So, one semester over, and soon another one will begin.
Its been one hell of a ride so far, having done a heap of research into different topics and then into transhumanism, looking in detail into the topic to create a basis from which I could create various different game ideas. From there, I took one of the different game ideas forward, fleshing it out into a game project proposal for next semester.
Its been hard. While the research itself hasn’t been difficult to complete, writeups will forever be the bane of my existence. Quite frankly, I hate doing the writing for these modules. I just don’t instinctively write up what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, and frankly it’s been the hardest part of this semester. For pretty much the entire semester I have been behind on the writeups, and it’s made the whole process so much harder. Due to how much I have had to catch up on, all of my phases have ended up a fair bit more rushed in the writeups than I’d like. It’s hopefully not affected my mark for this semester – it certainly hasn’t had an effect on the project itself, as that has been the reason the writeups have been so behind – but we’ll have to see how the marks turn out once I get it back. I do think that, all in all, the blog is pretty decent, and that I’ve covered everything I’ve done this semester, barring one perhaps glaring omission; I’ve not written anything on James’ workshops. Now, in fairness, a load of them were great, but honestly? I didn’t really use them once I reached the create phase, which was the phase when they would have had the strongest impact (it’s not like I have maths as a theme). For that reason, I decided that, given that I barely understood the content in a load of them, it wasn’t worth writing up about. Perhaps that was a mistake? I don’t know. It’s hard to gauge how much better or worse the create phase would have gone if I’d utilised them. What I do know is that I’m glad I didn’t have to write the blog posts for them. That would have been a heap of extra writing for not much payoff.
For my research phase, I feel like in hindsight I could have done a lot more research in to the themes I had in the first phase. While I feel that I have a good understanding of each, I’m not sure if I exhausted them enough to fairly gauge which to take forward. I do, however, feel that I picked the one that was best for me to take forward, as I really do love the theme of Transhumanism. There’s something about the theme that really gets my creativity going, although the same could be said for perception, which is another theme that was really interesting and could have become so many different things in the end. It’s something that I’m going to have to come back to in the future.
For the second phase, I’m pretty happy with my research into different media that have transhumanism as a theme or element. I covered a heap of different narratives, and I feel like this gave me some interesting ideas going forward into phase 3. I feel like phase 2 was the unsung hero of the semester, as looking into the different narratives directly made my game ideas in phase 3 so much more diverse and interesting. I do feel like my neglect of real life transhumanism was a bit of a missed opportunity, but as I stated then, I don’t feel that the stuff going on in real life is really there yet. At the moment technology has some elements of transhumanism, but the goal at the moment isn’t something so grandiose as going beyond human limits. Prosthetics, for example, currently are being developed to reach the level of human limbs, and while they’re there to a degree, they aren’t comparable, and definitely not reaching any human limits and going beyond them. It’s just not that interesting! Well, for game ideas, it is of course interesting to know about, which is why I’m glad it featured in the first phase so much. All in all, phase 2 was a success, in my opinion.
For phase 3, it was time to begin creating games, and as I stated, I love these phases so much more than research phases. Don’t get me wrong, I love to learn about new things, but writing up this stuff is super boring (just look it up if you don’t know about it, don’t make me write it up again). Creating game ideas though? That I enjoy, and can stomach writing it up after thinking up an idea. I think that the ideas that I came up with were great; All of them had some potential, even the fourth that I hated so much, and I feel that barring that one, any could have gone forward and become a great game, if enough time and resources were put to use solving any issues and making all of the necessary assets. This is especially true of the VR Puzzle Room Game, as that was one that I really want to make in the future, and was only not picked due to how uncertain the mechanical feasibility was. A shame, honestly. I’m also super happy with the fact that most of the ideas got prototypes, and the three that went into the presentation had moodboards, as this definitely helped to get the ideas across better. I just wish I had better explained the ideas so as to get someone else on board with an idea.
For the final phase, phase 4, I feel that I could have done more visual work. I have done some, and I’m happy with what I’ve made, but it would have been the icing on the cake if I had a good taste of the visuals for the game before the second semester started. In general, I don’t do much visual exploration, and I worry that it will affect my mark, but ultimately that’s just the way that I work. I don’t have the best time making visuals that aren’t final (I end up treating everything like its got to be the best in the whole wide world, then get depressed when my artistic skills can’t reach that), and I do feel that I have enough in other sections to make up for the lack of visuals for the game. This will be something I’ll have to do before the start of second semester, as I haven’t got much time to concept in addition to modelling and coding, which is also the reason that bosses will most likely be cut even if I could model them in time – it most likely wont be feasible to design mechanics that feel good for them.
Nevertheless, this semester, while one hell of a wild ride, has been successful. I feel that, overall, I’ve done good research and turned it into a good game proposal. Now, let’s hope that Adam agrees, and that I can execute on my vision in semester 2.
R. Wintle FMP Semester 1 