Definitions in games/media
Representation
“Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. “ (1)
Also with the knowledge that NUCA presentation slides provides me on Representation and Space, I believe that Representation in this context is more correctly explained as a form of portrayal, depiction or a concept, for example;
using blocks of simple polygons in a game to portray objects or even characters. For example in Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy 7 (1997) characters are in form of bad blockish 3D polygons, but players understand what this represents.
Also from number IX in the series, on the world map, towns/ cities/ dungeons are all depicted as big as the character, which is ridiculous, but obviously this is just a form of visual representation and players understand this concept without usually realizing this. This is also very common in Real Time Strategy (RTS) games or any game that possess large world map like areas.
Audio Representation
In retro games such as Rockman, Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario, representation of audio and visual are very important since both technologies were very limited during the time. Usually gunshots are depicted with a laser like sounds, damage by a snare-like punching sound usually accompanied by flashing of the subject and deaths usually are depicted with a short demoralizing catchy tune. Here is a spoof of retro games, although it is a parody, it still does points out these few things I mention of sound and visual representations in games.
Space
“An element of art, space refers to distances or areas around, between or within components of a piece. Space can be positive (white or light) or negative (black or dark), open or closed, shallow or deep and two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Sometimes space isn't actually within a piece, but the illusion of it is.” (2)
As explained above, Space refers to an area or sometimes the illusion of having an area, for example; a fully immersive 3D world map in a game, it is not real but if done right could make the player feels that the area exist and engaged in the game’s particular setting. A few good examples of games with immersive surroundings;
Red Dead Redemption (2010)
Set in the Wild West, environment plays a big part to grab players into this grim yet beautiful world of gun battles. Almost like it was taken straight from a John Wayne or Sergio Leone’s movies set, especially when this is a free roam sandbox game that requires players to explore and wander around a lot, it totally captured the essence of what being a gunslinger is like.
Shadow Of the Colossus (2005)
A fantasy story with a massive environment to roam around and get lost in (literally and mentally) in a good way; the landscape sometimes plays as a mini puzzle where players have to sort of find their way to certain colossus. Also very significant and plays a huge role during some of the Colossi battles, many times even utilizing the colossus themselves as environment.
Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas (2004)
Although the visual is pretty obsolete to today’s standard and contain lots of graphical glitches, it is still a fine game that utilizes its environment impressively, especially on missions involving air vehicles and trip to the country sides, which looks amazing and very lively for a game during the time.
More
Other games such as First Person Shooter Killzone 2 and 3, Stylish Action Devil May Cry series and Bionic Commando, have a similar way of presenting the illusion of space, by mapping out areas in the distance that aren’t actually accessible by players and blocked out by ‘invisible walls’ during the game. This gives the player the sense of freedom and being in a largely created environment, while the game itself is actually pretty much linear.
Technology
“The branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.” (3)
Some examples of today’s technology in games,
Motion Capture
A technology that allows capturing animation or facial expression from real reference by using ‘dots’ placed on the body or face, very often used in blockbuster movies and action packed games.
“Motion capture (AKA Mocap) used to be considered a fairly controversial tool for creating animation. In the early days, the effort required to 'clean up' motion capture data often took as long as if the animation was created by an animator, from scratch. Thanks to hard work by the manufacturers of motion capture systems as well as numerous software developers, motion capture has become a feasible tool for the generation of animation.” (4)
High Definition (HD) Visuals
Technology that allows smooth and crisp visual to be displayed.
“HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD.” (5)
Motion Sensors
Nintendo Wii, Xbox Kinect & Playstation Move are 3 examples of today’s top motion sensor technology.
“PlayStation Move is a motion-sensing game controller platform for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). Based on a handheld motion controller wand, PlayStation Move uses the PlayStation Eye camera to track the wand's position, and inertial sensors in the wand to detect its motion.” (6)
Creativity
“The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.” (7)
Some examples of creativities in games;
Portal (2007)
It’s a simple concept of using a gun that fires 2 portals to solve puzzles throughout the whole game. Definitely a fresh new concept when it first came out.
Guitar Hero (2005)
Sure there were arcade version of instrumental game such as Guitar Freaks or Drums Revolution, but Guitar Hero did an amazing move by bringing them all in 1 game, gave the game a personality and even added a singing and up till now the types of instruments just kept on growing, not to mention the number of similar musically inclined games that followed up this concept.
Heavy Rain (2010)
An interactive drama, where u played scenes utilizing Quick Time Events (QTE) buttons and choices during the game. Story also branches out depending on how the player play out particular scenes, which in turns affects the ending as well. A very bold move by Quantic Dream, considering it’s a game that you basically watch 70 percent of the time, nevertheless it is definitely an intense and fresh experience for gamers who are looking for something different.
Culture
Anthropology. The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” (8)
Examples of cultures in games;
Assassin’s Creed series (2007-2011)
Set in the ancient holy land during the year 1191.
Similarly Assassin’s Creed 2 is set in the northern Italy during the Renaissance (15th Century).
Suikoden series (1996-2008)
A Sony Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) that lets player recruit up to 108 characters in the game. While it is loosely based on a Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan, variety of cultures is the backbone of this massively diverse game, there are many different places, governance and way of life with references to real world cultural & warfare state.
God Of War (2005-2010)
Loosely based on Greek mythology and culture, players follows the story of an original character called Kratos as he fights his way against tons of mythical creatures, weapons and also featuring ancient Greek gods, goddesses & villains such as Zeus, Hermaphrodite & Hades to name a few.
My Research for Group task
Representation
1. One Low Pixel Character
Solid Snake from Metal Gear (1987)
2. One HD Character
Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008)
I thought using Solid Snake from MGS1 and MGS4 as references is brilliant because there is a 21 years gap between the 2 games and of course they are the same character, only older, making this comparison rather fair and able to bring out the contrast in technology a lot more.
Space
1. One Silent or basic sound environment
Spiderman : Friend or Foe (2007)
The environment in this game isn’t exactly silent in terms of sound or music, but in terms of movement, interactivity or looks, this game is pretty ‘dead’. Environments are really bland, flat and poorly made, there are not much to do in the game other than just moving forward all the time, the map is also really small in length and rather boring.
2. One Fully Immersive 3D environment
Red Dead Redemption (2010)
A beautifully crafted environment of the old west. Weather changes, rain visual looks believable and the sound of the environment is amazing; minimalist use of soundtrack & occasional sound of animals adds to the eerie feel of the wild west. Visually unchallenged, player will find themselves on a vast land of the US and Mexico, riding for hours on horses, having gunfights, doing missions and still have a moment to stop for a second just to enjoy and soak in the scenery.
My research on Representation & Space essay
Upon researching for a topic on my essay, I browsed through some of the articles on DiGRA website www.digra.org
These are some of the articles that interest me:
Among pasta-loving Mafiosos, drug-selling Columbians and noodle-eating Triads – Race, humour and interactive ethics in Grand Theft Auto III
By Mikolaj Dymek & Thomas Lennerfors
This text talks about the how Rockstar made a game based on racially stereotypical characters, revolving on a storyline that consist of betrayal, violence and political sarcasm and humor; Grand Theft Auto III. It explores the issue on how this game had become a cultural impact among gamers and non-gamers alike. It also talks about how the author used two different analytical method; Critical Racism Theory (CRT) and Humor to further discuss about the game’s controversial nature.
Sex in Games: Representing and Desiring the Virtual
By Gareth Schott
It talks about how pornographic material or adult related content is just a part of our media culture, with no exception to games. It mentions some examples of games such as Leisure Suit Larry or Playboy Mansion that uses this as a selling point and how gamers are becoming more and more obsessed about their virtual ‘celebrities’. However, this article never discussed much about the impact on our of this happening.
Computer games and violence: Is there really a connection?
By Tor Endestad & Leila Torgersen
This article features how the authors collected data by surveying students from different schools, to find out about the relationship between playing different genres of games and being violent. In the conclusion, its is mentioned that only certain types of games will aroused violent nature in players so generalization that computer games equals violence is definitely out of the picture, further more the results also show that action game have more unique effect on violent behavior than first person shooter. However this article never got much into the cause of this trend.
So I decided to look upon the subject of violence in games; which includes racism, sex, gore, etc. hopefully to be able to find out the factual results of playing certain kind of games and whether or not they cause players to become more violent, therefore my topic will be ‘Does violent games equals violent gamers?’
During my research I came across few more articles online that I believe might help me achieve the answers to my topic.
To start of I searched for articles that have similar questions and more generally talking about the controversy within gaming world and the problems it causes to young people that might have been influenced by violent games.
Then I started to look more on how this actually started.
I also looked at some articles that provides me factual advantages and disadvantages for playing games.
Then I came across a good article that talks about 12 most controversial Video Games. Which is definitely useful for this research.
With these I gathered that this issue has been in debate for so long in the history of gaming, dating back to early days when Death Race (1976) or Mortal Kombat (1992) first came out, followed by the very popular Grand Theft Auto series which despite of the lawsuit charges against it, kept selling more and more copies on every new release.
So in my essay I will discuss about the history, some articles regarding the issues, incidents that are associated to this topic such as Columbine shooting or Akihabara Massacre), some statistics and measures being taken on this issue. Lastly I will conclude the essay with my take on this topic.
Bibliography
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