Task 7

Is the right person?


”Who is the right person?” is the question that must be answered by the project director, the owner of the company or anyone else who has the authority to employ an Art Director. That resposibillity is almost equal to a risk sometimes and sometimes is not.
A good formula for success for Plan maker (project director, owner of the company) and vision Maker (Art Director) is when both of them respect the idies of each other.

The Dreamers


The key person for a game project is the Art Director. He is the person who coordinates the leaders of the development teams (animation director, chief programmer) and the teams. He must create a remarkable vision for the game and take opinions for that vision, but he must stick to the project plan until he evolves the project with that vision;(is like you create the basic form for a game and then you give your touch with the special vision because the specifics do the deffirence). When the game is developing, research should be done too, and this is another resposibillity for the Art Derector as well as the manage of time. An Art Director must also have good knowldege in art design and programming in order to solve problems, to communicate corectly with the others, and because without this knowldege the deadlines he will set will be wrong.
Is like you heared about a new world and then you have your own dream for a better world (game). Then you have (or gain) the belief followners(the development teams) and you create that world with the followners.

How to be..

I don’t now extacly how, but I’m sure about some things.An Art Director must have good organisation, good communication, to be patient, creative, infectious, to have leadership skills,art – programming knowldege as well as time management. If you don’t want to be an Art Director, you can be a Creative Director whose job is about the environments, the way you can take the sceenshots and the perfomance of the actors (who choose them). So is very similar to Art director’s job. Both of them have the main idea, the “tools” to give life to the idea and the full resposibillity for that. The main difference is that the Creative director take the idea and the vision, and then he must create the film expressing that idea and vision in his own way!

Task 6

Gameplay: A way of expression


Well, Gameplay is a term which is used to judge the quality of the experience gained by a gamer while playing a game. That’s the main use of the term “Gameplay” on press. But Gameplay has an indefinite meaning. I believe it’s a very complex nature, which combine the whole game and how easily you can play the game. In a way, Gameplay is the soul and the material of the game and the graphics give the appearance. A good game combines those two, but a good Gameplay can easily make a big success without good graphics.

Generally, the famous games which are created from the “big” developers (like Blizzard, Sports Interactive, Valve, Square Enix, Infogrames), who are the leading lights in the game design, are not responsibility of a single person, but of many different development teams. However, there are always some “key” people who express the main idea of the game, and on the other hand there are many games created from one person (the most of those games are nearly unknown). The “elite” of game designers are in long term (1-3 years) projects with enormous development cost. So, generally I can say that the Game Design take place in the game industry.

I like a lot of game types such as RPG, FPS, strategy and some car racing types. And each of them has their own personal style in Gameplay and in structure. If all the games had the same design principles, they will probably all look similar. A chess Master said, if you find a good move then try to find a better one; so, if you think the same about games, is valid. Because the evolution in games designs, from the beginning until now, they find different and better types of game design. To sum up, the most important thing for a game when we play it is the Gameplay.

Task 5



The Elephants. Salvador Dali

Well, before I wrote the task, I looked into the mirror and I saw a small NGJ (yes it was me! And I’m not crazy) and he talked to me about things I must know.

Reviewing a game: A powerful art

I can say that it is a very old art. The art of writing something; anything! And in that case, the art of reviewing a game, it seems easy but it isn’t. I believe is a piece of art because the artists can express themselves-and I’m talking about the NGJs- they can create a huge success for a game but easily they can “destroy” it. They have the opportunity to “believe” and support games, and they are doing it with passion, pleasure, as well as to enjoy themselves. Because is a way of living and not a way to live.

The Middlemen

Because of their characteristic to unite the two sides/games and gamers/ in many ways, they have a lot of power, but not always the essential time to use that power as they should. But in the case that they are running out of time, they should compromise as they are only humans and not machines. Because the games and the game developers need good publicity, and so they need the experts for that, them! They are the people that the gamers trust. Of course they have the opportunity to write attractive reviews for a game as well as negative reviews; also in some they can drift the readers just like they can drift themselves. Finally, without the NGJ, gamers and game developers cannot communicate, at least not effectively.

Deceit them!

Give them a nice reason to lose their time. You don’t have one? Then fix one. They are not asking from you to be the best, they only ask from you the basics. But there is a small different between the “basics” they mean, with the “basics” you probably understand! And is not very difficult to find out that basics from the press; the only thing you have to is to read some NGJ articles (and we all know who they are, and if we don’t, them we must recognize them from the way they are writing).
So, first you must read that articles, and then sent a copy of your work. They don’t have much time, so you have to do the “read-see the copy” easy, fast, interesting and creative.

Reflect your work

See you work. And “review” it for them. Try to be concise and clever and you must be objective with your work but not boring. Try to create the curiosity in their eyes/with words or images/and sent them your work. Now you have to realise the nature of NGJ, the chances for your game to be reviewed, famous or unknown are equal. You can avoid the review (bad or good) and be placed in the top 100 games of the internet (but that will not approach the truth) or hold you breath and give your work to the experts. Not all the times numbers are saying the truth, so some rating lists are not the correct place for your work, and definitely they can help you to sold you game for that try to have your work reviewed from an expert(NGJ) and then your game will appear into the experts lists.(but some good reviews are far more good from any kind of list).

Realisation

You have to know what will happen to you. Probably you will be like a NGJ; to be more specific you will be a NGD (“New Generation Developer” with whatever that means) for game industry. Just like the NGJ you will have an “ok” salary, from you main job/for example the NGJ main job is the game magazines, and they maybe have some other activities for which they manage to combine fun with a small amount of money/ with a lot hours of work. But you are going to feel much better from others because you are going to do what you want to do with your life. Enjoy your work.

“So, now I know some thinks.” I said.I looked the mirror again, I watched carefully my self and….I’ve to go to sleep…

Task 4

The current history

From 2000 until today, in game industry we have huge development in all sectors. The progress on computer power, graphic accelerator cards, sound cards and in games development tools are rapidly increasing. But the leader on “current history” is the console games. The computer games market is a very stable one, but the market of console games are far more interesting and more powerful than all the others. Because of that we saw and will see new powerful consoles. Microsoft produce the ultimate, X-Box 360, console but the start came from Sony, with PlayStation 2, a 128 bit console (and its a DVD player too). Nintendo release the CameCube and Game Boy Advance. Microsoft entered the video game industry with X-Box in 2001. Nokia released N-Gage game-phone and later in 2004 the N-Gage QD. Sony in 2005 released the PlayStation Portable which gives you the ability to play video games, watch videos, listen to music, upload and view photos, as well as Internet browsing functionality and some on-line games. In 2006 Nintendo announced Wii, which features a new controller (whatever you do in real life affects what happens on the screen). In the same year the Envizions Computer Entertainment announced Evo: Phase One a multimedia entertainment hub which they hope to take the place of DVD player and PC ( play DVD, record live TV, store files and play Computer games).

Microsoft Vs Sony: Titans Battle

Nintendo’s, Wii? Yes, I’ll say if someone asks me about what the significant developments in 21st century. Evo? Yes again. They give new perspective in game industry. But all the knowledge on games development and games hardware (computers and console technology) are the most significant developments. We were expecting the computers to be the “future”, but the “future” came from a console. Xbox 360 is the best game performer in time and with on line-games. The Xbox 360 systems Performance is simply ex-ordinary.

CPU: 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each,2 hardware threads per core, Custom ATI Graphics Processor : 500 MHz, Memory: 512 MB GDDR3 RAM, 700 MHz DDR, Storage: Detachable and upgradeable 20 GB hard drive , 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM and 3 USB 2.0 ports.

Sony in 2005 demonstrates the PlayStation 3 and in 2006 releases it and appeared with a very strong system. Inside it beats a complex heart in the form of the 3.2GHz Cell processor (created form IBM and Toshiba), 550MHzRSX graphics processor and XDR 256 MB memories. Storage: 60GB, Except CD-DVD-ROM. It'll also be one of the first devices which accept the Blu-ray Disc ROM format, which is capable of storing 54 Gigabytes on a single disc and 6 USB 2.0 ports.

The nature of the industry

In a market with 75 million PlayStation 2 owners and 20 million each of Xbox and Game Cube owners, the cost of developing new consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360) and high-profile games, has increased exponentially over the last few years. For example, in 2004 Microsoft released Halo 2. Over 190 people are listed in its credits, and the game took three years to complete with a total development cost of over US$40 million and the cost of consoles is high because of their processor and others parts. And because of that publishers are looking for large returns above all other considerations. The publisher mentality tends to dismiss quirky new game ideas in favour of sequels and licensed properties from movies, comics and TV shows.

Part 2.0- My games…

1997-2006

Playstation

The most games I’ve played were in PlayStation and few in PlayStation 2. But some of them have a special place in my heart. Ace Combat 1, 2, Gran Tourismo 1, 2 (especially 2) and Colin MacRae Raly 1 and 2 for PlayStation 1 are some of the best games I have played. But when I’m thinking about PlayStation the first game that comes in my mind is Final Fantasy 7, which is the first RPG I’ve ever played and the best one. I also played FF8 and FF9 and they were very good games but FF7 had life inside it!! With my brother we beat all the Ultima Weapons except the red one, we collect all the materials, except the summon ones (bahamut zero), and the best weapons for all the characters. Cloud, Aeris, Sephiroth, chocobo… moments that I’m never going to forget.
Computer & On-line Games
On the other hand, computer games were for me, (on-line, lan-game, and some times at home), pleasure and not. I mean that I played games for fun but also to compete and be one of the best and maybe one of the best worldwideJ.

CounterStraike-the period of glory!

I start playing this game at 2000 with my friends in an on-line, lan, game store. The first (and my officially) nick name was “empty_” because I didn’t really thing what name to put for nick-name as I didn’t know anything about the game. At the beginning we played for fun, in public-lan maps or maps with my friends only. The Kalashnikov was my favourite gun but my speciality was the AwP. We became in really short time very good players, very good to play only for fun!
The “fun” CounterStaike became game of “ClanMatch”. The first clan match was in 2001. And from then we played only clan matches, until our clan was one of the best in Crete in 2002 and in top 10 in Greece in 2003 (unofficially).

Diablo Series-(“Okrim_Valor”)

I played Diablo 1 on-line and it was a very good game, I loved it right away. It has poor graphics and sound, was a simple game; but the simple some times is very beautiful, at least for me. However, Diablo 2 expansion was the best from the series. The game has a lot of things to do, explore, find, create and kill. And in that game we played as a team too. With my friends again, we created the Valor clan and it was on of the best clans on Diablo 2. Today only two of us we continue to play Diablo 2.

WarCraft 3-team spirit

The game I love to play and I’m never boring with is WarCraft 3, sorry I mean Dota!! Dota is a map of WarCraft 3. First, you choose a side (5 at each side) Scourge or Sentinels, then you pick a hero and play with your team to win. Guess what? Yes we create a clan for this game too.

On Line RpG-Feel the game or don’t play

Lineage 2 is the game I played most of the times in net-shops in the last years. I am really enjoying playing with my character and helping my clan in many servers. But now (in England) without my friends I’m bored to play alone. Well in the net-sore you can have direct contact with each other and not only in the game. And for now I play SilkRoad, which is another RPG game quite good.

At Home

At home, alone or with my brother I often play Manager! Say it Football or Championship Manager. The objective is the same, pick a team and try to take all the cups or at least be better from your opponents. I played all the series and I’ll continue to play the new ones, because I love the football, and I like very much this game.