Week 17! When a bird gets sucked into an engine they call it "bird strike". It's not bird strike, it's "engine suck"!

The game engine, the heavy lifter of all the tech involved in game making. The game engine is the software responsible for managing the various functions of a game. The engine has a list of functions to perform such as a physics, animation and rendering to name but a few all which come together in a glorious crescendo enabling you to shoot a bad guy in the face on your favorite games!?!

With beginnings in games such as doom and quake in the 90's the game engine was soon on many developers shopping list. Rather than starting from scratch many developers will buy in an already existing engine. This provides a number of advantages such as quicker production times and a reduction in the production costs. This does however mean that any problems may need to be referred back to the engine developer and therefore another party then becomes involved in the production of the game.

The game engines employed in today's current generation of consoles are increasingly more sophisticated and there has been a separation in the different functions often running individually. An example of this is in racing games where the physics thread will be running at a different pace to many of the other core functions. This is a small example of some of the changes that have had to be made to how the game engine operates in order to incorporate the increasing need for realism in today's games.

Week 16! Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning.

I wouldn't say I'm a really a gamer. I tend to drift in and out of phases of playing on a fairly regular basis and then not playing anything for months at a time. For instance at the moment I am playing quite a few games down to the fact that I have only in the last few months, come into possession of an Xbox 360, prior to this change in console related circumstances however when all I had vent to my video game playing urge was a PlayStation 2, don't get me wrong, a much loved console but by this time well past it, in my fickle eyes, It was a shadow of its former self sitting under my TV probably ranting in a drunken state to all the other electrical appliances about how it used to be somebody.

The thing that appeals to me in gaming is the escapism and with this in mind when i am in the grip of the game playing phase I do tend to get engrossed and it then can sort of become a distraction.

As for the game culture as a whole I suppose I have noticed change. Fairly recently on my last few visits to the cinema their have been big dramatic, cinematic trailers on the big screen for a few highly anticipated game releases. This i dont think was something that happended a few years back so I think there has been a cultural shift and as games are becoming more sophisticated they are not just considered a pass time of the geek.

Week 15! This industry moves so fast it's really hard to tell. That's why I need a name that's cutting-edge, like CutCo, EdgeCom, Interslice.

The game industry has well and truly arrived in the sense that it is a multi billion pound, profit making machine but this is not a true reflection of its current state. behind the figures lay a problem.

Games used to be fairly cheap to produce yet would still sell in great volumes and in return the profit margin was great. This, unfortunately is no longer the case. Increasingly more sophisticated platforms has breed an increasingly more sophisticated consumer which in turn requires more sophisticated games. As a result games nowadays have production costs in the millions and unlike previous years when a team may produce several games in a year, the product is taking 2 or 3 years to completed.

This applied pressure to the employees of the games industry. As mentioned the games take longer to develop and cost more than ever before as a result more and more is being asked of the talent involved in the production. It appears there is an ongoing issue with the amount of hours an employee is expected or required to put in when working on a project.

It is not all bad, the pay for example, although not stratospheric is something that has increased as a result of the growth of the industry and most employees are paid what you could call a comfortable salary.

It seems the industry is at a stage of make or break. Either it could continue to grow with the the opportunities for advancement the current generation of consoles have brought with them or in a strange twist they could herald the end. It is the expectation of the games they also bring which has pushed the production costs higher and higher and caused the problem facing the industry at the moment in the first place.

It has reached a point where the consumer is possibly more demanding than ever in terms of what they expect from a game so there doesn't really seem any way to go back. One of the ways this is being confronted is the lifespan of the consoles. The industry has learnt that progressing to fast is a costly exercise. Another challenge the industry faces is finding a way to keep a handle on the production costs so that it is possible to keep developing games to this standard with out the reduction and loss of profit it has recently been suffering.

Week 11! Don't hate the player, hate the game....play!

Nooooo! not gameplay again! what does it mean? As I touched on previously I consider it a loose term to describe the players experience of playing any type of game. But this of course, is not a difinative answer. I dont know if there is one. what i do know is, what ever it is, it is important in making a good game.


I would say gameplay is made up of a lot of factors all coming together to provide the experience of playing the game. Anything that detracts from this has a negative effect on the experience of playing and therfore reduces the gameplay, this could be anything from poor controls to a badly designed level.

That is how I perceive gameplay and with that said I realise these are all things that are dependant on the individual so if I regard, say, the controls of a game to be awkward and unuseable another player may disagree so gameplay is opinion based. like most things in life it is impossible to please everyone and with this in mind it would be impossible for gameplay to programmed or designed into a game.

In my opinion one man's gameplay is another mans poison, where some may find gameplay, some may find none.

Gameplay, to me then, is the overall experience of playing a game and comprises of the various factors that make up a game working in a way that the individual finds and enjoyable experience.

Week 10!

Character design has become increasingly more important in gaming. A good character is an essential part of any story and a pivotal part of engaging with the audience.

Thinking of characters I have encountered my memory is not great so i will comment on a character who rate and who I re-visited recently. I thoroughly enjoyed the bourne movies, Identity, supremacy and most recently ultimatum. I am currently reading a book which continues the Jason Bourne character, titled the Bourne legacy.

Unfortunately however, I have never read the original books the movies are based on so I'm not sure how the character was originally envisioned by the author (Robert Ludlum). So the character in the movies is the one that appealed to me. Jason Bourne is a top assassin but rather than being an armed to the teeth, gun swinging action hero, Jason Bourne comes across as a believable person doing believable things.

I think the movies really captured the sense that Bourne is highly trained killer but that is not it, he is resourceful and highly intelligent, subtle touches like slipping in and out of a multitude of languages give depth and help reinforce this element.

I think this is one of the things that was appealing to me. It was reinventing the action hero and it was interesting to me to see how Bourne would deal with the situations he was placed in, both the combative, and the everyday.

I think any character is helped by a good script and performance. A good character needs to have good things to say and know the right way to say them. This is relevant in all aspects of story telling. The performance doesn't always have to require actor though an example that springs to mind is the "birth" of sandman in Spiderman 3. Not an actor in sight but it is a captivating and emotional moment built within a computer.

I do like a hero story. Someone selfless and/or triumphing against adversity whether it be the real world that exists in the Bourne movies or the more fantastical Spiderman etc. and this does filter into the sort of games I play.

Week 9! you got the touch!

The controller, whether it be the joystick or the high tech wizardry of the wii mote, is an essential piece of equipment for any gamer, lets face it games would be a lot less interesting if you couldn't move.

the early controllers were essentially a stick on a box, i am of course referring to the humble joystick. it was the joystick which provided the interaction in my early gamer days on my Atari ST. Though not always the most reliable, functional or practical pieces of equipment, it sure did come into its own on those early flight Sims.

Nintendo NES brought with the "pad" and consoles have never looked back. The now standard D-pad soon became the control method of choice for most manufacturers. of the early pads i used i seem to remember preferring the SNES pad to its Sega rival. i always thought the megadrive pad, a little too bulky. On the subject of these particular consoles, though they may not have the sleek design of some of today's machines but I personally like them for their pure ease of use, and how robust and heavy duty they were along with the cartridges. No need to worry about a scratch on the disk in them days.

The introduction of the analog stick on the N64 again stuck as another standard feature. I think put to best use on the PlayStation controllers. Particularly the PlayStation 2, dual shock 2 which now i think about it has probably been one of the best.

having fairly recently purchased an Xbox 360 i may be slightly behind the game but i am enjoying the whole wireless remote experience. it is such a huge relief not to be constrained by that pesky wire. having never owned an xbox i have also got the used to the controller fairly quickly which is testament to it really.

Of all the consoles though, purely on looks alone the PS3 does slightly edge it over the 360, though it is a close run thing. i do like the taper of the 360 but the PS3 is so sleek it looks like it could fly.

Then there is of course the Wii and the now infamous Wii mote. I have not used said equipment but it has been a huge success and with it being such a success it has possibly opened the door for more obscure and innovative ways to interact with games in the future. Has it spelled the end for the game pad? i think its success may have, as history has taught us that after one company (Nintendo) has done it, all the other companies follow.

Week 8! The never ending story.

I don't necessarily think a story makes for a better game, but I do think a story certainly makes for a more immersive experience and offers a different type of enjoyment than say a player driven game in the model of the Sims.

A good story will hopefully captivate the player and make them want to keep playing, and i know from experience i have lost entire days trying to delve deeper into a good storyline. I think this is a key difference it gives the player a sense of involvement. How the story is played out is in most cases pre determined by the programmers or creators of the game and the player will travel a series of paths which will ultimately lead to the same end or in some cases a selection of endings again pre determined but i don't believe this limits the story in any way i think the whole point of a good story is to offer some form of structure and plot.

So as a player there is the element of the story guiding but unlike movies playing a game is an interactive experience so their will inevitably be things a player can do or attempt to do which may not always be plot relative. so with that said the story Will guide but the player does have some element of control as to how and when.

Not all games have a predetermined story line. I started to think about guitar hero and singstar as having no story but I guess there is an arguement it is a story of the progression from amatuer to rock god or pop legend. With games like the sims I suppose the storyline is fairly open ended but the characters will follow a very broad script of birth, work, marrige, and death which in a sense offers some form of narrative. I would say that in games where the story may not be a great deal of plot or the story may not be obvious a player will impose their own story.

So I suppose story does exist in most games if you look hard enough. Not always obvious, not always good stories for that matter but I think that a story is a fundemental feature in a game as thats what we as a speices seem enjoy whether it be music, movies or the humble computer game.