week four task

Ah developments of modern day gaming, in this era of technology and increase in skilled game designers artists ect we are at the dawn of a new age of game development with the new machinery and programs coupled with the amazing art. Gaming is facing a big issue that all games strive to be, this big issue is realism, a lot of games that are coming out at this moment in time are made to look close to the real thing, using new engines and new techniques to draw the gamer further into there fantasy without leaving there seat. A game that shows this most is a next generation game that is not in stores yet, it looks to be the most realistic game at the moment the skins are fantastic and the way things move when you interact with them is realistic.


The games name is “Crysis”, as you can see from the photo it looks real. Another big development in modern day gaming is the use of realistic interactivity, which is shown up in many new titles one of which is Crysis were you can chop down trees run through bushes and have the leaves bounce off you realistically but its also been in games like Oblivion and earlier Morrowind picking up items and destroying items in real time is a big thing in most games at the moment. The experience of realism coupled with an immense and epic storyline makes for great gaming.

Ah pressures, we all have them and a big weight on the game makers shoulder is the price tag, creating these fantastic games may be all good fun but what about these prices, have you seen the price of the new ps3, its crazy and this echoes back to the game maker because if people can’t buy these games or cant afford the consoles or the powerful desktop computer to run them then game makers will become bankrupt. This shows that technology is moving way to fast for the average person to keep up, I don’t want to shell out hundreds of pounds to play a game that only lasts a few hours due to the immense memory usage from the intense graphics and high polygon count. It is not worth it. Also this eye candy graphics looks good but it takes away the time people spend on the story line. A great example of this is the elder scrolls set from the first games like dagger fell to oblivion the graphics and detail has increased but the in depth epic story line has vanished, I’ve seen many reviews saying elder scrolls has lost all it used to be and is nothing more that eye candy, well if that’s so it brings me back to price, I bought a brand new computer for a thousand pounds to play next generation games on and all I’m getting is great graphics but bad plot lines and quick endings.

What I want from gaming in the future is attention to detail, when a mage holds down a fireball in his hand I want to see veins popping out of is hand and when I shoot a man in the chest on an online shooter I want to see a gaping wound with blood and guts. Games have gone to the point of looking real now we need to make them feel real, they need tiny bits of movement that shows its not just a bunch of animated polygons slumped with a texture. I want it to feel like I’m running through a war zone or trekking across an immense field with my sword at my side. Games need feeling, immersion. I want to play games with hair blowing clothes moving people speaking to me with feeling not a set dialog of babble dependent on my race or class. Also a great feature for a game would be, if its in the game you can interact with it, I’m tired of walking up to a window and finding out I cant open it or climb through it. Set paths are boring and very linier when I have to get into a house I want to be able to jump through the window or climb down the chimney, I don’t want a conveniently placed guard or locked door sending me in the direction the game maker wants me to go.

A massive improvement to gaming could be more realistic real time gaming for example if I play a game for a couple of months I want to see the grass getting longer and the people getting older, when I chuck an item on the ground I want to come back a year later and its rusted or rotten. On this type of game I would go every were and any were do as much as possible, do something bad I want people talking about it on the street and guards searching for me, people need to be scared and some angry but not go to just the extremes. some people need to be more scared than others instead of people being frightened or heroic there are in betweens to emotion.

middle history of games

Tasks:

review the ‘middle’ history of computer games
write your blog entry, and consider the following questions:

What were the significant developments during this time? How were games different by the end of this period than at the beginning?

continue to map out your own personal gaming history

What was the first game you played? What was the most recent? What happened in between, and most importantly, what made you continue playing for all this time?


Ah the middle history of gaming the essentials of what makes gaming the way it is for our generation. well in my last post i went on about the start of gaming with the first ever game on the rise of a majour game company now its time for the development of gaming history.

so from university games progammed by geeks with to much spare time to the present day arival of ps3 and nintedo wii. Acourding to most sources ralph baer is an influential man in the gaming industry taking gaming from the geek scene of coding and waste of time to the home television with a game called "chase" one of the first home played games but thats just the beginning there is alot more that spawned from the great idea, which is the reason im wrighting this and the reason we're all interested in this sort of thing. But tis blog is about the middle eras so makes it hard to really choose where to start you could of given us a date "micheal powell", but i guess we're stuck with it.

one sagnificant develipment include the "Magnavox Odyssey" which was one of the first home played computer consoles created by, yes you've guessed it Ralph Baer, ill jump a head here to more interesting developments like the creation of a little known console called sega mastersystem and that freakishly fun game "alex the kid" this game was one of the first games i played and got me hooked as i was very young at the time, it was not a very influential part of gaming history but was very influentiall to me so i thought i would wright a short bit about it. heres a screenshot to give you a taste if you have not seen it before.

A big influentiall part of the 1980's is the hand held lcd screen computer games, one of the games was super smash bros melee a games played on a game and watch hand held and because of the low power needed to run these games they only required watch batteries which made games small enough to fit on the wrist like a watch.

a large part of the 1980's was the online generation taking games to the masses this spawned games which aloud more than one person to play online games like online poker and it soon spawned to online rpg's one of the biggest online played genres in the world, but they were first called mud's or "multi-user dungeons" a smaller and less detailed version of games like final fantasy 11 or runescape.

abother jump in that era was the console from nintendo called the famicom an 8 bit console spawned from america. this blast of console mayhem soon gave way to the use of game pad instead of the old arcade joystick which is still used today on many arcade systems and flight simulators but the joypad is the way of the hime computergames, my opinion is the mouse and keyboard rule for certain games were the joypad is optional for other games i.e. fighting games.

the next big mark of gaming comes with the rpg and online rpg with games like everquest and the all important squaresoft creation finalfantasy which was so called titled due to the last fantasy creation by Hironobu Sakaguchi so much hardship and failure to create the most loved series of rpg ever created. In comes the game legend of zelda created at around the same time for the NES another big game in the wide world of gaming history. 1987 was a benchmark for gaming as it was the birth time for all these influentiall games aswell as the well loved metal gear, created by hideo kojima, this game was the first ever stealth based game in the world a bench mark for gamers everywere.

The difference from 1980 to 1990 was a jump from gaming on a console in a 2D format to gaming online and 3D gaming, which was thanks to the increase power of comuters giving gamers better detail and graphics giving way to the rise of the level of detail we have today.

The most rescent game ive played shows this high level of detail with the use of large levels online playability and a 3D environment its called "Battlefield 2142" This game shows just how far we've come in the past decade as it combines all the new technologies from the history of gaming into one action packed fun game worthy of our aproval. New and powerfull storylines coupled with intense realistic graphics is whats keped me hooked to the computerscreens all this time.

well the year is 1952 and a man named A.S. Douglas created the first ever computer game on a computer made from a vacuum tube, it produced a low buget game called tic-tac-toe, it was displayed on a cathode rod display and was of very poor quality due to only being created by a small team were as in the presant day games are produced by many people with alot of money. All of which douglas did not have.

The next interactive game that was produced was made in 1958 and it was a small adaptation of tennis, it was called "tennis for two". not long later a game was made which we all know and love, called "space wars", which i still have on my pc.

In 1967 the first ever television played gamed was created, the man who created it is called ralph baer he was working for a tv company at the time which may have been his insparation for this well known idea we all take for granted now. There was many adaptations of games one of which is called computer space, made from the game space wars but the next step in the game evolution is pong the tennis like computer game made from blocks and shapes, it was createed by Nolen Bushnell and he later went on to form atari computers with ted dabney, which recently created matrix and has games under its belt like "temple of elemental evil".

skip a few years and we come to the odyssey whcih is the firs playable home console made by ralph baer with the company magnavox. games were played firstly by inventors and technitians who made them it isnt ver sagnificant due to them making them so they need testing by some one.

My first console was not my oldest console it was sega and the game golden axe which nearly everyone i have spoken to knows about. the next consol for me is the playstaion which changed me from a sega lover to playstaion which i have never changed from. the first game i played on playstation was crash bandicoot a very weird and fun game due to its unusual style of charecter much like the use of a plumber in mario. it went from there realy changing to next generation consoles like ps2 and game cube but i still played the retro consoles like comedor 64 with the cassettes.

the most rescent game ive played it oblivion one of the next generation games so far, but this game was not the one that made me change from games passing time to games being my life, this was down to baldur's gate due to its fantastic story line and being the first rpg i ever played,. It hooked me to the point of rpg's being my favourite but as time went on i changed from loving indepth story lines to loving fast pace action of online and ofline first person shooters, which i love to this day I.e battle field 2

well the year is 1952 and a man named A.S. Douglas created the first ever computer game on a computer made from a vacuum tube, it produced a low buget game called tic-tac-toe, it was displayed on a cathode rod display and was of very poor quality due to only being created by a small team were as in the presant day games are produced by many people with alot of money. All of which douglas did not have.

The next interactive game that was produced was made in 1958 and it was a small adaptation of tennis, it was called "tennis for two". not long later a game was made which we all know and love, called "space wars", which i still have on my pc.

In 1967 the first ever television played gamed was created, the man who created it is called ralph baer he was working for a tv company at the time which may have been his insparation for this well known idea we all take for granted now. There was many adaptations of games one of which is called computer space, made from the game space wars but the next step in the game evolution is pong the tennis like computer game made from blocks and shapes, it was createed by Nolen Bushnell and he later went on to form atari computers with ted dabney, which recently created matrix and has games under its belt like "temple of elemental evil".

skip a few years and we come to the odyssey whcih is the firs playable home console made by ralph baer with the company magnavox. games were played firstly by inventors and technitians who made them it isnt ver sagnificant due to them making them so they need testing by some one.

My first console was not my oldest console it was sega and the game golden axe which nearly everyone i have spoken to knows about. the next consol for me is the playstaion which changed me from a sega lover to playstaion which i have never changed from. the first game i played on playstation was crash bandicoot a very weird and fun game due to its unusual style of charecter much like the use of a plumber in mario. it went from there realy changing to next generation consoles like ps2 and game cube but i still played the retro consoles like comedor 64 with the cassettes.

the most rescent game ive played it oblivion one of the next generation games so far, but this game was not the one that made me change from games passing time to games being my ife, this was down to baldur's gate due to its fantastic story line and being the first rpg i ever played,. It hooked me to the point of rpg's being my favourite but as time went on i changed from loving indepth story lines to loving fast pace action of online and ofline first person shooters, which i love to this day I.e battle field 2

Who's writing, and how do you perceive them to be? Does blogging strike you as objective or more personal? How often do they write, what do they write about? How do you see yourself using a blog? Do you feel comfortable writing for an invisible audience for example?


John A seems to me, to be a very hard headed gamer as he pulls down games for trivial reasons, even though his ideas are correct in some aspects, he doesn't understand the importance of variety. In one comment he pulled down the use of a car level in the matrix even though cars were a part of the story line as much as the bullet time and running up walls. The car level in the matrix made it seem as if you were running round a large city because of the length of roads were as if you didnt have this in the game you would be bound to the relitivly small obstical course levels. This also brings up the point of half life 2, the long levels in which you transgressed acres of land in fast moving vehicles made the game seem large as if you were fighting for the excistance of the hole human race not just your own private war. The levels gave depth and shows of the work of the artists, sculpterists and designers, which isn't a bad thing to us upcoming artists.
John A also seems to me like a knowlegable gamer with sound views and opinions even though he attacks little mistakes, which we are all intitled to make, even the best game developers make mistakes, look at "oblivion" bethesda missed out majour things from its predisessor "morrowind" which people liked.
Now onto a personal point John A needs to get of his second year high horse, us students are old enough and wise enough to work out what we can and cant do for ourselves, we are not lower than higher years because they had the fortune of being born a year or two earlier than the rest of us first years(no offence john).

Blogging seems a farcry from objective its more personal that wrighting a 10,000 word essay of crap the night before its due in. It gives the hole assey writing thing more merit as you are wrighting your views as they come instead of cramming worthless dribble into a few pages of copied and re-copied information from the net and as we all have our own personal blog it cant help to be personal. Personalities show more online as i have found out from years of forums, msn, and just online chatting, people seem to say what they feel due to the advantage of hiding behind a computer screen.

john A wrights a few times a month but it is slightly erattic due to him wrighting what he feels when he feels, which is the great thing behind blogging. opinions do not all come at once it takes time between learning new ideas and creating opinions of them. He wrights mainly about his ideas and experiences, his opinions and others opinions are a big part of his blog as he likes to comment on other peples opinions and explain his views.

i see myself wrighting in my blog alot, mainly commenting on opinions and getting accross my ideals to the class and tutors, it will be a way of comunicating outside normal lesson hours about the gaming world with people who have a similar love of the game world to me.

im not really wrighting to an invisible audience due to all of us meeting up in class to continue the conversation of last nights blog over a game of "call of duty", which means our audience is all to visble and by now we know each other by online alias and can picture each others faces just from names like Kung-Fu-Jesus(god damn sniper) or soft-entertainment(me)

EVEN THOUGH THIS IS LATE I HOPE YOU ALL STILL READ IT! SORRY MICHEAL POWELL!

soft-entertainment(adam) games

we need battlefield 2 call of duty = boring!!!!