mintyferretgameblogs

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Mediation, Control, Mods and Bugs

Hello everyone today I will be discussing my brief experience playing Dwarf Fortress. Through my gameplay I didn’t get very far at all with the gameplay, I found the user interface and the whole gameplay very confusing as it was throwing a lot of information at you right off the bat. I really couldn’t get a grasp of what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to do it, I looked for a tutorial and even the beginner level tutorial was close to an hour long. I also did not get around to using the mods as the ones I could find would have only added more mechanics to the gameplay. I’m not sure what actions I managed to do as I did not understand the core mechanics of the game, and the user interface didn’t give me feedback I could really understand. The things I enjoyed are the concept that they tried to pay a homage to the early days of MS-DOS type games, though when it comes to MS-DOS I much prefer games in the vain of the original Duke Nukem, Halloween Holocaust and Doom. What I did not like is the art style was very straining on the eyes and very primative, the map, gameplay and user interface are very confusing and there is a lot of information to take in, the game seems to require a vast prior knowledge to get into it. Not really a pick up and play style of game. I would not really play it again outside of the homework assessment, I found it a very stressful game to figure out.

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Hard Coded and Procedural

Hello again everyone, in today’s blog I will be reading and discussing an article called “How RimWorld’s Code Defines Strict Gender Roles” The article opens up by talking about one of the characters who is named Reed. Reed is one of three survivors amongst a crashed ship, the others constantly make advances towards her despite the fact of her gay sexual orientation; making the feelings far from reciprocated. Her life basically consists of bad pick-up lines and work for the colony. I perceive this as a possible social commentary or a satire of sexism in the workplace; not all too long ago there was a stage in real life where women just had to “put up” with such treatment in the workplace. The article describes RimWorld as a sci-fi colony management simulator. The game mixes in dynamic storytelling around the players attempts to survive on harsh alien worlds, however when it comes to other elements such as gender, romance and sexuality it tells variations on this very frequently. The writers of the article looked into the code to find out why this is the case. When it comes to the constant barrage of flirting directed at Reed she doesn’t seem all that bothered by it, I believe this to just be a wall of kinds she puts up to try and just ignore it, or maybe even taking part of the “boys will be boys” justification that people try to push in regards to sexism. Rob and Boots, the characters constantly pursuing Reed seem to have an almost permanent mood and relationship penalty for Reed, this is because they keep asking her out and getting declined. The reason for the sexual advances towards Reed lies in coding, the romance attempts are calculated depending on whether the initiator is a male or a female, all characters start out with a base chance of turning any social interaction into a romance attempt and a minimum amount of attractiveness. You have to like someone and find them attractive to start a romantic relationship, when the coding and random chance comes in however things become different. Putting the code into simple terms female characters are about eight times less likely to attempt to initiate romantic relationships, other elements include being single or they feel about their partner. However, this single check on gender has an effect that make female initiated romance very rare. The orientation is not at all considered in the chance of the men hitting on Reed, or any other character that is gay. I believe that this is playing more into the stereotype of boys being the ones that pursue the relationships, also in some of my personal experiences with straight men a gay orientation did not deter them, in face some of them tried to just push on a “They just haven’t met the right guy” neither of these views match my own. In RimWorld males find people between the age of 20 and that of their own age attractive, if the male is below the age of 20 it doesn’t make a difference because the code will check the “lower bounds” first, they’re guaranteed to find a 20 year old attractive, this explains why Rob (who is 32) and Boots (who is 17) keep trying to ask out Reed (Who is 23). However, the coding doesn’t check for Relative age and this Boots wouldn’t find another female his own age all that attractive. The minimum age of attraction is 16 (Much like the Age Of Consent in Australia) On the other hand women prefer partners older than they are, and unlike men there is no cut-off for “too old” for the females, even characters 40 years older have a chance of being perceived attractive, contrast this to the men where 15 years older has zero chance. Looking into the codes with Rob flirting with the younger woman and the women having no age cut-off I think this could be a way of placating the conservational views of “All men are pigs, and women are just gold-diggers” stereotypes. Though I might be reading into things that are not there in this case.

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Video Game Diagesis

Diagesis in Games.

 Hello everyone, today I will be  discussing diagesis in video games; more specifically I will be discussing the sci-fi horror game Dead Space.

Diagesis is where aspects that exist to the player; like health meters, inventory menus and maps also exist in the games world. For example the Pip-Boy in Fallout 3 and 4; health meter in Resident Evil 7 (consisting of a smart watch with a heart rate monitor); or the ammunition count in the Halo series. In Dead Space you play the role of Isaac Clarke, an engineer who works at the Concordance Extraction Program aboard the USG Ishimura. Diegetic elements that exist in the game are things like: Your health meter which is told via a LED spine that is built into the suit, the light gets lower as your health decreases; selecting weapons and other items via a holographic display that Isaac interacts with, using this display does not pause the game so there is also the added sense of horror and tension; and the stasis meter which indicates things such as the recharging of your weapon. The LED crosshairs on your weapons also indicate what orientation the laser blast will go (i.e. horizontal or vertical). Ammunition is indicated by a holographic number display above your weapon. In game objects are given a blue/white LED to indicate that you/Isaac can interact with them; conversely red LED means the object is locked and cannot be used; and as a bonus element orange/amber LED is used to indicate that the object is just ambient or there to make the scene look nice. The in-game Sound implements diegesis. Using only the ambience of the ship with no music whatsoever during the gameplay. The lack of music not only serves the diegetic premise of the game, but also helps to build the ship in which the game takes place, as well as build tension for the player. The game environment, USG Ishimura, as a character, emphasizing its extremely industrial and violent environments, full of metal, gear and engine sounds is also an excellent example. Lastly the element of saving your game consists of using in-world kiosks to save your game, Isaac also interacts with these too. In conclusion there are a lot of different ways to implement Diagesis and doing so correctly can be quite challenging but if it is pulled off well it can serve to make the game experience immensely more immersive.

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Tone Control in Video Games

Hello everyone. In today’s blog I will be discussing Tone Control in video games, for this I will be discussing a video on YouTube by Ben Burbank, where he plays and discusses the SNES cult classic game Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan); the game was translated from Japanese to English by a man named Marcus Lindblom. The video starts with an unboxing of the game and showing that it came with a Players Strategy guide and a kind of walkthrough, this is likely due to the fact that JRPG’s were not yet as popular back then as they are today and many players would be confused as to where to go and what the goals are, the video also mentions that the game did not sell very well due to poor marketing by Nintendo. Having the only marketing aimed at the “Boogers and farts crowd” having played a little of the game myself on the Mini SNES as well as seeing various reviews and play-through videos of the game I very much disagree with the marketing choices there as there are other titles at the time such as Beavis and Butthead games and even Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 that much more match the target audience. The latter titles being more aimed at the younger demographic. Earthbound sold only 200,000 copies whereas Mother 1 (Colloquially called Earthbound Zero by English-Speaking fans) sold 400,000 within the first week in Japan alone. The game was only initially released in an oversized box that came with a players guide magazine. The game takes place 10 years after the original Mother, and it also has the same villain from the first game, which is an all-powerful space god. The game begins with a bright colourful bedroom scene where the player character talks to their mother and is told to get dressed, he then exits the house to investigate a meteor landing, the colour palette then shifts to a dark night scene with cops scattered all over the place; they talk about how much they hate their jobs. The following day you meet your neighbour pokey back at your house. Ben discusses how he can’t really hate the character even though he’s a bad person because he was abused as a child, the game discusses this really quickly. Something of this level being revealed so soon I find rather pointless and ineffective as there was no time to bond with the character and therefore the abuse backstory loses all its power and meaning. The game attempts to deal with social issues, Ben mentions later on in the game that there are prostitutes. I find this very unusual and not what you would expect from Nintendo given how they around this time were trying to push family values. Unanswered prayers are something covered in the game, where a character has a pray attack that does nothing. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a jab at religious groups or just an on the cheek social commentary. The game also has some implementation of discouraging players from playing for excess periods of time, in game your dad will call you and ask if you’re okay and tell you to take a break, or your character will walk slower and have lowered stats. The battles have an inconsistent range of enemies; A parking meter, some silver robot, a snake, crows, a green creature on top of some kind of drill, some wooden robot that looks like a piece of construction vehicle, a petrol pump and much more.   In summary there are a lot of cool ideas here but I believe as well as the poor marketing there was just too much going on here and it couldn’t captivate American/European audiences the same way that it did in Japan, the game has since become a cult classic and has fans itching for the whole series to have an English translation.

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Week 4 - Subjectivity

Zombie Army 4

Hello everyone in today’s blog post I will be talking about Zombie Army 4 and player experience and motivation in relation to the game, in doing so will be using an article called Bartles Taxonomy of Player Types (https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/bartles-taxonomy-of-player-types-and-why-it-doesnt-apply-to-everything--gamedev-4173)

According to the article many games, more particularly you can encounter many different types and styles of a player/competitor these are:

Killers like to provoke and cause drama and/or impose them over other players in the scope provided by the virtual world. Trolls, hackers, cheaters, and attention farmers belong in this category, along with the most ferocious and skillful PvP opponents.

Achievers are competitive and enjoy beating difficult challenges whether they are set by the game or by themselves. The more challenging the goal, the most rewarded they tend to feel.

Explorers like to explore the world - not just its geography but also the finer details of the game mechanics. These players may end up knowing how the game works and behave better than the game creators themselves. They know all the mechanics, short-cuts, tricks, and glitches that there are to know in the game and thrive on discovering more.

Socializers are often more interested in having relations with the other players than playing the game itself. They help to spread knowledge and a human feel, and are often involved in the community aspect of the game (by means of managing guilds or role-playing, for instance).

In Zombie Army 4 killers will focus on getting a high body count and killing as many zombies as possible, the achievers will have a motivation for exploration and finding all hidden collectibles and weapon upgrades, the explorers will likely look for bugs and/or Easter Eggs in the game, the socializers will try to meet people in the online community and they will try to join or start their own clan. The article suggests that players usually belong in a primary category, but drifted between several others depending on their mood, situation and preferred goal in the game. This allows a player to experience different facets of a game world and its mechanics. Some of the examples that the article states for understanding player type is: You are buying a pair of shoes, and every time you do so you acquire one point, the more shoes you buy give you more points giving you access to better shoes, in ZA4 the more kills you get gives you more experience points to levelling up, the higher your level the more perks and skill tree you have access too, or the more collectible weapon upgrades you find the more powerful your weapon will be. You are exploring a website, and rather than giving you points which an explorer does not care about, find an alternate way to reward them, in return they will continue to explore the website, in ZA4 there is a subtle Easter Egg which seems to have a bit of a 50/50 between killer and explorer, one of the levels has a bunch of rats that are wearing gas masks, every time you kill one of them, a small gas mask appears on one of the walls in the level, more rats killed means more gas masks on the world, it’s a subtle reward but it will entice the explorer to look for more rats. Lastly the usage of leaderboards will not be a thing that is important to socializers as they are more in search of friends and clans to engage with. Bartle states it's important to remember that the types are based on observations of MUD players, and cannot necessarily be extrapolated to miscellaneous other types of game, certain games such as Tekken, Crash Bandicoot or other games that have linear levels or boxed in grounds for 1v1 battle for instance don’t allow a whole lot of exploration or offline games that don’t have the social aspect.  In conclusion there are many different types of game players and ZA4 has a place for all the different types of player, thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next article.

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Week 3 - Weekly Game Blog Posts

Hello guys, this week I will be reviewing and critiquing an article titled Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock ( https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html ) In the beginning of the review the writer discusses a dissonance (lack of harmony) between the game and the story, and that it is difficult to enjoy it simultaneously as a game and a story. Having played the game myself a few times it does lose a lot of value and mystery and I find the plot twists somewhat shoehorned into the story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The horror-esque environments with the superhero like gameplay mechanics don’t always seem to gel together well in my opinion. In conclusion I can see where the writer is coming from. The reviewer mentions a contract the game forms with you, referring to the choice of harvesting (killing) the Little Sisters or releasing them from their brainwashed state, I can see validity in the points of there being disconnect from the player and the fate of the Little Sisters as the game doesn’t really punish you from acting on selfish abandon. (aside from unlocking a “true ending” by saving them all instead of harvesting) The reviewer mentions that the game falls apart after the second contract as it begins telling you about selfish acts to advance yourself only to spring on helping someone to advance further. The game does not offer a choice of loyalty between Ryan and Atlas which I agree is a pointless narrative and disconnects the player to some extent.  In that extent this is the disconnect the writer is talking about, while you are offered gameplay freedom you are not offered narrative freedom. In conclusion the writer raises some very interesting reports, and it seems like while he states in later paragraphs that it is still a fantastic game it is not without it’s flaws, having read it I can see the game in a different light while also being more aware of the few glaring issues the game has.  

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About Me and Why I Want to Create Games.

1. Hello my name is Benjamin, I am 25 years old and I study a Bachelor of Game Design

2. The part of Game Design that interests me the most is Level Design/Level Artists, because I enjoy feeling immersed in a well constructed world, I would love to become a Level Artist after I graduate

3. The things in a game I care about are, good atmosphere, great characters and dialogue.

4. My favourite game is Bully, it relates to question 3 in asmuch as the characters are well written satires of US high school culture. You can also gauge from the minute you meet the antagonist that he is pretty much sociopathic and manipulative.

5. Game developers I look up to are Rockstar Studios, their work means a lot to me because they have an open world focus and alot of their projects can be very immersive and vibrant.