Personal gaming history

27^th October


My very first games consol was the Sega Mega Drive, and my first game on it was a Sonic the Hedgehog game, a traditional early sonic side scroll game. We also had a Formula 1 racing game. The consol was given to me and my brother by a family friend that didn’t want it anymore, but at that time I didn’t know much about the gaming world, I was only about 5-6 years old at the time.

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The next experience I had with video games was when a friend and me would play on her Play station. The games we played were some of the classics like, Crash bandicoot, Spyro, Buster move, and Final fantasy. The first Final Fantasy game I played was Final Fantasy VIII; this is what spurred my interest in RPG based games. I remember going into town with my friend to pick up a copy of Final Fantasy IX when it came out.

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At roughly the same time I was playing a Game Boy colour, my first game for it was Pokémon Gold version, this was when the series Pokémon was at its peek. We also played on the Nintendo 64 another consol that used cartridges like the Sega Mega Drive, Pokémon Coliseum was what we spent the madgority of our time on again reflecting the craze at the time.

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Later we were bought a Play Station 2, which my brother and me formed some loyal followings for curtain series’ of games. Some of those include the Ratchet and Clank games, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper and many more, including later instalments of the older series that we played on the original Play Station. I had my own favourites for the PS2 and was still a dedicated follower of the Final Fantasy series and went on to buy FF10 and FF12, I also played the Kingdom hearts games, which were a lot more colourful and cartoony than the Final Fantasy games. I am a JRPG (Japanese role play game) fan first and foremost, but I play a variety of other games I don’t like to be confined to one genre.

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When the Play Station 3 came out, we were quick to buy one, like most we were excited about what they could do with it, as we had seen the progress developers had made by pushing the PS2 to its limits.

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Tally of decisions made.

Siren blood curse: Horror game

16^th October

Saturday night we decided we would test the amount of times that you would make decisions. Georgia called out every time she made a decision and I made a mark on paper, we chose a horror game as you can choose to do a lot of different things. The main decisions were either to run or to hide, running was a risky option as you were at risk of getting spotted, but the hiding option requires you to be stealthy, making sure you know where the enemy is at all times and avoiding their sight path. But after thinking about it we realised that when playing a game every time you press a button you are making a decision, even if they are subconscious ones.

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Lecture 3D character artist. 8/10/10

Chris Goodswen

At first he used to hate 3D and was mainly focused on at traditional work and avoided doing 3D work. His main focus was on character design but he also did some background and environment art. All this was when he was still in university.

During his final year at university he was working on his final project as well as getting stuff together for a portfolio, he explained that it was important to have some traditional art in your portfolio as well, like life drawing and thumb nail sketches, this would show that you new about anatomy and the original ideas that you came up with. He really focused on the anatomy, as if you can show you know what you’re doing in that area, it looks really good in your portfolio. Despite the fact that he was not that skilled in 3D work he chose to specialise in it. He chose to base his game concept as a horror in the 1980’s; he started by looking at some rather disturbing fantasy stories to get inspiration for his designs. He then did a lot of thumbnail sketches and then moved on to speed paints, so he had the basic concepts for his characters before he started the final models.

The program he used to create his models was called Mud box, he explained that the companies that you do work for don’t really care how you do the work as long as it gets done. The method you use is up to you and what you are most comfortable using.

As he went further on in his education he found that he did not have as much freedom over what her did on the BA course, he didn’t have much say on what he was meant to be designing and producing and found his work was being intensely criticized and he was often told to redo a lot of stuff. They usually worked in teams each having their own job to do within the game making process, giving them a chance to specialise in there chosen area, in Chris’ case character design. He found the process of producing a game very stressful and found that they were under a lot of pressure as the deadlines were tight. 

At the end of his lecture he emphasized that it was important to network and get yourself out there, giving yourself a good opportunity to get spotted by potential employers, also to make sure to keep working on improving yourself while looking for a job.