly made up of fans and former Bungie employees who worked on previous Halo's, now unless the games are built solely for money or each of these employees are selfish pricks who want to sign their name on something I am super skeptical of those credentials because 343 Halo's hit every pothole you need to avoid when you are working on an older IP.
The art style goes from a hard edge olive green not too dissimilar earth military vs foreign aliens to trippy sleek sci-fi vs trippy sleek sci-fi. The lore and the backstory of the series is re-written to events before anything in the games for the sake of slamming the series with new credits. And the gameplay and been completely re balanced for the sake of new trash players, hollowing out the game to reduce the skill gap and any achievement you feel for being skilled, all of the skills I've spent over a decade refining have been rendered mute but bullet magnetism, auto-aim and a button that lets you climb ledges of missed jumps.
Halo is the perfect example of what not to do with an IP and why it should be avoided.

But there is a reason you should use old IP's over an original title, and it's a simple one, brand recognition. Effectively it's free marketing, even if the huge name means the rich publisher is gonna pay for heaps of marketing anyway. You could have the best game in the world but if it's original then you are really relying on word of mouth to get it out there, even reviews and previews are just a bunch of internet bloggers saying "trust me, its good" but if you hear about the new toilet scrubbing sim "HALO: Shit Sticker" you think "Well Halo's a good game, so this must be good too," of course the title doesn't speak to the games quality, it never can, it can convince people to try it though, even when they know it doesn't follow the same structure as the original game.

Honestly just go with what you think the game you want to make suits best, if it can slip in as a spin off, make the pitch and see what happens. If it needs to be original make it original you just might risk the initial sales, but if you make a game withing an existing franchise, please don't make Halo 5.

Game Design: Week 5

Full disclosure I'm not sure what I can really add here since this more of luck vs skill, though the readings did put me off playing Candyland.



Mixing Strategy and Randomness allows for more varied and exciting gameplay. On hand a game of pure luck is boring and technically no one wins except for one grinning tool who did nothing to earn what he got, kind of like life, and on the other a game of pure skill no matter how complicated has a "correct answer", there is a perfect way to play, the mathematically most efficient move for any scenario can be determined and if you and your opponent know them it will be boring. So the key is to strike that balance between them, which as I have previously mentioned is all preference, there is no right or wrong way to go about it, just avoid making a game exclusively about one or the other.

Randomness doesn't need to be on a linear scale of values that equate advantage to disadvantage like flipping a coin, rolling a dice or drawing a card, it can be much more uncertain or random in how this aspect of luck can effect you. It could be the layout of the game board or map for instance which will effect what strategies you should use going ahead and also provide you with a new scenario so even if there is a "correct answer" no one is going to know it if the boards layout is one in a hundred.

There are methods randomness that can be applied to a game that doesn't involve a strict good or bad connotation to and are just modifiers to the experience to suggest players alter their strategies to allow them to gain the upper hand from their own merit, which brings the pride in victory from a skill based game, but also brings the tension, excitement and anxiety from an episode of Scooby Doo luck based game.

Game Design: Week 4

When you play a new game the first thing you need to do is understand how to play it, or else you can't play it, no brainier huh. So I priority of a designer should be for them to create a product that can be understood rather quickly and preferably intuitively. Having a large manual or long tutorial accompanying a game isn't out right the wrong thing to do, especially when the game has many complex mechanics in it, but many simpler smaller details should be as intuitive as possible.

This can be achieved through association with other games and habits, for example thanks to Legend of Zelda whenever I see one section of discoloured wall I am tempted to blow it up, and quite a few other games have used that logic and thus have never needed to teach me what areas of the environment are destructible. How often does a video game outline that red barrels are destructible? Not many, do you shoot it anyway expecting it to explode? Of course. Sometimes it's just building mechanics that just make reasonable sense or just creating an obvious path, such as throwing a barrel of water onto fire puts out the fire which in Divinity Original Sin 2 is never explained, and in the Uncharted series when you can always tell what rocks and walls are climbable. The Assassin's Creed series even has some of it's own internal cues that repeatedly make appearances, such as where ever there is a white cloth or sheet draped over an object then that object is the beginning of a movement path, and even the locations of pigeons indicate you can jump to a hay bail from there.

Sometimes it is difficult to account for this, I can't even think of my own examples right now from board games that aren't just factors borrowed from other games, so it is not a cardinal sin to include manuals and tutorials, but the faster players can learn how to play the faster they can get into the game and the less frustrated they will be with the rules. There is also something satisfying of seeing  something in a game and thinking "what would happen if I did this?..." and discovering new interesting ways to play with clues that have been laid out for them. Honestly though, if someone isn't really willing to learn how to play a game whether it's through a manual or trial and error, they don't really deserve to play it.

Game Design: Week 3

There are two major factors that effect the level of perceived competence a player has in any given game, skill and luck. At any point a decision has been made in a game at least one of these concepts is in play and thus the importance of either of these two cannot be understated.

Skill is the ability to do something well, and that is on point with that is refereed to when skill is mentioned in the context of games. Luck in games refers to any time that chance is a factor in the outcome of any action. These two core concepts are in conflict with each other in determining the result of the game. The goal of a game designer is to find a balance of skill and luck that they feel suits the game, while maintaining a degree of balance on the side.

With games that rely solely on skill the victor will always be the better player, this creates more gratification in victory and recognition of hard work because the player has always earned their victory. Where games that require solely on luck and chance pretty much are just totally random and are pointless, you need a minimum level of choice here, but lets just say mostly luck for now, these games can become very suspenseful as many decisions could have any number of potential unknown outcomes, some tend to claim that luck softens the pain of loss because you can deny your personal failure, but speaking for myself I consider winning through luck cheap and would rather have lost due to my own stupidity.

Ultimately how much a game relies on luck or skill is preference or at least preference of your audience, there are merits to both but the most important thing about a game is whether it is fun or not, that is up for the game designer to find out and tune as they go. The resulting game could have a wildly difference skill/luck balance than what was initially intended because it makes it more fun to play.

Game Design - Week 2

I have decided to keep using this blog for further assignments involving theory classes such as Game Design, that require some sort of weekly discussion. Enough about that on to the actual work.

PS. I realized way to late I never clicked publish on these.



One of if not the most important aspect of game, board game, video game, sports game, war game, development is playtesting and prototyping. If you are a sane and reasonable human being you should believe form follows function, and understand that practical use is logically of greater importance than aesthetic.

To prototype a game is to put together a quick representation of what you intend your game to be with what ever resources you have during the games development, and playtesting is testing the play of that prototype. The reason this is so important is that it will guarantee the quality of play, in showing you the players and developers whether the game actually works and functions as it is intended to. Play testing can let you know that your brilliant and revolutionary idea is a total and complete game breaker and you are useless and Bioware should've never hired you.

I'm not quite sure how much detail i have to go into but not much has to be said here. You as a developer have to give the consumer what they want, fun. You can spend hours on you rules and systems but none of it matter is none of that works or doesn't bring anyone any enjoyment, so it's your job to make sure your game is fun and works, and building prototypes as you go is how you do that and if you can't do that you might end up with a disaster on your hands.

Before I end this I would just like to note that many triple a titles aren't released as absolute shit shows because they don't play test them but usually because developers pressure them to release it anyway and maybe patch it later, they knew Arkham Knight was broken.

Entry 09: Virtual Reality

Is virtual reality the next big step for video games, or is it just a gimmick? Either possibility has potential, which is more likely? There are many things to look at to help determine this, the popularity of VR, such as the companies making VR games, the cost of producing triple a games and the overall future of game production,

Virtual Reality is not a new concept, there are many examples of VR throughout pop-culture, from headsets to holo-decks and even stasis chambers that pierce into your spine and there are a fair share of attempts are creating Virtual Reality such as Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and even some people would reason that 3d imagery is an attempt at VR. VR as a concept is clearly sought after, but what about as a product, at least in its current iterations of headsets including the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, well that is a bit tricky to answer. Apparently there is plenty of consumer interest and optimistic (foolish) analysts have made high predictions for the adoption of VR headsets, however sales numbers have been rather low in comparison, I can lend my personal opinion and say that I believe that everyone who has tried one wants one, they just can't afford it. My opinion may mean nothing however the price is definitely a point worth discussing, as many VR headsets are floating around $700-$1500 assuming you're in the US, as well as requiring a top of the line computer to be able to support it, the closest thing to a cheap alternative is whatever that crappy phone one is or Playstation VR (but come on, new finicky tech, mostly indie games, do you really want that on an extremely restricted console). So here we are, step one of making an argument, establish you've gone nowhere, VR isn't as popular as it could be but it might only be because of money, okay then. At least the games are cheaper.

The top of the line triple a games are produced with budgets of millions of dollars, Destiny for instance had a budget of roughly $500,000,000, I am not joking. Now this seems like I'm going off topic but bare with me, this comes back round. Triple a games may eventually become unprofitable. As games evolve the amount of work that goes into them and the number of developers working on will increase, and for every little shortcut someone programs into a new engine there are two other areas that now require twice the work to hit the current industry standard. What I'm trying to say, is that top tier games are only going to get more expensive to make and we will hit a cap before the rest of the industry changes, whether game technology stagnates at this cap or game prices increase, something will change, and VR may just be what comes out unscathed. Just for a little proof, when Epic games a very successful developer known for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War was working on their original concepts for Gears of War 4 came to realize that this Game would cost over $100,000,000 to make, and despite the overweening success of the rest of the series, making that game would bankrupt them, so they sold the IP to Microsoft. That's just showing that even the biggest and most well known developers will not be untouched by the rising costs of game production. "Jesse, where the hell does VR come into this," Well, it doesn't, well it does but not directly, what I'm suggesting is that Indie games will survive, low budgets and developed by small teams, (good) indie games are either retro with a creative twist or purely a gimmick, and where indie will start to rise, so will VR because VR fits into indie.

VR from the start is a gimmick, people may have dreams of Matrix like worlds just like our own but we can do what we want GTA style, but what are some of the most popular VR games (with proper optimization and controls)? Job simulator? Surgeon Simulator? Roller-coasters? They are all from independent developers, they are all (moderately) low budget, and they don't cost much to buy. VR may have a large buy-in cost but the games themselves, $20-$40. All of these VR games are short, sweet and fun experiences, often with playfully simple aesthetics, with simple geometry and cartoonish colours and shading. Aside from having to cater everything to VR (there are probably already templates to make it easy to follow) VR games a relatively easy to make when compared to the monolithic triple a titles we all fight over now, and that's what's going to keep VR around. Occasionally we'll get a Star Citizen or a Resident Evil which when ported correctly feels like it was made for VR, but everything actually designed purely for VR is just simple and fun, like a Wii but much much better,

Is virtual reality the next big step for video games, or is it just a gimmick? the simple answer, yes.
It's both, it is part of the next stage in gaming because it is a gimmick. The difficulty of making a truly top tier title is what stop VR from becoming obsolete due to production costs, and they almost stupidly simple games sold for the platform is what will keep it alive a lot longer than what Call of Duty could for any device.

Entry 08: Australian Classification

Is Australia’s ‘Refused Classification (RC)’ category for Video Games treating Adults like kids?
That's a bit of a loaded question isn't it? It's purely subjective and will spark an argument between gamers and 30-50 year old women with nothing better to do because they are ignoring their parental responsibilities and making us front the cost. Gee Burt, I think Jesse might be biased. Ya think, Ernie?

Several decades had gone by since video-games had become mainstream before we obtained an 'R' rated classification for them. For those who don't know video games (allegedly) follow roughly the same guidelines set for films in Australia, which are their to help viewers determine the level of appropriateness for them self or their family with 'R' being the highers (along side 'X') for high impact content. Video games however only obtained the 'R' rating several years ago after constant petitions and one dickhead premier from South Australia who kept voting against it retiring (requiring a unanimous vote to be put through, also this dickhead wanted all R rated films to be coverless, seriously? fight club is just a bar of soap), previously all content that would be classified 'R' would be marked as refused classification or 'RC', which kind of made sense, given there was no adult rating at the time, so it was only the lack of one that was pathetic.

Getting this new rating was not the homestretch. Sure the classification board loosened up, giving us back Mortal Kombat 9, and letting Valve re-apply Left 4 dead 2 uncensored (it's free dlc on steam check it out if you want) which given the first game was almost the same was  without any censorship to begin with was its on controversy, but it didn't stop games being classified as 'RC'. Why is this? Short answer: hypocritical assholes. Longer answer that isn't quite the long answer: contradictory guidelines and statements made in the forms the classification board is supposed to follow; within the guidelines of the classification board includes two lines that roughly go like this "an adult is allowed to view, interact with or consume any media they choose," and "refused classification if considered offensive by a reasonable adult," (when referring to any of the classification points, violence, sexual content, etc.). What is a reasonable adult? I don't know, it's probably somewhere along the lines of the board members themselves, but that's irrelevant, if from the start you say people can do what they want, you CAN'T later use terms like 'reasonable adult' which imply and enact a restriction. It's ridiculous it's pathetic, it's a complete fucking joke. You can't even say it's to protect the children.

We need to protect the children. Says the inept parent who doesn't know how to do her(maybe his) fucking job that she signed the contract two when she got horny without protection. That argument is invalid and pointless, or at least it should be, to some people it caries weight still. However there is still an abundance of products that would be considered inappropriate for a child sold on store shelves everywhere every day, and if anyone who looks young wants to buy anything that's considered adult material they need to have ID on them. Every precaution has been taken to make sure kids don't buy inappropriate material, so why would that be an issue. By effectively banning video games (or any other non dangerous product) they are putting on a shelf that's too high for anyone to reach not just children.

To everyone's joy we were blessed with an adult rating for games, that basically did nothing for anyone over 18 leaving us in the same ditch we were stuck in in the first place. Leaving plenty of games still out of our reach just like the children who could no longer play R rated game (given most would have been MA before hand), so yes, we are being treated like children, and while at 20 I still don't quite feel like an adult, talking down to me and telling me what is an isn't okay for my eyes, leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and you know the rest.

Entry 07: Game addiction

Game addiction has been an apparent problem brought up by dipshits for years. And while it is true that there have been plenty of examples of people being addicted to video games and the consequences of that, actively blaming games for it is absurd.

Video games are often the target of critique, both by media that feels endangered by its popularity, news which just needs a story to drum up controversy, parents who'd rather blame their lack of responsibility on someone else so they don't have to do their job, sjw's and feminists hoping it's an easy target. This is not new to us, and I believe I have mentioned this before and I will definitely later on. The constant and biased targeting of this medium with generally little to no real evidence, definitely puts most accusation against video-games on questionable grounds. The sheer amount of slandering endured by our medium, has trivialized any remark made against them (for some reason comments made by a famously shit posting cunt Anita Sarkeesian were actually taken on board by dickless Kaplan at Blizzard, but thats for another time). But that's not to say there isn't cases of game addiction, just that the accusations are bullshit.

Dopamine is a chemical released in the brain when we do something considered pleasurable, it's actually what makes us consider it pleasurable. Do that thing to often and you will eventually create a strong association of that action with the pleasure you are feeling, eventually you get addicted to that and can't stop yourself from doing that thing. That is a super simplified explanation to how basic addiction works, drugs for example are a little different, you are often directly addicted to the drug not a dopamine reaction. Anything you enjoy can cause addiction as a result of this, and the addiction itself isn't so much a danger, it's what the addiction can make you do, or not do. Addiction to video games can cause you to ignore you're friends, family, job, exercise and even food, you can end up physically unwell and covered in bed sores, and that's just some examples. But are video games any more dangerous than anything else no? No, games are no more addictive than anything else, and repeated near obsessive use will cause addiction, just like anything else, and the symptoms of addiction such as those mentioned above, aren't necessarily any worse than that of any other addiction.

Is game addiction a problem, yes? Is it any worse than anything else, no not at all. If you are a responsible adult you can avoid it, and if you are actually a decent parent it won't be an issue. So everyone can shut up about it and stop scapegoating on a hobby just because they don't like it.

Entry 06: Violence in video games.

Fuckin' sweet.



















































Since the dawn of time government, news media and parent groups have always found some scapegoat to blame societies flaws on, there was rock music, then television now video games to name just a few. And these games were filled with abhorrent content, such as violence, sex and mushroom stomping racial stereotypes, and everything you could want in a scapegoat strawman.

Because of this video games were attacked as a medium with violence being the main cause of grievance (before the regressive left got to them). "think of the children" they said, "fuck off and raise them yourself" I said, well not really since this fight started back around the time of the arcade release of Mortal Kombat, as the uberviolent fighting game was one of the key prompts for the creation of the ESRB. The ESRB was created after the US government effectively warned the game industry that they would instate a ratings bored if they did not do it themselves, after concerns raised about the violent game from worried parents, how about hey just take responsibility for their children and know what they are doing, christ.
It didn't take much longer for games to be rated in such a way internationally, over here in Australia it's handled by the same board that rates films, that board evenly represents all demographics and holds games to the exact same standards as films (sarcasm is hard to get a cross in text).

Despite placing these rating systems that clearly label the content there is a fair share of controversies, due to fuck wits being surprised that R rated game they bought for their kid being in appropriate. A recent example was a push for target to remove GTA 5 from their shelves by a mothers group, the details make it pathetic, it was due to a some feminist being upset that you can kill prostitutes. The game is a sandbox, you can kill people and there are hookers, hence you can kill hookers, its not a goal its a choice, not to mention that this was upon the games second release after being ported to the newer consoles.

I'm not even going to go into the studies on the effect on violence in videogames, I'm not going to touch the theory that the docile nature of society conflicting with out primal aggression that draws us to violence, I'm just going to say this. IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR KIDS TO PLAY THIS DON'T FUCKING LET THEM.

Entry 05: Ludo-narrative resonance/dissonance

Ludo-narrative resonance and dissonance refer to when a games gameplay mechanics can assist or conflict with story elements respectively. Both ludo-narrative resonance dissonance have an effect on the immersion of a game, generally the resonance brings you into a game and the dissonance drags you out.

Ludo-narrative resonance as mentioned above is when the mechanics of a game can assist the story. This aside from shooting the bad guys because the character doesn't like them, or anything else that is literally doing what the game is saying should happen, is generally considered the rarer of the two. SPOILER ALERT; As an example in The Last Of Us as the protagonist Joel you kill pretty much everyone who gets in your way and this is directly acknowledge by dialog, and all the melee combat is relentlessly brutal, all of that lends itself to Joel's survival of the fittest mentality and adds evidence to the idea that Joel may not quite be a hero in the story. A simpler less context heavy example is playing Trevor in GTA V, you go around stealing cars and killing everyone in sight, but Trevor is very clearly mentally unstable and its very believable for him to go out and do that, unlike CJ in San Andreas who is rebuilding Grove Street by decapitating and old lady then molotoving her body before parking you car on a prostitute and detonating it with plastic explosive. I wouldn't say that really adds to the story of GTA but it still technically comes under ludo-narrative resonance, but at least it doesn't detract from the story.

When mechanics of play are detrimental to the story it results in ludo-narrative dissonance. This is extremely common, as most games are games first and foremost with gameplay taking priority over story, at least during gameplay at least. There are examples of this all over the place, from average Joe mowing down hundreds upon hundreds of nameless thugs/terrorists/nazi's but the moment you hit a cutscene they have a mental breakdown after shooting one person, or nigh immortal supersoldiers for characters when they are supposedly human, or when they are actually supposed to be unstoppable supersoldiers they have some ridiculous one hit kill weakness (cough cough Halo). This all can bring you out of the game such as the moment you ponder how your heroic adventurer can slaughter hundreds of men or just plain do something ridiculous (you can grapple hook cops off the roof in Batman: Arkham Origins, try it's hilarious), or it can just piss you off, I have thrown a controller or two because some c*** stabbed me in the foot and killed me. Also a punch from, Mei a 5' possibly overweight or overdressed (heatstroke, come on people) scientist, and Soldier 76 a 6'1" super soldier smashing the butt of his rifle hurt the same amount, fuck off, thats about as believable as an 11 year old kid in Africa building a battle robot... wait a minute. Basically this shit just doesn't make sense, but that's okay, it doesn't always need to, unless maybe it's Metal Gear, which takes everything into account, but that still doesn't make sense anyway.

This topic is a bit more cut and dry than the others, it would probably be better if ludo-narrative resonance where the gameplay assists the story was more prominent, but we don't want everything to be pretentious crap where everything has to mean something profound. This may be a bachelor of arts but I ain't some nancy boy hipster prick who thinks I'm better than someone because I can make up some bullshit meaning for why Masterchief has to fight the covenant instead of hug it out, Vietnam's over they can all shut the fuck up now.

Entry 04: Realistic vs Stylised Aesthetics

There are two main schools of thought on the direction of aesthetic design and graphics in video games; realistic graphics or an intentionally stylised design. And just like 3rd person and 1st person, one is not explicitly greater than the other, and just comes down to preference.

Realistic "graphics" refers to an aesthetic style which is intended to be realistic as possible given the current hardware capabilities. Generally this is considered more desirable and impressive by most people. As our technology and artistic skills increase so to does our ability to graphically render more realistic looking video games. An immediate drawback to this is that graphics now take majority of a personal computers grunt, the mere existence of graphics cards prove this, however this also means that as we want to improve graphics we must also improve the hardware and graphical engines that power these games, pushing forward computing technology. Focusing on this style of aesthetics also has other practical applications such as generating photos of you in different countries so you can look important on facebook, when you in fact spent your time modelling your own face and not learning about photoshop, there are also medical applications but who cares about that.

Meanwhile what people refer to as stylised aesthetics or graphics is where the aesthetic style of a game forgoes the attempt at creating the most realist appearance they could in favour of something more artistic. There is a distinct advantage to stylised aesthetics over realistic ones is a timeless appearance. Focusing on designing a game based on a particular art style allows the games appearance to never look dated aside from the resolution (which can be updated most of the time), cell shading (comic book style lighting) with solid lines in games is a good example of this, provided that the models are smooth enough and the game has skilled artists a game will forever look good as a homage to the art of comic books. However a result of this in contrast to a realist style pushing the technology, the technology could stagnate. If the games look 'good' for extended periods of time without further development companies will start to see that they don't need to put money into furthering the technology used, creating a new status quo for how games are made, which even with many different visual styles from many different artists it will eventually hit a wall and just stop dead flat and just like Call of Duty it will all be the same shit.

Ultimately we need both realistic and stylised graphics, both because everyone has a different preference and because we need to continue the technology but still preserve masterful games.

Entry 03: 1st person vs 3rd person

Since the dawn of time Mountain Dew and Rockstar energy drink addicts have been at each others throat arguing which is better, 1st person or 3rd person perspective in shooters. Of course both of these groups tend to be dickheads with no basis to their argument. While each perspective has it's merits neither is decidedly better than the other, simply because each game is different anyway. Now even though I already made any argument redundant I need a higher word count so here we go.

The first person perspective places the players camera within the head (or on the headless shoulders) of their in game avatar, while the third person perspective places the perspective places the camera behind the player. Much like how the terms first and third person are used in writing it implies the difference between 'I' and 'Them' when referring to the protagonist. This places you into the boots of you're character, you are Gordon Freeman, you are Doomguy, you are B.J. Blazkowicz, you are Masterchief. But while this method immerses you into the actions of your character and lets you live a power fantasy it can pull you out of the overall story by making you these voiceless blank slates made for self insertion.

Third person shooters separate you from your roided out death machine of a protagonist, letting you peer safely from over their massive shoulders. If you has some kind of a personality disorder that caused you to believe you really were the character in a first person shooter you no longer have that problem, as third person shooters don't make much of an effort to make you personally feel like you could be the character. Initially that doesn't as enticing until you come to the conclusion that it allows for stronger stories with much more flushed out characters and better scripts, the flat and simple "Sir, finishing this fight" becomes "eat shit and die, motherfucker," okay maybe that wasn't the best example, but the characters are actually characters not just blank slates to allow you to embody. These characters carry can usually carry a stronger story being that they are fully realised, and none of this is even considering gameplay yet.

Finally getting around to the gameplay aspects, the first person shooter as stated before puts you in the boots of the camera. Your camera is further forward and you could almost swear you are holding the gun in your mouth, this immediately has some advantages, your skill based accuracy and rang is generally better, simply because you are closer to where you are actually firing from. The advantage is negligible, especially when I found an exploit in a certain triple a third person shooter that lets bullets clip through cover (don't ask I'm not sharing my secrets), but the difference is noticeable at times, otherwise some third person games wouldn't insert first person as a feature. A distinct characteristic of most first person shooters, is speed, especially on on the pc. First person shooters (competitive anyway) are all about fast reflexes, 90 degree turns finishing with a head shot and teabagging. These quick snapshots would only be possible without the limitations of "realistic movement" and are also more necessary with the smaller cone of vision.

Third person shooters are often coverbased. Coverbased meaning you slam your back into a wall and pray to Lord Gaben you don't flanked while taking potshots and using you're magical camera to look around the corner. Naturally this coverbased gameplay is much slower than the break neck speed of a first person shooter, slugging around cover to cover, playing much more defensively, unless you just run around with a shotgun anyway, speed was also effect by the use of complete and realistic(ish) animations when running around. You also have a wider perspective due to the camera being placed back, yes I know the angle is more or less the same the camera is just moved back, but it still gives you a greater sense of vision and spatial awareness, and even some games allow you to rotate your characters vision with out aiming, again aiding in a much more defensive style of gameplay. But these are more a matter of preference rather than a solid pro or con, same goes for first person shooters.

I reiterate this argument is pointless, but just as people will always bitch about an opposing console they will about this. So I will close this with a few simple statements. You can either be the character or you can follow A character, It's irrelevant as long as you enjoy it. You may consider some features of either perspective as advantages or disadvantages, but still irrelevant, if you are playing competitively then your opponents are playing with the same advantages and/or disadvantages as you, all that matters is which are you better at compared to the average. That is all.

Entry 02: Games after 2000 - Corporate greed and micro-transactions.

Money makes the world go round, well actually a combination of gravity and the atmosphere does but I'm missing my own point here. My point is money is extremely important in our current society for a variety of reason, so naturally money is the main desire of many, many people and thus we all work to obtain it. If you came up with a genius idea to make money quickly and easily with no effort wouldn't you, enter the evil (might be overstating) and greedy(might be understating) concept of the micro-transaction.
Micro-transactions are small purchases that can be made with in a game, usually for in game items as opposed to being a full expansion. Often micro-transactions can include in-game currencies, skins, power-ups and equipment such as armour, weapons and vehicles. Companies often use these to continue funding a game after all or most sales of the game itself have been made with little effort on their part to create new content, with many companies being accused of cutting content originally intended to be apart of the full game so it can be sold later as a micro transaction.
Much of the controversy surrounding micro-transactions comes from the general displeasure of having to pay for content someone should already have access to but that is still relatively harmless regardless of how dishonest it is, however micro-transactivisions can have a great effect on gameplay.
Several multiplayer games have tiered systems of weapons, equipment,etc. that can be exploited by micro-transactions or are even sometimes designed around micro-transactions. The reason this is a problem is that the 'best' players of these games will no longer be the most practised and skilled players but instead it will be some asshole who looks suspiciously like Casper the friendly ghost
who can simply just afford to purchase top tier equipment by throwing his wallet at the screen. This in turn ruins the game for many players, shortening the lifetime of the game and ultimately earning much less money than what they would if purchases were limited to something like skins, very much like what Riot Games has done with League of Legends which is a free game that has earned the millions of dollars.
Micro-transactions are the idea of a money hungry fat cats trying to scrape every bit of cash the can from their consumer and hoping they are dumb enough to fall for it, are you? Well yeah probably, I mean it's still happening. Look just do your best not to fall for this shit and maybe they'll stop, and maybe never download a game on your phone, like ever, just watch Southpark.

Entry 01: Games before 2000 - Id Software and 3d graphics

Nostalgia is a mans best friend, if your best friend is a highschool sports star who can’t get over how good he use to be, and seeing him brings a smile to your face but sends you into a spiral of regret and sorrow. Moving on, the 90’s still feel like they were ten years ago with its kickass cartoons, people in spandex fighting giant monsters , floppy disks and dial up internet connections but in reality the 90’s ended nearly twenty years ago and our favourite medium for entertainment has come a long way since then.

May 1992 Id Software released Wolfenstein 3d for MS-DOS. This was a breakout hit for Id Software and the gameplay inspired their next release DOOM (E1M1 At Doom’s Gate plays in head) in 1993. These two games were pioneers of gaming in this era making Id a household name (well at least in the tech rooms of college campuses) and created the ‘DOOM clone’ genre which includes such classics as Duke Nukem 3d, Shadow Warrior and Star Wars: Dark Forces.
Eventually the Doom Clone became the genre we refer to as the First Person Shooter.

Assuming anyone reading this has played or at least seen a first person shooter, you would understand that perspective and a 3d world would be necessary for the most important feature of the genre, looking through the protagonists eyes. And thus the limited technology of the time would have made creating this a very painful experience, how ever the programmers at Id lead by John Carmack (praise be unto him) used a technique called ray casting to make Wolfenstein 3d appear 3d and another much more complicated technique for DOOM which actually only work with 2d calculations, so that the old processors never actually calculate a z-axis in any of these games.

It wasn’t long after this when popular games began using actual 3d graphics, with the original Starfox being released in 1993 which used the Super FX chip to display polygons on the SNES and the original PlayStation releasing in 1994 (in Japan) bringing many games with 3d graphics before 2000, ultimately rendering John Carmacks Genius redundant, you know until he started building space ships, but we can still thank him for Call of Duty... um, I take that back.