Task 6. Finding yourself in a routine plot?

I’m a bit tired and irritable today. Don’t know why I can’t get through even half a day without getting tired lately. Anyway hope it doesn’t affect my writing so here it goes. O and by the way Tenkaichi 2 is pretty darn good so if you’re thinking about getting it, it’s worth getting. Also been playing FEAR extraction point, it’s amazing, very scary and atmospheric it’s the only game series that makes me scared so I’m a little bias.

Gameplay appears to me as the actual mechanics of the game. The task that is set for the user to complete for example in FPS games the main task is to shoot and kill all enemy objects before they shoot and kill you. I think gameplay is the skellington of a game where only the task exists with variables being more in the area of X and Y than The human hero and evil aliens. Therefore the gameplay of two games could be exactly the same but it’s the actual design that separates them. Games design integrates the mechanics of the gameplay along with visual effects, programming, sounds and narrative.

My personal favourite games developer is Square Enix. They produce a mainly Japanese cultured game based more around an epic storyline and trying to take existing gameplay mechanics e.g. an experience levelling system. Then reinventing it to give their games of the same genre a fresh feel e.g. the sphere grid in final fantasy 10 rather than the pure experience system of final fantasy 7 or kingdom hearts.

The games design process is conducted before creation of the final game even starts. A games design is produced to a producer possibly along with some basic prototype programs to model their idea this design could be entirely created by one person or a large team of people. The producer will then give the green light to the project if they believe it is a good enough design. However the games design is always changing throughout production therefore when a games design is shown it tends to be incomplete.

I think different games genres require different principles as their mechanics are different. A game like FEAR needs game levels and sound to work in harmony to create as spooky an environment as possible while a turn based strategy game would be more dependant on the maths of all damage calculation and computer AI rather than relying on object skins to effect gameplay.

I think my personal preference of gaming is dependant on mainly storyline. Older games like final fantasy 7 easily contend with games of the same genre with much higher level of graphics purely because the story was so amazing. That doesn’t mean that gameplay is not a effector it just varies depending on the genre of the game. For beat em up games I will mainly judge it on the game mechanics rather than the actual storyline. As the beat em up genre doesn’t really go hand in hand with in depth storylines.