25. Female. NYU Game Design and Business of Entertainment, Media & Technology student. Follow me as I post my projects, thoughts and random works here!
When I was thinking of a video game I wanted to remix, I knew I wanted to go with a platformer since they tend to have very simple or easy to understand interactions - especially in a still frame - compared to other types of games. The most recent platformer I played was Ibb and Obb and when I searched for screenshots of it, my mind just immediately thought of Kandinsky. Kandinsky used a lot of shapes, lines and colors in his works to portray movement and chaos, and although Ibb and Obb is much simpler than any of Kandinsky’s art, the varying shapes and colors in Ibb and Obb just seemed like it would marry well with Kandinsky’s style.
Marrying the two was trickier than I initially thought it would be. One of the main points of Kandinsky’s work is that there is no clear focal point, so trying to translate that into an interaction which needs to be clear was difficult. I found the more elements from Kandinsky that I added, the less clear the interactions from Ibb and Obb became. But the less I added, it just didn’t feel like Kandinsky. Initially I just did a wireframe of the interaction, and began placing Kandinsky-like geometric shapes or lines over those interactions (some of which were pulled directly from Kandinsky’s Composition VIII). I also wanted to give everything a more traditional and “paper-like” feel so I pulled the background from Composition VIII and overlayed it onto my remix piece. From there, I started to add even more background elements to spaces that felt too empty. In Ibb and Obb, they use contrasting colors to make elements stand out (blue shapes on an orange background), but I decided to do the opposite since I was adding much more and didn’t want to take away from the main interaction. I also added outlines and drop shadows to elements that can be interacted with (characters, enemies, etc.) to make them stand out. In the end, I sent the finished product to a few friends who I know have played Ibb and Obb and asked them if they could tell what game this was. Everyone guessed correctly, so I was happy that the interactions were still clear.
I don’t think much has changed pertaining to the interaction, really. I think it’s still clear what elements are “dangerous”, what can be interacted with, jumped on, and so on, although the frame does have a much more chaotic feel to it which could influence the way people play. I think in Ibb and Obb, the background elements are there just as an embellishment, whereas in my remix, the background definitely fights more to be noticed and could draw the viewers/players eye away from the main interactions more often. I also don’t think the audience has necessarily changed, but likely broadened. I think people who play platformers would still play this game, but it’s opened up opportunities for people more interested in traditional or even modern art to look at this game in a different light. Vice versa, a game like this could help “gamers” appreciate traditional art forms more. It’s hard to say whether this remix version of the game is better or worse than the original, because I don’t think it’s either. I think both work well, but they just elicit very different emotions.
I found this reading to be very interesting and helpful, mostly because I’ve never actually considered myself a creative person and usually struggle to come up with ideas. I’ve heard of (and used) some of these brainstorming methods previously - such as mind mapping (which from personal experience is a method I think is easier said than done) and visual research. During our projects this semester, I mostly used visual research (to create mood boards which I always find extremely helpful) and some visual brain dumping. I didn’t know that “visual brain dumping” was a named method of brainstorming before this reading, but for the logo project specifically, I found myself just sketching out several small iterations and ideas in a short time to help get my creative juices flowing. I enjoyed using both of these methods.
Some of the methods that are new to me are forced connections and action verbs. In specific, action verbs seem like something that could be very useful and I would want to try in the future. When it’s hard to come up with ideas, taking a basic image and just applying verbs to it to change it seems like a simple way to start producing ideas and variations.
I also found the section of “basic figures of speech” being applied to design interesting. I think using some of the examples given in the text is another good jumping off point to get ideas flowing. Above is an example of personification, in which the pepper has been given human like qualities so it appears as if he is screaming - with the hole in the center representing a mouth, the seeds resembling teeth, and the entirety of the pepper portraying a head.
In Galloway’s Allegories of Control in Civilization, he stresses the allegory that the player reveals through learning and mastering the algorithm through play, however critics Meier’s tendency to attribute specific stereotypical characteristics to civilizations. Describing it as “but a few keystrokes away from a world in which blacks are ‘athletic’ or women are ‘emotional’”, Galloway condemns Meier for making such generalizations, but if these same generalizations weren’t made the algorithm would not be as intuitive. The Civilization series attempts to encompass humanity’s largest gatherings throughout history and translate it into a strategy game, generalizations make this concept consumable for the player. While this is by no means advocating the use of stereotypes, in this context they are almost necessary. Overall, the civilizations themselves are not integral to the gameplay, but the mechanisms that they are constituted of is what is truly important to the game and these generalizations only help to categorize.
While the casual player may first choose to play as their own native, real world civilization; after learning the algorithm of the game the player will choose a civilization based on its strategic ability. When proposed with the choice whether to purchase Fire Emblem: Birthright or Fire Emblem: Conquest, there are two primary thought processes. The first would be the preference of characters, setting, and fictional morality. The second is the preference between the more modern Fire Emblem gameplay and the classic. The second is the only one that considers the algorithm of both games. If the player truly values this, then the aesthetic qualities become irrelevant.
I agree that the “generalizations” made by Meier are almost necessary to the game play of Civilization. With any strategy game, different “types”/groups/races all have their own strengths and weaknesses - that’s (partly) what makes it strategic. Meier simply took world history as a theme to overlay the strategic mechanics of the game, and it’d be extremely difficult to stay true to history while doing so. I do wonder, as someone previously commented, what then was the point of even using real civilizations instead of fictional ones? But I also think using real civilizations is part of the allure of the game, since people find comfort in things they already know.
While Galloway’s “Playing the Code” is without a doubt the easier read, Wark’s “America (on Civilization III) is infinitely more compelling. Galloway’s understanding of Civ III is, in my opinion, kind of superficial. He even admits at one point: “where the ideological critique succeeds, it fails” (Galloway 39). When quantifying qualitative information, of course things are going to get problematic. Galloway criticizes Meier: “The modeling of history in computer code, even using Meier’s sophisticated algorithms, can only ever be a reductive exercise” (39). Of course it is. And although Galloway says, “This is a argument about informatic control, not about political control” (39), his informatic argument is lost in his critique of Meier’s reduction of history. Civ III isn’t a game for political accuracy or education; rather it uses “civilization” as a theme for a strategy game, extremely problematically, I should add. In the same way, Counter-Strike uses terrorism as a theme for a first-person shooter while doing nothing to illuminate the political dominoes that leads to extremist groups occupying power vacuums in the first place. I think Galloway obviously understands this but it gets quite lost in his writing.
Wark, on the other hand, had a much higher learning curve in terms of understanding and getting comfortable with his vocabulary and allegories. However, both theorists at one point essentially state the same thing in their own vocabularies; Wark: “It is not so much an allegory for world history as an allegorithm for gamespace itself” (Wark 49); Galloway: “Thus the logic of informatics and horizontality is privileged over the logic of ideology and verticality in this game” (Galloway 39). I’m kind of confused as to where Galloway and Wark really differ other than in their presentation of their arguments. It feels like different means to the same end.
-Natalie
I agree with your statement “Civ III isn’t a game for political accuracy or education”. I found Galloway’s criticism of Meier’s inaccurate portrayal of history a little muddled, since I don’t think Meier was trying to portray history accurately in the first place. Like you said, it’s just a theme for a strategy game that honestly could be replaced with any other theme and work almost exactly the same. I don’t think it’s fair to expect Civ to stay true to history, and the argument for it not doing so isn’t legitimate.
Platforms - can stand on; cannot pass through Enemies - kill you upon collision White “Triggers” - always opposite an enemy; can be touched to kill its corresponding enemy 2 Characters - can move, jump and stack on top of each other/platforms Floating “Platforms” - can be jumped through; reverses gravity for the player who passes through
A few changes I made from my earlier drafts included making the diamonds on each project slightly smaller, removing the drop shadow from each unless it’s being hovered over with the mouse, decreasing the text size and fixing the line spacing for the titles and menu, making the sub-menu text normal weight instead of bold, increasing the value of the social icons slightly, and finally fitting it all to a browser. I believe my initial audit goals were met. I wanted a clean, easy to understand space to present my various graphic and game design projects, but I also didn’t want it to feel bland or lacking personality. I think the color of both my logo and the projects help to make the page exciting and interesting to look at, while the simplistic shapes, menu and grid-based design makes it easy to explore. I really enjoy the repetition of the diamond shape throughout the page to make everything feel cohesive, as well. One of my initial struggles was finding a way to not make the page feel too overwhelming with color. Since my logo is so colorful and all my projects will likely be colorful, it was a little overpowering to have it all on one page. Decreasing the opacity of all the projects really helped to tone everything down without losing personality, and it made for an easy and understandable interaction when you hover over a project. If I were to make this into a real portfolio website, I could definitely see myself using it to present to potential employers. I would probably like to add more animation to the hover interaction, as well, to give the diamond a smoother transition and possibly a “bounce” effect.
For my final project, I’d like to attempt the “Remix” assignment by combining the video game Ibb & Obb with Kandinsky’s aesthetic and style. The two seem to share many design elements in common, although Ibb & Obb is obviously much, much simpler, and I think marrying them would work well. I also think it’d be interesting to see how Kandinsky’s work would translate in a game environment since it is so hectic.
In this reading, there wasn’t anything that particularly stood out as being more important than the rest, nor confusing or hard to understand. I think the information presented it pretty straight-forward and common sense. If I had to talk about one specific topic, I would say that grids seem super important to design. Personally, I like when things are very clean and organized, so designing on a grid is extremely useful. But in general, unless you are clearly trying to avoid a grid and create something that really breaks away from it (like a collage perhaps), it’s quite easy for the eye to see something that is out of place. For example, the newspaper below seems very messy and hard to read, not necessarily because it’s not on a grid, but because too many components are placed in each area of the grid. Some headlines take up 2 columns in the grid, while some take up 1 or 3. The proximity of all the text is very close to each other, as well. Overall, it’s hard to discern each story from the other and my eye cannot find a place to rest.
Rather than cut scenes being merely “brought on by a nostalgia for a previous media and a fear of the pure uniqueness of video games”, I would argue that they can just be another tool for game designers to create an overall narrative. Using previous media implies that videogames must have their own completely different way of expressing narrative and I find that completely unnecessary. While cut scenes often feel more like an interruption from gameplay, I would argue that instead they allow for a more dramatic cinematic effect.
In StarCraft’s campaign mode, the cut scenes in particular allow for greater character development. Right from the beginning with the cinematic trailer, the player can learn the basics of two of the races without even playing the game or sitting through a walkthrough. And while the next part of the story is mainly experienced through Raynor’s perspective, there wouldn’t have been the same dramatic effect without those cut scenes. If the story were changed to incorporate more game-like elements, the player would be at best picking from preset dialogue choices. Having those kinds of choices, however, implies that there is a choice in personality, leading the player to most likely pick the option that reflected their personality. That, however, is creating an open character, not Raynor with his specific personality and predispositions. Through the cut scenes, the designer can clearly point out Raynor’s heartache and his trained intuition as he reaches for a gun. Instead of an avatar, the cut scenes in StarCraft allow for a creation of a character, something not so easily done through pure gameplay.
From hero to enemy leader: more from the realm of cut scenes…
I agree that cutscenes can be very useful to games, and not just in a narrative sense. Of course they help to push along the narrative and progress the game, but for me personally, they’re a reward for doing well and a moment of respite. For example, viewing a cutscene after a difficult boss battle was always enjoyable for me because it felt like “yes! I finally did it, now I can relax for a second and see what happens”. I actually dislike a lot of games that use quick-time events during cutscenes because it feels like a cheap attempt at trying to get me to just do SOMETHING at all times just for the sake of it. I’d prefer to sit back and receive my reward.
I want to use Alexander Galloway’s Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture and Firewatch to examine dialogue in games. Using Galloway’s ideas about diegetic and nondiegetic elements of games, I think it’s safe to say that the dialogue options in Firewatch (and most games) are nondiegetic which I think makes talking to people less believable at times.
I think in an ideal world most dialogue systems would function by the computer character saying something and the player literally speaking their response and having the character interpret and respond. Obviously, that kind of comprehension and speech recognition isn’t present and is not in the foreseeable future so for right now we have Telltale-style nondiegetic dialogue menus. The problem (maybe in some people’s eyes the benefit) of these types of menus is that they do not incur a natural reaction from the player. You’re presented with four options, so you read through all of them(or at least some of them), and then you decide which one to choose. Not only does this slow down the game, but it also has the potential of giving the player extra information and reducing the possible player reactions down to caricatures (I’m either mad, happy, or sad about this). In this sense, I think that presenting dialogue options as a way to mimic conversation becomes a more enabling nondiegetic action than we would want. Personally, I think the best way to tackle this problem as a designer is to try and remove evidence of consequence from the options.
Games like Kentucky Route Zero accomplish this by not giving the player a clear immediate goal. It’s also where I think Firewatch stumbles. Too many of the dialogue options are so very clearly trying to indicate some sort of impactful narrative consequence that when there ends up not being a whole lot of difference in the end, the whole game feels a little artificial.
I totally agree. When I played Firewatch, I found myself specifically choosing the dialogue options that seemed to “fit” the emotion of my previous answers, not necessarily because they were what I wanted to choose, but because it felt like I was trying to create a personality for Henry and stay true to that. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, because maybe many players enjoy the sense of giving their character a specific personality and “role playing” with that. But personally, I think having dialogue options with too much information and a predictable responses definitely pulls me out of the narrative a bit.
The first article Behavioral Game Design by Jhon Hopson gives a brief description of the types of reward systems in games and the behavior associated with them
There are numerous psychological aspects that go into game design. Among which I find the psychology of reward system design to be quite interesting. In “The Psychology of Rewards In Games” Max Seidman, discusses the psychological phenomena resulting from rewarding players in games and the design issue he refers to as the “Overjustification Effect.”
What Seidmans calls overjustification is a shift in player motivation from “playing the game because they like it”, to “playing the game because they want the reward”. In the example given by Seidman the first group of kids were motivated to draw as long as they were receiving their rewards, but once the rewards were removed they motivation did not snap back to being intrinsic. They lost their motivation to draw and as a result the overall interest and quality in drawing declined. Seidman’s solution to this was designing reward systems around a variable ratio schedule, i.e simply making rewards uncertain/random.
It sound like an obvious fix on paper, but when given real world application its amazing how this simple fix psychologically affects players. Warframe is a rather repetitive game that is highly configured around reward systems. When you log-in you receive a random daily log-in reward from a pool of rewards that positively scales as you consecutively log-in. When you do missions enemies have a chance to drop rare resources, you have a chance to find rare caches, and at the end of the mission you have a chance at even more rewards. Notice a pattern? Everything within reward system is uncertain, the player isn’t guaranteed any specific thing, which in my opinion, prevents players from getting bored of the game. Imagine the game followed a fixed ratio reward schedule where they were guaranteed whatever reward they wanted after fulfilling a certain requirement. Players would play to get all the rewards then shortly quit after achieving this goal due to motivational shift; If there are no rewards left for me what point is there in playing.
Though there are cases where variable reward schedules may not eliminate it completely, variable reward schedules reduces this feeling of overjustification in players and fosters motivation for play.
I think the idea of a “variable ratio reward schedule” is really interesting and it’s something that I wouldn’t have really thought of before. Especially in the case of the pigeon test that Seidman talks about, I would have expected the pigeons to press the lever more when there was a guaranteed chance of reward. However, after reading the article, it honestly makes sense, especially when you relate it to games. I think part of the reason people enjoy playing games is because of the challenges they present us with - the ability to test our skills, learn from our mistakes, and when we finally do overcome the challenge, feel accomplishment. Having a constant and guaranteed reward might take away from this feeling a bit - we might get tired of the same thing happening over and over and feel as though we are not truly being challenged, but rather having our hands held. Offering random rewards and at random times gives us something to strive for and look forward to without it becoming predictable and boring. Though I wonder, as in the case with the Kindergarteners - are we, as players, too accustomed to receiving rewards that if they weren’t given in a game, would we even play it at all?
