Blog

For this blog I have been asked to take a look at early Japanese games and early European and American Games and look at the difference between them especially the design aspect of the early games that were being developed.

To look at old games I had to look at some old consoles. For this blog I have looked at the Atari 2600 and the Neo Geo. I will be explaining a little about each console and then looking at the different games for them.

The Atari 2600 was first released in 1977, and it was the first successful video games console to use plug in cartridges instead of having games built in them. Some of the notable games that were released on the Atari 2600 are:

Atlantis
Breakout
Combat
Donkey Kong
Kaboom
Keystone Kapers
Ms Pac-Man
Pac-Man
Pitfall
Pole Position
Real Sports Tennis
Solaris
Space Invaders
Sword Quest Series
Yars’ Revenge

The Neo Geo was another console to use plug in cartridges. It was released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK. It was years ahead of its time offering colourful 2D graphics and high quality sound. It was a major platform for arcade games at the time but was also available as a costly home console. There were two different versions of the system; these were known as the AES (Advanced Entertainment System) and the MUS (Multi Video System). Games for the Neo Geo included:

Nam 1975
Fatal Fury
King of the Monsters
Art of Fighting
Baseball Stars 2
Puzzle Bobble
Samurai Showdown
Sonic Wings 2
Super Sidekicks
Metal Slug
The Last Blade
Shock Troopers

Some of the games I have looked at for the Atari 2600 were Adventure, Kaboom and Pitfall

Adventure was, when first released, considered the first action adventure. It was released in1978 by Atari. Adventure was inspired by a computer text games called Colossal Cave Adventure. Atari bosses said that it could not be done but game designer Warren Robinett, created a graphic game based on a text game. Adventure went on to sell a million copies. The object of the game was to find the Chalice and return it too the Gold Castle. The character was represented by a square and would explore a multi screen landscape, which could contain castles, mazes and other various rooms.

Kaboom was designed and published by Activision in 1981. The idea behind Kaboom was to catch bombs dropped by the Mad Bomber with a set of three buckets.

Pitfall was released by Activision in 1982. The game is seen by many as the first platform game ever made, and is one of the best selling games on the Atari 2600, selling over 4 million copies. The idea of the game was to manoeuvre the character called Pitfall Harry Veditz through a maze like jungle. You have to avoid different hazards along the way, which included tar pits, quicksand, rolling logs, snakes, scorpions, walls, fire, and crocodiles. To avoid these obstacles the character would have to jump and climb, and in certain places he can swing on a vine to avoid them.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The games that I have looked at for the Neo Geo are Ryuko no Ken (Art of Fighting), Gekka no Kenshi (The last Blade), Metal Slug: Super Vehicle SU-001 and Puzzle Bobble.

Art of Fighting is a fighting game series which was created by SNK. When released it was one of the first fighting games to include a super bar, it also introduced the spirt gauge and the desperation move. This game had its own sequels of 2 and 3 and it led it a huge amount of spin off games. Some of these include:

The King of Fighters series
Capcom Vs SNK series
Fatal Fury
Neo Geo Battle Coliseum

The last Blade is another fighting game that was created by SNK. The game takes place during the Bakumatsu era of Japan and also included Japanese mythology. The game was characterised by two selectable fighting stances, and a unique combo system. It also used a deflect and parrying system. The Last Blade also had sequels that included:

The Last Blade 2: Bakumatsu Rouman Dai Ni Maku: Gekka No Kenshi Tsuki Ni Saku Hana, Chin Yuku Hana.

The Last Blade – Beyond the Destiny

Metal Slug is a scrolling shooter computer game created by SNK and released in 1996. The game required the player to constantly shoot at re-spawning enemies in order to reach the end of the level; here you would meet the end of level boss.

Puzzle Bobble is a puzzle game series created by Taito. The idea of the game was to match up different coloured balls using a fixed cannon, whose angle could be changed, to fire the coloured balls at a pre arranged pattern at the top of the screen. If the ball manages to come into contact with identically coloured balls and forms a group of three or more, those balls and any hanging from them are removed. Points are rewarded depending on how many ball are removed from the screen at once.

----------------------------------------------------

From the research I have carried out and the different number of games that I have played for this blog; these are my feelings toward early games design in Europe/America and Japan. The Games from Europe/America, I feel are all a bit samey. Many of them involve mindless shooting at objects to get to the next part of the game. Of course not all the games were like this, I have written about two who you could say kicked off there own genres. The Japanese games I feel were also trying something new when they come up with an idea for a game. (Although this game could then spawn off many sequels and spin off games as I showed with Art of Fighting. I feel that while European/American designers were churning out another shooter, Japanese designers were coming up with new puzzles games and bright and colour games. The main reason I feel for this the difference in what gamers wanted from each continent, and this is still apparent today in the gaming charts.

Having looked at the latest games charts on:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/charts.php

From these latest charts you can see the difference in the games that people play in different countries. In Japan you can see that the games they play are puzzle game and RPGs such as Brain age and English Training DS. As for the American and UK charts, they are full of shooters and sports games. I feel that this is one of the main reasons why early game design was different because they were making games for different people who wanted to play different things.

First Person Shooter Family Tree

Delta Force Black Hawk Down - xbox

For this blog I am going to be looking at a first person shooter and looking at who developed it. I will be looking at their history and some of the people who founded the companies.

The game that I have decided to look at is Delta Force Black Hawk Down. Delta Force Black Hawk Down was developed by Novalogic and Climax Studios.

Black Hawk Down was released in 2003 and is a first person shooter that takes place in Somalia, where the famous Mogadishu operation took place. The game is based on the real events that were also depicted in a book and a movie. In the first half of the game the missions consist of the missions that the delta force soldiers had to engage in, such as defending UN food convoys, rescuing hostages or destroying weapon shipments. In the second part of the game, it covers the events of mission Irene on October 3rd 1993. Its goal was to capture two lieutenants of the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. For most of the missions you play as a member of a small delta force team, working in co-operation with US Army Rangers or Un Forces. Some of the missions include the player riding machine gunner on a Humvee or a helicopter.

Novalogic was founded in 1985 by John Garcia. Novalogic is a privately owned company. The Primary shareholder is Electronic Arts. Novalogic is a global publisher of computer games for the PC, Playstation, Playstation2, Nintendo Gamecube and xbox. It concentrates on a small number of titles each year. Novalogic spent it early years in producing home versions of popular arcade games. Throughout their history it has developed original gaming content for both console and PC platforms. Novalogic is best known for developing military combat simulations, with one of these franchises being the Delta Force Series. The Delta Force series includes:

Delta Force

Delta Force 2

Delta Force: Land Warrior

Delta Force: Urban Warfare

Delta Force: Task Force Dagger

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre

Delta Force: Xtreame

In 2004 Novalogic released Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising which dropped the Delta Force Name. Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising was Novalogics attempt to create a vehicular battleground. With its success in the consumer military simulation, Novalogic was brought to the attention of the US army. In 1999 Novalogic Systems was developed for the gaming market by bringing them to the military and civilian training communities. Novalogic Systems was the provider of the training software for the Land Warrior Soldier system.

John Garcia formed Novalogic in 1985. His computer software career started in southern California in the early 1980’s, when he worked for Datasoft as a programmer. He later became vice president of software development. He was responsible for 22 programmers and he helped develop more then 40 software titles. While at Novalogic he helped guide the company from small time arcade conversions to large scale development of best selling CD – ROM titles.

Climax was founded in 1987 by Karl Jeffery. It has grown into one of the world’s leading independent developers of interactive software. Climax is made up of four divisions which are: LA, Action, Racing and Handheld. They develop games for all the major consoles; Playstaion2, Nintendo Gamecube, xbox, and the Gameboy Advance. They also develop games for wireless devices and interactive television. Successful games that they have developed include:

MotoGP – xbox

Sudeki – xbox

ATV Offroad Fury 3 – Playstaion2

Karl Jeffery is the founder of climax and has been chief executive officer since then; he began as a freelance video games programmer, developing games for the Spectrum, Amstrad and Sega consoles for small UK publishers, which back then included Activision and Epyx. He would do everything from the design, the coding to the art, and a game would take him about four months to develop. He founded climax with several other programmers.

Week 6 Blog

For this blog I have been asked to read a review of a computer game and identify the verbs, nouns and rules.

The game review that I have chosen to work with for this blog is 24: The Game. To read the review click on the link below


http://ps2.ign.com/articles/692/692726p1.html


In the first part of this blog there will be a list of all the verbs that I identified from the game review. Then I will list all nouns identified and finally all of the rules that I found throughout the review. For the last piece of this blog I will be describing the nouns and verbs I identified and how they relate to one another.

Verbs

Plot Twists

Capturing

Shots

Acting

Play

Briefing

Talking

Invade

Exiting

Carries

Shooting

Driving

Solving

Pulling

Looking

Aiming

Hitting

Look

Navigate

Watching

Fine-tune

Pull

Hide

Move

Firing

Hiding

Run

Turn

Panic

Forcing

Strangle

Knock

Finding

Kills

Standing

Waiting

Emerge

Push

Open

See

React

Throw

Ruckus

Pursuit

Drive

Input

Apply

Crashing

Moving

Running

Taking

Thrown

Hack

Break

Finding

Matching

Sift

Engaging

Interrogation

Moodswings

Sniping

Firefights

Heading
Gunfight

Test

Run

Look

Conversations

Pause

Unlock

Shoot

Threaten

Steer


Nouns

Terrorists

Bombs

Storyline

Villains

CTU

Good guy

Money

Bad guys

Camera

Cutscenes

Team members

Cast

Jack

Field

Squad

Character

Clock

Puzzle

Controls

Target

Stick

Enemies
Guys

Bullets

Soldiers

Cover

Body

Tazer

Weapons

Guards

Doors

Room

Chairs

Traffic

Boat

Car

AI drivers

Vehicle

Landscape

Trees
Computer

File

Letters

Path

Button

Floors

Buildings

Snipers

Photos

Vitals

Shadows

Information

Assault rifles

Automatic machineguns

Ears

Fingers

Hand
Environment

Clutter

Barren

Tony

Kim

Animations

Team

Rules

It has plot twists, murders, terrorists, bombs, and everything you’d expect from the show

The show switches back and forth reasonably often, but the game really only follows CTU folk

The show at least builds deep character backgrounds

Invade the location

The game essentially follows the 24 – hour clock

The game encompasses everything from shooting to driving to puzzle solving

Press L1 to aim, the camera aims in the direction your character is facing

Pulling L1 causes a 180 – degree snap of your view

If you look up or down it’ll pop back the second you let go of the stick

Nearly impossible actually, to navigate stairs properly while watching out for enemies

You can snap between enemies with a flick of the right stick and then fine – tune shot placement for headshots

Flick the stick, pull R1 for a second, flick the stick again, pull R1 again, and repeat until and area is clear

And you’ll have to properly use cover and compensate for soldiers with cover of their own.

Wait for an enemy to hide and then aim at where his head was just at, as soon as he pops back out you can nail a head shot

Simply repeat the same firing and hiding stances until one of the two of you are dead

Enemies will sometimes run at you or past you if they panic in close proximity

You can strangle, knock out or even tazer someone

You’re told that the character you’re using at the time doesn’t have a lot of weapons training so you should try and avoid all contact with the guards

You can even throw chairs around in the room and cause whatever ruckus you want

Multiple driving sequences that range from getting from point A to B on time to evading some sort of pursuit

When you’re attempting to pass a car you’ll often wind up either nailing it because of the delayed response or crashing into something else because you’ve over – steered

These are used when someone needs to hack a computer, decrypt a file, and break into a room or some such

The games range from having to arrange various letters in the correct order to finding a path between a string of points to simply matching a button press to a coloured block on – screen

Need to sift through the floors of multiple buildings and try and discern possible snipers from satellite photos

Choose a push or calm question until you get their “vitals” in the right spot

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the review it talks about shots, shooting, aiming, gunfights, firefights, firing. These can be related to the objects assault rifles and automatic machineguns

Sniping can be related to the word snipers

Plot twists can be related to the noun storyline

Hack can be associated with the object computer

Part of the review is about the driving elements in the game. These are seen in the words Driving, pursuit, crashing. These can be linked to the words, traffic, boat, car, vehicles.

The review lets us know about the different characters that are in the game. Words such as, terrorist, villains, CTU, good guy, bad guys, team members, cast, Jack, enemies, guys, soldiers, guards, Tony, Kim, Team. All these nouns can be associated with different action gameplay elements of the game, such as, solving, hitting, hiding etc, etc, and all of the other character based movements.

From looking at the connections that I have made between the nouns and the verbs, I feel that there is a lot of description about the characters and the movement and actions. I feel that this is quite important to 24, as it is a TV/game tie in. So for the game to be successful the developers are going to have to get the character and their characteristics spot on.

Computer Game Violence

For this blog I am going to be looking into computer game violence and its impact today. After watching the documentary ‘First person Shooter’, I have decided to look into the research that has been carried out into the affects that violent games have. I will look into what effects researchers believe violent games have on people. After writing about my research I shall evaluate what I have found out and give some of my own opinions on violent computer games.

According to psychologists, game players, particularly children, may become more aggressive and use violence to resolve conflicts. Research has also found that children may become more desensitized to violence in the real world, less sensitive to pain and suffering and more willing to tolerate ever – increasing levels of violence. There has also been concerns raised that the very young who play violent computer games may begin to believe that the real world is just as violent and dangerous as it appears in the computer game. This last concern was raised when it found in a survey of 900 eight year olds in the US, that over half of these children’s favourite game contained fantasy or extreme violence.

One piece of research hypothesized that we should expect computer games to have an impact on people’s lives because:

Children are more likely to imitate the action of a character with whom they identify. In violent computer games the player is often required to take the point of view the shooter or perpetrator.

Computer games by their very nature require active participation rather then passive observation.

Repetition increases learning. Computer games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioural rehearsal of violent activity.

Rewards increase learning, and computer games are based on a reward system.

Another piece of research that compared their own research to other people’s research found that there were patterns of results in five areas.

The first of these areas is ‘Exposure to violent games increases physiological arousal’. The studies carried out have shown that violent games increase physiological arousal. The heart rate, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure all increased while playing violent computer games. Research has also found that the effect may be even greater for children who are more naturally aggressive. These children who were more hostile showed much greater results in adrenaline, nor – adrenaline, and testosterone. These effects are important because these are the same types of physiological reactions bodies have when engaged in a fight.

The second pattern is that ‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive thoughts’. This study showed that when measuring cognitive responses to playing violent games increased aggressive thoughts. These findings have been found for males and females, children and adults.

The third pattern is ‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive emotions’. This study has shown that when measuring emotional responses, violent computer games increased aggressive emotions. This study also showed that game players who were more addicted to computer games were significantly more likely to be in a bad mood before, during, and after playing then were non – addicted gamers.

‘Exposure to violent games increases aggressive actions’. This was the forth recognised pattern. This showed that playing violent computer games increased aggression. In one particular study, students played either a violent or non violent game. After playing the game, they were given a competitive reaction time task in which they played against another student. If they beat the other student they were able to deliver a load noise blast. They got to chose how load and how long the noise blast would be. Students who had previously played the violent computer game delivered longer noise blasts to their opponents.

The final pattern witnessed is ‘Exposure to violent games decreases positive prosocial actions’. This showed that after playing violent computer games it decreased the player’s tendencies towards positive behaviours. One study showed that children who spent more time playing computer games were rated less positively by their classmates, then children who spent less time playing computer games. Also a study on younger children, were rated as more aggressive and less prosocial by their peers and by their teachers when exposed to violent computer games.

Although all these studies and research all seem to point to violent computer games being to blame for game player’s aggression. A recent study (December 2005) has put it down to something else. It has found a brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the USA. This work shows us that there may be a casual link between the two, not just a simple association. This association is down to studies which tell us that people who play violent computer games are more aggressive, more likely to commit violent crimes and less likely to help others, as discussed earlier. While others say that violent people will play violent computer games, and not that games can change someone’s behaviour. The study found that people who play violent games show diminished brain responses to images of real life violence, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures e.g. dead animals or sick children. The study was carried out on 39 experienced gamers who played violent computer games. They showed them real life images, interspersed with violent scenes. They did this while carrying out EEGs on the subjects; the P300 (this reflects an evaluation of emotional content on an image on an EEG) was smaller or delayed when seeing a violent image.

From what I have written I can see why it is easy to point the finger of blame on violent computer games for aggression in younger people and sometimes even murder. The problem I have with this is that from my own personal experiences while playing violent games, I have not felt the need during or after to go out and mimic what I just played. I feel that the people who we read about and see in the news must have other problems which are not documented in the press; it is always the games fault for making them violent and want to hurt or even kill. I am not saying that games don’t lead to aggressive thoughts; studies have shown that they do, but these are only short term and should not last forever. Also when we see these stories in the press they are normally under 18, so what are these people playing a violent game for anyway. Violent games like Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto have 18 certificates, and so it is illegal to sell these games to people under that age.

Another part of the research that I do not agree with is ‘violent people will play violent games’ I play violent games and I am not a violent person. Some research that I do agree with is that I do believe that seeing violent images in games (or in TV or film) does lead to some desensitivity of violent images.

In conclusion I feel that either you believe strongly that violent games are going to make others violent or you believe that there is no real strong evidence that violent games make people more aggressive. Before violent computer games, there was violence on TV and on film, and for a while these were blamed for aggression in younger people. I feel that violent computer games are just another scapegoat that people can use for a more deep rooted problem.

Rockstar North

In this blog I will be writing about a games developer. The games developer that I have chosen to discuss to Rockstar North. I will be looking at how Rockstar North came to be and to do this I will be looking at the games company DMA

Rockstar North originally started life as DMA. DMA started in 1987 by Dave Jones in Dundee. DMA had two early hits with Menace and Blood Money. These games gained the attention from gamers and critics for their high quality presentation and punishing levels of difficulty. DMA made their major breakthrough in the 1990’s with Lemmings.

Up until 1994 DMA had its games published by Psygnosis. Then in 1994 DMA developed Uniracers. This was published by Nintendo. Nintendo then asked DMA to join their ‘Dream Team’ of developers for the upcoming Ultra 64 System, which would later become the Nintendo 64. DMA accepted the arrangement and got to work on a new title. Body Harvest is what DMA came up with. However, Body Harvest never got published by Nintendo, this is because of Nintendo’s demands; they required a number of major overhauls to the original design. The game suffered numerous delays and Nintendo finally decided to drop their publishing plans for Body Harvest. The game was however finally released by Midway in 1998. DMA then went to create what it is best known for. Grand Theft Auto. When it was first released it attracted controversy which probably played a part into making Grand Theft Auto DMA’s biggest success since Lemmings. In 2001 GTA was released it became the Playstation2 best seller in the US and Europe. This caused Sony to pay DMA to keep GTA a Playstation2 exclusive for some time.

DMA changed hands many times before ending up with Rockstar Games. As I discussed earlier DMA first worked with Psygnosis, and then briefly with Nintendo. In 1997 DMA was sold to British publisher Gremlin Interactive. Dave Jones stayed on at DMA and became the creative director of both companies. Then in 1999 Gremlin interactive was sold to Infograms, as a consequence to this DMA left Gremlin Interactive soon afterwards. It was at this point Dave Jones left DMA and set up a new development studio in Dundee. The development studio was a subsidiary of Rage Software. This subsidiary later became Real Time Worlds due to a managerial buyout. DMA went on to gain a publishing deal with Rockstar games.

Rockstar Games was a new division of Take Two Interactive. Rockstar Games was founded in 1998 by Sam Houser, Terry Donovan, Dan Houser, Jamie King and Gary Foreman. Sam Houser is currently the Vice President of Worldwide Development for Take Two Interactive; he is also the President of Rockstar Games. Rockstar Games then went on and brought DMA outright in 2002. Rockstar Games then renamed DMA studios as Rockstar North. Rockstar Games has other different branches. One of these are Rockstar Vienna, this company ported GTA3 and GTA – Vice City for the Xbox. Another Branch is Rockstar Leeds which was formally Mobius Entertainment until Rockstar Games brought them in 2004, this company developed GTA – Liberty City Stories under the supervision of Rockstar North.