Sunday, December 10, 2006

books beat films by miles, cannot beat the power of imagination

well to start and with probably with most of my co-students backing, books are far better than games or films just because of the level of detail, the way they introduce a character telling you everything about him or her but in films and games you do not get that in depth coverage. books force your imagination to create the characters and with you making up the character the character will suit you more being more scary or better looking depending on the writers description. I feel more attached to characters in books as I have partly made them up myself were as in films you get everything done for you which to be honest is boring (the imagination by far ways out the imagination of another person).
when a writer uses in depth description and detailed biography it makes you feel like you know the character also they do the complete opposite to the bad/villains of the story so you are attached to the characters that are good but far removed from the characters that are bad this makes me feel sympathy and compassion to the good guys but love it when the bad guys get hurt. but this means writers can easily make you love a bad guy just by giving you a little information on something like a bad childhood, making you feel sorry for that character.
dependent on the script! I feel story is the script you cannot make a good story without a good script. but this by far does not make the game for example fighting games like “dead or alive” or “Tekken” have very little story line but people still play them because they were made for beating the crap out of friends and the artificial intelligence not made for the story, but when you get a game like an RPG, which you are playing a role in a large story, the script is integral to the games success, the characters design and the level design become almost irrelevant, the game or film just becomes a book, a story but obviously not as detailed as a book. The acting helps convey a characters emotion and style separating him or her from other characters in the story like the to most common opposites in any story and any game, the good guy and the bad guy both so opposite they require immensely different style of acting I.e. a characterisation of evil would be slow sly movement like sneaking and skulking, where as good would be big bold movements and gentle posture. so to give the viewers more in site, the story is very dependent on the acting as it shows the characters part in the story.
I find mysterious stories very irresistible because they require a lot of thinking and they have many twist and turns also I prefer stories set in the medieval era because I like stores with chivalry and good verses evil in its plainest sense i.e. dark wizard verses gentle knight. also whenever I play a game requiring you to choose which character class i always choose knight(oblivion) or paladin(Baldur’s Gate/Neverwinter Nights1/2).

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

task 9

Well to be honest the best user interface is the Macintosh OSX it is so simple and that’s the way it should be, one time in college a bunch of us thought it would be fun to play the halo trial on Lan and it was the most simple thing ever to do even though we had to hack around the system we got it to work almost instantly because of the simplicity of OSX, but on the other hand have you seen the interface of Project Gothem racing it is really bad, you have to scroll through a lot of crap just to get to 1 on 1 mode its stupid, it took about 3 people to find there way around and they had all played this game before. I read this link on the net were a guy stated that the ps3 control pad(old design) was a good idea as it was designed to feel good well that’s what its all about, its not aesthetics, yeah true its ok to look good but would you buy a Ferrari with no engine. Have you noticed that all that changed in the shell of the computer console is, its got more curves and a lot smaller for the power you get so obviously if we keep going that way we would more than likely end up with a console shaped like a sphere and that size of an atom, well probably not but its fun to dream.

In the future I perceive that people will interact with consoles with there whole body not just a control pad or head gear. Full engrossed gaming with every sense used and for one you will not have the stupid robotic movement like in most first person games you neck will not be clamped to the character like he has a neck brace. The joy stick has been dying for along time as a personal thing I hate the joystick I prefer mouse and keyboard as it gives more control. Consoles are changing so much people have already started on virtual reality, if that got better and they used it to make games with graphics equal to reality then that would change the way people play games immensely as people would be more engrossed because they become part of the game instead of just a puppet master.