Ok finally after all of this time my previous website (elinsane) is back, now we have a new name, style and new people so dont forget to check it out, you can find it in www.elsurvivor.com.
So if you find my blog either through my website or random means, dont forget to check out www.elsurvivor.com, you can find news and reviews for many games. Also I should mention before, its in Spanish, so tell of your friends that speak Spanish.
Spradan
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Value of Peace in videogames
Values@Play
Find the value of “PEACE” in videogames, hopefully in gameplay situations.
To start the assignment I thought the value of peace would be easy, since it’s a concept that a lot of games that involve any type of violence (a lot) touch, so my goal for this assignment is not to only look for the obvious cases but to cross the line of the simple value of peace and try to explore it in more non-expected situations.
To start my first game when I can find the value of peace is with the obvious answer of the game Peacemaker.
As the game states the game is all about a simulation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict where in many situations the conflict will continue, but as shows in the previous video in second 00:43 there is the possible solution of being able to simulate a specific situation where both countries stop war and are at peace.
The previous sample is of course the first thing that came to my mind for the assignment, and of course to go in the same type of games, Civilization is also a game where during the experience you will be able to sign peace treaties which shows another perfect example of the value of peace as Peacemaker so for that reason I won’t go deep in that example.
Now to go a little deep into Peace in videogames I look at Wikipedia for the definition of peace: “a state of tranquility or quiet” or “A state of security or order within a community”. As this definition shows the concept of peace can be very related to war games, not as a specific event, but as a main goal. To demonstrate this I show the following video of Command and Conquer.
As the video states, the purpose of Kane (game character) in the game is to fight a war with the ultimate goal of achieving peace as a final event. So if we look at any aspect of the game, it’s not wrong to assume that all the actions of play either by allied or enemies are with the purpose of achieving peace at the end. Additionally if this example of peace works, we could assume that most war games nowadays are all about peace, as a sample I put Call of Duty, where the end of the game is to end the war and thanks to that all of our actions are tools toward ending the conflict at the end, or also knows as achieving peace.
To conclude maybe the value of peace itself is not what the goal of war games like Command and Conquer are trying to show, but since they are touching the concept of war, they are also involving the concept of peace in their games. But for what the value of peace show in a game, I believe that Peacemaker is probably the only good example thanks that the game is trying to show this as a design aspect, and other games might be able to do it more slightly like Civilizacion or even Spore where you may take the peace or war path, but its not the main goal of the game for these last two examples.
Find the value of “PEACE” in videogames, hopefully in gameplay situations.
To start the assignment I thought the value of peace would be easy, since it’s a concept that a lot of games that involve any type of violence (a lot) touch, so my goal for this assignment is not to only look for the obvious cases but to cross the line of the simple value of peace and try to explore it in more non-expected situations.
To start my first game when I can find the value of peace is with the obvious answer of the game Peacemaker.
As the game states the game is all about a simulation of the Israel-Palestinian conflict where in many situations the conflict will continue, but as shows in the previous video in second 00:43 there is the possible solution of being able to simulate a specific situation where both countries stop war and are at peace.
The previous sample is of course the first thing that came to my mind for the assignment, and of course to go in the same type of games, Civilization is also a game where during the experience you will be able to sign peace treaties which shows another perfect example of the value of peace as Peacemaker so for that reason I won’t go deep in that example.
Now to go a little deep into Peace in videogames I look at Wikipedia for the definition of peace: “a state of tranquility or quiet” or “A state of security or order within a community”. As this definition shows the concept of peace can be very related to war games, not as a specific event, but as a main goal. To demonstrate this I show the following video of Command and Conquer.
As the video states, the purpose of Kane (game character) in the game is to fight a war with the ultimate goal of achieving peace as a final event. So if we look at any aspect of the game, it’s not wrong to assume that all the actions of play either by allied or enemies are with the purpose of achieving peace at the end. Additionally if this example of peace works, we could assume that most war games nowadays are all about peace, as a sample I put Call of Duty, where the end of the game is to end the war and thanks to that all of our actions are tools toward ending the conflict at the end, or also knows as achieving peace.
To conclude maybe the value of peace itself is not what the goal of war games like Command and Conquer are trying to show, but since they are touching the concept of war, they are also involving the concept of peace in their games. But for what the value of peace show in a game, I believe that Peacemaker is probably the only good example thanks that the game is trying to show this as a design aspect, and other games might be able to do it more slightly like Civilizacion or even Spore where you may take the peace or war path, but its not the main goal of the game for these last two examples.
Friday, February 5, 2010
The magic of opening a new game
Of all the topics covered in class, there was one that called my attention above all other, it was when we talked about how new games have achievements and new ways of calling players attention and attracting them into buying your game. All of this was normal but is this really necessary? And why was this not necessary 15 years ago on the time when we just went to our local game store and just pick a game depending on the name and the box.
Let’s begin by thinking how the gaming industry advertisement worked 15 years ago; at that moment I was a kid so let’s think how the industry tried to approach a kid during that time. The first part of a game advertisement was television, as expected (today is more common) like nowadays this way of advertisement was the way to get the public to get to know what products are currently on the market.
The next step of game advertisement was the box art, which was meant for people to go into the store and according to the name of the game and the box art (which included the front of the box and the game images on the back) they decided if the game was worth buying it. An example of this I can recall buying the game “Spider-Man –X-Men: Arcades revenge”.
If we do a simple analysis of the game cover above, it is very appealing for a player at a young age, first of all it has a great quantity of characters that means that you are going to play with them or at least fight with them. Also this characters are really famous (thanks to comics and cartoon shows of the time period) which make it really exciting to play with your favorite heroes. But most important, what this box shows, is the battle between the characters which tells us that it is going to be an action packed game which we will enjoy a lot for a great amount of time.
Thanks to all of these messages that the box communicated I bought this game and was deeply satisfied by how fun it was, and the same goes for old games like “Rock’n Roll racing” where just the name of racing with awesome music was enough to buy a game, and just the excitement to not knowing what type of game until you opened it, made it a magical moment when you opened the box and played it for the first time, and that is what I call “The magic of opening a new game”.
Now if we jump to today, what are the aspects we think about, when looking to buy a game, if we compare it to the last statement, television commercials are still presenting us with games, but, nowadays we have a new aspect that a lot of people keep in mind when buying a game and that is Game Reviews.
The main purpose of game reviews is to show the public the quality of games, and suggest them if the game is worth buying, according to other people, or other “experts”; opinion, but is this really good for the industry? Nowadays game development if we compare it to 15 years ago, fewer games are coming out but more important, games are less risky. The reason for this last part is that taking risk for a new game idea may result in a terrible review which will result in terrible sales. If we think about the first years of gaming taking a game where you would play like a porcupine or as elf might sound like fun, and thanks to that legends like Sonic and Zelda were born, but if we think about it, if we just come out with an idea nowadays of playing a game as a first person view and it focuses on running and not killing we might think is a lot of fun, but when we take Mirrors Edge (which has that main concept) and evaluate it in its Presentation, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay and Lasting Appeal (IGN reviews) of course we will find that it has some glitches, but if we go deeply in the game, it is the unique idea makes it a great game that is worth playing.
Thanks to this review standards that exist nowadays for games, companies have started to look for other options for calling players attention, like Downloadable Content and Achievements, where we come to create the terms of “achievement whores” who are players that play terrible games just to get the easy achievements. This new ways to get players, may not be wrong, but it is not the right way to go, because it shows that the industry is just giving up on quality and worrying more on random sales which is why now we have so many games that qualify as “shovelware” which are games that are just developed as fast as possible without worrying about its content.
In conclusion the industry has changed a lot, personally I miss the days where we could just go to the store pick up a game just by looking at the picture and live the “magic” of opening this new game, now when we buy a game we already know what graphics to expect, what time is it going to take me to beat it and we know a number which means how much I will enjoy it. Personally this is wrong and it has taken the fun out of a lot of games, that if we were able to play it almost blindly like when we were young they would be tons of fun.
So what can we do to recover “The magic of opening a new game”? Actually I don’t know, but if we as game developers stop worrying about the dumb aspects of game reviews, press comments and more about what can I make that will make gamers go “Wow!, this is awesome” maybe that could be the next generation of gaming.
Let’s begin by thinking how the gaming industry advertisement worked 15 years ago; at that moment I was a kid so let’s think how the industry tried to approach a kid during that time. The first part of a game advertisement was television, as expected (today is more common) like nowadays this way of advertisement was the way to get the public to get to know what products are currently on the market.
The next step of game advertisement was the box art, which was meant for people to go into the store and according to the name of the game and the box art (which included the front of the box and the game images on the back) they decided if the game was worth buying it. An example of this I can recall buying the game “Spider-Man –X-Men: Arcades revenge”.
If we do a simple analysis of the game cover above, it is very appealing for a player at a young age, first of all it has a great quantity of characters that means that you are going to play with them or at least fight with them. Also this characters are really famous (thanks to comics and cartoon shows of the time period) which make it really exciting to play with your favorite heroes. But most important, what this box shows, is the battle between the characters which tells us that it is going to be an action packed game which we will enjoy a lot for a great amount of time.
Thanks to all of these messages that the box communicated I bought this game and was deeply satisfied by how fun it was, and the same goes for old games like “Rock’n Roll racing” where just the name of racing with awesome music was enough to buy a game, and just the excitement to not knowing what type of game until you opened it, made it a magical moment when you opened the box and played it for the first time, and that is what I call “The magic of opening a new game”.
Now if we jump to today, what are the aspects we think about, when looking to buy a game, if we compare it to the last statement, television commercials are still presenting us with games, but, nowadays we have a new aspect that a lot of people keep in mind when buying a game and that is Game Reviews.
The main purpose of game reviews is to show the public the quality of games, and suggest them if the game is worth buying, according to other people, or other “experts”; opinion, but is this really good for the industry? Nowadays game development if we compare it to 15 years ago, fewer games are coming out but more important, games are less risky. The reason for this last part is that taking risk for a new game idea may result in a terrible review which will result in terrible sales. If we think about the first years of gaming taking a game where you would play like a porcupine or as elf might sound like fun, and thanks to that legends like Sonic and Zelda were born, but if we think about it, if we just come out with an idea nowadays of playing a game as a first person view and it focuses on running and not killing we might think is a lot of fun, but when we take Mirrors Edge (which has that main concept) and evaluate it in its Presentation, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay and Lasting Appeal (IGN reviews) of course we will find that it has some glitches, but if we go deeply in the game, it is the unique idea makes it a great game that is worth playing.
Thanks to this review standards that exist nowadays for games, companies have started to look for other options for calling players attention, like Downloadable Content and Achievements, where we come to create the terms of “achievement whores” who are players that play terrible games just to get the easy achievements. This new ways to get players, may not be wrong, but it is not the right way to go, because it shows that the industry is just giving up on quality and worrying more on random sales which is why now we have so many games that qualify as “shovelware” which are games that are just developed as fast as possible without worrying about its content.
In conclusion the industry has changed a lot, personally I miss the days where we could just go to the store pick up a game just by looking at the picture and live the “magic” of opening this new game, now when we buy a game we already know what graphics to expect, what time is it going to take me to beat it and we know a number which means how much I will enjoy it. Personally this is wrong and it has taken the fun out of a lot of games, that if we were able to play it almost blindly like when we were young they would be tons of fun.
So what can we do to recover “The magic of opening a new game”? Actually I don’t know, but if we as game developers stop worrying about the dumb aspects of game reviews, press comments and more about what can I make that will make gamers go “Wow!, this is awesome” maybe that could be the next generation of gaming.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Is tragedy in games impossible to achieve?
During Game Design class we came to a concept that it’s very common in the entertainment business, but it is seen mainly in books and movies and has always been a little absent in video games, this concept is tragedy.
The word tragedy if we look at it in the dictionary well find various definitions but let’s look at the following “A drama or similar work, in which the main character is brought to ruin or otherwise suffers the extreme consequences of some tragic flaw” . Taking this definition in mind, for achieving a successful tragedy, we need to involve a character in a succession of events and in the end, make him suffer in an extreme situation where the results will be terrible.
Keeping this in mind for a successful involvement with a character it is required some good storytelling which is why tragedy is most common in books, since it’s all about the storytelling but as the title of the essay implies this is also possible to achieve this in games. For this I am going to look for some examples on strong characters from games and analyze if we can relate enough to this character and with that be able to know if this type of characters is able to give us a tragedy event.
As a first example I am going to choose a game like Zelda. In this game our character is named Link and the bases if this story is that the princess has been kidnapped and the kingdom is in trouble. So to go directly to the point we want do we feel bad about the situation of this kingdom? Or do we feel worried about what might happen to the princess if we don’t get to save her in time. The answer to this questions is no, and the main reason is because of the lack of involvement we have with the character Link.
If we analyze this character there is not much depth to this one, for all we know he is an elf with a sword and a shield that is trying to save the day. This does mean that this is a good game, actually the Zelda franchise are considered some of the best RPGs that exist but none of the games in this franchise, have put us in a situation where we felt like a tragedy is about to happen.
For a second example let’s take a game like Devil May Cry 3, where we have the main character Dante and his brother Vergil. As an initial analysis we can look at the main character Dante if we look at it with the Lens of Character Traits (77) we can find that his main trait is being a powerful being with a dark past, which makes him an interesting and mysterious character. The second lens we can use for looking at this character is the Lens of The Character Web (78) where we find that the game is builds around the relationship between Dante and his brother Vergil.
Finally why did I added lens into this analysis, the main reason is because in the game there is a mayor point of tragedy that is able to match the sentiment that a book can make us feel for this character and this is all thanks to the Lens of Character Transformation (81) where our character is forced to fight at the end with his brother and slash him with his sword to be able to save the day.
If we compare this character to the last example Dante is also a hero that saves the day at the end of the game, but during the whole game we are given a story that tells us the details about his relationship with his brother, and the impact of the change at the end, with the help of great cinematography and soundtrack, make it a tragedy to see a character take the decision to finish his brother.
As a final example I will use one of the greatest tragedies in gaming history, and that is the game Final Fantasy VII. In this example we have our main character Cloud and a secondary character called Aerith, which form the beginning of the game we are shown that these two have a interesting relationship.
Thanks to this relationship that is build throughout the game we can not only see the characteristics of our main character but also like the lens mentioned before we can see his relationship that he has with this other character which makes us players build an involvement with the character to the point where we hope that the relationship works.
Thanks to this involvement with Cloud and Aerith is that we come to one of the best tragedy scenes in games, and that is in a moment in the game we are familiarized with the character we hope always for the best and since it’s a game we have an indirect control to usually do it (saving and loading always give us control over life in games). But at the end of the first chapter of this story we are surprised by a change of events where the character of Aerith is murdered in front of our eyes concluding in an unexpected, dramatic and sad change in the story. Thanks to this dramatic change of events is that we can say this is a real tragedy event in videogames, not only because it fits the description of tragedy in the first paragraph but also since this scene for most players was able to give a feeling of sadness and anger when this event happened.
Finally what can we conclude about the examples shown before? As they are good examples of tragedy in games they may have a lot of personal opinion since I’m telling the stories how I played them in the game. But if a story like this can awaken a feeling of sadness, surprise for a tragedy for a virtual character in a person, my point is that this qualifies as a tragedy event to the magnitude of a written story or to a movie looking at other media.
But as mentioned in the first paragraph the definition of tragedy is making a character suffer in a sequence of events, but looking at the Zelda example this is not enough, something else is needed for this and like the other examples showed, that detail missing is character involvement. So if in a video game just like in a book we are able to create a deep character that is able to create some sort of feeling of involvement on a person, whether its identifying itself with it or just feeling sad for him, those situations that happen to those characters, the player will be able to feel them just like if he was there.
To conclude the question, is it possible to create tragedy in video games? The answer is yes, and this had a lot of depend attached to it. Probably if the player doesn’t like the game that much he won’t be able to feel an involvement with the character, but the most important aspect to be able to create good tragedy in a game is being able to have a well created character with deep enough relationship and personal aspects that will be affected but a tragedy in the story.
The word tragedy if we look at it in the dictionary well find various definitions but let’s look at the following “A drama or similar work, in which the main character is brought to ruin or otherwise suffers the extreme consequences of some tragic flaw” . Taking this definition in mind, for achieving a successful tragedy, we need to involve a character in a succession of events and in the end, make him suffer in an extreme situation where the results will be terrible.
Keeping this in mind for a successful involvement with a character it is required some good storytelling which is why tragedy is most common in books, since it’s all about the storytelling but as the title of the essay implies this is also possible to achieve this in games. For this I am going to look for some examples on strong characters from games and analyze if we can relate enough to this character and with that be able to know if this type of characters is able to give us a tragedy event.
As a first example I am going to choose a game like Zelda. In this game our character is named Link and the bases if this story is that the princess has been kidnapped and the kingdom is in trouble. So to go directly to the point we want do we feel bad about the situation of this kingdom? Or do we feel worried about what might happen to the princess if we don’t get to save her in time. The answer to this questions is no, and the main reason is because of the lack of involvement we have with the character Link.
If we analyze this character there is not much depth to this one, for all we know he is an elf with a sword and a shield that is trying to save the day. This does mean that this is a good game, actually the Zelda franchise are considered some of the best RPGs that exist but none of the games in this franchise, have put us in a situation where we felt like a tragedy is about to happen.
For a second example let’s take a game like Devil May Cry 3, where we have the main character Dante and his brother Vergil. As an initial analysis we can look at the main character Dante if we look at it with the Lens of Character Traits (77) we can find that his main trait is being a powerful being with a dark past, which makes him an interesting and mysterious character. The second lens we can use for looking at this character is the Lens of The Character Web (78) where we find that the game is builds around the relationship between Dante and his brother Vergil.
Finally why did I added lens into this analysis, the main reason is because in the game there is a mayor point of tragedy that is able to match the sentiment that a book can make us feel for this character and this is all thanks to the Lens of Character Transformation (81) where our character is forced to fight at the end with his brother and slash him with his sword to be able to save the day.
If we compare this character to the last example Dante is also a hero that saves the day at the end of the game, but during the whole game we are given a story that tells us the details about his relationship with his brother, and the impact of the change at the end, with the help of great cinematography and soundtrack, make it a tragedy to see a character take the decision to finish his brother.
As a final example I will use one of the greatest tragedies in gaming history, and that is the game Final Fantasy VII. In this example we have our main character Cloud and a secondary character called Aerith, which form the beginning of the game we are shown that these two have a interesting relationship.
Thanks to this relationship that is build throughout the game we can not only see the characteristics of our main character but also like the lens mentioned before we can see his relationship that he has with this other character which makes us players build an involvement with the character to the point where we hope that the relationship works.
Thanks to this involvement with Cloud and Aerith is that we come to one of the best tragedy scenes in games, and that is in a moment in the game we are familiarized with the character we hope always for the best and since it’s a game we have an indirect control to usually do it (saving and loading always give us control over life in games). But at the end of the first chapter of this story we are surprised by a change of events where the character of Aerith is murdered in front of our eyes concluding in an unexpected, dramatic and sad change in the story. Thanks to this dramatic change of events is that we can say this is a real tragedy event in videogames, not only because it fits the description of tragedy in the first paragraph but also since this scene for most players was able to give a feeling of sadness and anger when this event happened.
Finally what can we conclude about the examples shown before? As they are good examples of tragedy in games they may have a lot of personal opinion since I’m telling the stories how I played them in the game. But if a story like this can awaken a feeling of sadness, surprise for a tragedy for a virtual character in a person, my point is that this qualifies as a tragedy event to the magnitude of a written story or to a movie looking at other media.
But as mentioned in the first paragraph the definition of tragedy is making a character suffer in a sequence of events, but looking at the Zelda example this is not enough, something else is needed for this and like the other examples showed, that detail missing is character involvement. So if in a video game just like in a book we are able to create a deep character that is able to create some sort of feeling of involvement on a person, whether its identifying itself with it or just feeling sad for him, those situations that happen to those characters, the player will be able to feel them just like if he was there.
To conclude the question, is it possible to create tragedy in video games? The answer is yes, and this had a lot of depend attached to it. Probably if the player doesn’t like the game that much he won’t be able to feel an involvement with the character, but the most important aspect to be able to create good tragedy in a game is being able to have a well created character with deep enough relationship and personal aspects that will be affected but a tragedy in the story.
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