The Art Of Gaming

 Welcome back to my blog! Today I finished writing up about my themes that I highlighted from different annotated bibliographies. I thought it was going to be way harder but after I followed a sentence structure I was able to write a paragraph or two each on the themes that I picked out. I don't really know if I done the paragraphs correctly but I'm happy that I tried. I feel like going through the whole process helped significantly with writing out everything. I have way more knowledge in doing a literature review now and I'm more confident in my writing skills. I think I improved tremendously in many areas such as academic writing and reading. After I had to write about my themes, I realised that I don't have enough information on some of the topics that I talked about but it's nice to know where I can improve in some areas. I had to go back and read over the academic articles and pick out important parts which I could develop on in relation to my themes. Neverthe...

Reading through my annotated bibliographies I noticed common themes among all of them. The only downside to my them is that I don't have a ton of information written for each so I will have to go back and read the academic articles once again. For my main project I have a few things I want to write about that I feel is important in terms of game modifications.  1) What is a mod and the history and background of game modifications. (I need to get more information on this) 2) The active modding community that revolves around the gaming industry. Examples of this include Simtropolis, Nexus Mods, CurseForge and how they benefit fan programmers.  3) What motivates the modding community and how much fan programmers benefit the gaming industry as well as the different skills fan programmers learn along the way in addition to complications.  4) The different developmental tools that make it easier for fan programmers to mod their games. I will be talking about Half-life 2 and how...

Game Modifications (Player Communities) "To Mod or Not to Mod - An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation" Katarzyna Bilińska-Reformat, Anna Dewalska-Opitek and Magdalena Hofman-Kohlmeyer (2020) 'To Mod Or Not to Mod—An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation'.  Sustainability,  Vol. 12 (9014) 9014. In this article the authors focus on the customer value co-creation in relation to game modifications as well as the motives of mod users and creators. Qualitative research has been carried out which includes separate interviews and focus groups with mod creators and mod users. This research centres on the participation in the development of game mods and how it motivates the user and the creator based on the engagement of the individual. This article gives an in-depth definition of what game modifications are and the different type of game mods and their characteristics alongside some background historical information on the fi...

7 Different types of game testing techniques   Gaming companies need to play-test before they release a game in order to find any faults, glitches and bugs. A recent example of this would be Assasins Creed Valhalla which caused uproar in the gaming community. If a company releases their game without figuring out the errors, it will bring talk amongst the community which can bring down sales.  Game manufacturers need to know who their fanbase is first of all, they need to test their games in order to perfect their end product.  These are the big risks when it comes to game testing: If the game isn't compelling enough for your target audience. If the game has boring aspects. If the game is too repetitive and common for the users.  With risks there are many different game testing techniques that big companies such as KiwiQA, TestBytes etc. use. The errors are documented and brought to attention.  1) Functionality testing - Generic problems are hunted such as g...

When I first started on the reading tasks I didn't really know much about academic writing or reading. I kept doing them first because if I left them till the last minute I would freak out. I kept going back and forth through synonyms when writing my blog to make my writing appear more professional because I thought academic writing was all about professionalism. I was wrong entirely when we started doing the reading tasks together as a class. I feel like the progress is getting much better since we figured it out as a group and our lecturer was extremely helpful. He understood that it was our first time doing the academic writing so I took a lot from the Monday lectures.  My favourite reading so far was probably the first one: The components of game design . You can tell that my academic writing was a bit too much but I had fun trying to figure out how to go about the assignment. During the blog comments I was looking at students academic writing and I had a feeling we were all st...

“In order for the player to be optimally engaged, challenges should be presented at a level equivalent or slightly higher than their current skill. Not too easy, not too hard”( Gigity McD ) The word 'flow state' was coined by Csikszentmihalyi (1975) also known as being “in the zone” This is when the player is fully engaged in the game experience. Csikszentmihalyi put a lot of work into observing and analysing various groups of people. This theory is focused on the idea of how people should balance their skills and the demands of particular tasks. An example of Flow would be a challenge in a game that interests the player such as a puzzle or a boss battle meant to keep the player interested and not get bored. Csikszentmihalyi also states that flow is related to an ideal psychological condition when a person engages in a challenge-skill activity, often resulting in concentration and a focused emphasis on a task. A practical technique for improving Flow is to look at what players...

What is the GDD for? A Game Design Document (GDD) is a blueprint for the design and development of a game. The GDD is a way of being creative and documenting the approach to the development of the game. Gonzale (1999) states that “ the important thing is to have something that describes your game project (or any other project for that matter) before jumping into production.( Gamasutra ) It should help to plan out your game. Though it is recommended that the GDD should be short it needs to be detailed enough so as game developers and artists can coordinate the development of the game independently whilst still keeping to the design.  The GDD is a blueprint for how the game is going to be designed and built, similar to a mind map. In conclusion, the game design document is vital to making a game and it is important to have in order to describe your game project. How do we make one? There are a variety of tools that could be used to create a GDD. These include word processing tools, v...

What are the Qualities of Games?  The following consists of key excerpts taken from an article by Ian Schreiber. It aims to discuss the qualities of a game.  The various definitions of what a game is appear to have similar themes : rules, goals, decision-making and an uncertain outcome (Schreiber, 2009).  The author defines individual gaming elements as "formal elements" because they can be broken down and examined in a straightforward manner. Furthermore, Schreiber outlines several factors in relation to certain aspects of games that designers must consider. Examples include Players, Objectives, Rules etc.  Schreiber discusses Critical Analysis as a key feature of how game designers formulate a better understanding of their product through their consumers. They often need a detailed analysis instead of a simple comment for example "I like this game because it's fun". They strive to dig deeper into the understanding of why it entertains the player. When analysin...

What is a Game, Anyway? The following consists of key excerpts taken from an article by Ian Schreiber. It aims to discuss one's definition of a what a game is.  Schreiber (2009) discusses that many games have similar contrasting ideas. For instance, dots and boxes present the user with a simplistic objective of whoever attains the most boxes wins the game. The same mechanics apply to Tic-tac-toe. Therefore, it is important to clarify the differences between games. A substantial amount of individuals have clashing definitions in terms of what a game is, but all have equal elements. The components of an enticing experience can incorporate conflict, a set of rules, a problem solving task as well as an out of body experience yet all require interaction. A game does not essentially call for technology for the experience to be stimulating, there can be colossal subsets to a game. A game may be as straightforward as "tossing a ball around", as Schreiber (2009) states "play ...