Game design update.

The concept for Team JJKJKJKK is a race against the clock. Recent Ball State budget cuts have caused there to be only one shuttle driver for the entire campus. The player must zoom through their route before time runs out. It’s not all about time, though, because hitting certain obstacles reduces points.

This was our first idea and after several decent ideas we were convinced this was the game for us. We wanted to do something involving the Ball State experience. One of the main selling points for this game for me was the idea of having packs of freshmen moving haphazardly around and being the most likely to jump out in front of the bus.

The next big step for us will be the physical prototype. We can do research about what will make good obstacles and what won’t, but I think seeing people actually interact with these obstacles will be far more beneficial than just asking them. Before this we can hopefully have some of the buildings designed, because they won’t be what changes.

We really just want to make a game that is fun for Ball State students. We could try to do something more appealing to the masses, but the specificity makes it something special.

I most excited about working on the designs. I enjoy this sort of work, and this game will present some unit challenges. I am not, however, excited for the coding and actual creation of the electronic game. I’m a video person, not a coding person (we tend to not get along very well). But I’m confident I will be happy once the finished product is made, especially since it is so different from anything that I have done before.

FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup

Wow, long title.

I haven’t really gotten into a sports game since NFL Blitz 2000, but I picked up FIFA 06 Road to FIFA World Cup at Dave’s Video a while back for really cheap.  Besides the players being outdated this is a fun game.

If you couldn’t tell from the background of my blog, I like soccer. I am in heaven during the World Cup, especially since it helps get through the Premier League offseason.  So I was naturally drawn to this game when I saw it for a super cheap price. Controlling the players to do just what you want is fairly difficult. But this actually makes the game play more fun by adding tension to the game. If you ever get down by a point it is never a certainty that you will be able to make up the points, the shooting is a bit too chaotic. Or maybe I am just not very good at this game, which is usually the case. This also changes the game dynamic. A strong defense is needed because the offense may not always be able to make up the difference. It is also more important to be able to often get off good shots.

Let’s talk about the not so good. The computer-controlled players on your team are pretty terrible and will do truly stupid things. Having an actual person to play co-op with helps this greatly. It is also all too easy to hit the wrong button and do something that you obviously didn’t mean to, like pass to out-of-bounds instead of a chip into the goal. This can become increasingly frustrating and lead to profanities being yelled at the TV. Remember, it is rated E for what happens IN the game, not outside of it.

There are many options for game play. You can just play a quick game or play through the whole World Cup experience. Additionally you can play with or against up to 3 other players. The player can also customize the length of the game from just a few minutes to the actual 90 minutes.

Overall it is a pretty fun game, but nothing special above any other soccer game so I give it four out of five stars or thumbs or whatever. 

Left 4 Dead

I’m sure many people have already played this game, but I am usually several years behind in video games.  Left 4 Dead is a first-person shooter/zombie video game. I usually prefer to shoot zombies, evil aliens, or Nazis so this is a game that suits me well, especially since many of the zombies have mutated to not look very human.

I don’t feel like much needs to be said about the plot. A group of 4 people who are immune to this new disease make their way through the Pennsylvania town of Fairfield. They make several escape attempts but all lead to disaster and they ultimately flee to the south, headed for the Florida Keys.  It is a pretty simple story filled with hordes of infected.

Now I am absolutely terrible at this game, mostly because I can never get the hang of the shooting mechanics, but it still is quite a bit of fun. I really enjoy the multiplayer aspect of this game. Up to four people can play offline and work together to kill things. I don’t often play video games by myself so I appreciate when games have solid multiplayer game play. I also like how the players play cooperatively. I prefer working with my friends rather than against them.

This game can get a bit intense. This is especially true when a witch is around. A witch is a female infected character that stays still and cries. But if a player disturbs it with light or loud noise it because extremely aggressive. As if hearing crying randomly is not creepy enough, the danger it represents is terrifying.

This game is not terribly long. Normally I do not like this about games, but the ability to get a group of friends together and beat it in one day, not that I personally have the patience for that, is a positive. This game also has a high enough replay value that beating it doesn’t significantly cut down on the enjoyment of popping the disc back in a few days later.

This game is a lot of fun, but the shooting mechanics could be a little better in my opinion. Therefore I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Gender bias in gaming

There is a gender bias in the video game industry. Many games are clearly marketed for males, and some for females. This does create a separation between male oriented games, which are the more “hardcore” games usually, and female oriented ones, which tend to be more casual and less competitive.

The effect of this is a separation of male and female gamers. The appearance of few female gamers causes many male gamers to feel isolated from females. The lack of overall recognition and acceptance of female gamers causes them to feel isolated from everyone.

What can be done about this? It is easy to point fingers at the game companies, but is that fair. After all, they are doing what works, what has caused ever-increasing sales.  It would help if they would start making changes and see if that causes drops in sales. But ultimately it is up to individuals making the choice of which games they wish to purchase. Perhaps as more females become part of the gaming culture game developers will see the benefit of creating games purposely geared towards both sexes.

The gaming industry is certainly not the only industry with gender bias issues. However, society is making advances in certain areas. I believe gender biases will continue to diminish, but it will be a long process.  I do also believe that games with female sex symbols will always have a market though, just not as dominant of one in the future.

Heroes of Gaia (MMORPG)

I wanted to play an MMORPG for this week because that is what we focused on last class and I have little to no experience with them. I found a free one called Heroes of Gaia. In this game you choose from one of four races: elf, human, orc, and undead. You must defend you castle from other players while trying to build up fame and a strong army. An important aspect of this game is gathering various materials like wood and gold. You can build up your castle, which can do everything from building up its defenses, allowing you to recruit new heroes (you attach units to specific heroes), and training new forces. There are also various cards which give certain bonuses.

Maybe I just have very little experience with MMORPGs, but this game is really confusing and pretty boring. It took me quite some time just to figure out how to attack soldiers to my hero so I could kill some things.  The fighting is also turn-basedish, and just really not satisfying.  You can either attack monsters to get more resources, or you can wait to get a certain amount each hour. Once I started running low on soldiers I couldn’t really do much until my resources built themselves back up. This made the game incredibly boring and kept pulling up other screens while the game was running in the background.

Lame fight

I guess I shouldn’t be expecting too much from a free game, but I was incredibly disappointed with the game play. I am quite surprised that people actually play this game. It seems like the kind of game achievers would really like, because there is a fame leader board. However, explorers would not like it because the graphics aren't spectacular and there isn’t really much to explore.

Not much to explore, just basically this over and over again

One more complaint. The chat system works where everyone can see what you type unless you set it to private or clan. That means I kept having to see annoying teens cuss at each other for tattling to the administrators.

Clearly I would not recommend this game to anyone unless you are great at multitasking and do actually entertaining things while playing. But even then, what would be the point?

I rate it 1 out of 5 stars that I only give to certain games for some reason.

VatSim: Virtual Flying World

Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network, or VatSim for short, is a simulation network that links thousands of flight simulator users in a real-time aviation system.  It is a free community-based system that allows for ace pilots and hobbyists to fly in the same virtual global system. What is remarkable is that people not only play as pilots, but they even take shifts in the air traffic control position.

Many real pilots are using it to brush up on their skills at flying in different scenarios that they do not get to experience in real life. Many fly in terrible weather to test their finesse. I know that if I am in a plane that runs into bad weather, I’d like to have a pilot that has at least virtual experience in flying in said situation.

What is sought after is realistic flying conditions for training pilots and allowing hobbyists to cost effectively live out their dreams. Some companies make money selling hardware add-ons and software packages for more realistic controls and planes, but the system itself is not for profit.

http://news.cnet.com/Into-the-wild-blue-virtual-yonder/2100-1043_3-6144347.html?tag=mncol

Gamer type

Halo: Combat Evolved

So unfortunately my XBOX is still broken, but I managed to find an old copy of the original Halo for PC. I don't think I need to do much explaining of this game, it is pretty engrained into our pop culture now. But let's break down the story elements. I'll talk about the dramatic arc and not the hero's journey because the hero's journey may be my least favorite topic to discuss because its elements are often stretched to fit certain stories so I find the whole thing useless.

Exposition: The story begins onboard The Pillar of Autumn, a human Naval space battleship. It is under attack by the Covenant, a conglomerate of aliens that like to kill stuff. Okay I'll admit it, I never really understood why the Covenant does anything, I just always figure basic good vs. evil story and move on. The hero of the story is a super-soldier known as Master Chief who escapes the ship with an AI unit named Cortana. His escape pod/ship lands on an artificial world with a strange ring above it.

Rising Action: The master chief fights on the world and ends up taking a gravity lift up to the ring. The master chief learns more about the strange ring and while on it fights a horde of parasites called the Flood, which infest living creatures. And my understanding is that the Covenant accidentally released the Flood on the ring. I guess I can just call it the Halo because obviously the big ring in the sky is the Halo of the title. Oh the ring would also cause the death of all sentient life in the Universe if it is fired.

Climax: The master chief fights his way through the Flood and the Covenant to restore the Halo's defense system.

Falling Action: Cortana figures out that activating the defense system would kill them as well. So they rig the crashed Pillar of Autumn to explode.

Denouement: The master chief escapes the ship before it explodes and heads to what we learn in the next game to be Earth.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to follow all of the story because it is too easy to get wrapped up in killing things that focusing on every detail of the cutscenes becomes difficult. Also some of the story is told while in combat, and like I can concentrate on story while being shot at.

I usually don't like games with laser guns and magic forcefields, but Halo is a fairly enjoyable game. That is, except for the Flood. It is just not a fun enemy to fight. It is rather intense and unnerving and not satisfying. This is really the only major drawback of the game for me.

As Real as Your Life

Maybe this is just an ignorant perspective from the outside, but I don't see games as all immersive as the video suggests. It could be that I am just not very good at games and have to consciously think of what buttons to push because I never play any game enough for causing an action by a button push to be natural.  I think that games could become fully immersive, but only when there is no longer a tangible controller.

When I was watching the video I had the impression that he has severe neurological disorders and unhealthy obsessive and addictive habits. If this is something that is quite commonplace with gamers someone please leave a comment saying so. I've never really spent a significant amount of time with "hardcore" gamers so I don't really know what that culture is like. If this is something that can easily happen to anyone than I can see a danger is games becoming more lifelike. Games increase in realism at a fantastic pace and soon graphics will appear quite real and I imagine eventually there will be no need for controllers. This will make becoming immersed in games much easier. However, I don't see this blurred line of reality becoming a common issue. I believe that there will always be some sort of balance keeping people grounded in reality. Perhaps I can go on a grand quest in a video game that feels very real. But as games become cheaper and faster so will travel. If I can cheaply and quickly go to a location across the world I would much rather do that than visit a simulated version in a game. This is obviously just an example of something that would help balance out and not the only thing.

Being immersed in technology doesn't necessarily mean being taken away from reality. If technology becomes good enough classes or meetings could be held without having to have a physical space to hold them. You are still receiving real, relevant information, you just aren't physically in a certain place.

Maybe it is just a strong hope, but I don't believe that a large portion of the population will be unable to differentiate between reality and video games.