Multimedia Development 1

  Hi everyone! It's been a while since my last post here and I kinda miss writing blogs. This is the first week we that came back to college (online) and for this module, we are 90% done with our writing project which is great! Today we have to add images, referencing the bibliographies we have used, and also reviewing our work again to make sure that they are good. It did not take me a long time to complete the tasks as I have copies of references for the articles I have used. Adding an author bio was a bit hard since I do not really know how detail we have to be but everything went well and I can't wait till college is over so I will be free!

A brainstorm I made from Miro For this week's tasks, we have to write our main introduction and conclusion of our chapters. I find it challenging as we will have to use the knowledge we have gathered from the research and writings we have done. I had to keep reading my work over and over again because I get distracted so easily. This is when brainstorming become useful to me as I was able to focus on my thoughts step by step! I decided to divide the introduction and conclusion intersect them with the body paragraphs that I have written for the past few weeks. After I read through my work, I then write the important bits that I found and create a statement from it. The videos from our website module were really helpful as I was able to write my introduction and conclusion properly. I also tried my best not to repeat words and information that has already been written but it was still a challenge for me because we must summarise the chapter with our own understanding to help the read

Writing Image. Annotated Bibliography  link. For this week's writing task, we have to begin writing the content of our first literature review which is referring to the themes we have gathered from the annotated bibliography notes that we have written for the past two weeks. I found I challenging to write the literature review as the themes I have are all connected. Therefore, I had to make sure that they are in order to show a better understanding of each theme. I also realized this week that I did our last week's tasks wrong because we supposed to highlight the themes from our annotated bibliographies not from the articles we have gathered so I ended up doing it again but it was not a difficult task so I was able to finish it quick. It was also hard for me to choose the right information to include in my literature review because my notes were long and it really took me a while to decide what points are important to talk about. There we also some other topics that I think wou

                                             Reflection An image of the notes I wrote while reading the Articles. Hi everyone! For this week's reading task, we were instructed to set up our research about the topic we chose for our Writing project. We will also have to create annotated bibliographies for the first three articles, books, or documents that we have discovered as well as writing a short summary. At first, I found it challenging to start doing my research as I do not have enough effective keywords that I could use. Therefore, I only found few books that I thought would be useful for my chosen topic.  Before starting this project, I was confident that I had enough knowledge about the Hierarchy of challenges in gameplay. However, I was wrong as this topic is very broad and it was difficult for me to find the specific articles and documents that I needed. I decided to do everything again from the start where I look up useful keywords that would work for the topic and I als

  Image of my brainstorm from Notes. Hi guys, it is me again!  For this blog, I will talk about how I will plan my research strategy for our Writing Project. The first topic that I decided to write about is Gameplay, focusing especially on the Hierarchy of Challenges in a game. I remember we read an article about this topic during the last semester and I was really interested in it. A topic such as how the level of difficulty can affect the player mentally and how do we plan it really stood out to me. I am looking forward to doing my research and being able to write a book about it! This week, a staff from the Library, Lindsay, visited us during our lecture to talk about how the online library site could help us gather information for our writing project. She also went through the website of the Library such as how to use it, how to borrow a book online, and most importantly, she showed us how to reference correctly and organize our work in an easier way by using RefWorks  which was ve

Inspirational quote. Video: How to Playtest! How important it is to playtest? Playtesting is where you can see your hard work come to life. You might feel nervous or irritated as there are things that would not work. However, this could be a good way to find your mistakes and things that you can improve. When can you test your game? You can start as long as you have a prototype, but you should not type your game too early either because you haven't really tried your first planned idea yet. However, do not also wait till you complete your game to test it as there could be an error on some parts that you have not discovered which is too late to fix it and you ended up spending more time fixing the error and possibly ruined the whole game. If you want to have a wider perspective on improving your game, you can let someone try the game or you can just do it yourself. it is better to have a wider range of testers to get various feedbacks in any age. Article 1 Types of testing: Playtest

  Yubaba from Spirited Away movie. I decided to pick this image for today's reading blog because she is one of the antagonists that I like. I also love Ghibli movies in general as each character has a special part in the movie and each of them has a reason to have an interaction with the hero. I think that the game also needs to have this kind of set up instead of just adding unnecessary characters and story in the game. Everything should have a purpose. In this week's reading, we have to read about the importance of a good story in a game. We also have to watch a video about it which explains more about the stories with systems in the game . From what I understood after watching the video, some game does not have a story in them which made me think that it was strange as most of the games that I have played before does. Even though it is only the character's back story to help us know and understand how their purpose and what they can do.  However, in this video, I learned

  Image Link Hi guys~  This is the first time I write a reading blog again after two weeks! For this week's reading task, we have to go back over to the readings and writing assignments that we did and reflect on them. I used the questions that are given to us. 1. Overall, how well are the reading and writing assignments working for you? I find the reading tasks very useful because I applied the knowledge that I learned from them to my game project. It also makes me consider other things such as what would the future players feel if they play my game i.e. boring, thrilling, or exciting? I also used some of the articles that are essential such as the Game Elements, Game Fun, Exploring Game Design, and especially the Games MDA and GDD. Even though the writing assignments are challenging to do, it still helped me to improve my writing skills. I was also able to learn new vocabulary that makes my writing more professional. I also find that my grammar improved though sometimes I still m

Game Fun The game can be described by the 3 components Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) or otherwise stated as rule - system - "fun" . The three reading selections this week and the synopsis below all address the term "fun" in relation to game design. There are eight types of Fun outlined by the MDA. These types are both a source of reference and player experience that blend together in many ways, and essentially what makes a game engaging and enjoyable.  Eight Types of Fun Box Oxford and Merrian dictionaries define Fun as an enjoyment, delight but within the context of the game, it refers to a form of pleasurable entertainment. MDA papers define the '8 kinds of fun' sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, and submission, remain a source of reference and possibly the most popular list of the player interactions combining in various forms to attract each player to a particular game. Nicole Lazzaro presents four

"In order for the player to be optimally engaged, challenges should be presented at a level equivalent or slightly higher than their current skill. Not too easy, not too hard" (Gigity McD). The word "flow state" was coined by Csikszentmihalyi (1975) also known as being "in being the zone". This is when the player is fully engaged in the game experience. Csikszentmihalyi put a lot of work into observing and analyzing various groups of people. This theory is focused on the idea of how people should balance their skills and the demands of particular tasks. An example of Flow would be a challenge in a game that interests the player such as a puzzle or a boss battle meant to keep the player interested and not get bored. Csikszentmihalyi also states that flow is related to an ideal psychological condition when a person engages in a challenge-skill activity, often resulting in concentration and focused emphasis on task. A particular technique for improving Flow i

GDD gif What is GDD for? A Game Design Document (GDD) is a blueprint for the design and development of a game. The GDD is a way of being creative and documenting the approach to the development of the game. Gonzales (2016) states that " The important thing is to have something that describes your game project (or any other project for that matter) before jumping into production"( Gamasutra ) It should help to plan out your game. Though it is recommended that the GDD should be short it needs to be detailed enough so as game developers and artists can coordinate the development of the game independently whilst keeping to the design. The GDD is a blueprint for how the game is going to be designed and built, similar to a mind map. In conclusion, the game design document is vital to making a game and it is important to have in order to describe your game project. How do we make one? There are a variety of tools that could be used t create a GDD. These include word processing tools

  Taking Notes Link For this week's reading task, we are going to talk about how to analyze the game design and research properly. We were given two articles to read and they are called "MDA: Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research" by Hunicke, R. LeBlanc, M. & Zubek, R. (2004)   and "Design, Dynamics & Experience (DDE) for Game Design" by Wolfgang Walk, Daniel G ö rlich and  Mark Barret . We also have to watch a video explaining about MDA Framework. Link to an external site. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics and it helps to clarify and strengthen the iterative processes of developers, researchers making it easier for them to break down, study and design a range of game designs. Design methodologies also guide the creative process and help ensure quality work. as designers always consider assurance before making changes. "Games are created by designers/teams of developer and consumed by players" There is also a differe

  Textured background with a text. Link This week's reading task is about game elements where we have to explore more important vocabulary that we could use and also consider if we are starting to build our game project. The first written document that I read was analyzing the qualities of games. It started to give a quick summary about the definition of a game and all of main qualities can be simply called as "Formal Elements" also known as "Atomic Elements of Games" . They are the smallest parts of a game that can be studied individually.  Here are the 10 Atomic elements: Players Objectives (goals) Rules Resources/Resource Management Game State Information Sequencing Player Interaction Theme (Setting, Narrative, Backstory) Game as Systems After reading each explanation about these elements, I started to understand how important it is to follow this because every one of them has a special role in our game. The whole game could change if we just adjust/remove a

Inspiration image about discovering new things We started this week's tasks by reading articles about defining what a game is to a more detail and in depth explanations.  I used to define "game" as one or multiple players who works together to complete certain tasks with a set of rules that they must follow whether they win or lose. However if I put more thoughts into it, the definition gets more profound and brings me more in depth about what a game truly is. As I read though the first article that was talking about particular definitions of what a game is depending on how much interaction they have with it. For example, the more interest they have about games the more knowledge they can share with people. There is an interpretation from the article that I like based on a book called "Rules of Play" by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. They explained that games are a "system in which players engage in an artificial, defined by rules, that results in a quanti