Report on Reading 4/25/17
I found this week reading to be insightful on how i’m currently feeling about games and their meaning, and how I should be addressing these common problems in my own game design. I have been having inner struggles about how can I have core gameplay mechanic, while also having meaningful intention behind the mechanic of the game. This I believe is the hardest part I’m having as a game designer, about what should be the focus point behind my own creation. This is the main reason why I have has been taking so long to focus on one game concept before developing it because I have to analyze the idea from all angles, for instance is the concept fun and interactive? Is it possible to add a social or political aspect to this concept? These are the thoughts I have on a daily basis when I’m trying to create experiences through my design. I feel that as a creator that I have the responsibility to speak on current or past issues that are not being addressed, like women equality, sexism, poverty, sexual assault on college campuses and workspace environment, and so on. This is the true focus point for myself as a designer, I want to have meaning behind my own work not just empty thoughts. This class has been insightful on helping me develop as a conscious designer through our discussion and reading assignment about all the different way that we should be thinking when creating.
Report on the Pinata VR and Reading 4/4/17
This week reading was somewhat interesting but not really useful for the project i’m currently developing. I’m making a VR game where you can hit a pinata that looks like Trump but it has been a big challenge to make it, due to having a lot of technical difficulties with the documentation for the GearVR. I had to spend many days just reading and trying to understand the contents of the GearVR and rarely had time to begin developing my game. Another issue is that has slow my progression is that I couldn’t work remotely due to the GearVR being Android and can’t run the SDK on my mac laptop on the go. At the moment I don’t have much of a game yet, I had to rethink the first concept of the game since it won’t be do able with the amount of time that is left to en-capture the main concept that I had envision. I will be trying to make a simple room and have just one pinata that you can attack hopefully. On another note I forgot to mention about a video in this week reading about the Embodiment game which was super cool, I wish that I could develop something of this caliber in the near future. It’s something that struck me on how this game represents a connective experience with no real goals, which I found to be amazing how they came up with this structure. I think i’m gonna start to experiment more with strange ideas instead of trying to follow the norm.
Ideas and Concepts for PlayTech 3/31/17
The game that I will trying to make if I can get a Wii Controller to function on Android platform will be focus on the concept of pinata. Which is a Hispanic tradition of having a cartoon figure that is stuff with candy that children hit at parties. I will be trying to make a version of this in VR using Donald Trump as the figure, where people can hit to receive everything that Trump has promise us. The game will be centered around a American ball party, where you as the player will have opportunity to attack Trump pinata that is hanging from a chandelier.
If the controller doesn’t work I will be doing a walking simulator that will be simulating the same concept ideas of Conformity. I think it will be much cooler to experience this in a VR setting.
Mixed Feeling about development and The Quest to make a Fighter 3/7/17
My thoughts on this week reading were that the information I gather from the videos, games and the blogs to be insightful on helping me gain a better perspective on how to construct my ideas. When I was playing the “The Internet Express” game, I felt that the game was very boring at first but as I continue to play the game for a few more times I began to grasp the key factor that the designer has put in front me. Which was the understanding of the advertising industry where they forced advertisement in creative way upon us. This gave me the same perspective of walking down the middle of the street in Time Square, where there is no escape from the branded lights on the building and the advertising all over the place. The way that the game was design questions me as a designer but bored me as player, this is something that I face when I’m developing my own projects. When I looked back at all my games I creative they all bored me, I don’t feel excited about any of them. Is this how all developers feel about their projects? Or is it just me? Don’t get me wrong I do have a exciting ideas but I just haven’t developed them yet as school project. I hope that in the future I can creative a game that I feel genuinely excited about playing it and developing it. Onto a lighter note I also like that you added the “Mugen Database Engine” onto the topic list this week because it’s an engine that anyone rarely talks about. I have used the engine in the past which it was fun to used to make 2D fighting game by using character from all the fighting game we all love like “Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom”. I wish there were more information about making fighting game for Unity because i’m really interested in developing a fighting game in the future. I have done some research on the topic but there are not much sources for information about development. In the past I have talked to developers at events that have made the fighting game “Skullgirls” which is like the only Indie fighting game that has come out in the recent years that is not from AAA. The developer of “Skullgirls” told me that fighting games are the hardest to develop and code, which explain why there are not many fighting game being developed at the moment. Overall I found the reading about infinity to cool and useful but not my main point of interest, even though it help me have a better understanding about the concept of finite versus the infinite experience which was quite interesting.
Humor is the Key 3/1/17
This weeks reading was an unimaginable experience of humor, starting with the Harry Potter audio called Wizard People. I watched a few video of it and it was very entertaining even though I have seen the actual films, this interpretation of the story being told by Brad Neely as a voice over is hilarious. The names of the characters have a slight change like Professor Quirrell being called Professor Queerman and Dumbledore being refer to half-dead or near-dead is funny as hell. I will be watching the whole series when I get the chance or have more free time cause it’s that good. I thought the video footage on “Welcome to New Lux Plaza” to be a very tripping experience with the color and how the world is setup, I was hoping to have the chance to play it. The game does remind me so much of “Slave of God” due to the way color was used. In the Ayn Rand article about “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone” I found this reading to very interesting on introducing economics with twist of humor, which caught me by surprise when I was reading this piece. The way it was written was a simple but beautiful way to engage the user about a social topic that was easily digestible due to how the author chose to incorporate humor within the piece of the reading. I hope as a creator myself that I can incorporate this same finesse when tackling topics that questions or raise awareness about social and political issues that can easily engage the user at hand but also entertain them, this is something that author of the article did for me. This designing issue is the sad reality that plague me as a designer when I’m trying to come up with a simple way to get a message across to the user about a certain topic or issue which is hard to embrace, how do I go about it? I find the article like this to be helpful while also being useful as template that I can follow when I’m thinking about the next project. Overall the reading and the video were interesting and different which I like and I hope that we get more reading about games that have some type social element that are being addressed within the medium.
Idea’s, Concepts, Challenges 2/21/17
The project that I’m currently working on is about an urban issues on lack of space, which is a problem for expanding and newly-developing cities alike. Population increase leads to an increased demand for reliable infrastructure, nowadays combined with a need for increased energy efficiency and a higher environmental awareness of the public. These are the kind of issues or question that I was trying to raise in the game development cycle, but couldn’t go through with it due to time being a big key factor if I wanted to tackle this issue correctly. I chose instead to focus mainly on my experience during my Derive, where I found myself feeling fascinated on the two areas that I visited which where Chinatown and little Italy. The two areas are drastically different from each other and I thought this would be a good idea to showcase the differences in an abstract way within the project. The first part of the project I started by building a small little street block that has a bunch of little stores and street traffic which represents Canal Street in Chinatown and I began incorporating the mood or experience that I felt with the crowd during my time there. In the second part of project I created an artistic environment that is cover with art and luxurious mood that showcase how I saw little Italy during my visit. In both environment I focus on making the player feel the situation that I felt personality while also showing lack of space by using objects that grow from small to big or using object that represent the crowd that I follow to get a glimpse of the culture in the areas I visited. During my developing I did encounter many problem and challenges with this project due to being a native New Yorker I don’t really see a big problem with lack of space due to my current knowledge with the situation. Which put me in a stuck area with coming up with ideas or a plan of attack on this urban issue on a small scale. I ended up creating many different prototypes that were interesting but not good enough at addressing the issues in a correct matter.
I found many of the reading to be very informative on many different issues like public housing and infrastructure to be a good resource for my issue, even though I didn’t incorporate them in my design I did think about them during the first prototypes, which were focus on an realistic approach. The reading from Robert Yang on the Witness and Fire Watch were fantastic learning about level design and how it hasn’t change during the recent years. This sad belief that environment artist and level designer are secondary used thing in game much like how sound or music are incorporated in game as a whatever thought, which these trait values are unappreciated within the game industry.
A Game Concept from Derive 2/16/17
The concept for the game that i’m designing is gonna be a maze style abstract structure that have the ability to change in size while you explore through it. The goal is to incorporate the feeling of change to the environment so that the player can experience how I felt during my Derive. I will be combining the ideas of lack of space with the dramatic change by giving the effect of moving walls, that grow in size or change to the imagery of a building structure. The steps I believe that I will taking is looking how to add some kind of claustrophobia experience that the player can in engage with.
Reading Report 2/14/17
I found this week reading to be really interesting especially that they were all on different topics that were really relatable about discrimination. When I began reading “Discrimination by Design” it made think differently about architecture and how we so often don’t realize the intentions of person that is developing these design. I found the article to be really alarming on how much I truly didn’t know about the design that are in my home state of New York. This type of discrimination is something you would believe came out of a film, it’s hard to even grasp that this type of hatred is living inside of people who have creative mean to put them into used. On a lighter note the topic in the article “Design for the one Percent” about how designer created architecture for the rich is something that is not surprising to me. Having an architecture or a product that is beautiful but clearly not functional is something that is still being practiced today. I do hope that in the near future, designers care overwhelmingly about the people they affect with their creations. The reading about Moses and his prejudice mindset on how to keep people of color away from white neighborhood through his design of public transportation is disturbing. To see that even in the present that we are still dealing with these type of people, makes me more focus to cause change in our world. All these reading makes me want to become an architect so I can knockdown those evil building and remodel them for the people that deserve justice.
Quest of the Derive Report 2/14/17
I began my Derive quest when I arrive at the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall train station and started to walk directly north where I saw a large building which was some sort of a court house. I continue to walk in the same direction which lead me down a narrow path into more government building. As I kept continuing to follow the same path I suddenly came across a park by the named of Columbus Park. The park was empty and cover with snow as the weather was cold outside, there were no people around this park. I stop to take a few pictures of the area where I started to see a lot of people at the west end of the park, playing Chinese chess. I remain following the same direction, where I got up to Canal street also known as Chinatown. I walk around looking at all the food shops and the merchants in the area, which were really interesting. The smell of the food was strong and soulful, I began to follow the crowd of people in hope to be on my way onto the next destination. As I continue to follow the crowd I notice how narrow the sidewalks really were in comparison to the Bronx sidewalks, being among the crowd gave me the weird feeling that I was in a horde of ants moving along a small bark of a tree. During this moment I started to really think about the reading, on the topic about intention with design. Why were these sidewalks so small and why is all of Chinatown so cluster together? All of the building have an old design and there are no trees around beside the one that are in the park. The sense of nature is absence in this area, the mood of Chinatown is fast pace just like Manhattan. Nevertheless I continue to follow the crowd, thinking to myself how I wanna see how the endpoint of Chinatown area would look like. As I kept moving along I started to see construction sites and also remodeling of building, then bam suddenly I bump into a new area, where I did not see no more Asian crowds just regular white people in the area. This area was little Italy, which looked so modern in comparison to Chinatown. It felt as I just teleport-ed in my magical capsule into the new year, this area was covered with a bunch of coffee shops and beautiful restaurant at every turned. As I was walking through this place I will see people walking their dogs, drinking a smoothie and eating cannoli. The walls in little Italy also had beautiful graffiti art drawn, which was unexpected. There were also upscale clothes shops and art & design store, which gave off the feeling of a hipster vibe in the area. This place still suffer from the same as Chinatown with the lack of nature in the area. I kept moving along the same road path then made a left onto the next intersection which brought me back into Chinatown. After walking through both area I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Discrimination by Design” reading, I just stood by the sidewalk wondering why are both places so different even though both of them are only one block away from each other. The architecture of the building are so dramatically so different from one another, one looks for the poor while the other looks for the rich. The people of both area live completely different lives, in Chinatown there were no one walking their dogs or jogging about. While in little Italy the people were doing the norms things we see when we are in Union Square which is a much modern upper class area. At the end of my Derive I just had many question about how would I incorporate the feeling I had when I visit both area.
The Quest Location of My Diagnostic Dérive 2/9/17
I will begin my walk from the Brooklyn Bridge train station stop.
Core Studio Environment Week 2 2/8/17
The topic for the game design that i’m currently working on is about the emotion shame, which is a feeling of shortcoming or discomfort on an individual. During the reading of Roland Barthes’s essay there was a sentence which really related to the core idea of the game i’m building. Which was an “author is supposed to feed the book, that is he pre-exists it, think, suffers, lives for it;he maintains with his work the same relation of antecedence a father maintains with his child.” this one sentence sums up exactly how i’m tackling this project and thinking about it by using my own personal experience to feed the book. Which is the feeling of not fitting in or not living to the expectation that others put upon you. This is the feeling that I had during my high school years among other things like being pick on, looked down upon, school discipline, laugh at or even being made fun of.
I believe that Incorporating personal experience is the key to give players a genuine interpretation of emotion which is the motivation for me as a game designer to bring up topics that don’t normally get addressed within games. There are many issues in our society which go unanswered which I personally believe as a designer is my responsible to shed light upon. In the game I’m telling the story through architecture paths that were design for the purpose of giving the player a short glimpse of the situations that I have mention before, which I can hope paints the picture for the player. The world is design in a way that keep the player on an limited control environment, so I can predict their movement and make sure they experience exactly the situation that I created. The style of the game is also a factor of how the player will be feeling the aspect of the story, which I when toward a modern abstract point of view that focus on clean solid lines. During the design process I have been having a difficult time figuring out how the ending for the experience should be like. Should it end on a sad or happy conclusion, this is the challenge that I’m having with the story that I am have created. I personally don’t want the game to have a conclusion but to raise a questions to the player which is, what is the cost for conforming to society rules? what are you willing to sacrifice to fit into society norms?