Narrative and Games

Story: All the elements which end up being depicted, not every event which happens, many things can be implied but never shown properly.

Plot: The chain of causation, these are the things which actually happen within the story.

Narrative: The order in which events are revealed.

Events in a narrative can be revealed either first hand or second hand. When a story is revealed first hand it is shown to the viewer by the character from their perspective as the event unfolds to them. When an event is shared second it is by characters who were at the event and directly involved but not about themselves.

Narrative form, however, can be linear or non-linear. The sequence of events will inevitably include diversions and delays to help create dramatic tension or elongate the intended emotion evoked in a viewer.

Jenkins argues that this means that aspects of narratives tend to be  isolated from the computer gameness of games. They may be delivered in the form of cut scenes. However not all games tell a story e.g. Tetris or Minecraft.

I feel that Tetris and Minecraft do in fact have narratives although they are player driven narratives which are unique to each player. A story still unfolds around tetris, eg. "I was so close to losing and then that piece I'd been waiting for all game appeared! I cleared so much stuff and beat my previous high-score"

Sound in Computer Games

Within most games there are different types of sounds, the main kinds of sounds you’ll hear in games are; dialogue, music and effects.

There are two main types of dialogue. The first type is narration; narration is an off screen and out of scene piece of dialogue relating to the scene. The main purpose of narration is to tell a story which can’t be fully explained though visuals. In Gears of War narration is used to great effect at the end of the games when the Queen of the Locust talks and shares her side of the fight, something which wouldn’t have been obtainable by following the main protagonists due to the fact that they never see the Queen. The second type of dialogue is script dialogue, for this example I’ll stick to referencing Gears of War because there are many cut scenes throughout the Gears of War games in which the Characters talk to each other as well as a lot of scripted interaction throughout actual game play.

Within Dialogue there is also diegetic and non-diabetic dialogue. Non-diegetic dialogue is out of scene sounds so things like narration. Diegetic sounds however is any sounds which are in the scene, even if the sounds are radio sounds. If the character can hear it, it’s diegetic. If the Character can’t hear it and only the player can hear it, it’s non-diegetic.

Foley sounds are the types of sounds you hear every day. Things like footsteps and rustles of trees are Foley. Foley is incredibly hard to pull off well for video games because you hear them during everyday life so they need to sound almost identical. Recording these sounds is usually the best way to successfully recreate Foley sounds for video games. A footstep sound might also be layered with something else in a multi-track manner in order to get the exact sound required.

Music within games is becoming more frequently present with time because games are becoming more and more immersive. Music in retro titles was simple due to hardware limitations although they still gave a sense of atmosphere within the game. In an action packed part of a game the music will normally pick up in pace and fit with the action packed scene to stimulate excitement from the player.

Theory of sound

The wavelength is the length between 2 points on a sound wave. A sound wave is a change in air pressure which the ear receives and the brain interprets as sound. The longer the length of the wave and lower the peak is, the lower pitch the sound produced will be.

If the peak of the sound wave is taller and the length of the wave is narrower, the pitch of the sound will be higher. A humans hearing range is from 20 Hz to 20 KHz

How sound is used in video games

Games all use sound differently. For instance ‘The Impossible Game’, a simple arcade style game based around navigating a square through an obstacle course made of triangles and squares uses a single sound track for each level which is just to give the player a beat to play the game to. Through playing this game myself I noticed how the beat and melody of the song matches the actions the square you control makes. The melody helps you get through the game because you can follow the song to ensure you’re jumping at the right time to complete the course. However, I’ve also noticed that as you progress through the level and the level becomes more difficult the song picks up in pace. The song becomes a distraction to the player due to the increased tempo and pressure to keep up. The effect of this is that the player feels more under pressure and becomes tense. This is something I noticed more when I played the game with no sound as I actually got further as I could just keep a steady beat by tapping my foot. 

Starcraft uses sound in a very different way; the game does have background music although that’s really all it is… background noise… Something to flesh out the sound of the game in order to keep the player immersed in the experience.

Most of the appeal in the audio from Starcraft, being a real time strategy game, comes from the in game sound effects. Most of the sound effects come from the player making an action and the game giving the player audio feedback for their actions. Whenever an in game unit is created it will say a scripted line of some sort to make the player aware that they have another in game unit to use. Other sound effects include alerts on the mini map when a player is being attacked, confirmation that a building has reached completion, sound effects when units fight each other. Marines shoot rifles, zerglings attack using melee and stalkers shoot lasers, to name just a few of the sounds effects that are present in the game.

Notable audio alerts in Starcraft are useful to the player, because keeping track of the multiple commands can be a difficult task, and the scripted audio prompts can make gameplay easier, as it reminds the player what they need to do. If you’re trying to create units but don’t have enough minerals you will hear a voice tell you that ‘you require more minerals’ or when you need more supply a voice will tell you to ‘spawn more overlords’ or their race equivalents. 

I'll admit my fear. Amnesia is horrifying, easily the most unsettling game I’ve ever played. A door swinging open could possibly be a clue to where you’re supposed to proceed; doors however could fly open as an indication that a monster is charging through. I literally couldn’t stop fidgeting while playing this game. Amnesias sound design is incredible. Cleverly used subtleties reinforce the horror extremely well. The main immersive subtlety I noticed was the character's breathing: you hear your characters breathe at most point and as you become more afraid your breath becomes more heavy and unsettled. The Character you play as sounds really terrified, he sometimes screams or moans when he's particularly freaked out. When a monster appears though is where the sound design gets slightly more clever. Scary things come and go in games and conventionally when the scary thing is gone the music will stop to give you an indication. In Amnesia, the unsettling music doesn’t end until you leave your hiding place and ensure the monster has left. It’s super effective — even if you’re hiding in a relatively safe spot. Because of this, you feel like you’re in constant danger until you find out if the monster is gone or not.

My examples all contrast heavily although they all use sounds in different ways to force the playing into feeling a certain way. In the impossible game the music makes the gamer feel tense and under pressure. In Starcraft the sound gives the player awareness and makes them feel more in control of what’s happening within the game because they’re being given constant in formation via audio notifications of what’s happening within the game. In Amnesia the player is forced into feeling terrified due to a clever use of eerie and unsettling sound effects. Overall I feel that the important thing that sound does within video games is force emotions from the player and help them play the game. These 3 games all utilize sound very well.

Job Roles In The Computer Games Industry

Publishers - What do they do?

Publishers are companies which fund projects developers put forward to them. There are many ways they fund their projects, producers will put money initially into the development of the game itself and market research to ensure the game is profitable. Publishers are sort of the overseers of the games industry in the sense that they watch over the developers and make sure their productions are running smoothly and will be profitable Activision interfere a little more than other games publishers in the sense that they make sure their product will 100% sell, they mostly just make sequels lately and have lost their originality over time. Publishers also put out ads and market the product the developers are creating, Microsoft marketed Halo 3 on release with TV ads although some other developers will use youtube to make people aware of the release of their product. Another responsibility for publishers is the distribution of the product; large production companies will distribute products themselves whereas smaller production companies will hire other distribution companies to distribute their products.

Developers - What are the different types of developers? What do they do?

There are hundreds of development companies around and all of these companies are a little different. These development companies are split into 3 categories. There are 1^st party developers who produce games exclusively for one publisher, 3^rd party developers who produce games for publishers to openly buy them and independent developers who develop and publish their own games. Independent developers are few and far between although they do release some gems occasionally. Bungie who started as an independent developer signed with Microsoft to expand the Halo franchise into the video games industry. They then became 1^st party developers for Microsoft before they moved on to join Infinity Ward and Treyarch under Activision. Infinity Ward is best known for the Call Of Duty franchise along with Treyarch.

Independent developers such as Jagex develop and publish their own game, Runescape. Quite a few gaming gems have come from independent games developers. Runescape for instance has been around online for over 10 years and is still played by a large community of loyal players.

The Dispute – Developers vs Publishers

General disputing publishers and developers has always happened since the start of video games design. The reason for this is that although both parties share the same goal of releasing great games they also have different goals to reach. Developers want to come up with new ideas and create fresh games all the time that they would enjoy to play and they would enjoy making. Publishers want money from the game that the developers make. Often times this will result in compromise to get a great game released. Sometimes however Publishers won’t respect the creativity and knowledge of games that the developers possess and will look at games purely from a marketing perspective.

Activision and Infinity Ward have a big dispute issue within the Call of Duty franchise. Activision want to keep pumping out the same title with minor tweaks because it’s proven to be profitable and the game has generated a lot of success whereas the developers of Call of Duty would rather make a lot of drastic changes to really evolve the game and unleash their creative freedom on an already successful title.

Gaming Industry Roles

Producers Average pay:  $82,905.

The responsibilities of the producers are to ensure the game meets the standards of the publisher distributing the game. Since most development teams are 3^rd party developers working with publishers to get their games released the publisher will often assign an executive producer to a specific title to handle contract negotiations including licensing deals. The producers act very much as liaisons between the development team and the publishers to ensure a good relationship and make sure everyone are getting what they want from the titles release. The biggest job I would say a producer has though is managing how time and resources are spent within a project. Their main job is to maintain budgets and schedules to optimise productivity while also overseeing the technical and creative development of the title. The time management is all based around getting the developers to reach their milestones on time for alpha and beta testing with the quality assurance team. Producers are also responsible for arranging focus groups and localization which is the process in which the software is given different languages or regional differences to fit the target audience. There’s no point in having a game work in American NTSC format if it’s going to be published in Europe on a PAL format. ­­­_­

Games Designers Average Salary: $55,600

Game designers are usually the people who come up with the initial idea for the game, they decide how the game plays and what it consists of. Combinations of skills are required for games design because it is such a complex activity. These skills consist of –management, design, scheduling and research etc.  Designers also require an understanding of all of the games aspects. Documenting their vision and being able to communicate it with the members of the development team is another skill required.

Usually games are large projects in which a number of people share responsibilities for a section of the game or ‘level’. Allocating level designs to team members is one of many responsibilities for game designers.

Mapping, detailed layout and building of the environment are all processes within the Level Design process.  Placement of interactive objects and assets within the environment are also a part of Level Design, another responsibility of Games Designers. The majority of modern games are 3D meaning Designers work with 3D modelling software in mind to ensure the Artists are able to develop the models required to make the game aesthetically pleasing.

For larger projects there will be multiple Games Designers within the team with each designer being responsible for their own part of the game, a Lead Designer or Creative Director takes overall responsibility and will allocate designers with tasks to complete or ‘milestones’.

Animators Average Salary: $46,700

Animators take 3d models and add motion; they give the models life and work within animation software such as Maya, 3Ds Max Flash to create animations. Animations are created using key frames to create fluid and life-like animations for the video game. Theatrical ability is essential as an animator because you need to be aware of the sort of movements characters would make in certain situations. Knowing how people talk with their hands etc.

Storyboarding is another responsibility of the animators since they need to plan out what they’re going to do before starting as well as express their ideas to the rest of the animation team.

Concept Artists Average Salary: $41,000

Concept Artists come up with ideas and draw them. The responsibilities of the artists are to take what’s in their head and put it on paper, usually using traditional materials as opposed to software. Sharing their ideas with the rest of the games development team is their main responsibilities. They are responsible for sketching ideas for environments, characters, vehicles, clothing, furniture and other content within the game. They also suggest how the game would feel to play in specific colour schemes.  The ideas of the concept artists determine a lot of how many of the aspects within the game will look aesthetically although they’re not really involved in the actual creation of the game art.

Programmers Average Salary: $50,000

This seems the most mysterious. From the outside, of all the game development areas Programming is the most misunderstood. Programming is the heart of the development process. The programming team are the people who write all the code which makes the game mechanics playable. It’s all fine and good having pretty graphics but without programmers those visuals would be just that, visuals.

Programmers are separated into numerous sub-categories within the department of programming. These disciplines include character control, artificial intelligence, graphic rendering engine development, middleware tools development and gameplay programming. All disciplines are more often than not monitored by a Lead Programmer who is responsible for keeping the team on the same page regarding the out-come of the game they’re creating. The Lead Programmer strategically manages the code development process. In order to create great mechanics and make things work the way they’re supposed to, programmers require good problem solving skills, strong team-work skills and communication skills on top of programming ability.

Sound Engineers

Sound engineers are responsible for the sounds you would hear within a game. They record foley sounds to be used within the world. Things like footsteps on various surfaces need to be recorded in high quality on top of multiple other real world sounds. Sound engineers will oversee the recording of music and voiceovers too since they are the most knowledgeable and have extensive experience with both the hardware and software used in industry.

Quality Assurance

Games testers or quality assurance specialists only need limited knowledgeable of the games design process because their job is literally just to find glitches. Quality assurance within the games industry requires patience due to the tedious nature of the work. Games testers also work with the design team to change mechanics in order to make them function correctly or balance them properly with the rest of the game.

Computer Game Story Development

Traditional Story Telling

Traditional story telling methods are things like myths, legends, fables and fairy tales. These are all stories spread by word of mouth. Hieroglyphs and cave paintings are also traditional but only really because they are old although they are recorded.

Recorded story telling started back in ancient times with cave paintings and Hieroglyphs. Cave paintings were a ways for a caveman to tell a story about something he has done such as killed a huge beast or win a battle. Hieroglyphs were images carved or painted onto walls to tell the story of an Egyptian royal. These story telling methods are different to the legends and myths of the Grecian and Roman times because they were recorded for future generations to see rather than stories being told through generations and being exaggerated even more every time they’re told.

Myths are completely false stories; the main characters in myths are usually gods or supernatural heroes who will have never existed. The story will have been exaggerated to make them more interesting to listen to. Legends on the other hand are based on a real person but the story about them and the core elements of the story will have been changed through exaggeration or being lost in translation. Hercules is a legend, the story of a demi-god is probably all a load of lies but a man probably did exist called Hercules and he probably did fight some big animals but not to the exaggerated size of how the story tells them to be.

A fable is a story told using animals as characters who carry out human like actions. The

story element of fables are normally simplistic although each will contain a moral to take

from them. Normally told by adults to teach children the basics of right and wrong and to educate them on how they should live a good life. The fable of the Hare and the tortoise for example showed that the Hare may have been faster than the tortoise but because he rushed and got cocky the tortoise came through in the end and won the race which teaches a few morals, 'Slow and steady wins the race' being the main one that people take from it but personally what I take from that story is that hard work and dedication pays off and you can work hard for anything that you might want.

Traditional fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm were gruesome stories told of horrible creatures and magical things that are all trying to kill and eat little boys and girls but as they became more commercialised by Disney Fairy Tales have become inspirational stories for children to tell them that they can do whatever they believe they can do If they believe in themselves and what they're trying to do. The story of Cinderella for example, the poor girl with the wicked family marries the prince in the end. She got what she wanted despite her setbacks.

Contemporary Story Telling

Contemporary story telling methods are things like Radio, TV and Books. Things that have developed to make the same story widely accessible to more than one person.

Books, those things made of paper which really revolutionised story telling because it allowed all the fables, fairy tales, myths and legends to be written down and recorded so they didn't get exaggerated and changed any more. With books though came a new way of telling stories. Non-linear story telling where you could make decisions while reading to change the path you go along to reach the end of the story.

Radio was the first form of technology which was used to broadcast live storytelling. The war of the worlds broadcast is the most iconic story ever told on the radio. The broadcaster said that aliens had come down from the sky and started killing people which sent people into a state of panic. This is because nobody had ever heard a story on the radio before, only the news so when this was told everybody went crazy. The war of the worlds was later developed into a film.

Television is another contemporary story telling medium. TV allows directors to read stories and show their depiction of what they've read to other people. Films and live TV broadcasts have really changed the way stories are told today, on TV you can watch movies which tell stories which are separated into genre's and even on TV you have a lot of different channels dedicated to showing different shows. Soaps, dramas, action, adventure, romance, comedy. All of these story types which are all shown on a screen to many people. They all see the exact same thing as each other.

Stories in Games

Stories in games are told in multiple ways though, sometimes the story is told based around the environment and world that you set your characters in. Other times the stories are told around the characters and in the case of some games like Mario and Sonic the entire story is just one big McGuffin. If your world is set in the 1920's and your character is a futuristic space robot then that just won't make sense on its own although If you include a time machine in the story and maybe a McGuffin of 'An evil villain took you're girlfriend back in time with his minions' then it would make sense. Anti gravity battles could happen anywhere with the help of an anti gravity grenade or anything like that.

Game stories are pretty much split into two separate ways of telling stories and the kind of story you want to tell depends on the genre of game you're trying to create. For example in a shooter like call of duty or gears of war you're not going to want to make decisions or change the path of a character. You just want to blast through everything and be the hero. In a game like fallout though, a role playing game (RPG), you're going to want to change how the story plays out depending on the actions you make and the decisions you make. The enticing aspect of an RPG is that you can role play and live in a surreal world changing it as you make decisions within the game.

With games like Mario though there isn't much call for a story because it's the game elements themselves that are fun. You enjoy jumping around, collecting mushrooms and bouncing on peoples heads to kill them so the fact that you're constantly chasing the princess is fine. It's just a McGuffin, a story element to keep the game moving, In Mario the 

Gender in Games

It's pretty obvious that there is a huge imbalance between genders in gaming which has led to segregation in a male-dominated industry.

The imbalance between genders is very easily shown when you look at the statistics of men and women working in the games industry throughout various roles both in development and outside of development.

The number of women who play games and how often compared to men though is very close, this leads me to believe there are some psychological factors effecting which games they play and how women see these games.

Men and Women on Playing Games

I read a rather interesting article from The Daily Mail by Deborah Arthurs who finds that women would "rather spend time playing on their gadgets than having sex".  That isn't really important as far as this article goes. The key points I took from her article were that she found women to play games more for relaxation whereas men would play for competition. The fact that men compete and women relax, to me implies there are some genetic and instinctual traits coming out from both genders when playing video games. Males in almost all mammal species' are competitive because in nature, that's how a male would acquire a mate. Women however, just need to chill the fuck out! (I'm just kidding, nobody sue me for sexism! I was joking, sort of.)

Women naturally experience more stress than men and chronic stress can lead to a breakdown in health. This could be why women consciously or subconsciously seek methods of relaxing themselves. Women statistically play more casual games, collectively, than any other game genre.

Segregation in The Market

The type of games played by each gender effects how we design games for each target audience. If we know women prefer games to be relaxing we would create games with soothing soundtracks, simple goals and easy to pick up gameplay.

With men looking more towards competition in games we would have to look at creating a more aggressive feel to playing the game. Aggressive soundtracks to get players 'pumped' for playing and get more blood flowing is a popular thing in male dominated titles such as Call of Duty, Gears of War and Halo. What makes a game competitive though? Massively played games such as League of Legends, Starcraft, and Halo (2&3) all have pretty huge skill gaps between players and as such, ranking systems.

As soon as you introduce a visible ranking system to a game, players will always compete for the highest rank.

I remember playing a game called 'Puzzle Pirates' which I feel hit the nail on the head when it comes to drawing in both male and female players. The game had a visible ranking system which held experience and skill separate very well. The game was casual enough with all the puzzling and simple games which really were easy to pick up and play although it allowed players the opportunity to compete with eachother. Puzzle PIrates offered brightly coloured, cartoon styled graphics and a soothing soundtrack. As a male, I would love sailing around, taking over other peoples boats and stealing their 'booty' although I can see how you could enjoy the exact same action purely because the entire game is based around puzzling. Sword fights, ship fights, fist fights and anything aggressive in the game was all dictated by your performance in comparison to your opponents puzzle abilities.

Deborah Arthurs (2011) Women play computer games just as much as men - and they prefer gaming to sex, survey reveals. In: Daily Mail 14th July 2011: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2014821/Women-play-games-just-men--prefer-gaming-sex-survey-reveals.html

BLOG TASK: Critical Games Bibliography

• Three full-length books (use the UCS OPAC)
• Three contributions to a book (use the UCS OPAC)
• Three articles in refereed journals (use the Summon searchtool)

These are the references for my bibliography:

Costikyan, G. (2002) I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Game. Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference, ed. Frans Mäyr, Tampere: Tampere University Press.

Adams, E. (2003) Break into the game industry; How to get a job making video games. Emeryville (Ca): McGraw Hill/Osborne.

LeBlanc, M. (2006) Tools for creating dramatic game dynamics. In: The Game Design Reader: A rules of play anthology. MIT.

Jacobson, J. Hwang, Z. -Unreal Tournament For Immersive Interactive Theater Volume 45(1), pg 39 - 42, 3p

Nieborg, D. B., and Van der Graaf, S. (2008) "The mod industries?" European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(2), pp.177-195.

Finkel, I. L. (2008) "On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur". In I. Finkel ed. Ancient Board Games in Perspective. London: British Museum Press. pp. 16-32.

Turner, M.C., 2006. GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. Black Enterprise, 36(10), p.53

Wei, H., Bizzocchi, J. and Calvert, T. (2010) 'Time and Space in Digital Game Storytelling', International Journal of Computer Games Technology 2010 1-23

Williams, S.M, 1992. Simulation/Games for Learning : Journal of Sagset, Volume 22 , Kogan Page Ltd/Sagset.

Games Britannia: Part 2

The first part of Games Britannia was intriguing and opened my awareness towards a lot of interesting old ideas which shaped how games are designed and played today. Games Britannia: Part 2 was focused more, towards the beginning, on how board games can be used for educational purposes and teaching children manners.

Commercialized games such as 'Mansion of Bliss' and 'Mansion of Happiness' were aimed to bring children out of their juvenile minds and help them mature quicker through playing board games.

Monopoly

Monopoly is a great example of a modern board game based on an older game called 'The Landlords Game', designed by Elizabeth Magie, which was a game designed to show and bring focus to the land grabbing and renting system. The theme of money, property owning and taxing players for landing on your properties, however, actually drew people in as it was a great way of escaping and playing the role of one of the land owners they were almost slaves to.

War on Terror

Probably my favorite segment of this part though was the cover on the commercial moral board game 'War on Terror' in which the aim of the game was to obtain global domination through the liberation of other countries. In the game, players can choose to either fund or fight terrorism. Funding terrorism is obviously the easiest way to quickly conquer countries. The game wasn't designed to justify the funding of terrorism but to help people understand that funding terrorism causes other complications. People began to understand the choices which lead to the decision to fund terrorism. A soldier actually sent a letter from Iraq to one of the designers in the show questioning why he was a part of the war once he'd played the game.