Mac's Blog

Woohoo! Finally the chapter is done! Looking back at what I have written with fresh eyes was a great way for me to realise I have a real tendency to ramble. After taking out numerous tangents that went nowhere I finally had a chapter that I feel flows nicely. I also added in my author bio and a bibliography which I feel pretty silly for not including in the first place. Overall, I had a great time working on this chapter and am happy with the end result, I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I did researching and writing it.

  Author Bio My name is Matthew McConnell, I am 22 years old and a student of Creative Digital Media in TUDublin Blanchardstown. I've been playing all sorts of games my entire life so it just made sense that I would try and focus my career goals around playing games and having fun. My favourite Video Games are usually single player RPGs but I feel that games are best played with other people so I love going to the arcade with friends. Chapter Topic My chapter topic is the history of gaming in the predigital era, which is something I had a lot of fun researching and writing about, I'm a big nerd so talking about Dungeons and Dragons and the history of the game chasing was just really fun topics for me to write about. My Thoughts I'm pretty happy with how my chapter turned out, I feel like its pretty well researched and written competently enough. The thought of having something I wrote published in a bonafide book is a really exciting concept to me. I look forward to informi...

  https://www.wikihow-fun.com/Dress-Like-the-Nostalgia-Critic I was sad to see that no one had reviewed my chapter besides Irene, ah well, it was my own fault for missing class. This week I went through my colleagues chapters, unfortunately Nasim hadn't uploaded anything. Emma had cut down a few things in the middle of the chapter and it reads much better. I cut down a lot of places where I tend to go on a tangent that has nothing to do with my topic.

image taken from pixabay  I was pretty happy with the feedback I got about my chapter, the fact that it was too long was a good thing for me as I believe its easier to have something be too long and cut stuff out than have it be too short and have to add a bunch more words. Essentially what I've done is taken out all the fluff from my chapter and spruced up my bibliography, I really wasn't thinking when it came down to putting a link into my text lol. I also need to stop spelling Gary Gygaxs name wrong, I think its just autocorrect changing what I tye behind my back.

  https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/nostalgia-critic-0db846d2e60442e1a0433155e930cc03 I had a bit of trouble this week as I had come down with a pretty bad flu so I ended up missing class. From what I can see I didn't get put into a group to review anyone's work so I decided to review the writings of Emma and Nasim who I know from doing group project with.  Emma had written about a topic that was pretty close to mine, namely "The resurgence of simple games - board games, card games and table top RPGs". The chapter is really well researched and poses a pretty wholesome reason as to why people were returning to board games, essentially the digital age has made people lonely, and thus they long for human connection. The chapter was well written however I personally feel that the writing becomes bloated in the middle. Unfortunately it looks like Nasim hasn't written anything for his chapter yet, I'll update this when he does. 

  “A Predigital History of Games And Narrative” By Matthew McConnell B00138902 The common agreed upon starting point for video games came in 1958, when an American physicist named William Higinbotham created a game called “Tennis for Two” on an old analog computer, like its more well known successor “Pong” it was played by two people controlling digital paddles hitting a small digital ball to and fro across the screen until one person had scored more points than the other. This one invention led to the creation of various arcade cabinets, game consoles and inevitably brought about the hugely popular gaming craze that has swept the world in the last two or three decades. However, “Tennis for Two” isn’t the first example of people inventing an activity for the sole purpose of simple fun, in actuality, games have been played throughout the history of hundreds of different cultures throughout the world. For example, Tennis for Two was obviously based on the game Tennis, which can be tr...

Man Reading Pictures/ iStockPhotos  Greeting Friends, Thats how Gary Gramenz begins his video on how to code a document and create themes, for some reason, those two words had an impact on me. I felt a certain kinship with Gary and I was excited to hear what he had to say. So in awe was I by these words that I have decided to add it to my personal vocabulary.  The collection of data and processing into a readable article was something I had learned to do in my last college during my journalism course but the whole coding a document aspect was completely new to me. The creation of themes was something hat hadn't occurred to me to do, usually I just kinda write down whatever comes into my head and hope to god that what I have written makes sense. The themes I ended up coming up with are as follows: Fun throughout history, gaming's impact on society, gaming systems, how games are played and meaningful gamification.  I'll have to start writing this chapter pretty soon, w...

Cover for "The Shamutanti Hills" by Steve Jackson “In ev’ry job that must be done  There is an element of fun  You find the fun, and snap!  The job’s a game!” (Travers 1934) I'm an active reader, it's a curse. Every time I read something it takes me forever because I get too critical with what I'm reading, for instance, when I read a historical novel,  I'm gonna have to have twenty Wikipedia articles open on my phone explaining the backstory of each and every character and place mentioned. So when it came to this weeks reading I made sure to take my active reading compulsions to the next level and really critically analyse what I have been reading. I learned some interesting stuff, like that the term "gamification" was coined in 2002. However the thought of gamification goes back a long way, it seems that throughout our history, the human race has striven to gamify the boring parts of our life, such as everyday work life and even religious ceremony. ...

  Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Wikipedia This weeks readings focused on a concept called "flow theory". It seems to focus a lot on the player using game dynamics to achieve goals within a game and keeping the player engaged. It is a state that I have found myself in quite a few times, and it is interesting to me that this is something that game developers take into consideration when creating a game. It seems that keeping a player engaged is very important. However I feel that most modern games focus on introducing a player to game flow  at the beginning of their games, slowly teaching the player how to engage with it, which is great when the player is playing the game for the first time, but I feel that having to reintroduce players to game flow on another playthrough can be a hindrance, that's why I think that games should give players all the gameplay opportunities possible at the start of the game to keep them engaged longer.

"Design Considerations" by Greg Aleknevicus was a cool thing to read. As a Warhammer fan, I found his insight to creating board games pretty cool, I appreciate how he mentioned Space Hulks cool box art as an important part of the game, which I feel is an oftentimes overlooked aspect to games nowadays. I feel that nowadays more people care about gameplay trailers and researching a game rather than just seeing something cool and buying it. The blog focuses mainly on board games though so it's not the most helpful thing I've read. The video on Game Design Documents was a good help to me while I created my own Game Design Document.

MDA framework for IT system design | 4Agile  What does MDA stand for then? Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics Mechanics is essentially how the game plays, whether it be jumping,r unning or even how long it takes to look down the sight of your gun in a game. Dynamics is what comes from combining multiple mechanics creating a smooth gameplay experience, for instance, in order to play Mario, the player runs and jumps. Aesthetics is essentially what the game aims to make the player feel, for instance, harder gameplay and scary game settings create a horror aesthetic. This is what I was able to piece together from my reading anyway. 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fsabotencon%2Fstatus%2F906211826823815170&psig=AOvVaw1d_ap4ym4gTAVD8kCA4XY5&ust=1641866276866000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjhxqFwoTCPiz5NOKpvUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD   The reading this week was real fun. The video  had alot of fun ideas as to how to come up with ways to conceptualise your games in real life, it reminds me of how Hideo Kojima used Lego to create and plan out the maps for the Metal Gear games, an interesting video that kind of connects to this can be found here . "Formal Abstract Design Tools" by Doug Church was an easy, quick read. I enjoyed how on page 2 he discusses how games have a language without borders, detailing how gamers have their own lingo that stretches worldwide which I found amusing. I found Paper Prototyping and Iterative Design by Chris Barney to be the best of the three. It has the same sort of concept found in the video but his blog aesthetic and his writing...

 The readings this week match up pretty well with my week in general, I was listed as a close contact so I've essentially  just been spending my isolation play testing my upcoming game, I've also sent it around to some of my friends and got their hot takes and opinions on it. Therefore I'm pretty excited to see what the readings have in store for me and maybe I can compare how I did my playtesting to how they tell me I should do it. The first reading,"7 Different Types of Game Testing Techniques" essentially lists what it says on the tin, listing 7 different ways to test your game, the 4th one, functionality testing is one that stands out to me as I have no clue how the game will run on itch.o, I think I had better test it and see. After that I read, "Computer Games Are Serious Business and so is their Quality: Particularities of Software Testing in Game Development from the Perspective of Practitioners" was a long read, but an interesting one, essential...

image-photo/fabulous-shadow-little-prince-on-horse-578902873  I can't believe watching video essays about video games is what I get to do for homework every week, it's awesome. I was halfway through watching the video "Telling Stories with Systems" when I realised, hold on... I've watched this before, in fact, it's the video that got me to try out Crusader Kings 2! It's nice to know all those hours watching YouTube videos as a teenager have finally started to pay off! This weeks topic on stories in games is one that interests me greatly as most of the time the main thing I look for when deciding to play a new game is the story, or more importantly the stories I can inside the game. One of the main reasons why I love RPGs like The Witcher 3 is that although I can complete quests and goals set for me by the developers, I can also choose how to go about them, will I be a barbarian and cut down every enemy I see? Or will I choose to talk it out with the villai...

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pondering-my-orb Crikey, I can't believe it's week 9 already, it feels like so much has changed since we started this wee project back in December. Thats why it's important to look back on the past few weeks and determine how well I've been working with the readings and writings of the past 9 weeks. I'll be the first to admit that my blog is looking pretty scarce, it's been a rough couple of weeks with family tragedies and job drama nearly completely consuming my life so I haven't been able to update the blog as much as I would have liked. And believe me, I like writing this blog, I love it even, I get such a strong sense of catharsis when I sit down and just type my thoughts onto the screen, it really helps me to get in touch with myself and kinda figure out what my brain is up to whilst I wander the earth doing projects and chores until I fall asleep proceed to repeat that process day in, day out. Looking back on what I'v...

  https://unsplash.com/@roadtripwithraj Reading 1: I found this essay pretty interesting as it hits the nail on the head as to how to fit games into category's, I think video games as an art form are more in need of definitions and genres than say films, as with films, though yes there are rules, the audience doesn't control the film, the film decides how the audience interacts with it whereas with a game, players require guidelines and rules to help them experience what the game has to offer. Reading 2: This essay was very helpful in how it goes about researching and understanding creativity itself. Writers block is a familiar burden so it was excellent to read through the many different techniques one can utilise to brainstorm new ideas. The interviewees had a very interesting thought that its easy to think of ideas but its hard to think of good ideas. Personally I believe that any idea can be a good idea as no one will ever know what will be successful and what will not unti...