Research #2

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, chapter 2

I used to read comics when I was a kid but I stopped after growing up, comics are very artistic in my opinion because they give a different feeling, it feels like I’m just reading a book but at the same time, watching a movie. I started watching comics after my friend told me to so I can relate with this screenshot.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, chapter 3

Comics also requires the reader to analyze in order to understand the hidden meaning in the story, it’s powerful if you get it. Comics also help us with our imagination, we can learn a lot from them and use them when we are brainstorming.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, chapter 6

Nothing is perfect, not even comics, there is always something that the readers won’t like. we are all different and we have different taste and that is the reason why some people hate some things and some people loves them.

Sybon Action

This game is really annoying because of the traps that are hidden, I died a lot of times because of my mistakes and that made me annoyed, the controls are a little bit hard to control due to the speed of the character.

Research paper #1

“Computer games are much like candy, comic books, and cartoons. All four activities provide
intense or exaggerated experiences. Whether they use sugar, exclamation points, or animated
explosions, the goal is the same: to provide extreme experiences”

I find this very meaningful because it’s what I thought how games works, they give us experiences and feelings that makes us learn new things, game often give us different experiences so I really think this means a lot to everyone who plays games.


“Interaction is important for several reasons. First, it injects a social or interpersonal element into the event.
It transforms the challenge of the game from a technical one to an interpersonal one.”

Interacting is really important nowadays because it makes the game feel alive, when I play games, I enjoy interacting a lot because I can learn much from it and feel the atmosphere.

“A game creates a subjective and deliberately simplified representation of emotional reality. A game is not
an objectively accurate representation of reality; objective accuracy is only necessary to the extent required
to support the player’s fantasy.”

I think games can also give what people desire, some people have their own fantasy or imagination, games can give them what they want and I really support this because happiness is very important.

Understanding Comics Research Lab – Joshua Young

“The trick is to never mistake the message for the messenger”

In Comics, it’s a whole other medium on how to convey a story to their respective audience. The medium is the comic, the message is shown within the comic, and the messenger is the author using the comic, what Mcloud wanted to say is to not confuse the authors words or intentions with what is shown in the comic.

“However much we may try to understand the world of comics around us, a part of that world will always lie in shadow– a mystery”

There is a vast majority of comics that have been released today, there may be a ton of hidden gems that can change your world view or others that have messages you hate. The many types of comics that focus on action like Marvel comics or the comics that are meant for comedic purposes like Garfield or the Sonic the Hedgehog comic. There will always be a shadow of comics for people because it also falls of their perception of what genres they’re interested in.

“Humans are a self-centered race. We see ourselves in everything. We assign identities and emotions where none exist. And we make the world over in our own image.”

Mcloud saying this quote to define how we as people perceive certain things as emotions like emoticons and even two dots and a line to signify a face. By making that connection, it explains the existence of being able to simplify certain expressions into more comprehendible images for viewers. Making images as simple as you can see fit can help bring that benefit of attracting more of an audience because it isn’t overly complicated.

Crawford Chapter 1 Research – Joshua Young

“Those who overrate their own understanding undercut their own potential for learning.”

In game design or in game development, we as both the players and the developers often overrate our skill wen making a game or product. The same goes for the opposite, people often underrate themselves in their in own skills when they create a game, they can be the most skilled programmer but if they don’t think of programming in terms of improving the experience for the player, then it’s hard to say whether that person is a good game programmer. The moral of this quote is that we all have the potential to create something amazing, but we can’t undercut or overrate our abilities, we can just do what is within our skill level to use as a learning experience.

“Games are objectively unreal in that they do not
physically re create the situations they represent, yet they are subjectively real to the player”

When playing games we like, whether it be the story or the gameplay, we get this subjective attachment to it that we feel immersed into the game. Games like Persona 5 makes us immersed with the characters and gameplay but also a game like OMORI can keep us attached to the characters with its storytelling, the situations the game puts us in and that we as developers put our player in must have some sort of hook took keep them playing the whole way through our game.

“the player of a game is encouraged to explore alternatives,
contrapositives, and inversions. The game player is free to explore the causal relationship from many
different angles.”

This quote means how in games it encourages the player to create their own story instead of always being presented the facts like a regular story. Games that do this often has some kind of quest system implemented that can both influence the story and give the player optional content and gameplay to go through for story reasons, an example of a game like these can be OMORI and even the more recently released Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach by having the option to the player to access multiple endings. This is all a choice for the type of game you as the developer are going for, but as a suggestion, if you make a game where your choices should matter, and if it will have one ending no matter the choices, have a good build up in the story ending to make that ending satisfying to the player.

Video Game History Timeline / HENI ABID

Sonic was really a successful and fun game to play. I had too many memories of it. The character is unique and well designed. I was always fascinated by its blazing speed and its edge attitude.

Angry birds were and still a successful game. The idea of this game is creative and have many levels in it. A variety of tilemaps, tilesets, obstacles.. and of course we can’t forget the protagonist, the red bird

In 2016, people went crazy about this game, and of course, how can I miss Pokemon Go, it was my favorite too. Imagine playing a game where you can hunt virtual creatures, it makes you feel like you are playing in the real world.

Published
Categorized as Research

Understanding comics / HENI ABID

Mccloud here trying to explain that comics’s creators all over the world, every creator has his own taste, images, and ideas, and also has a rule, they have to send a clear message to the audience or the messenger.

Mccloud receives a question from a Bunny guy who was asking what’s the difference between Cartoons and Comics. If I were Mccloud, I can say that a cartoon is a single panel image used to convey an idea, however, a comic is a story told using sequential panel images.

Most people love cartoons more than comics. Cartoons can tell you how exactly the characters are feeling and its facial expressions help revealing it, and some people prefers cartoons more than comics because they don’t want to read to have fun and lugh, they just want to watch the visuals , it is more easy for them.

Crawford Chapter 1 / HENI ABID

A game is a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality. 

The Art of Computer Game Design – Chapter 1

I found this quote interesting and meaningful because a game can be a fiction story or a non-fiction story and it is not necessarily to represent reality. 

A very important motivation to play games is fantasy fulfillment.

The Art of Computer Game Design- Chapter 2

It is very true, games are meant to be a source of enjoyment and happiness, which means they can transport the player who was stressed and sad into a different world full of imagination and creativity.

A game must have a clearly defined goal.

The Art of Computer Game Design- Chapter 5

Games are similar to films at this point. To write a script for a film, you must have a meaningful story, a clear Protagonist who is called a player in games, and a defined goal. 

Syobon Action

LORD, WHY IS THIS A THING?!

I wish I knew how to record on my Windows PC (really wish I had an iMAC) but honestly this game made me laugh so hard. In the picture above my character is dead… I attempted to jump across and that invisible block appeared and made me fall right into that hole. Then I found a mushroom and it made me bigger and as I go to land, I completely went through the entire floor and straight to my death. I laughed again. This game is clearly to troll its audience but I really did try to at least finish it and I think I got halfway through.

There is a game that follows the concept of this game in which you learn as you go and figure out what the mechanics are in order to beat the game, and that is the raids in Destiny 2. Bungie developers will NOT tell you how to work through the encounters of their raids which is why they have this thing called “World’s First” where a new raid is launched and everyone is in a race to beat the raid and get recognition and rewards from Bungie and likeminded gamers. This game though is clearly for the giggles. But if you want a real headache? Try a Destiny raid without looking up any walkthroughs.

Sorting Out the Genre Muddle (RP#4)

To build a Nintendo game, you had to have a Nintendo developers’ license, and they wouldn’t give one to just anybody. All the other console manufacturers followed suit.

Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.

If you have been gaming for as long as I have, then you would know when it comes to big companies such as Nintendo having to micromanage, label, and do business in a way where everything they make is exclusively from them just to put a big price tag on it then you’re just as annoyed with what video gaming has become now with the whole microtransactions. Just more ways to get you to spend your dollars on their products and you know what? I buy it. So it doesn’t even matter.

Fiction book genres are based on subject matter and to some extent, emotional tone. There are techno-thrillers, westerns, romance novels, mysteries, spy novels, historical fiction, and so on. The book’s setting plays a role in defining its genre.

Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.

Absolutely. There is no way a book, a movie, or even a game could be successful without having a genre to fall under, whether one can relate to it or not, it needs to have all the elements that comprise epic storytelling in order to stimulate the consumer’s mind. That’s why games like “The Witcher”, its succession comes from the fact its novel had an established fanbase who were heavily invested in the story. It then branched out into tv show series, board games, and video games. The author, Andrzej Sapkowski, would have no involvement in the game’s developments but gave permission for polish game developer company CD Projekt Red to use his characters to create new storylines. The Witcher falls under the genre “fantasy action role-playing.”

A shooter is a shooter, whether it’s set in the Old West or on Mars or anyplace else. A player who enjoys shooters will probably enjoy one no matter where it’s set, if it’s well-made.

Earnest Adams, Blogger, 2009.

His argument is that with books there are settings to set the tone or narrative of the literature you’re reading but that concept does not apply to gaming. And he’s correct. You can shoot people in any setting in gaming. GTAV, you’re in California shooting police, drug dealers, or pedestrians. In Destiny 2, you are traveling the solar system shooting aliens or other players (Guardians) in their PVP mode. In Red Dead Redemption, you are shooting your enemies in an old fashion cowboy western setting. As long as the location goes with the theme, doesn’t matter what the audience is doing, if its fun then it’s a win.

Video Game Timeline (RP#3)

(1940)
For the Westinghouse display at the World’s Fair, Edward U. Condon designs a computer
that plays the traditional game Nim in which players try to avoid picking up the last matchstick.
Tens of thousands of people play it, and the computer wins at least 90% of the games.”

I honestly never realized video games dated back that far. I did however I know that when going as far back as the 70s that gaming was more of coding, words, and not what you traditionally see nowadays. But 1940? That’s crazy. This basically is what started the pavement to what would become a billion-dollar industry.

(1977)
Atari releases the Video Computer System, more commonly known as Atari 2600.
Featuring a joystick, interchangeable cartridges, games in color, and switches for selecting games
and setting difficulty levels, it makes millions of Americans home video game players.

This is what I remember as a very small little girl, my uncles playing with this ‘machine’ that I had no interest in. It just looked funny and by then not every single family that I knew had one. It wasn’t until my father bought me my first Nintendo in 1992 that I fell in love with something that would forever be a part of me.

(1996)
Lara Croft debuts as the star of Eidos’s adventure game Tomb Raider.
Players love her, but critics charge that she’s an example of sexism in video games.

Personal Take: If you ever had a conversation with me about my all time favorite franchise in gaming you’d know it would be Tomb Raider. I had the first game back in 1996 on my Sega Saturn. Growing up my mother and I never got along but playing this game made her and I, for a moment, forget our tensions and just play the game. She loved seeing a female lead in gaming and I just loved that it made my mother nice to me. I would solve all the puzzles and mazes and she would do the scary boss fights for me. And it continued well into my teens with every Christmas my father bought me the new Tomb Raider installments because he hated watching us fight. We even went together to see the movie starring Angelina Jolie. We loved it.

Sexism in Gaming: I didn’t dismiss that part of the quote. I cannot tell you how many games there are where the men have reasonable armor and the women have their belly, chests, or thighs exposed with very little armor for protection. There’ even sexual suggestive games out there like “Catherine”. I guess it’s because the male species have dominated the gaming world for some time now but women, in recent years, have made a come up in numbers. And I have witness some games not over sexualizing the female characters like Destiny 2 and Call of Duty.