BA7 - Studio - Entry 1

 I have now gone through several ideas for what to do for my studio project. At the beginning of term, I knew I wanted to pursue my goal of becoming more proficient in 3D modelling. Having decided to give up on my original aspiration of becoming a concept artist. So I knew I wanted to create a small environmental scene, preferably in Maya, with a fully finished, textured, geometrically efficient model at the end of BA8. I just had to decide what to choose. This was a big decision for me, and as a result, I had lots of different project ideas.

My first thought was to create something from one of my favourite horror movies'; 'The Evil Dead'. I thought about the movie, and came up with the idea that the cabin was the ideal size for the project. I would re-watch the film several times if necessary, going over every frame in detail, so to get the most accurate recreation possible. I aimed to create the cabin itself, with the interior fully modelled and textured, as if being played from a first-person view perspective. I also wanted to model the shed outside, and the 'almost-iconic' Delta 88 'Oldsmobile' as well.

Another idea I had was to look at a fantasy universe that I have a personal passion with and a great love for; the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I wanted to create some kind of 'digital diorama' depicting a scene, telling a story with only a snapshot. The same basic form as the 'Evil Dead' idea, but just different content. Back in first year, in BA3, I created a bunker door from the game 'Fire Warrior', which is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I was very pleased with the end result for this project, and got my highest mark out of all the modules I've done so far for it.

My finished BA3 project from first year

For BA7, I will do something similar, a small but well polished scene that shows my potential with 3D modelling. So far, I have done a few quick concept sketches of what I might like to do.

Battlefield ruins 1

Battlefield ruins 2

Heretics Hill 1

Heretics Hill 2

Battle for Valhalla

BA7 - Contextual Studies - Entry1

So, I have decided to start with the question: ‘What is it that makes people spend so much time in virtual worlds?’ I came to this question after just thinking about video games for a while.  The amount of time in people’s lives video games consume astounds me. People spend most of their lives in front of a screen of some description.  When it comes to video games though, what is it that draws audiences in and holds their attention for so long?

For an example, ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ has a little counter, which is visible before a player is about to jump into a multiplayer game. This counter gives varying statistics about the worldwide audiences actions in the game. One shocking statistic I found, was that collectively, players all across the world have spent over 10,000 years playing ‘Call of Duty’: Black Ops’. The last time I checked this counter, was well over a year ago. At the time of writing, three more Call of Duty games have been released every November. I find this amount of time completely ridiculous.  And that’s just one game, and more than that, what if it was only displaying the time spent on the Playstation3 platform alone?! ‘Call of Duty’ games are typically released on PC and Xbox360 simultaneously with Playstation3.

What makes video games so addictive? Why do so many people play them? How are they so successful? I am not speaking from outside the frame here. Let me be clear in saying that I myself have whiled away hour after hour after hour on video games. Overall, I think everyone, myself included, spend to much time playing video games when theres a lot more to life than just 'Halo' or 'Minecraft'. I don't want to say that games are a bad thing, I think they can be enjoyed like anything else really, in moderation. I want to look at the things that make games so popular and attractive to an audience. To begin, I would say that games can offer people; control, violence, sex, and the means to do things they would never get to do in real life. The first word which springs to mind when I ask myself 'what is it that makes people spend so much time in virtual worlds?' is escapism. 

If we look at film for a comparison, we can see that James Cameron's 'Avatar' and George Lucas' original 'Star Wars' are two of the highest grossing movies of all time, even when adjusted for inflation against all others throughout cinematic history. These two films, are both of the science-fiction genre, both contain lots of action, but more importantly, they are both escapist fantasies. 

BA6 Contextual Studies - 'Spore' game review

‘Spore’ is an ambitious ‘god-game’ from the creator of the famous ‘The Sims’ series, Will Wright.  On paper, the premise of ‘Spore’ sounds exciting; the player takes a race of single-celled organisms, swimming around in a primordial soup, right through the evolutionary chain, up to galactic conquest.  It sounds like an impressive concept for a game, but in practise, ‘Spore’ falls short of its expectations. ‘Spore’ deals with very serious, ‘real’ issues, like; war, conquest, colonisation, expansion etc. But juxtaposes this by presenting them in a light-hearted manner, with wacky, cartoonish creatures, intended for children and teenagers.

The player starts by creating what their race of monsters will look like. ‘Create a Creature’ is a big part of the attraction of ‘Spore’.  The tools available to the player are overwhelming, and the sheer amount of manipulation is astonishing and very simple to utilize.  In fact Create a Creature’ was given out by the makers as a ‘free-to-download’ feature. Once the player has constructed a monster, their creation begins as a tiny, microscopic organism in a sea. This is known as the ‘cell stage’. The player controls one organism, with the goal to grow bigger, whilst avoiding the larger, predatory creatures that populate the sea.

Once you reach a certain size, the game moves onto to the second stage, the ‘Creature Stage’. Here, your little beast moves onto land for the first time, and goes about basic animal instincts, i.e. eating, breeding, running away from predators etc.

The third stage acts as a very basic sort of RTS game. This stage is known as the ‘Tribal’ stage. With the player now controlling a small tribe of the same creatures, who wield rudimentary tools and weapons. You can either befriend the other tribes that inhabit the world, and greet them with either peace or war.

The next stage is the ‘Civilization’ stage. This is were you are in charge of multiple cities, and can engage in larger scale warfare, with tanks and planes. Again, the powerful and easy-to-learn creation tools of Spore come into they’re own here. The player can customise their vehicles and buildings to match the aesthetics of their race. The focus in the ‘Civilization’ stage is global domination.

Once the player has conquered/ unified their own planet, they progress onto the game’s last stage; the ‘Space’ stage. Once again, the player has the opportunity to create their own kind of object; a spacecraft, with which to explore the galaxy. The gameplay shifts to colonising and terraforming other worlds for your species. To counter-balance the monumental task of running a galactic empire, ‘Spore’ concentrates the player’s actions onto a single ship, rather than try to look at the whole galaxy. You can zoom around space, discovering new, intelligent life, and then interact with it. This could either be peace, diplomacy, trade, or conversely, it could be the global extermination of an alien species. The point is that the game leaves the decision up to you.

‘Spore’ is very ambitious, in its attempt to create a game, which encompasses the whole evolutionary chain. I admire ‘Spore’ for it’s original concept, it’s aspiration and it’s marvellous customisation tools. However, I do feel that each of the individual stages of ‘Spore’ seem rather watered down, and a bit weak. The only exception to this is the final ‘Space’ stage. I thought there was enough to do in this final phase to foster a wholesome, game-playing experience, but unfortunately this was the only case. Taken together, the separate stages of ‘Spore’ work well, although it feels impossible to escape the simple nature of each stage individually. 

'Spore's impressive 'create-a-creature' tool

BA6 Contextual Studies - 'Kabul Kaboom' review

'Kabul Kaboom' is a small flash game which was made, presumably, in response to the war in Afghanistan, and in particular, America's involvement in the war. In the game, your goal is to catch burgers, which fall endlessly from the sky, whilst also avoiding the constant barrage of falling bombs. There is no scoring system, there are no levels, no varying degrees of difficulty, only the infinite strafing from left to right. Catching fast food and avoiding missiles is the entire game, as there is literally nothing else to do. This is the screen you are first greeted with:

A very simple screen, with instructions, title, creators etc, presented in a comical and rudimentary manner. This simplicity is key to 'Kabul Kaboom'. It is about conferring a message, rather than about creating a rich, deep, technologically complex game. 'Kabul Kaboom's message is to demonise America, to portray it as a violent, warmongering nation, bringing death and terror to Afghanistan, whilst at the same time, bringing it's fast food to the whole world.

Avoid the American bombs,  eat the American burgers

I noticed that the little character you control when you're playing the game, is actually from a famous painting by Pablo Picasso. She is part of the piece 'Guernica', painted in 1937. She looks to be a weeping woman, crying for the loss of her child, who she holds in her arms. 'Guernica' was made by Picasso in response to another war, the Spanish Civil War. The horror and tragedy of war on innocent civilians was what prompted Picasso to create 'Guernica'. It has since become an iconic symbol of peace and anti-war propaganda. This is obviously part of the game's message. By referencing a powerful anti-war piece of art with 'Guernica', it further emphasises it's own message against American aggression.

By using both bombs and burgers, the game addresses the hypocritical dichotomy of America. With American global fast food chains populating the far flung corners of the Earth, while at the same time, bringing peace and order to foreign countries with bullets and missiles.

The game invariably ends the same way, with the player being caught by a missile and being presented with the game over screen. Even this is subverted in a way that helps bring across the game's message.

Instead of the conventional 'GAME OVER', 'Kabul Kaboom' states that the game is NOT over. There is a point to the fact that you can never win and never truly finish the game. It is the game reflecting the idea that American intervention will never end and that there are no winners.

BA6 Contextual Studies - 'Dear Esther' game review

The player starts on an unnamed Hebridian island, with no immediate explanation why they are there. Almost everything about the player’s character is unclear, as regarding; race, gender, age, etc. This ambiguity could stem form the fact that ‘Dear Esther’ is an indie game, with fairly limited money behind it, giving rise to the explanation that there wasn’t enough money, time, computing power left to ‘describe’ the character in-game. On the other hand, the makers of “dear Esther’ may have thought such personal details unimportant, in relation to the story it was trying to tell.

The only actions the player can perform, is move, look around and zoom in. I think this minimalist control scheme was included because the makers of the game wanted the player to focus more on the backstory, as it was delivered to them in cryptic fragments, as they traversed the island. There is next to no interaction between the player and the game environment. You can move around the island, the game will recognise when you walk over different surfaces, such as rock, sand, shallow water etc. But there is little other interaction.

Throughout the experience of ‘Dear Esther’, there is evidence of previous human habitation and man-made objects, littering the world. Old, abandoned hovels, ship wrecks, rusting crates, fences, graves etc, all give the player the feeling of this island being occupied sometime in the past. The story of these objects and buildings are slowly revealed through narration by an unnamed male speaker.

The narrative plays out in a series of well versed, if sometimes overly ambiguous voice-overs, by a disembodied male narrator. Overall, I was left confused as to who I was actually assuming the role of in ‘Dear Esther’. Was I Esther herself? Or the unnamed narrator? Was I the one sending these strange letters, or receiving them?

Occasionally, I would happen upon strange, little scenes that seemed to demand attention, yet were not obvious in conveying their message. On a beach, I found a mysterious pattern drawn into the sand. I happened to know what it was, but why was it there?

Hidden meanings: Divine proportion? The Golden rectangle?

Further on into the game, I came across chemical symbol, crudely painted onto different surfaces, in a luminous, turquoise paint. This time however, I did not know the elements or compounds they were describing. I assumed that they, along with the pattern on the beach, were left here by the shepherds who used to live here.

Additionally, I found several Bible passages, scrawled across the rock of the island, or in man-made structures. There were also several mentions of the ancient city of 'Damascus', which I did not understand. 

I saw that the game was generating mysterious elements to itself, which kindled my interest in the game, further. I immediately wanted to find out  what these weird messages and symbols meant. I then came to the realisation that by doing this, the game had created extended interest in itself. By that, I mean that the players of 'Dear Esther' would spend time on figuring out all the hidden meanings associated with these strange writings. It was really another way of drawing people's attention to the game, with added mystery.

The game was very atmospheric, it looked and felt like you were actually on that remote Hebridean island. ‘Dear Esther’ has great looking scenery, with wind, lighting, and water effects all adding to the immersion.

The interior caverns of the island

The beautiful, moonlit bay

The player journeying up a rocky hillside, to a distant house

You can explore the island, but the experience is actually quite linear, despite the game’s attempt to appear non-linear.  Invisible walls and other barriers restrict the player in where they can go. These blockades funnel the player into where the game wants them to go. When this became apparent to me, I was at first disillusioned with the loss of freedom available to me.  But after some thought on why the creators had done this, I saw the necessity in limiting the players movements. If I had been making the game, I wouldn’t let people just have completely free reign in what to do. If I wanted them to explore a set number of environments in a particular order, I would need to create a linear path down which the player could travel.

'Dear Esther' is a game which focuses on a higher concept of storytelling, rather than the game in itself.

BA6 - Contextual Studies - 'L.A. Noire' game review

L.A. Noire is a crime-thriller game, set in 1940’s Los Angeles. Made by Rockstar games, the player ventures through the story as ‘Cole Phelps’, an honest cop, eager to prove himself, after recently being promoted to detective. As the title of the game suggests, the game takes many cues from ‘film noir’, the classic movie genre. Evidence of this is apparent throughout the game. One such example of this is the stylistic GUI of the menu screen, with its distinctive slanted text, projected against the wall of a misty, back-alley. Another example is with a narrator filling the audience in on background information, in a dry, cynical tone, that echoes that of film noir. 

The game's main menu screen

‘Rockstar’ are best known for their successful, if somewhat infamous series: ‘Grand Theft Auto’. ‘L.A. Noire takes many features from ‘Rockstars’ seminal series. Including the popular sandbox gameplay, the shooting and driving mechanics, character customisation and elements of its’ GUI.

New technology in ‘MotionScan’ allowed Rockstar to capture human facial expressions in there most minute and subtle detail. This clever new technology allows a new level of detail into the game, which hasn’t been seen before. Interrogation is a major part of this crime-thriller game, and ‘MotionScan’ really helps with this pivotal game mechanic. 

'MotionScan' allows an unprecedented level of facial detail to be picked up

The soundtrack has all the features of a classic noir film, harking back to a bygone era with jazz and swing music. The game has it’s own original score, which was heavily influenced by music of the 1940’s. A particular feature of the game’s sound, is that certain notes and chimes will play out when the player discoverers something of significance.  Thus, accentuating the importance of the object and helping to point the player in the right direction. The game actually tells the player this, in game. 

Interaction exists in many forms in L.A. Noire. The player talks to characters within the game world. They also can navigate around the environment of L.A, as well as engage in gunfights and chases. The environment is very interactive, with shrubbery swaying and bending as you move through it. Streetlights can be collided with and can fall over. Nameless NPC’s will try to avoid you if you swerve to close to them in your car.