Hugman

http://www.whatwouldmolydeux.com/display.php?GameID=179

Hugman is a 2D game made in the Unity engine. The game was made by myself (Environment Art and Audio), Emily green (Character Art/Animation) and John Cooper (Programmer).

The Game was made other a weekend for the What Would Molydeux? Game Jam 2012.

http://www.whatwouldmolydeux.com/

Games as Art: Barker vs Ebert

Roger Ebert is one of the world's most respected movie critics and in 2005 he wrote in a series of responses to his readers on his website rogerebert.suntimes.com that "video games could not be art." and he considers "video games inherently inferior to film and literature. " This sparked off debate from gamers, game designers and academics that Ebert admits himself "has taken on a life of its own." One person to join the debate at the second hollywood and games summit was Clive Barker, novelist, director, artist and game designer, most famous for the film Hellraiser. I have found his responses and Eberts further responses on Eberts site.

They both make some interesting points on the subject of games as art. Here is a part I found particularly interesting;

Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."

Ebert: "He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet" Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic?"

I think that Eberts view here is flawed yes surely if you could change the ending of "Romeo and Juliet" then it would no longer be Shakespeare's artistic vision but your own, you would become the artist. But surely a planned complex narrative created for a game with multiple endings are created by the games designers and still part of there creative vision and not the players, though the player may feel they have control over there outcome within a game the end result will still be one created by the designers. I argue that there is an artistic collaboration within games, the player is also the artist, able make the choices and progress of the game, without the player the game will sit idle. I believe Barker reflects on this by saying "We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. "

Control Mechanics as Art???

Can a games control scheme have artistic value? Can it emotionally reach an audience on a cognitive level? A game controller is the direct physical connection someone has with a video game so surely it should be an important aspect of an artistic vision within a game, but often I believe it is overlooked. Here is a post on destructoid.com by Jason Leray titled Shadow of the Colossus' controls are an exercise in art. Leray makes some very interesting points on how Team Ico's Shadow of the Colossus and how its control scheme contributes to its artistic vision. I believe he makes some valid points, for example the games grabbing mechanic used to grab hold of ledges and scale the colossi (the huge beast that must be defeated to progress through the game) instead of just hitting the r1 button the once to grab hold of a ledge you have hold onto the button allowing you as the player to have a connection with the games protagonist. "There is never a rift between what's happening on-screen and what's happening in your hand."

Also mentioned is the control mechanics of Argo the protagonists trusty stead, later in the game you are reliant on Argo's "AI and ability to take care of himself... as some colossi are impossible to beat without his help." This creates a bond between you as the player and argo and contibutes "To a compelling artistic metaphor (friendship)."

Henry Jenkins - The New Lively Art

This Publication by Henry Jenkins Games, the new lively art. Is an application of popular aesthetics to games and there cultural value.  It revisits Gilbert Seldes The seven lively arts (1924) and how it "Might contribute to our current debates about the artistic status of computer and video games." Seldes argued that a primary source of artist expression in america had formed through emerging popular culture such as jazz and hollywood cinema. It also says how critics at the time were quick to dismiss Seldes argument much like todays topic of games emerging as a form of artistic expression. Jenkins concludes that games are in indeed maturing and progressing towards an artist value and that healthy criticism and debate can help drive them foreward.

Chris Crawford - On Game Design

Chris Crawford's book On Game Design has an interesting chapter titled Creativity: The missing ingredient. In this chapter Crawford explains how "Nowadays, games design itself is a cold mechanical process requiring little in the way of creativity." He is not referring to game designers as not being creative people but that "The problem is that in the long grind from inspiration to product, the most creative aspects of the design are ground away until the final result is little more than yesterday's big hit with a few minor embellishments" He describes that as budgets have gone up designers are less likely to take risks than they would do with smaller budgets and thus the creativity of games is affected, money making over innovation and creativity. After-all a majority of games are made to make money. Does this mean they have the right to earn an artist status?

Chris Crawford - Dragon Speech

Click here for a link to a Section of Chris Crawford's famous dragon speech at the Game Developers Conference 1992. He begins by talking about language and how it is used to teach people, and the concept of mass media, a way to teach many people, and that this is the genesis of art. "Because art really is just a way of communicating ideas." He says. He refers to Michelangelo's statue "pieta" that shows mary cradling the crucified body of her son (Jesus Christ) and that the statue he says "Conveys to you, the audience the message of motherly love with tremendous power, it is compelling, it is clear, it is powerful and because of these things, it is so great, we call it beautiful." He later talks about the mind being an active agent and not a passive receptacle and if art puts us as an audience in a passive role then it is in conflict with "The basic structure of the human mind." To explain this further he talks about effectiveness over efficiency if he were to convey his views in this lecture on a one to one basis with someone then they would interact bouncing back and forth with conversation and it would be different, that person would learn more, the one to one conversation is an active audience and the lecture is a passive audience. Though the lecture is more efficient. He explains this problem has been with us for centuries "Every artist, communicator... has been forced to sacrifice effectiveness over efficiency.Until now." He says this problem has been solved because now with floppy disks and computers we can convey our ideas in games and these games can be mass-produced and then the ideas are interacted with, with effectiveness. This says to me the potential of games as a artistic expressive medium.

Flower

Click here for a link to a video about Flower narrated by the president and co-founder of ThatGameCompany Kellee Santiago. In the video Kelle says "We start our ideas with emotion, how we want the player to feel." is this not how an artist would approach a painting? Flower is like an interactive watercolor painting, that moves and changes as you paint the ground with color as you float across its landscapes. The game is freely available on the playstation Network which relates to what Chris Crawford said during his Dragon speech "Effectiveness over efficiency." Looking into the philosophical definitions of art, the game is mimetic, an observation of nature(traditional), the games aesthetics are clear (Functional), and it has been widely praised by critics(Institutional). I believe Flower is interactive art and a good sign that maybe Chris Crawford was wrong in the Creativity: the missing ingredient chapter on his book On Game Design. What Kelle says towards the end of the video backs this up "With downloadable games you can have smaller teams, smaller budgets, which means we can take more creative risks and now we are seeing all sorts of games that would not have been published with out the playstation network." This feels me with enthusiasm about the artistic direction the games industry can go. Sally backs this up further by saying "Were continuing to try and create games that express emotions and hopefully push the boundaries of what games can do." Is this not what artists do with a medium.

Alex Legg – Environment Artist

Alex Legg is an environment artist for Rockwell Collins, he has a degree in Computer Animation and uses Maya, 3Ds Max, Mudbox, Unreal Ed and Crazybump. I have an interest in his work because I am trying to learn the best techniques in creating low-ploy.

 High and low resolution models made in 3Ds Max

Diffuse, Normal, Specular and Occlusion maps.

Alex created this model using a tutorial from Eat3D. The low resolution model 1500 polys and 2000 tris, the distribution of tris on the model are well controlled and texture maps are well made and effective, I think I could learn a lot from using the same tutorial.

Here is an in game image of the model in the Unreal engine. From looking at this model I can see the benefit of creating looks of separate model assets to create a room instead of multiple or all assets in one go. By creating multiple objects I will have more control over creating maps that suit different surfaces and will being able to gain a higher resolution.

3Ds MAX – Pelt Mapping

Pelt Mapping is a great technique which I have just learnt, I have found that since I have learnt this technique I use it for 80% of the mapping work I do on models. First of all I apply a UVW Unwrap modify to my model in the modify tab. I then select faces and click the Point To Point Seam button, this tool allows me to cut up my model into different sections to be mapped. To do this I can use the Point To Point Seam tool to select edges to separate up sections of polygons. Example below, the seams I have created are marked blue.

After I have marked out the sections of the model I want to map I select one of the faces of a section I want to map and select Exp. Face Sel To Seams, this selects all the faces on the section I want to map. I then click Pelt. Which brings me up with the Pelt menu.

Faces before pelt

 I click Pelt which stretches and unfolds the sections of faces along the seams I had selected with the Point To Point Seam tool.

Faces after pelt

I Then select Relax which relaxes the faces and brings the faces into proportion.

Faces after Relax

3Ds MAX – Extrude Along Spline

This is a useful technique I have learnt which is especially helpful when creating trees models. First of all I create a tall cylinder which will be the trunk of my tree.

 I then go to Create - Objects and select the line tool. Go to the Top view port and create a line of four vertex points in a rough shape and direction I want for the roots of my tree. I then go back to the Perspective view and adjust the vertex points again.

 As you can see I move the line so that it touches the model and is roughly in-between two polygons. I then select these two polygons and select Extrude Along Spline (I click the menu button for this function which is a small small square that is next to the functions name) and select Pick Spline, then I select the line I had created that is touching the selected polygons. Polygons now extrude from the cylinder model along the line. I then adjust the Segments, Taper Amount and Taper Curve opens in the Extrude Polygons Along Spline menu accordingly to get the effect of a tree root.

By using this technique many times over on this model, adjusting the options of the Extrude Polygons Along Spline menu for each extrude to add variety I can create a basic complex tree model within minutes. Below is the final result after half an hour.

Importing Models into Unity

Unit set-up

Before I begin modelling anything in 3DS MAX which I intend to import into Unity I go to Customize - Unit setup, then click the System Unit Set-up tab which brings me up with this menu.

 I set my Unit Scale to 1.0 and Meters, this helps me to keep my models in scale for example height of walls and the size of rooms. This is important because when I import multiple models into unity they will piece together perfectly without having to spend time scaling them to fit together.

Here is a basic model of two planes I created which I have applied a texture and a basic bump map.

Model

Render

Now I open Unity and create a new project saving it to My Documents. Back in 3DX MAX I save my model to the the assets folder with in my Unity project folder. I also create a new folder with in the assets folder naming it textures and copy and paste my model texture and bump map to it.

Now when I go back to Unity my model and textures have been imported to my project tab.

Now I tick Collision Colliders and select Don't Import on the Animations Generation tab and click apply.

Now I can just drag and drop my model from the Projects tab to my scene. After that I click each plane in the Hierarchy tab. This give me the option to apply my textures to the model. I select an extra Shader option on the Shader tab and select Bumped_Diffuse. This applies another texture option below to put my bump map into. I select my textures in the 2D texture tabs and select the tiling to 3.0 on the X and Y axis of each texture, this is the result.

My model is now imported into Unity, now to add some lighting I go to GameObject - Create Other and create a Directional Light and a Point light, position them to bring out my textures and here is the final result of my 3DS MAX to Unity import test.

UNITY – Particle Effects

To create a particle physics system in Unity I go to GameObject - Create Other - Particle. This applies a particle system to my unity scene.

From the Inspector menu I can adjust the variables of the particle system to suit an effect of my choice. For this blog post I will create a rising flame. To do this I go to the Particle Renderer script in the inspector menu and double click on Materials - default elements section. This brings a new window within the Inspector menu which allows me to change the textures of the particle system. From here I select Flame D which is a particle texture that comes with the Unity software, this now changes the textures that the particle system generates.

Now I can adjust the variables of the particle system to get the effect of a rising flame. To do this I change the Max Size to 1 (this adds a variety to the size of the particles being emitted) , the World Velocity to 5 on the Y axis (this sends the up the Y axis to a factor of 2), the Local Velocity to 1 (this adds a sway to the particles direction which gives the effect of the particles being swayed by the wind) and finally the under the Local Rotation Axis - Size Grow to 1. Below is the result.

Research Methodology

Qualitative research

Qualitative research aims to theorize and contextualize meanings in human behaviour, for example, decisions we make and reasons why we perform certain actions.

Ethics

Grand Theft Auto, the first instalment to the series is a game that raised a lot of ethical questions when it was released. Grand Theft Auto is set in three cities which the player is free to roam, the main objective of the game is to reach a certain amount of points for each city, the player can achieve this through various criminal activities; stealing cars and selling them, running people over, killing and assassinating people, also missions can be completed which include robbing banks, being a getaway driver, returning stolen drugs to syndicates and more. These raise ethical questions that Toshihiro Nagoshi designer of the game Yakusa reflects upon in this article from kotaku.com "I thought one day someone is going to have to make something like this. Personally, because I think you must think about the influence games have on people, I would never think about wanting to make a game like this. However, because of the moral issues in this game, I think we should have a healthy debate...In gaming, if you make a decision, there is a reaction, and it's the most stimulating form of media, I think. And thus, it can asked if it's the most dangerous media... Depending on what you make, perhaps." (Nagoshi, Yakuza Creator On Grand Theft Auto by Brian Ashcraft, Kotaku.com, 2009) I believe Nagoshi makes a good point, it’s a debate that has been running about films for years, do they have an effect on people? Here is an article from cbsnews.com. This is a report by Correspondent Ed Bradly. Devin Moore of 18years “who had played Grand Theft Auto day and night for months.” (Ed Bradley, Can A Video Game Lead To Violence, n.d.) Shot dead three police officers after being brought into Fayette police station on suspicion of stealing a car, he then “grabbed a set of car keys. He went out the door to the parking lot, jumped into a police cruiser, and took off.” (Ed Bradley, n.d.) Its reported that after his capture Moore said “Life is like a video game. Everybody’s got to die sometime.” (Moore, n.d,) Frighteningly these do feel very similar to events from the game and there is no denying the assumption that Grand Theft Auto could be a contributing factor. Attorney Jack Thompson on the case says “What we're saying is that Devin Moore was, in effect, trained to do what he did. He was given a murder simulator... He bought it as a minor. He played it hundreds of hours, which is primarily a cop-killing game. It's our theory, which we think we can prove to a jury in Alabama, that, but for the video-game training, he would not have done what he did.” (Thompson n.d.) My views on this moral question on video game related violence is that if someone is capable of committing such an extreme act of violence they would find some other medium to vent themselves with, for Thompson to say Grand Theft Auto is a “Murder simulator” (Thompson n.d.) and provokes violence from individuals in the outside world is unfounded as there would many more cases across the globe. I believe it a possibility Devin Moore was capable of crimes even before he played Grand Theft Auto, but I am not denying that it may have desensitised him and contributed towards his actions, which could have been from elsewhere in his life or yet to be, from another media source for example, reading about a crime, or watching a violent film or documentary.

The Making of: Playstation

Here is an article from edge-online.com. It gives a good introduction into the history of the playstation and its success.

Rising from the ashes of a battleground of negotiations and betrayal with Nintendo over the Super SNES CD, a peripheral CD-drive for use with the SNES "Nintendo declared that it would be breaking its deal with Sony by partnering with Philips instead." (edge staff, the making of: playstation, 2009) This enraged Sony's president Norio Ohga and with the influence of Ken Kutaragi (who designed the S-SMP chip, used in the Super NES) sony eventually decided to develop their own console. At that time named the Playstation X. 

A part of this article I found particularly interesting was the decision by Norio Ohga to remove Ken Kutaragi from Sony and move him along with nine team members to Sony Music. He did this for two reasons:

Not only outside the company but also internally views towards Sony entering the gaming business was met with resistance, and Ohga feared Kutaragi's passion to enter it would crush his reputation. Explained by a quote from Phil Harrison, the then president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios "The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of the playstation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-yearold brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years."(Harrison, n.d) This is also an interesting insight in to the cultural value of gaming within business at that time.

Secondly "Sony Music knew how to nurture creative talent and how to manufacture, market and distribute music discs - with the move to CD-ROM, the mechanics of making and supplying games had become similar to that used for music" (edge staff, the making of: playstation, 2009) which would have made the working on CD-ROM on the Playstation for Kutaragi an easy transition.