mlbower

[mlbower]

Going through my ideas with Mark

So today we had our first critical lesson; even though it wasn't a proper crit it was still nice to hear what everyone was doing and get feedback on what people thought about my idea. 

Overall my feedback was pretty much 50/50. The idea of my main project was well received; taking an older game and redoing the whole UI for it, bringing it up to the modern standards we expect from lately released games. 

Now for the bad news, my research report idea wasn't great, well he didn't say that specifically he just said we would need to talk more about it and I would need to see Marie-Claire and she what she said. The problem was that the researching I am wanting to do about it very graphic design like, which Mark said isn't a problem at all he just said I might not be able to find much information about my research topic. I haven’t really thought of a question for my report yet but I have began looking into what I want to talk about which is user interface, linking it back to my main bulk of studio work. 

[mlbower]

First day back...

Today was the first day back at uni and thank god it was a relief to be back. Summer has been long this year and I was looking forward to coming back and cracking on with the third and final year. 

Today we just went over what we were going to do throughout the year and what the plan was going to be. We covered the changes to the units too. 

[mlbower]

Research Bibliography

1. http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/14/5613472/video-games-education-school-panel-pax-east-2014

2. http://www.eschoolnews.com/2013/01/08/how-mainstream-video-games-are-being-used-as-teaching-tools/

3. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/schools-use-video-games-as-teaching-tools-1.970855

4. http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/21/the-future-of-homework-is-video-games/

5. http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/publications/connect-information-technology/2012/04/30/video-games-and-the-future-of-learning.html

6. http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Can_Pok%C3%A9mon_be_educational%3F

[mlbower]

Update

I haven’t posted in a while regarding Contextual Studies but now it has come to that time where I need to start thinking more and more about my essay. We have looked at educational, artistic and political games and we now have to pick one to talk about within our essay. 

I think the one I could talk about more is education. 

The task we have been given is to create a 250-500 word proposal of what our essay will be about and what research we will look into. I also have to decide on a question that my essay will be based on and what I will research about. So, onto thinking of a question!

[mlbower]

Proposal

In this proposal I want to cover the exact point of educational games. A lot of parents and teachers say that educational games simply don’t work, they just lead to a distraction, this could be right with some games but no most of them. I am going to propose that two of the games I have looked at, one being specifically made for education reasons and the other not, to show exactly why these games can be used to teach children. 

First of all let me talk about the point that people bring up about educational games not working at all. I don’t see the point in which people have, educational specific games are designed to put education first and entertainment after so what’s so bad about them. Yes sometimes the child playing the game might get to carried away with it but that’s good because it means they are also learning without even realising it. Game companies what people to learn while having fun, I think everyone prefers that way.   

Back on topic now, first of all I am going to look at Story Cards. This is a game designed by Preloaded, a company known and famous for creating great educational games for the public to play for free. Story Cards is a simple concept but is played out very well. The player will play a card game against either another player of the computer but the cards are people from the books that they will be reading around this time, characters are made up of literacy classics. Each card has moves and a certain amount of health based on them from the books they are in. 

Story Cards work perfectly has an educational game and shows exactly why games can be educational and fun at the same time. I played this myself and I had a huge amount of fun even though I knew all the challenging literacy points but I could see how people would learn from it. 

Now onto a game that isn’t designed for educational purposes. I decided to look into a game like this because I wanted to show that even games that kids wouldn’t play in class to learn from they could learn out of school without even realising it. The game i’m talking about is Pokemon. Pokemon I believe is a great example of how someone can learn without even realising it and take so much away from a game before they actually realise. 

So why could pokemon be classed as a type of educational game. First things first I wanted to say that I believe pokemon helps with both maths and literacy skills. Maths first, when you are battling other people in the game you have to sometimes work out well you could kill someone especially if the levels are in their favour. A player can work out exactly how many hit points they will take in damage or deal in damage, therefore the player will have to use some simple and advanced maths skills to see if they can actually defeat the opponent. Literacy now; the all point of pokemon is the story. The player will have to keep up with reading about what other players are saying so they can get further ahead with the story. 

Both of these shows exactly how a person can improve reading and maths skills without even knowing it.

[mlbower]

Answering the Question...

How do they engage their audience?

Pokemon - Pokemon’s audience isn’t like Story Cards, it’s way bigger. Pokemon’s audience ranges from children to adults with it being one of the biggest games played, it’s crazy the amount of people that play the game. Gamefreak probably have got this much of an audience because they have engaged them from the very start. They have done this by being the only unique place on the game market does something like they do very well. Other companies have tried but failed.

So exactly how do they do it? Well it’s simple, they make an enjoyable game that doesn’t have much wrong with it. Not many people can say they don’t like pokemon and this is the reason why. People get attached to the pokemon they are raising and makes them feel like their actual pet and this is why the audience will be so engaged. 

Story Cards - Like I said Story Cards doesn’t have a huge audience however it does its job very well and that’s to educate. I know exactly how Preloaded games have engaged people into playing their game and that’s just by using the classic English characters that we all would be learning when you would play this game. Everyone always jokes like “oh Dracula would beat humpty dumpty easily!” and no you would get to prove that point. 

It’s very simple but so great when you look at it. People will probably even forget that they are playing a learning game because they won’t even realise they are learning due to how much enjoyment the game also provides. 

I don’t feel like I really need to answer the other questions just because I feel comfortable writing my 500 word proposal now.

[mlbower]

The 2 Images...

Here are the images that I have chosen to show exactly how both games relate to education.

So why these images, let me first of all talk about the Pokémon image. This images shows everything Pokémon really has to offer. It talks about Pokémon, it talks about moves, you can see the person is clearly travelling and there are more than a couple of people around so you can see there is some kind of story going on. 

Now let me look at the Story Cards image. This images shows the main concept of the game, you can pretty much see everything. Your health on the card, the moves you have, what book the character is from and a short description/passage of the character. This is the one that the main purpose is education however I don’t you can see that just from the image. 

Something else I wanted to look over quickly, why would I consider Pokémon to be able to become an educational game. I believe that Pokémon can be really educational and having played it myself when growing up and now looking back on it I can see why now. Here are some of the points that I believe help in an educational way; 

There’s a lot of reading the player must do to help them with their adventure, this will help the player when it comes to increasing reading abilities.

The player has to learn about moves and how much damage they can survive and do, this would help them with their maths skills.

Pokémon are of a certain type, some types are better against other and this normally relates to real life stuff. 

Overall there are lots of points to show why Pokémon could be classed has educational even though intentionally isn’t made for this purpose. I personally believe that I benefited from playing Pokémon and a lot of other people will have too

[mlbower]

Easter Task

So over the Easter we were given a task by Sharon and we were told that it would help us get a basis on what this terms has to offer in the terms on contextual studies. 

This was the email confirming what we had to do exactly this term; 

“ Write a short (500 word) proposal - an abstract - for a mini conference to be held during the first CS session after the Easter Break. The abstract should summarise your findings from the research task that has been set, and outline a research project that you will pitch to your peers. The research proposal should be centred on an interesting aspect of the differences between the two games you have chosen to analyse and compare. How do they engage their audience, or fail to do so? How would you go about demonstrating their positive and negative characteristics in a research project? How might your research benefit the debate around the use of games in education? 

 Select two images to accompany the proposal, representing each of the two games you have chosen to research, analyse and compare.” 

Quick summary of what this means.

500 word proposal.

Outline a research project.

Analyse and compare two games.

The games have to be related to education, one game purposely made for educational purposes, one game that can be changed into an educational game.

Two Images to show education. 

My thoughts. First things first I needed to decide what games I was going to compare. I knew for the none educational game but could be turned into one I was going to choose Pokémon. I know a lot about Pokémon and I know that I could analyse it with another game. I also know why Pokémon should be considered as an educational game. 

After looking around on the internet I remembered a game that I quickly glanced over in BA5 and this was a game called Story Cards by Preloaded games. In this game you take characters that you would read about and play a card game with them. All together I think it relates to Pokémon very well and can compare the two. 

Onto the 500 words proposal.

[mlbower]

Contextual Studies Brief

This unit considers the potential for games to be a persuasive and culturally relevant medium beyond mere entertainment. It focuses on the significance of the audience and asks the question, ‘Can digital games change the world?’ 

The project considers artistic, educational, and political games, their emergent influence on the cultural landscape, and their potential for wide-scale influence on society.

You will analyse the various strategies that games employ to persuade the player, to gain and to retain an audience, and how they achieve, or fail to achieve, their goals. Looking at digital games from this perspective, you will explore the ethics of game design, and ask if games have the power to persuade, what ethical implications are there for the game designer? 

In presenting the research you have done, in the form of a 2,000 word essay, you will continue to enhance your knowledge and experience of the skills needed to produce an extended research project.

[mlbower]

Quick update - UX Document

Haven’t posted in a while but I have been hard at work trying to get everything done before deadline week so I don’t have to panic has much. 

During this gap of posts I have managed to finish the UX document, put all the documents together to create one easy hand in document, rendered out the video to the correct settings and updated my blog. 

Now that’s it for studio work and specialism is done I think. I will check over everything but I can’t see anything wrong at the moment. Now it’s onto contextual studies and research about and writing my essay.

The end is near!

[mlbower]

Video Finished

Woo! The video is finished. I will post a video to my tumblr of the final thing and how it turned out. 

Even though it is simple it is exactly how I wanted it to be, it shows off everything I needed and that’s the purpose of it.

[mlbower]

Video planning

Video time! I know how I want my video to look I just need to get the sound clips I am going to use.

What will my video include;

Shooting two bullets.

Reloading twice.

Grenade being thrown and blowing up.

Being injured.

Shooting again. 

Recovering health.

I don’t think this video will be to much of a problem because I have done a lot of video editing during college and am very comfortable using Sony Vegas to do it all in.

[mlbower]

Pitch document finished!

I have finally finished the pitch document. It didn’t really take as long as I expected because once I got typing away I just kept going and before I knew it I was finished. Now this is done I can move onto the video showing exactly how the game screen will work. 

[mlbower]

Changes to the pitch document

So after looking back at the original plan I decided to change a few things when it came to the pitch document, this wasn’t anything drastic just what I would be talking about. 

My content page would now look like this instead;

Synopsis

Specifications

Aim of the game

Story of the game

Story of the player

What the player will do

Characters

Settings

Mechanics

Unique sellings points

Screen shots

This gives me more than enough to talk about. So onto doing the pitch document!

[mlbower]

Games Pitch Document Planning

Now that I have finished the interactive version of my UI I wanted to take a little break from doing user interface related stuff and focus a little more on the games pitch document. This wouldn’t exactly be a break but it would be a little more laid back and less stressful. 

Firsts things first I needed to plan exactly what I was going to talk about; once I have done this then I can plan what goes on each page and how many pages the document will actually be. 

What am I going to talk about;

Synopsis of the game

what the player will do throughout the game

features

settings

characters

goals

mechanics

game screens shots 

So what will go on each page;

Page One - Title Page

Page Two - Contents Pages

Page Three - Synopsis of the Game

Page Four - Features

Page Five - Goals

Page Six - What the player will experience

Page Seven - Mechanics

Page Eight - Characters

Page Nine - Settings

Page Ten - UI Screenshots 

Not much planning is really need other than this. I feel comfortable enough to go ahead and start the document. If I stick to my schedule it shouldn’t take me too long to finish.

[mlbower]

The interactive UI

Here you go, finally it is finished and I am so happy with the outcome. I am really glad that I decided to do an interactive UI now has it looks beautiful and its so good to be able to navigate around my design. 

Here it is;

https://popapp.in/w/projects/55454553ddca76c66b0961fa/preview