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What Do People Want in Game?

There are many ways of people enjoy playing game, following are my own opinions on how people play game. Do note that all these are just my personal opinions based on my understanding and research done on June 2017. If you are interested to know more, you can click on the link that provided below.

Premise 1:  Human will respond and demand acknowledgement.

We all need to be recognized and acknowledge by others. We hate it when people seems to not notice us or forget us when we have must before. Acknowledge is part of identity and related to acceptance. But what is acknowledgement? Referring to Oxford dictionary, it means acceptance of truth or existing of something, can be an expression or displaying gratitude and action of showing that one has notice someone or something. 

Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/acknowledgment 

If you read my previous entry about “Why People Play Games”, you will find the hierarchy of needs familiar.

The need of acknowledge are part of esteem on the forth category in the hierarchy of needs, it’s based on emotion and the need of self-esteem and self-respect. It will also means bringing awareness of own self identity and how much respect you think you have from the others.

But why is acknowledgement is important? One of the reason is being acknowledge by others makes us feel more secure and accepted, it assist us in perceiving ourself as desirable, valuable ad esteemable. In another word, special. Such thinking starts way back when we were still a kid, we work hard and get high score in exam and behave to get reassurance and approval from our parents.

The self-esteem that we got from acknowledgment from other are important too because it has to do with the feeling people experience that they follow from their sense of worthiness or unworthiness and it will affect people’s choices and decisions. Which also means people who has high self-esteem more likely will take care of themselves and explore their full potential comparing to those who are low self-esteem. People who with low self-esteem tend to have negativity mindset such as capability to achieve their personal goals and tend to let important things to slide and less persistent about it. 

Source: http://www.pvmhmr.org/96-self-esteem/article/37614-why-self-esteem-is-important-and-its-dimensions https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201301/why-people-dont-acknowledge-you https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-acknowledgement-anne-e-richardson http://www.more-selfesteem.com/maslow.htm

According to Ideal to Real Today/AOL Body Image survey, selfie is one of the way to boost teens’ confidence. 65% of the teen said seeing their selfies on social media will boost their self-esteem and 40% of them said social media helps them to show their best face to the world. 

They believed that both clothing and selfie are useful tool for negotiating identity like by putting up the clothes that they like will make them feel more confident. Based on a online journal of First Monday, it reported women often take selfies to increase their self-esteem because the affirming messages left by other users allow them to see themselves in a more positive light. People took photos of themselves smiling, took photos of something that made them happy and something they believed would make someone else happy and the photo of something that would make someone else happy was sent to the person the participant had in mind.

Source: http://www.today.com/parents/selfie-esteem-teens-say-selfies-give-confidence-boost-2D12164198 http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6390/5620 http://www.teenvogue.com/story/selfies-increase-confidence-body-image-study https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/buildingselfesteem/2016/01/how-to-use-social-media-to-build-self-esteem/

Premise 2: Products can be infused with acknowledgement.

Many people buy products to boost their confidence and buying brand name products are one of the way. Some people buy certain brand name products to support their professional or personal image. In China, Chinese customers take a buying luxury brands to be a form of demonstration of status and success. 

But until today, both Chinese men and women customers buy luxury items is to impress their peers as these products make them feel special and able increase their confidence. This is because they believe the more famous the brand is, the more social and financial acknowledgement they will earn. They are also not afraid to publicly display social climbing through luxury items.

Source: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/people-buy-brand-names-69654.html http://red-luxury.com/brands-retail/six-reasons-why-chinese-buy-luxury-goods-29174 http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/091115/psychology-behind-why-people-buy-luxury-goods.asp http://womenssuccesscoaching.com/2011/07/is-your-self-esteem-based-on-the-products-you-buy/

Choice of clothing will affect how other think of us, hence it will also affect on our self-esteem and confidence. Women spend an average of 55 minutes to get ready everyday and we do it to make us to feel more beautiful and strong. 

Besides, clothing are not just affecting the confident level, they can also affect our success, as “clothing significantly influences how others perceive you and how they respond to you.” Research shows that choice of clothing are strongly influences other people's perception of our financial success, authority, trustworthiness, intelligence, and suitability for hire or promotion. 

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-l-ferguson/how-clothing-choices-affect-and-reflect-your-self-image_b_9163992.html http://www.today.com/health/stop-obsessing-women-spend-2-weeks-year-their-appearance-today-2D12104866 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2644076/You-DRESS-Clothing-significant-effect-self-esteem-confidence-claims-expert.html http://www.businessinsider.com/how-your-clothing-impacts-your-success-2014-8/?IR=T

How our personal appearance are linked to self-esteem as well. Recently these years, the numbers of people relaying on plastic or cosmetic surgery to maintain or change their appearance and body shape because they rely on these to boost their confidence and self-esteem. 

Fixing something you don’t like about yourself using plastic surgery able to make you feel better about yourself and may change the way people respond to you in social setting. In the end, you will be much happier and you will be able to concentrate more on the quality of your personal and professional life due to the fact that you will not be distracted by the problems with your own appearance.

Source: http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/lifestyle-fashion/stylebeauty/Cosmetic+Surgery-247888.html http://www.ghricko.com/plastic-surgery-can-increase-self-confidence/ http://www.more-selfesteem.com/plastic-surgery-and-self-esteem.htm

Conclusion: People will respond and demand products that contain acknowledgement.

If the above is true then the following could be helpful when developing video games in the future as an artist:

knowledge of on going fashion trend

knowledge of on going  cosmetic surgery trend

understand type of body and facial features 

*Do take notes that these are just my personal opinions. * 

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How People Play game

There are many ways of people enjoy playing game, following are my own opinions on how people play game. Do note that all these are just my personal opinions based on my understanding and research done on June 2017. If you are interested to know more, you can click on the link that provided below. 

Premise 1: People enjoy having power

Do you believe if I say having power able to bring happiness? Well, a group of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have done some research and survey on over 350 local adults. The result of the survey have proven power will able bring happiness to people. They published an article about it in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Sources: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612450891 

The researcher suggested that “power” people have was able to let them do what they want in life.  The results indicated that people who feel powerful in any context tend to be more content, this also creates a feeling of authenticity in life. 

By leading people to be true to their desires and inclinations -- to be authentic -- power leads individuals to experience greater happiness, -  Yona Kifer and colleagues 

In the survey, the powerful people felt 16% more satisfied in their life comparing to least powerful people. This tends to happened more often in workplace, as the powerful colleagues are 26% more satisfied with their job than least powerful colleagues. 

However, when comes to friendship and romantic relationship, the power-based discrepancy in happiness was smaller. The researchers believe this is a sense of community rather than hierarchy, so having power in these situation are less important. 

Sources: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201304/power-makes-people-happy https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130128143016.htm http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3820-powerful-people-happiness.html http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167216634064?rss=1 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/people-want-power-because-they-want-autonomy/474669/

Besides that, power is one of the element of fun written by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau published on Gamasutra back in 2001. In the article, he mentions power involves the “capacity of having a strong effect, of acting with strength."

Lets take Diablo II as an example, the mai goal is to make player as stong as they can. Everything player do in this game is make them get to this goal as close as they can, from leveling up from beating up monsters to items drop. 

The goal for most strategy game are also surround the element of power as the player need to build base to create more powerful army than the opponent in order to win the game. 

Power is also a great motivation for the player to move on in many way. 

Game: Final Fantasy 7 (skip to 1:24 for example)

In many of the Role-Playing Games, having sound effect playing when leveling up able to let player feels they have truly become more powerful ad felt good about it. 

Game: Fallout 4

Another great example from First-person Shooters and other games involving a single multi-characters is giving player able to customize character and doing improvement. In order to make player more powerful as the game progresses, giving some statistics and ability to improve them would make a game more interesting.

Sources: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/227531/fourteen_forms_of_fun.php?page=4 http://gel.msu.edu/winn/Serious%20Game%20Construction%20Worksheet.pdf

Premise 2: Torturing is a form of power

First of all, what is torture? According to one of BBC article, torture has been used as a punishment, to intimidate or control people, to get information or just to gratify sadistic impulses. 

Governments have used torture to keep themselves in power, to enforce their particular political philosophy, to remove opposition and to implement particular policies. -BBC

Breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used in 18th century.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel

The first use of torture was happened way back in 530 A.D. when Roman jurists used torture methods to force prisoners to speak the truth. Skilled torturers would use methods, devices, and instruments to prolong life as long as possible while inflicting agonizing pain. During 12th century, Medieval torture reached its peak and by 14th century, torture has become much more sophisticated with the advancement of medieval torture devices.

From 14th century until the end of the 18th century torture was a very common activity and most of the Medieval European country used it part of their countries legal proceedings. Skilled torturers would use methods, devices, and instruments to prolong life as long as possible while inflicting agonizing pain. 

Sources: https://www.elitereaders.com/history-list-of-torture-techniques/ http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-10-most-gruesome-torture-techniques-from-medieval-e-1626942115 http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/torture/introduction.shtml http://www.apt.ch/en/what-is-torture/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture https://worldwithouttorture.org/2012/10/11/ten-facts-to-know-about-torture/

Surprisingly, the Roman Catholic Church were heavily involved in medieval torture to extract a confession, not information. Because the Church are like sitting upon the high hill of morality, they did not want to burn anyone until they had a confession from the persons own lips. From there, they justifying the sinner being burnt to death or hanged. So they used torture.

In Germany, torture devices are actively used during witch trial from the period of 16th to 18th centuries. 

Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshipers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches' Sabbaths. 

Once the ‘witches’ had given in and confessed under torture, they were taken from the cells and put… well, I guess, right about where you’re standing… where more than 600 of them were burned alive! - Mike Stuchbery

From 1626 to 1631, the Würzburg witch trial are one of the largest mass-trials and mass-executions seen in Europe alongside with Trier witch trials, the Fulda witch trials, and the Bamberg witch trials. With 157 men, women and children in the city of Würzburg, Germany, were burned alive at the stake, with 219 executed in total in the city, and over 900 burnt altogether over the entire area.

The persecutions were orchestrated by Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince Bishop of Würzburg, and his nephew Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, in the years after the Catholic re-conquest of Germany in the 1620s. 

Sources: https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-people-who-invented-torture-devices http://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-torture-devices/ https://www.thelocal.de/20140523/history-of-witch-hunts-in-germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrzburg_witch_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period

Conclusion: In game, torturing is a way player feel powerful

In this world, there are many type of Sims player, and most of us spend hours on finding new and creative ways to kill our Sims. 

If you never heard of Sims, this game are actually a life simulator that can control sims characters’ fate. The game first launched back in 2000 and it gave us the absolute power to do what we want with the sims. 

When people are immersed in virtual environments, a phenomenon called the disinhibition effect may be evoked, -Berni Good

Another reason on why people are able to accept torture acts in game was because the art style is cartoonist where nobody take it seriously and no one was harm during these process. Most of the way to kill the sims are more of accident and natural way, like locking them in a room without window, door and food, etc. 

Sources: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/games/2017/01/i-want-cheat-him-and-set-him-fire-why-are-we-sadistic-towards-our-sims https://www.vice.com/sv/article/kwk9zv/why-did-we-all-want-to-kill-our-sims

Some of the player even make a torture chamber, make sims live like a slave and keep working till they die. There are also many players share their experiences and even make blog post about their proud work.

Sources:  http://imgur.com/gallery/l5ppq

If the above is true then the following could be helpful when developing video games (torturing game) in the future as an artist:

Varieties of death animation for characters

Varieties of pre-rendered for environment and props

*Do take notes that these are just my personal opinions. *

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Why People Play Games

There are many reasons why people play games and here I am, sharing my own opinion on why people play games. Do take notes that these are just my personal opinions. If you are interested in the facts, please click on the links to read the full articles. 

Premise 1: People will always yearn for sense of belonging

We as humans are social creature by nature, having needs of the feeling need to belong, this is actually how we as human able to survive till now. The 1998 book, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom, written by William Glasser - an American psychiatrist, one of the choice theory states that:  

We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. - William Glasser

Reference: http://www.wglasser.com/the-glasser-approach/choice-theory

As we wake up every morning, we din’t say such things like “Let’s achieve love and belonging today!”. Instead, we say something like “I wonder is Cherry up? Maybe I should give her call for having lunch together.” and “Let’s hit the bazaar with my classmates.” We do such things is because we need relationships, social connections, to give and receive affection and to feel part of a group.

Another theory proposed by Abraham Maslow on 1943, from paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" Psychological Review, he mentioned that after physiological needs like sleep food and safety needs, need of belonging are ranked third on his hierarchy. Because as humans, we need to belong. To one another, to our friends and families, to our culture and country, to our world.

Reference: https://www.learning-theories.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.html

When does humans starts showing the sign of need of belonging? Well, the answer would be ever since human begin to exist. Because of this, mankind was able to survive until now. From hunting food to delegating community jobs, building shelters to helping each other, sense of belonging was showed in these actions to ensure the survival. 

If you think from development perspective, ever since infanthood we have already show the sign of the importance of belonging. When we are all babies, we rely on our parents to give us food, shelter and love so we can grow healthily. Throughout these actions it has giving us as the babies some instinct of belonging to our parents and unconsciously our parents will also looking out of us. Spending times together makes “being together” feels good and it triggered the feeling of happiness and love which we seek out in life by finding friends and partner, build a family and also joining the community. 

But why do we do all these? Mainly it was because being needed by someone will give more meaning to our life and increase our desire of surviving. Besides, belonging to a or multiple groups will be able to boost our self esteem. Especially when the group is going well, it will generate feelings of being love, needed and wanted which will makes us feel valuable and treasured by being in the group.

A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; - Abraham Maslow

Besides, being in groups also give us a sense of identity. Example when people ask me, who am I. I will answer them, “I am a student” or “I am a Chinese” and so on. It can be related to religion, race, profession and much more.

Reference: http://www.saywhydoi.com/belonging-why-do-we-need-a-sense-of-belonging/

Premise 2: Games provide player with sense of belonging

You must be thinking that I am joking about this, but no. By playing games was able to deliver the feeling of belonging but how you asked, following are the examples. 

For online games, most of them are always required to play with another human player and some required a number of players to team up in order to complete the task. So, players will always need to form a semi-permanent team or permanent team in order to play some certain games or they can just join guild, where is a place where players gathered. 

While playing the game and communicating with the other players, they were able to develop close relationship. As a team or guild member, players can be very highly supportive when they get to know each other overtime, which will increase the experience of feeling belong, valued and needed as a member. 

Now, online games are not just that, many online game has become the back bone of eSports world. Fans buy tickets to watch their favorite players play live in front of them and cheer to support them, cosplayers put on their favorite character’s costume and gather together and let the photographer take photos of them. 

For brands and fans, eSports offers something that most traditional sports cannot—nearly unprecedented access to star players. This mostly occurs online, where players routinely interact with fans via social media or with YouTube videos. - E.J. Schultz

The sense of belonging and feeling needed are very strong when it on eSports event and people cannot stop loving it. 

Meanwhile in Japan, Romance Simulation Games a.k.a. Otome Games are really popular among the ladies, especially with married ladies. In Otome games,  the usual objective is to fall in love. Player can have multiple boyfriends at one time and decide on the interaction with boyfriends that decided the fate of the game.

One of the many reasons on why this genre of games are so popular are Japanese ladies are being afraid of having judge by the society because of having an affair, so by playing Otome games that offer virtual relationship will be able to fulfill the need of belonging to the ladies. 

Each character have their own story which give them some depth. So some people can find a character more attractive than real man. -Ai Aizawa

The first simulation game that focus romance was appeared on 1994, it was called “Angelique” by Koei Co. and made for Super Nintendo. After that, successor games such as Messiah’s “The Maiden of Albarea” launched in 1997 and E3 Staff’s “Graduation M” in 1998 further diversified the genre by adding in elements of fantasy, history, and adventure. Otome games are so popular nowadays, produced on most gaming system like Playstation, Nintendo DS, PSP, PS VITA and smart phones. This market makes $135 million per year and with the popularity of Otome games raising, Japanese game retailer even designate a shelf purely for “games targeted at women”.

Reference: http://adage.com/article/news/e-sports/308447/

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/this-is-what-esports-will-be-like-in-2016-435 

http://www.netaddiction.co.nz/whygames.html 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00229.x/full 

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276409103132

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/my-sensual-journey-into-japans-90-million-fake-anime-boyfriend-market

https://sites.duke.edu/unsuitable/otome-games/

https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera/videos/10155211829673690/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2M4ICwmhxU

Conclusion:  To attain the sense of belonging, people will play games.

If the above is true then the following could be helpful when developing video games in the future as an artist:

have good character and environment design and drawing skills.

knowledge of  shading/lighting technique.

play games and look out there and see what other artists are doing.  

*Do take notes that these are just my personal opinions. *

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Career Plan

Current Skills: - Solid knowledge of Modeling, Mapping and Texturing on hard surface - Expert knowledge of Photoshop, Max and Maya, and basic navigation of zBrush - Further specialism within art such as VFX, 2D & 3D Animation Abilities: - Good communication skills and ability to receive and act upon feedback - Ability to work to a brief and follow concepts - Working closely with Lead to identify process improvements/tools to increase department productivity and solve technical problems Interest: - Develop high quality 3D assets within the defined visual style - Experience with of working with modern game engines, for example Unreal and Unity. - Improving organic modelling - QA & Testing -Marketing

My plan in using those skills, abilities and interests in the game development industry: 1. Apply for 3D Artist, Environment Artist, Animator, Game Testing. 2. Planning to join indie game studio to gain more experience. 

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Color Practicing Day 01 

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Asura Online - art by yang qi917

Cinematic trailer for Asura Online [here]

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Illustrations by ömer tunç

-Infested- 

-savior- 

-face to face- 

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Cerulean Moon at Gamescom

Great news!

We’ll be showcasing Cerulean Moon at Gamescom in Cologne (Germany) this summer from August 17th to 21sth.  The water temple will be publicly playable for the first time as well, it’s gonna be awesome :D

(art by @sssashimi)

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Grove of the Pilgrim Hollow - by Tomi Väisänen

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Assault Troops - by Elijah McNeal

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Summer hours

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Artist suspends real clouds in the middle of the room

That’s not photoshop; that’s an actual cloud hovering inside an actual room. Artist Berndnaut Smilde merges art and science to create small man-made clouds that exist — albeit for just a moment — indoors.

Smilde uses a fog machine to make the actual clouds, but also carefully regulates the humidity and temperature. Even so, these installations exists for a mere moment before dissipating inside the room. If you’re not there in the moment, then you only get to experience these brief scientific sculptures as photographs. (Source)

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Up all night, Elsa Bleda

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Chase - by Roman Polyakov

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#352 Me watching Stranger Things rn hold me

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Cyberpunk Grotesque [1] and [2] - by Yohann Schepacz