Mountain Dew Game Fuel

Talking about the long anticipated release of GTA V (and how it compares to Saints Row IV (something that I won't get into in this post)) reminds me of when I used to get really excited about games. Feeling as though I am older, now in my early-approaching-mid-twenties, it is hard for me to say which games I am excited for right now. My excitement over the release of new games is probably caused by my exposure to a vast variety of video game and art criticism (appreciation of people like Anthony Burch, Jim Sterling, and Ben Croshow), an evolving taste, the rise of the independent market, the disappearance of Blockbusters (to allow me to rent any console game that came out), and my post-graduation financial situation. Though I am not a huge fan of the GTA series and have approached the series with an amount of skepticism, GTA V looks kind of fun, like something my younger self might have been excited about. However, my reaction to GTA V was, "That's kind of neat, probably won't play it, I bet Saints Row IV will be better, but I won't play that either." Maybe if I had $60 for every game that came out I would be more eager to play them, however 6 years ago I would have gone through many lengths for my fandom.

Halo Origins

Since elementary school I usually favored games that were unique, had interesting mechanics, or had some aspect of adventure, though some of my favorites were competitive games. From hearing about the buzz over the first Halo and having previously played Marathon (an earlier shooter by the people who made Halo (which is still one of my favorite games ever)) I knew that people thought Halo was a great competitive game. At the time, I did not have an Xbox to play Halo on so I had to wait for the PC release which I bought immediately. It was an instant classic in my eyes because it was the first time I had ever played an online shooter. By the release of Halo 2 I knew that I had to get it as soon as it came out, though when I finally got an Xbox I did not have Xbox Live to play online.

By junior year of high school, when the Xbox 360 came out, I finally had a console with online support. I had played Halo 2's campaign mode several times over, but I had not played it online until I got a 360, so I was pretty late to the game (playing online more than a year after its release). One of my best friends, Mike Timko, was pretty pro at most shooters, so I knew I would have to play just as much as, if not more than, him in order to beat him or play with him in a team game. Because of the amount of time we both ended up playing the game and my limited amount of real life and online friends that played Halo, we ended up playing Team Doubles together almost every night. Team Doubles is the variant of online skirmish that pinned two teams of two against each other on small maps in a variety of objectives such as Capture the Flag, Oddball, and Slayer. As we practiced we rose to the point where we were consistently playing against pro players and getting our asses kicked almost every game.

Halo 3

During the summer of 2007 (between junior and senior year of high school) I was obsessed with Halo 3. I eagerly awaited the Bungie Podcast, I tried to follow the AdjutantReflex alternate reality game, and drank a lot of Mountain Dew Game Fuel (which Mike and I called "Grunt Piss" in reference to one of the enemies in the game. I worked a small summer job doing lawn care just so I would be able to afford Halo 3 on my own. I wanted to get it as soon as it came out, but I could not go to the in-store release (being released on a school night), so the day of, as soon as I got out of school, I biked across the highway overpass to the nearest Kmart which luckily had a few more copies of the game (and posters too). I immediately hung up the poster (which is on the wall of my old bedroom to this day) and that night I played for 3 hours straight before doing homework.

When I hopped online I saw that all of the people on my friends list were playing Halo 3. It felt like I was a part of something much larger than myself and as if I could finally relate to so many other people at least on one level. Though many popular games have come out since the release of Halo 3 none have made me feel like the reception has been quite as universal. However, I may be confusing universal reception with hype in the media, clever marketing, record breaking sales though it was an overall great product.

Game Fuel

Game Fuel in retrospect (and at the time actually) was pretty stupid/genius. The reason I say "(and at the time actually)" in parenthesis because the stupid and genius in "stupid/genius" were switched around when I was 17 because I thought it was more genius than stupid; I bought several cases of Game Fuel, and it was all I drank. Not only was it a Halo Mountain Dew flavor, but it was delicious, one of my favorite soda flavors to this day. This flavor was similar to my then favorite Mountain Dew "LiveWire", which was orange flavored, but the difference was that the citrus flavor was "infused" with cherry.

I was so obsessed with Game Fuel that, in anticipation of its limited release's end, I saved all of my empty bottles and washed cans in a few cardboard boxes and tried to save a few full ones for the distant future in my garage's refrigerator. I made sure to tell my immediate family members not to drink them.

One day the one bottle I was able to save went missing. I immediately assumed someone drank it and questioned my grandmother and grandfather. My grandpa told me he was very thirsty and he thought he had bought that specific drink. The drink had been out of stores for several months. At the time I didn't know my grandpa's cancer was back and the Mountain Dew saved him from dehydration. I also didn't know that Game Fuel would come back 2 years later, though with World of Warcraft labels, last October during the release of Halo 4, and sometime this fall.

Hype

Maybe the reason I don't get excited for games quite as much, or in the same way, is because I learned my lesson with Halo 3. While Halo 3 was my favorite multiplayer game, playing it every night for the majority of the three years between my last year of high school and my time at community college, I was a disappointed in the campaign mode. I loved Halo: CE's, Halo 2's, and all of the Marathon game's campaign modes (along with the future Halo ODST's and Halo Reach's campaigns), but there was something that was not as fresh about Halo 3. What I loved about Halo: CE was the feeling of open exploration of the terrain, Halo 2 was the scale, variety, and amount of new environments and enemies, Marathon was the feeling of wonder and mystery. Halo 3 had a lot of iconic moments, but it did not nearly satisfy the hype that preceded it. That feels insane because of how much I still love Halo 3.

Telemarketing Game

What is this game about?

I had a tele-donation job for a month earlier this summer before I made Breaking Bread. The job entailed trying to passionately read off of a script to potential benefactors to convince them to donate money to different sorts of Jewish funded causes. While making Breaking Bread I realized the job I had was very similar to the game that I was making at the time. Based on the scripts, tele-donation statistics, and different stories my friends or I have had I am making scenarios for this game.

Above is a peak of a dialogue chart. Once I have access to my personal computers I will make more progress on actually making the game. For the past month or so I have only been sketching out how the mechanics will work which I have found to be a helpful mode of production. Production on Breaking Bread was different because I just went into making it without any planning or preliminary writing or any preproduction. I have heard of a lot of indie developers (I should cite this with some examples) advocating for not doing any preproduction because the final product is more fluent or something. I think doing these preliminary writings should be helpful and I am sure I am going to make changes while actually working on the game. This preliminary process seems as though it will be helpful because when I am doing actual production because I will have most all of the mental labor done and things will be less confusing.

I don't know, I'll see.

If you want to see the full dialogue chart as it is in progress click this link.

:-)

MolyJam Pt.2

Cool Games

Now that I am looking on the Games section of MolyJam, some of the games that I thought were most interesting are not featured. There was a realtor text based game and another game that had the player resize distorted photos to their correct size that I cannot find. One of them that I did find was "MolyNews". Moly News is a game in which the player plays as Peter Molyneux and has to choose different jumbled sections of actual Molyneux quotes to make complete responses to a journalists questions. Check it out!

"Limbo-esque"

At MolyJamDeux there were several teams that used the term "Limbo-esque" to talk about the game they had made. This bothered me for several reasons. While I think Limbo is a good game I am annoyed about how people talk about it. When people hear that I like freeware, downloadable, or "indie" games people often say, "Oh, have you played Limbo?" This is notable because Limbo has had a clear impact on people outside of the indie community. What I often hear about what people thought was interesting about Limbo was primarily the graphical style. People label it as artsy because the depictions are in black and white, cartoony, and vague. Though the primary gameplay mechanics are never elaborated on and the graphics were very stylish, I still enjoyed the game.

I enjoyed the game for the way story was incorporated with gameplay mechanics; this is not what the people who described their games as "Limbo-esque" meant. I have a problem with this because it equated black and white graphics, platform mechanics, and mood to things that make good games.

MolyJamDeux!

MolyJam2013

Game jams are something I have been aware of since I high school. I was always really jealous of people who lived in bigger cities (New York, places in Canada, places in Europe) because they had game jams and there is not that big of a game making community in Dayton. Now that I have finished college I saw this game jam as a chance to meet people in the game making community, and get experience making a finished game. What we made was "Molyneaux Slope" from a team of programmers, Clint Levijoki and Mark Michaels.

What Happened?

The team changed a few time during production which was difficult. We first started out with Clint, Mark, and I and then three others joined our team. Working with six people seemed to be far too complicated at the start because everyone wanted to design the game. We did a lot of back and forth and just settled on Clint's idea to make a dog park simulator. We settled on his idea because he was the most persistent and had the most tangible idea. Before we settled on his idea we had basically two really solid ideas that we were fighting against. We broke for the day and met the next morning.

By then two of the members from Columbia University had dropped out and we were left with four people. I was on the art direction and left all of the code to the other members. All of the other members of the group work professionally as programmers and none of them had made games on their own (outside of a company) before as I recall. There was a bit of a struggle between what language was going to be used but they all just followed what Clint was doing because during the night Clint had set up a framework for the game. The rest of the day was mostly Clint trying to set up multiplayer and the others trying to learn the language that he was using. I got a bit nervous because our game did not look like much. I had made the character and dog animations as well as some of the background assets but not much was implemented.

The final day was trying to wrap up text commands. Everything became implemented and we finished a little early. In the end we just made a bunch of extra character sprite sheets so not all of the players would look the same.

Tomorrow I will write about some of the games I played at The New School's hosting of MolyJamDeux and what I thought.

In Between Two Games/Where Should I Live?!

Where Should I Live?

So, for the past month I have not had a job in order to finish "Breaking Bread", a few comic book projects left from school, my general portfolio, and to figure out what I want to do career wise. I am now at the dilemma of either staying in Brooklyn, finding a new job, and new place to live, or going home, finding a job, finishing my computer science degree, and then a new place to live afterwards. Either path I take I will either be in Dayton or Brooklyn only for the next year or so because by then I will hopefully be at graduate school (which is something I need to figure out too). I would like to continue making games and such, but for the next few weeks I need to work like crazy because my feeling right now is to stay in New York just because of the amount of jobs, opportunities, and experiences. I have a fear of going back to Dayton because I do not want to go back and become stuck.

The thing is, either place I go I will still continue making games. In Ohio I will possibly have more free time, but the environment will not be as conducive to the process due to the lack of critically thinking people to interact with. In New York, there will be more people to talk to about critical subjects, but there are plenty of distractions, money is harder to make and to keep. Also, the idea of studying computer science again leans me to going back to Ohio, though I could easily study it on my own enough in order to make games.

Finishing My First Game!

I have made plenty of games with my friends from home, but I never finished anything. People would always become busy, or we would not make progress on something for a while, so things would just die off. It feels exhilarating to have finished a game, though made in Klik & Play, a game made by myself in a sense, without a team or partner to directly work with. There was a part near the end of the development where I got caught up and frustrated with some of how the game was working, but it was just a hump I had to get over. That hump was the sort of thing that stopped past projects from being finished, so it felt like a big thing to overcome.

How I Overcame the Hump

"Breaking Bread"'s interaction is mostly dialogue tree based, so things became confusing to edit. My mistake was to only write the dialogue and how the dialogue interacts in the program. During the end of development I started writing down all of the dialogue and drawing out lines to see how things connect. This helped me see how things connected easily! It also helped me write things and edit things in a way where I would not be afraid to edit things just because of how difficult it would be to change them later. This way of working also makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot if I did something out of order or forgot to add in some dialogue. I am starting a few other dialogue based games that are similar in interaction, and I am definitely going to start writing them down beforehand!

Finished: Breaking Bread

So, I just released the final working version of the project I have been working on for the last month or so, "Breaking Bread". I feel a bit relieved now that it is finished because now I can work on some ideas that I came across while making this game. So far only two people that I know of have played it and the reception was positive. The game is pretty inaccessible being made in Klik & Play, so it can only be played on a Windows machine, and only in something XP or before, and it is about a TV show that not everyone has seen.

I hope you enjoy this and future games! :-)

The Effects of Video Games

Found a paper I wrote a little while ago.

The Effects of Video Games

When was the last time you have played a video game? If you have played Mario, Halo, Madden, or Tetris you have been influenced by the music, the graphics, story, and even the graphic design. Interactive media has taken over the entertainment industry. Kids aren’t the only ones playing games today either, adults are too. Due to the media coverage of video games, they are being condemned. People now think, "Are games going to hurt me?" "Are my children affected?” “I've heard they are violent." "I'm really not into video games; none of them really interest me." Being an avid video game player and a video game designer, I know a lot of the answers to these questions and statements. Video games may be looked down upon by the mass media because of many negative effects, but video games have just as many positive effects. 

Most "gamers" (those who play video games) from the turn of the century were eight to fourteen years old according to Michael Brody in his article, "Playing With Death." In a summary of "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy," Dudley Barlow states that most children in the 8th and 9th grade spend more and more time playing video games. Girls of this age group play around 5 hours per week and boys play around 13 hours per week (Barlow). Around this time of growth for a child, the child has a "transitional space" in which a child finds his or her self or purpose (Brody). In this transitional period children are filling this time with video games (Brody).

Games like Halo, Final Fantasy, Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid, and Call of Duty are all very popular games among children as well as adults. All of these games have astoundingly realistic graphics and unreal fantasy settings. It is hard to picture why anyone would not be attracted to such fantastic wonders. Though these games are popular with children they are all filled with violence, blood, gore, and negative portrayals of women. A study in 1996 that says popular games among children were mostly violent (Barlow). In most games women are rarely the main character, but objects of desire like princesses in castles or seductresses (Brody). In games like Counter Strike, Halo, Gears of War, and other popular shooters, the main objective is to kill.

Violence is in 80 percent of games (Brody). This percentage of video games cause physical and mental symptoms related to aggression (Barlow). According to an article from BBC News, some effects are "auditory hallucinations, repetitive strain injuries and obesity". High blood pressure and aggressiveness (Brody) are others that have been seen for short and extended periods of time (Barlow). Video games cause a lack of charity and a surge of aggression in those who play violent video games (Barlow). Psychologist, Jane Healy, says, "Habits of the mind become structures of the brain," inferring that playing violent video games give the players aggressive tendencies (Brody).

According to a study by Iowa and Kansas State Universities, video games are correlated to aggression, but the study couldn't find if aggression was related to the violence in the games or not (Aggressive Behavior). It was also found that the length of time someone plays a video game does not change the effects (Aggressive Behavior). People who play violent video games aren't necessarily violent either (Economist). When a criminal is known to be a gamer the media goes wild. If half of Americans play games, why is it such a big deal (Economist)? 

In the past rock and roll, movies, comics, and certain books were looked down upon. Just as video games are today, those forms of entertainment were accused of turning people into "devil worshippers" “and "drug addicts" (Economist). Even in 1816, waltzing was labeled as an infectious disease (Economist). In 2005, The Watchmen, a comic book, has made the Times All-Time 100 Novels list. Movies are now used for educational purposes and artistic expression. Now, people who read a lot of books are deemed "smart." If history repeats its self, video games will be just as accepted as books in the future. 

Even though some people view gamers as anti-social, video games teach good team working and social skills. I know from firsthand experience that video games promote team work. When playing Halo 3 online, I know that I have to constantly communicate with my team-mates about our location, enemy location, and strategy. I also know from my friends that play massive multi-player online games, such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI, teamwork is required to make it through any raid or mission due to the large groups of people involved. It is surreal hearing friends talking about having to get around language barriers just to finish a dungeon raid. Apparently Japanese speaking people do not like to be in the same party as an English speaking person, because of language and cultural barriers. To get around such an obstacle is a great learning experience on its own.

Will Wright, creator of The Sims, Sim City, and Spore wrote in his article “Dream Machines”, "Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play." Problem solving has evolved because of video games (Wright). Such new skills were taught to professionals by video games as kids. Their skills have not been used only on dragons, robots, and aliens, but used in their real lives (Lewis). Those professionals have probably played games that are devoted to problem solving, point and click games. 

George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars movies, founded Lucas Arts in 1982. Back in the 1980's and 1990's, when Lucas Arts did not only make games based on Star Wars, they made point and click adventures. They were one of the best companies at it. They made fun, funny, creative games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, and Grim Fandango. These games were not just “fun and games” they were difficult and they required a lot of problem solving skills. Sierra also made the impossible to beat Kings Quest series. I remember when I played Kings Quest VI, I had to get a bunch of wall flowers (not a bunch of shy people, but shy flowers) to dance so I could capture a hole in the wall (yes a portable hole in the wall) so I could look inside a castle in which a princess was held captive. If those are not some advanced problem solving skills at work, I do not know what could be.

The dying genre of point and click games, does not typically have twitch game play that relies on the players’ hand-eye coordination to progress through the game. People who play fast paced action games not only get better at slaying Grunts in Halo 3, but they form an "increased visual attention capacity" for situations that require concentration (Chatham). This can be related to the lessened attention blink (Chatham). Attention blink is when gamers eyes are opened longer so he or she can keep focus on objects longer. While some skeptics say that hand-eye coordination skills learned in games can only be used in combat, other jobs also require such ability. For instance, surgeons who play games don't make as many mistakes as those who don't play games (Oak).

It is not typical to associate video games with the player becoming more and more creative, but in the gamer community creativity is a huge part of gaming. Will Wright has said, "Games aren't just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination." This statement especially applies to his game Sim City. Mr. Wright originally made a helicopter game called Raid on Bungling Bay, but he thought that creating little cities for the helicopter to fly around in was more fun than actually flying it. In turn, he made Sim City out of his personal level editor. Sim City is a game where the player can not only sustain a city's economy, but build the city from ground up. This single game has influenced other games like it called "sand box" games. Sand box games are basically games where the player can do what he or she wants to. Some such games are Crayon Physics, Gary's Mod, and Line Rider which leaves the game play up to the gamers' imagination.

Though games have all of these great aspects, the negative media coverage on video games are there for a reason. Most video games are violent and most video games are non-artistic. Jason Fagone from Esquire magazine says, "Game companies have spent so many years trying to make skulls explode complexly and water ripple prettily that they haven't invested any time in learning how to make games that are as emotionally dense as the best novels and films." There are actually a few people trying to make artistic creative games to help shape the way we look at games, one being Jason Rohrer. In his game Passage the player can have an experience driven by emotion like no other. Without giving away any spoilers, the player can learn a lesson about life and death the few minutes it takes to complete the game.

After evaluating all of the positive and negative reasons video games are simply a fun form of escapism. Video games are not passive media, so the interaction that gamers have with games make video games a better alternative to television (Oak). Computer games can be just as stimulating as sports. Research by Mark Griffiths, a professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University, says that video games can distract patients with sickle cell disease who are going through chemotherapy (BBC). While computer games can be a healthy activity, it is best that they are played in moderation.

To conclude, video games may deserve the negative media coverage because of the content and aggression effects, but the same thing has happened to every new form of entertainment. Video games teach players about team work, sociability, problem solving, creativity, and good hand-eye coordination while providing a healthy alternative form of entertainment. There are plenty of video games in stores and for free on the Internet so I would advise you to look up whatever interests you, whether it be problem solving games, shooters, or creative things like Passage. Afterwards, you should look at game reviews to see if the games content best suits you. Lastly, play in moderation and have fun!

About.com. Aug. 2001. 30 May 2009. http://mentalhelth.about.com/cs/familyresources/a/videojap.htm.

Barlett, Christopher. Branch, Omar. Rodeheffer, Christopher. Harris, Richard. “How Long Do the Short-Term Violent Video Game Effects Last?” Aggressive Behavior, Volume 35, pages 225-236. 2009. Academic Search Complete. Ebsco. Sinclair Library. Dayton, OH. 29 April 2009. http://web.ebscohost.com.sinclair.ohionet.org. 

Barlow, Dudly. "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy." Education Digest. 72.6. Feb. 2007. Academic Search Complete. Ebsco. Sinclair Library. Dayton, OH. 29 April 2009. http://web.ebscohost.com.sinclair.ohionet.org. 

“Computer Game Play ‘Aids health’”. BBC News. 14 July 2005. 1 June 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/4684057.stm.

Brody, Michael. "Playing With Death." Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter, Brown University. November 2000. Academic Search Complete. Ebsco. Sinclair Library. Dayton, OH.  29 April 2009. http://web.ebscohost.com.sinclair.ohionet.org.

Chatham, Chris. “Video Games – Mental Exercise or Merely Brain Candy?”. Developing Intelligence – The Old Version. 10 July 2006. 31 May 2009. http://develinetl.blogspot.com/2006/07/video-games-mental-exercise-or- merely.html.

"Don't shoot the messenger." Economist 382.8512. 20 Jan. 2007: 18-18. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Sinclair Library, Dayton, OH. 1 June 2009 http://sinclair.ohionet.org:80/loginurl=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=a9h&AN=23817852&site=ehost-live.

Fagone, Jason. "The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls." Esquire. 20 Nov. 2008. 20 May 2009. http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest- 2008/future-of-video-game-design-1208.

Lewis, George. ”Researchers Tout Positive Effects of Video Games”. MSNBC. 19 May 2005. 29 May 2009. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7912743.

Oak, Manali. “Psitive Effects of Video Games”. Buzzle.com. 27 May 2008. 29 May 2009. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/positive-effects-of-videogames.html.

Wright, Will. ”Dream Machines”. Wired. April 2006. 31 May 2009. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html.