For the first time ever I will not be doing a game review this quarter, which has actually come as quite a surprise to me. Normally there is at least one game each quarter that I frequently play and write a review on, though recent releases just haven't lived up to the standards set by previous ones. I'm not sure if this is due to an actual drop in quality among games in recent years, or if my experience working with games has caused me to spot flaws and think too critically about them, or if I've simply lost interest in video games. Whatever the case may be it is clear to see that the popularity of gaming as a whole has dropped recently, and one would think the only thing that could save it would be a huge release, but that is exactly what Fortnite was yet the popularity is still on a downward spiral. With no great new releases I've been stuck playing the same old games and thus have nothing new to review, though I feel that this may be a good thing. Being able to see that recent releases haven't lived up to the quality of prior ones shows that I'm not spending money just to spend it, rather I'm thinking about whether or not my purchases are worth it. Even with the little experience I have with game creation I can already detect patterns with the new releases of games. It seems the primary issue is a lack of creativity and lust for money from AAA companies, which I suppose at this point is to be expected. Perhaps when I was younger I didn't understand that most games, especially sequels, were made just for the money. Though companies have definitely become much more blatant with cash grab tactics such as releasing the same content under a new name. From my work on Ennui it is clear to see that passion is a big factor for the outcome of a game, and many companies lack that passion. We may not have been the most zealous game developers, but we at least cared about the outcome of our game, causing us to create a more unique product. Even though many people disliked our project, it was solely for the reason that they did not understand how to play it, I'm sure that with a little work our game could be much more enjoyable than the garbage being fed to us today. Large companies on the other hand, knowing they already have a massive mindless audience that doesn't need to be impressed to buy their game, are able to release games such as Call of Duty, that can just be re-released and recycled each year with no repercussions.
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Recently in class we've been working on turning our game ideas into playable physical versions, and it has certainly taken longer than I though it would. Apart from having to throw my original idea out of the window in the interest of creating a concept we all fully understood in a shorter amount of time, we still had to translate our idea of Ennui to paper. We thought that we would be making Ennui for a mobile phone, so many of our mechanics were based on controls that could be simulated by a mobile phone but not the same way for a board game. We thought of mechanics such as health bars to track health values as instances of damage are done, a discovery-based generating map, and moving at your own pace to determine how much noise you make. Though we had to do a few workarounds, we were ultimately able to translate these ideas into a board game version, though they are much more rigid than we had planned for our mobile game. For example, health values must be tracked and calculated by the players, movement type is determined by movement cards, and the map is generated around the player by being split up into several sections placed and removed by the game director. We also had to implement a new role to control NPC actions and such to make up for what would be done automatically on the mobile device. Unfortunately due to all of the mechanics translated from mobile to physical version, our game got to be pretty hard to understand for new players. Being the creators of the game, my team and I hadn't noticed it until we were all testing each others' games and had to have rules describe how to play our game without being there to describe niche mechanics that the rules can't get across. Ultimately though we've learned a lot from having to transform our game into a playable physical version, which has immensely helped us to understand the true feeling of the game we're creating.
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AuthorMy name is Andrew Prichard and the this is my first digital arts class, I look forward to a good year with lots of hard work. Archives
May 2021
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Last updated 5/14/21
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