Task 16

Culturation

I ‘ve played many games in my life and I spent many time on them, and I will play more games and I’ll spend more time, and from all these games I preffer to play games without gambling, music-dance, only-social games. In other words, I preffer games with action, like RPG, MOMPRG, FPS and turn base games. Of cource most of the games now have gambling, music and social parts in, but these are not the main consept of the game! Also I don’t like games with crime (although I play Omerta which is all about crime, but the game is a sort of a text-game).


The games always have a culture, patterns of human activity and symbolic structures which give such activity significance. The good games want/need the gamers to be part of the game, the structure of the games to be a different world for the gamers but at the same time to be familiar with the real one; like the money in the game, the power, the social part, gambling, crime and of cource death.
The games succeed what they want, that the gamer have a second life and a target to reach, easily when they use the culture images. They mix the cultures and they let us believe that the game have a new and different culture, and also they try to hide the origins the the mother-cultures. But the culture of the games is the culture of the humanity, because simply the humans create the games, and the humans are influenced by the cultures. So, I and all the gamers of the world, we play games with hide and un-hide cultures in them, and in the first case they are not familiar with the origin of the culture but only with the experience of that culture-through the game-!

MSN a home..at the internet

From the games, forums etc, we make “net-friends”, who are from different places (or not), but you know that probably you never going to meet them(and in many ways you don’t want to meet them, because they are just the “net-friends”). Well, in the games some times is difficult to chat, so what you can do is to chat via MSN. But the MSN in my opinion is something personal and even there you can catigorize the people you have add; still in many cases there are people that you don’t want them to bother you or you don’t have something to say with them-expect for the reason you invite them. Well I don’t have “net-friends”, and my contacts in MSN, are people that I’ve spent some time with them. For the net-friends, I prefer to communicate with e-mails.

Task 15

The fate of industry

The game industry in those days is facing a big problem but it has sectors which are evolving. The technology in game industry is growing fast and has the knowledge to use it, and these two are the main good sectors. But the price of that is huge, huge like the development cost of the new-age games.

The game market is growing too, and the gamers have a lot games to see and choose from. So the antagonism is growing too (like the number of released games), faster than the market and the number of the gamers. So, to be more competitive a game company, needs better games and new ideas, in other words the best technology and more creativity which the industry have the first (with a dangerous nature) and looking for the other. Except of these, the have another challenge to face with, the copied games and the freeware games (donate, pay for extra feature, or complete free games). The “problems” are many and the solutions are risky…

How the game industry will win this race?

Well, I don’t really know but I can suspect. The big companies will fall or will take over (because of the competition or the huge debts). And this is not very rare because the history of game industry is full of take over and bankrupts, and maybe that will lead to monopoly markets.
What is for sure is going to survive is the freeware games (because their development is cheap!!) as well as the free-donate-online-games, which they’ll never be as good as the big-companies games, but they will be playable and free. I believe that the solution is the on-line games with monthly fees, because is the only way for the big companies to gain back the money they spent for the game and of course to have profit. Also is a way to win against the “copy” games.

Although, not many companies will exist, because a game which you are paying for it, you should play it regularly (otherwise there is no meaning to pay for it at all!!), and that’s why you cannot play 2-3 games at the same time (and the games are made in a way to keep the player into the game for long periods!). So, each company will have their followers.
Personally I believe that’s the only solution for the computer games; now for the console games, like for the computer games, not many consoles will be in the market, and the have to evolve to on-line-computer consoles (they have already begin!)

The online games are the future! They are the only solution… and where the “money” is!!!

All these will affect the employees. Lower salary, less working places, less creativity, smaller deadlines which means stress and maybe not the best working performance!
I can see myself working with some companies and at the same time working with some colleagues on our on-line game, for which we will be very proud!!!

Task 11


The soul of the game

I said it before and I’ll say it again now. The Gameplay is the soul and the material of the games. Like the souls of people are an “abyss”, in the same way are for the games; and for that reason is difficult to difine them in a term. So, the next best thing to do is to say about the personality of the soul or better, Gameplay.

In video game terminology Gameplay is the overall experience of playing the game excluding the factors of graphics, sound, and the storyline. Excluding the Gameplay, in a way, all the factors helping to get the “best” experience, with the storyline to be on the top of that list. But Gameplay has an indefinite meaning.
I believe it’s a very complex nature, which combines the whole game and how easily you can play-live and love the game. The Gameplay has an object, to become a part of your life, of your self and if succeed then nothing can stop you playing the game; for example, I was playing the FF7 without colour, sound, color and sound, with broken gamepad and finally I restarted the game more than 4 time to succeed the very best. So, the Gameplay gives life to the game and is the most important thing because without it the game is just a toy.

"Let there be light". And there was light


A successful way, in my opinion, to have a good Gameplay is to create the game with love, to be like an extension of the creator. Of course, there are some rules and types you have to follow, but those are like making a cake you have a recipe but is up to you to make the material-cake. And that rules and types are the random interacting factors which are coming from your relationship with the creation of the game. To be more specific, you have a plan for a game and a Gameplay, and at the end the final work is different from that plan. So, what is most important for a Gameplay? The way of creation of the game-Gameplay or the main idea? The random factors? Your personality?
My opinion is that all these are important and is like an equation with random numbers and your result is multiplied with the care and love you put to solve it... and this is the Gameplay.