Final Blog

For this final blog I am going to be looking back over my work and looking at what I have learned throughout this module. First of all I am going to be giving an overview of all the blogs that I have written, and then finally discussing all that I have learned while researching and writing these blogs.

The first blog that I wrote was a review on a game that I was playing at the time. This review was not a normal review, because I had to talk about the different game mechanics which make up the game. I then looked back into the past to look at game which also had the same type of game mechanics, so I could see where my chosen game had got its ideas from.

For my second blog, I wrote a detailed blog about one of the past games (Elite) that I spoke briefly about in my first blog. I had to do a lot of research into its development and the people who developed it.

My third blog was another research assignment, where I had to write about a game design studio. I looked at how it started out and where it is today.

The forth blog was an interesting one. It was about the controversial topic of computer game violence and the effects that it has on people. I had to watch a video called ‘First Person Shooter’. Once I had watched this I decided to write my blog about the research that has gone into the effect of violent games. After lots of research I got down to writing the blog. I would have to say that this was probably the most enjoyable blog that I wrote because, I have a lot of views on this subject, and so I was able to express my views in this blog.

For the next blog I was looking at game mechanics, but this time I would be looking at them at a deeper level. I looked at a review and pointed out the verbs, nouns and the rules that are in the review. This process allowed me to identify the key aspects of games design by linking the nouns and verbs together.

The sixth blog was more of a class activity; I say this because we had to decide a first person shooter to write a blog about, this blog would then go into a first person shooter family tree. It was another research assignment, where I had to decide a first person shooter no one else had chosen and then write about the game. I wrote about what the games about, the history behind it. I chose the game Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, this game is part of the Delta Force series so I wrote a little about the past games. I then wrote about the companies that developed and published the game.

The next blog was a very interesting one, I had to look at early Japanese games and American and European games and look at the difference between them especially the design aspect of these early games that were being developed in these different countries. I looked at the American Atari 2600 and the Japanese Neo Geo. I did research for this by choosing some of the well known games for each and playing these games, I then wrote about games and the differences of design between them.

For blog number 8 I had to write about different the business models from the early games industry. I had to watch a video called ‘The History of Video Games’. I talked about Atari and how they first started out, the way the games industry started out in Britain with its Bedroom designers and programmers I then finally looked at Nintendo.

The final blog was about MUDs, MUSHs, MOOs, and MMORPGs. This required me to do a lot of research, because I’m not the biggest fan of any form of RPGs. After a lot of research I talked about what each of the above is, I then looked at how MUDs have evolved into the MMORPGs that we have today.

So what have I learned from all this? Quite a lot actually. From the first blog where I had to talk about all the different game mechanics, I had never really thought about all the different types of game mechanics that there are in game (and there are a lot) and also looking back to other games that shared the game mechanics, so I could see where the games of today are thought up from. For the second blog, I learned a lot form writing about the development of the game Elite, from how it was made and who made it. I learned a lot from the research assignments, the third blog where I wrote about Rockstar. Rockstar make games that I play and enjoy so researching them and writing about them was very interesting. The blog I wrote about Computer Game Violence was I feel my best work, I had to do a lot of research and I learned a lot about some of the research that has been conducted into this subject. The next blog I feel was very interesting, I had to write about a review by picking out all the nouns, verbs and the rules of the game review. I learned a lot from this and found it a very interesting way of finding out all the game mechanics that exist in a game. I will hopefully remember this technique for helping me in games development. I learned a lot from the research that I carried out for the blog about games development in early American/European and Japanese game. I was surprised about the difference between them. While American/European developers were too busy ripping each other off by copying each others work, the Japanese were coming up with new ideas and making vibrant games (Although there were a lot of Beat – em – Ups!!! ). The blog about the business models was interesting. I learnt about the three different business models from different countries. The way Atari was set up and how well it was doing until it was sold and then all it problems started because the company that brought them tried to squeeze as mush money out of them as possible. As the games industry was crashing in America, in Britain bedroom designers and programmers were helping bring it back to its feet, and in Japan, Nintendo, who used to make game cards decided to make games as it saw that the games industry was proving to be a successful business to be in. I also learnt a lot from the last blog, I never even knew what I MUD was. All in all I have learnt a lot and enjoyed this module. I feel it has expanded my gaming knowledge, I have also been playing a lot of older games. I am also playing more games which I don’t normally play, e.g. I now play some RPGs even though I still don’t like them, but I know over time it will help my understanding of all types of game design.

MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s

For this blog I will be looking into MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s. I will be describing what each one is, along with some of the gameplay elements of each. I will then write a conclusion into my own feelings about how MUD’s, MUSH’s and MOO’s have evolved into today’s games.

MUD stands for Multi – User Dungeon. The first MUD was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University. It is a computer game which combines elements of role-playing games. MUD’s were text driven games, the players would have to read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, etc. The players would interact with such objects by typing in commands. MUD’s usually took place in a fantasy world. The object of these games was to kill monsters, or anything that got in your way and explore the fantasy world. Developers of MUD’s got there ideas from pen and paper role playing games such as dungeons and dragons. Ideas also came from gamebooks such as fighting fantasy, choose your own adventure. There are different variations of MUD’s, the first of which is the graphical MUD. This was a MUD that used computer graphics to represent parts of the virtual world. An early graphical MUD was the Habitat which was released in 1985. Another type of MUD is the Talkers. These are MUDs but they have their game machinery stripped away, leaving behind the communication level commands. Next up are RPIMUD, which stands for Role Playing Intensive Multi Layered Dungeon. This type of game leaned towards more realistic enforced gameplay. The object of RPIMUD was not goal based; you had to collaborate with fellow players to create multilayered storylines in a cohesive game world. The last type of MUD was the complex combat MUD. These had a more complicated battle system. It usually meant the game didn’t have an automated fighting system.

MUSH stands for Multi Used Shared Habitats. It is a text based online social medium, where multiple users are connected all at the same time. The earliest uses of mush servers were for role-playing and socializing. There are two variants of MUSH which came from TinyMUD, which is also a social game.

MOO stands for MUD object orientated; it is a type of MUD and is a text based online game. Moo’s interactive systems are well suited for the construction of text based adventure games and with the invention of the internet MUD was formed as a network version, this Led to different types of MUDs and one of these were MOO’s. One feature of the MOO is that it can perform object orientated programming within the server. This aloud people to change things, such as authoring new rooms and objects, creating new levels, and changing the MOO interface.

MMORPG’s stands for massively multiplayer online role playing games. These are online computer role playing games where many players interact with each other in a virtual world. They are usually set in a fantasy world, where the player takes control of a character. MMORPG’s have the traditional dungeon and dragon style of gameplay. They have a character development system. This usually works by the player gaining experience points and then levelling up. In some of the games there is an economy which is usually based on trading, a final game mechanic is that some players will join together and form clans or guilds.

From all that I have written about MUD’s, MUSH’s, MOO’s and MMORPG’s, I feel that MUDs are the starting point for a whole new genre of gaming. I feel that MUDs with its early text based gaming has evolved into the huge MMORPG’s that we see today. It took its inspiration from dungeon and dragon pen and paper RPG games and with the technology we have I suppose it was only a matter of time that these games found there way onto the computer. From what I have written MUSH’s and MOO’s have been derived from MUDs and these have all helped in the development of MMORPG’s. Another reason that I feel that these games have inspired MMORPGs it that developers from early MUDs are still working but on MMORPGs, something that I do not find surprising due to my findings that the gameplay mechanics are nearly identical to today MMORPGs.