Writing about games, previews, reviews, commentary and lies

One of the main problems facing game reviewers is that they need to give an objective view of games rather than just their opinion. If they didn't do this, reviews would be unreliable to people looking to buy the game. As these are quite expensive items to buy, readers place a lot of trust on the reviewers.

There is also a lot of pressure from advertisers. The games companies obviously want their game to receive a good review, and there is some  question whether this can lead to biased reviews. For example executive editor of Gamespot Jeff Gerstmann was fired. Although in was never confirmed, the website had been paid a considerable amount of money for advertisement space for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Gerstmann had given the game a bad review,. His review was removed from the site as the publisher Eidos threatened to pull its contract with the site. This lead to readers becoming more un trusting of the reviews on the site.

Journalists also have a limited time to produce their work; in the UK a gaming magazine has nineteen days to play and review the games and to produce the issue. This is very little time  which may lead to some reviews seeming rushed and less accurate.

The wages of the journalists are paid by the websites and magazines that employ them. This could lead to some reviews being bias, such as the example above. There are also a lot of reviewers that are not employed by anyone, such as people who blog about games they've played and their experiences with them.

Many review sites and magazines use a ratings system for reviews. However, this can cause problems. There are so many different types and genres of games intended for different audiences that it is difficult to put them all on the same scale. For example, a casual game intended for children may score a very good score, but that does not mean that someone who enjoys first person shooters would enjoy that game. Everyone has a different taste in what they like to play. However, this form of ratings can allow people to see at a glance what to expect from a game.

New Games Journalism (NGJ) is new way of reviewing and writing about games. They often disregard the  objectivism of the more traditional review style and opt for a more personal view. It focuses more on the gamers experience rather than analysing the game itself. This could be a good thing, as it gives a more realistic account of what someone playing would think of the game, rather than picking apart the game analytically.  This could be better as it's a lot more relatable to than the traditional reviews, as most people don't pick apart games in see them for the little details, but rather as the whole experience. However, this means that the reviews are a lot more likely to be bias as they don't give an objective outlook, but rather as an individual persons view of the game. Not everyone is going to agree with the way they saw it. Personally, I think that both forms are good, but new games journalism is more likely to be entertaining to read.

Personal Gaming History

The first games that I played as a child was kids adventure games such as Harry in the haunted house on the PC (doubt anyone has hears of this). Once I had gotten a little older, I started playing some of my Dads games, such as Sim City 2000, and later the Settlers and Age of Empires. At this stage I really liked playing real time strategy games, and also games that allowed you to create things. In 2000, my parents brought me and my brother a Playstation. This was recommended by his teachers as he found it difficult to concentrate on two tasks at once. They believed that playing games would allow him to concentrate better. The first console game we had was Crash Bandicoot, and later other plat forming games like Spyro the Dragon .

When the Playstation 2 came out, we upgraded to it. My brother was the main person who used it, but I did play a few games on it such as 'Beyond Good & Evil' . It was only really until recently that I started playing on these consoles; after the PS3 came out, these consoles became mine and I began to buy and borrow more PlayStation and Playstation two games. My favourite series has to be the metal gear series (despite the fact that the plot got kind of convoluted towards the end), although my favourite game would probably be Shadow of the Colossus. I haven't played that many next generation games except for a few (for example Bioshock and Fallout 3 ) and at this rate it seems I'll end up getting myself a PS3 by the time the fourth ones out.

Once I'd upgraded my computer, I started to play online games such as Team fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead with my friends. Also got the orange box, which introduced me to steam. Mostly now I play games on my pc.

Probably don't have as much as to say about this as a lot of people, I've seen more games being played than I've played myself, and never really considered myself a gamer even though I enjoy playing them . Although it's doubtful in these current times, in the future I hope that games will use the more advanced technology that we have available to make more original and immersive. There's so much potential for games to try something new.  This is already happening with new motion technology with the kinect and the Playstation move. With 3d tvs becoming available, I look forward to be able to create and play games in new ways in the future.

History of Computer Games 2000s+

As the millennium arrived, a new generation of consoles were released.  Sony began to lead in the industry with the release of its Playstation 2 in 2000. This was the best selling console at the time, and also still has games produced for it to this day. Sega fell behind, with their last console being the Dreamcast, which suffered from their damaged reputation and pirating. Nintendo also became less popular, with their first disk based console, the Nintendo GameCube, selling less units than the Playstation 2. Although it was about the same technically, it did not have as many third party games produced for it and gained a reputation as a kids console. In 2001, Microsoft released the X-box, which was based on its computer technology.

It was also around this time that games became more mature, with more higher rated games being produced. Games that used the internet also became more prominent, due to it becoming more widespread and more affordable. There were quite a few Massively multiplayer online role-playing games at this time, such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Consoles started to have internet connection as well, starting with the Dreamcast and including the Playstation 2 and the X-box. The X-box used its system X-box live. This was very successful and was used in their next console.

In 2005, Microsoft released the X-box 360, and in 2006, Sony released the Playstation 3. Both had high definition graphics and an online system (X-box live and Playstation Network). They were almost as powerful as computers at the time of launch, but were relatively cheaper. However, for consoles they were considerably expensive. Nintendo released the Wii in 2006. This console had lower technical specifications, but had new motion controls and a strong appeal to casual gamers with games such as Wii sports. It became the fastest selling game console.

Games also cost more to develop that in the 90s and 80s. This was due to a increase in budgets. Earlier in time, developers often funded the games themselves, then looked for a publisher to distribute their games. Later on, publishers began to fund games directly, and this led to an increase of budget, as publishers had a more money to spend than developers.  However, this can limit the amount of original and innovative games released, as publishers are more likely to choose to invest money in a game that has mass market appeal, and is likely to give them a profit. For example, in 2005 'Out of the top 100 games in terms of sales, only 13 were neither sequels nor movie/TV licenses (source: USA; TRSTS)'  and in the same year EA published only one original game out of the  twenty five it published. There has also been more cross platform releases recently, allowing the product to reach a larger market. The increase in budget and advances technology mean that a larger amount of people are employed as staff for developing games compared to in previous times where only a small team was employed and many hobbyists created their own games.

History of Computer Games: 1980-1990s

In the late 1970s, the console market crashed. This was because the obsolete consoles tried to clear all their stock by selling off all their systems at a loss. This created a glut in the market, and some of the successful consoles companies went down as well.

It was in the 80’s that computers became more common in the home. This was because they had got a lot smaller than older computers which could fill a whole room, and also had become more powerful and more affordable as well as the crash in the console market. Early home computers included the Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC. This led to more games being made for these computers, as they were more assessable to the public. 

 A lot of adventure games were made for these computers. At the start of the decade, home computers could not handle much in the way of graphics, so a lot of these games where text based adventure games. This was where the game described a scene and the items in it, and the player could type in commands. They were mostly puzzle based. An example of a game like this would be Zork (1980). The first graphical adventure game was Mystery House (1980) on the Apple II which only had static monochrome drawings and still involved typing commands. By 1987 the first point and click adventure game, Maniac Mansion removed the text based part of the game altogether.

Consoles crashed again in 1983, but where brought back into popularity by Nintendo releasing the NES. By advertising it as a toy, they were able to sell their product. This was also helped by the release of their game Super Mario Brothers in the package. Other successful games on the NES include the Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear. This revived the market. Sega created a new console, the Sega Master System, but this did poorly.

The popularity of the arcade games began to decline in the start of the 1990’s as arcade games began to be released on consoles and as consoles became more popular. This was also the decade when 3D graphics began to be the developed. This allowed for new genres of games to be made, such as first person shooters and real time strategy games. In 1991, Nintendo began to be rivalled by Sega. Sega released its new console, the Sega Mega Drive, with the game Sonic the Hedgehog. In 1994 a disagreement with Sony and Nintendo made Sony release the Playstation as its own console. In 1996 Nintendo released the Nintendo 64, which was one of the few consoles which still used cartridges, which some saw as a disadvantage. The last console released in this decade was the Sega Dreamcast. This was Segas last console and was released in 1999.

This was also the decade when online games started to really take shape. Games such as Quake made online multiplayer almost a key feature of FPS. Online play also became a big part of RTS, with games like Starcraft and Age of Empires using it to allow players to play against each other. 

In summary, the 1980’s and 1990’s were decades of innovation in the games industry, laying the foundation for the games and genres we have today.

first guest lecture

This week on Wednesday we had our first guest lecture, from Jolyon Webb and Aaron Allport from Blitz studios. The talk was very interesting and gave a good insight into what working in the games industry is like. The company they work for is a UK based one which has worked on titles such as karaoke revolution, War games: Defcon 1, and Dead to Rights: Retribution. They mostly develop mass market family games.   

One of the most interesting parts of the talk for me was the video of an interview of a student on the course who had graduated and had been working with the company for four months. This was good because it gave a us a look at what working for Blitz would be like from the perspective of someone who had taken the course and was new to the industry rather than someone who had been working in the industry a while. It also gave us a look at the amount of workload the job required, working with a team and the roles that the job covered. 

 

It was also interesting the advice in the interview and the guest lecture about portfolios; it seems that in the last year it is a good idea to become more specific. If you are aiming for a particular job, it would be a good idea to have a portfolio only covering the area the job covers. For example, if you were aiming for a job as a character artist, there would not be much point in you having a portfolio with things like environments and vehicles. This also relates back to what we have been taught on the course, that the final project in our third year is probably best used to showcase your talent to prospective employers. However, at this stage, just getting to grips with the technology and the course, I don’t really know what I would like to specialise in.

Another part I found useful was the breakdown of the different amounts of people working different job roles. There were larger amounts of character and environment artists, but less visual effects artists and technical artists. The guest lecturers also said they were looking for visual effects artists and that when another company went under the people who had this job role were in high demand. They were currently looking for more people to employ into these roles. However, I did not really understand the role of technical artist from their explanation.

They also explained a lot more about character design and the process of developing ideas. They showed how some of their character designs and how they started with a sometimes not very detailed sketch, and then went through different versions until they thought it worked. The part about digital paint overs was also very useful; it seemed to really help to see what was wrong with the model by looking at the silhouette then painting over the corrections. This seemed a lot quicker than tweaking the model directly.

Although this was a very interesting and informative talk, I think that lectures like this will be more useful once I’m in the second and third year. This is because I would know more about what direction I would want to take my career and would have more questions to ask the guest lecturers. However, it was a really enjoyable lecture and I look forward to the next one.