Onwards Upwards: Dissertation Time

Well, essays are in, Game Design Projects are done, marks are back and term II is over.  That puts me in a peculiar position now: Dissertation time.

I have until the 21st September to write my Dissertation project.  I have chosen to do the practical route of the dissertation module, which involves me doing a Game Design Document and a prototype of a game.  With what feels like a long time before hand in it can be difficult to self motivate but I am now working on it (having had a long period of procrastination and actual thinking) most days and trying to pummel energy into the work.  I want to create a game that I am proud of and essentially I'd like to have something I can show at interview and the like.



It also means that I am beginning to think solidly about the future.  The course has confirmed that I definately want to work 'in the industry', either as a designer or more possibly as a producer.  All of my experience for a lot of my career has been in production / company management and so with the extra background knowledge the course has given me I hope to be able to transfer my skills to the games sector.  Of course now that means convincing someone that I am capable of doing the job, but that's the next step isn't it!

In terms of applying for jobs I think I want to get my dissertation done and out of the way before committing to jobs, although I am passively looking to see if things come up that are ideal (it would be foolish not to).  In the meantime I am aware that I should probably get my twitter feed running (I am so bad at twittering! - follow me at: @Frailtimes ) and I should probably sort out my Linked In Page, which I have but have never filled in the details of.

Playing Stuff: I have been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic over the last few months but it's sort of going a bit stale at the moment - people are busy, the content a bit samey now and so it's on a hiatus.  On the other hand I am enjoying playing a lot of Civilisation V (which I missed when it first came out) and playing it multi-player is great fun too - it's quite a relaxed multi-player game which is pleasant.  I had a brief sting on Diablo III but it got old quite quickly.  It's too much of a halfway house for me - not enough variables, not simple enough to be trivial - odd game.  It is very pretty but prettiness just isn't enough for me.
I'm looking forward to The Secret World coming out (next week) as it looks like the sort of game that will peak my interests (the idea of the skill wheel is very appealing).  I haven't played any of the beta weekends - I sort of want to experience it when I can throw myself into it properly, not having to stop when they tell me to!!

So for now back to work...  Hopefully you'll be hearing more of me soon :)

Questions and Answers

My next essay for my MA is about characters in roleplaying games, be they tabletop, live action or digita.  I am interested in what people look for in their games, how they play them and if they play different sorts of roleplaying games in different styles.

I posted a survey out using Survey Monkey on Tuesday morning (well, just after midnight) and so far as of 18:00 Wednesday I have 337 response, which is absolutely fantastic.

It's getting some really interesting responses and I can't wait to collate them and examine them in more depth.

People like me (I think) like talking about their hobby but I hadn't anticipated so many people would take the time out of their schedule to answer in the comments boxes I included (I deliberately suggested people skip them if they didn't have time and thought that most people would) but there have been a large amount of comments given in all of the questions, which is wonderful and fascinating to see people's responses about something which they clearly feel passionately (as I do) about.

I look forward to sharing some of the results (it's all anonymous and so on) and sharing what people have said. 

Thanks if you've filled out the survey so far and if you haven't... well - I'd love you to.  It can be found here

A special mention goes to Esther MacCallum-Stewart, who lectures at the University of Chichester and writes on all things games, and to Ian Knope at Having a LARP for posting this on for me.  Also of course to anyone who has shared this and that I don't know has passed it on.  Please do, the more responses the merrier!

De De De De De-de-de-dah... boom

March 2nd.  I even missed the pinch pinch first of the month opportunity (that's probably bullying or harrassment though so for the best avoided).

It's pretty amazing to believe that we've finished our design lectures for the year and on;y have a few weeks left of theory classes.  We spend our third term on dissitation / project work so much of my formal teaching is over.  I was last at 'school' quite a few years ago so being back again has been an interesting experience.

My essay for this term is going to be something about building characters / identity / affect or some combination thereof.  I'm still working on the title, but I know that's the thing that is intertesting me on the theory side at the moment.  I'm waiting for Game Feel to arrive, although my mountain of books has enough to keep me going in the meantime! I've been particularly enjoying the First / Second / Third person books (that's a link to one of them, the others are all there too) as they have been addressing some of the practical aspects of what I am focussed on - creating good games.

We had a pitch to 4 industry professionals and three of our lecturers on Wednesday.  This was a nervous week.  Mediatonic, Creative Assembly, Super Massive and a gentleman ex EA and very well connected were all there and they all gave fantastic feedback for us all, it was a great experience and the whole class pulled it out of the bag really, which was great to see.  My personal effort was called "When It Was Over" and I was reasonably pleased with it.  I learnt a lot from the pitch itself and from the process.  The next stage is to finish the deign document for it and make a prototype of some of it in MMF2, so that's going to be coming over the next few weeks.  I made a little trailer / mood board for it, which if you were interested you could watch it below - the intention was to give a feel of an adventure set on an island after the world collapses.  Naturally I don't own the rights to any of it etc etc.

All in all I learnt a lot from the pitch and the project leading up to it, so that was good.

Things happen in ironic ways and this week at my job in my 'other life' (I work as a production manager for a training / theatre company) things have been more hectic than ever.  We get people pull out of work for us at the last minute every so often for auditions or other stuff, but in this last week 3 nights this has happened which leads to late nights working at the office rather than on my MA stuff.  It happens, it's just been particularly unlucky!  It's made it all exciting and a challenge so I am, I have to admit, excited that it's over and looking forward to the weekend now!

In other news I've been working on another project which has started well, and am enjoying it very much.  There we go - that's a little bit of mystery for you!

 And now... back to work.

2012 - and it's almost February!

So here we are in 2012, and it's a new term at Brunel University.  This term sees a slight change of focus for the course.  Last term the game theory was just that, talk about game-theory debates and terminology and things.  It was interesting and useful, but this term is much more my cup of tea as we are doing Socio-cultural studies in games, covering things like militarism, structuralism and gender in games, So far it's been fascinating although I am stuck for what to write on this term, I find it all fascinating, and am having trouble choosing!  I did ok in my theory paper I worked on over Christmas, and learnt a whole load too.

We also have a slightly more practical approach in the design classes, with one MMF (multi-media fusion) project being expected per week, which is quite a buzz.  I enjoy creating games in it and like the challenge and accesibility it provides for people like me who don't 'speak code'.  We have a pitch project deadline fast approaching already and so that's going to consume time once more.  Waiting nervously on work from the design assessment of course.

The pressure is on, rightly so, and trying to balance work (as in my 'real' job) with the course (with my intended future job) with having any sort of life at all is quite hard work, not that I mind, it's the challenge I knew I had set myself from the start.

I am also trying to do as much reading as possible and am enjoying Third Person at the moment.  My preferred reading is the collections of essays that I am engaging with - I think I handle the topics better in shorter bursts (I also don't own a bookmark, and it's easier to find your place in an short essay!) 

It's hard to believe we're already 3 weeks into the term, it really has flown this year.  It's almost February already, almost into actively working on the next bit of work, all too soon it will time to work on the dissertation!  Gosh.

In other news Preto in Putney is an amazing restaurant!

Dressing Up

I've mentioned before that I think the things that people do related to playing games are fascinating and I think this video (which is on the Kotaku site) is fascinating and really rather impressive, not only is is nicely filmed but it features some stunning costumes alot of which will have been 'home made' - truly hugely impressive.

I'm afraid I can't work out how to embed a Vimeo video into a Google blog without creating a war, so in the meantime you'll just have to go there and watch it!

It's worth it though - go take a look!
What it doesn't feature though is this, which is something to amuse before taking that video!

Playlist: December

So it is December and the nights are closing in.  I think everyone is supposed to be quiet as a mouse and I am putting out mince pies for santa or something.

Instead I am deep into some games!

This month I finished playing Arkham City which was splendid.  I say finished, I haven't collected all the Riddler trophies or the challenge maps, but I have completed the main storyline, fought my way through baddies and bosses and thoroughly enjoyed it.   It's a very empowering game and extremely fluid.  Brilliant work there from Rocksteady, already looking forward to DLC / the next one.

Dear Diary.  I am a bad person for I have caved.  I know I said I wouldn't but I just couldn't help myself.  I too am a Skyrim Junkie.  Or not actually.  It seemed to be all everyone was talking about - one of my friends facebooks had 74 replies to a status about Skyrim.  Whenever people talked about 'examples of X / Y / Z type of game' it would be Skyrim that was mentioned.  It was it seemed the Mount Olympus of games.  Ambrosia of gaming here I come.  But I was a bit dissapointed.  It's good, the dragons look cool.  But it doesn't seem that good.  Maybe I'm missing something.  It really is just Oblivion but a bit prettier though isn't it?  They might have touched up a couple of bits but it really doesn't seem that different.  There are some nice features (I like the quest system, the snow looks amazing) but all in all...  I think it's rather over-rated.  I shall now don my flame-proof suit to protect me from the Skyrim love.

The iPad sees lots and lots of free stuff at Christmas, most of it fairly benile.  Bards Tale is quite amusing and a nicely done version and soon I will pick up GTA III as I've heard it's very good.  Nothing though has really grabbed me this month.

And then, of course, there's Star Wars: The Old Republic.  This deserves and will get it's own post.  However it is great.  There we go, that's my full academic opinion.  'It's Great'.  Really, it is.

End of Level 1

Wow, end of the first semester and it went predictably fast.  What I really need is a progress bar to keep count I suppose.

 It would be hard to sum up everything that's happened so far but it has been great.  I have really enjoyed my classes with almost no exceptions which is quite astounding.  We've had Critical Analysis and Game Pitches as assessments and over the Christmas 'holidays' have an essay, a games design document and a evaluation to write.  On top of that I have more MMF to learn (MMF is the game making program we use on the course).

Along the way I have read a lot of games theory books, some more accessible than others, and been trying to keep hugely up to date (I say hugely, I mean as much as I can!) with all the 'gaming news' - Gamasutra is my regular stop over but I have about 15 sources on an RSS feed which I download and catch up with on the bus.  RSS feeds are great (I think I have one above which you could follow me on, which obviously you should!) because it means they send me the news.  I use Go Reader on the iPad in combination with Read It Later, which is fantastic for storing stuff for later consumption.

On top of all of this I am trying to read around the subject as much as possible.  A lot of people have talked about the need to be a bit of a rennaisance man in this subject - to know as much as possible about as much as possible, which certainly seems to be the case.  I have books on project management and structuralism to read next and on my christmas list is Technical Maths for Dummies.  I realise how much of a geek that makes me sound.  I suppose it is all part of Geekademia (which is a term I am stealing from one of my tutors (although I suppose it might be more common than I realise, it's certainly one I am fond of).


I'm also reading various psychology books, albeit mostly ones written in layman's terms to compliment some of my understanding of the topic I am writing my first 'proper' essay on, which is about the feeling of heroism in games, thus Jung is heavy on my reading list along with some Morphology of the Folk Tale and other such classics!  Naturally I am also playing lots of games (I'll post up more what I'm playing in the next few days, because, once more my play-list has moved on a fair amount)

It's quite a challenge this course, I think it's been about 14 years since my last official essay, and so writing and referencing 'all formal like' is quite hard going, but I am enjoying the challenge, and slowly getting to grips with it.  I am also finding that I am enjoying the reading a lot more than I thought I might before the course started.  The design element is also extremely fulfilling, which I sort of knew it would be but it still deserves an honourable mention!

Conferences, guest speakers, essays, lectures and many many books make up the majority of my life at the moment, but I have to admit that I am rather loving it.   Roll on semester 2.