Continued: This Semester's Lectures Weeks 6-12

On and on and on we go... yes I missed a few lectures, but I'm re-reading the powerpoints and adding in my own thoughts. I also have to write this in half an hour, since I've got to get to work and it's pelting with rain at the moment. Oh well.

Week Six:

So here we are at the half-way point. Six weeks down, six to go. By now, I'm absolutely fed up with the tutorials to the point where I've stopped going. Not that it made much difference. They were pretty damn useless anyway and I'd much rather catch up on my sleep.
So this week's lecture is all about game balance, game design and the game design document. Hooray! Something useful after many weeks of non-usefulness! I particularly liked the game balance theory. Often I've come across games that were poorly balanced (Pokemon Battle Revolution for a start), where the game seems to work on a catastrophe curve (things peeter on well for a bit, then suddenly get monstrously hard!). This theory work is particularly useful for our projects, particularly the multi-player games.
If there's one thing, however, that I disliked about the theory of game balance, it would have to be the work on dominant strategy. Right. So, for instance, in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, just because the dominant strategy is to use melee characters, that's what I'll use, right? Wrong! I'm going to use the character with the strongest stats, regardless whether I should or shouldn't use them. The fact that they are weaker to that type doesn't necessary mean that the player will not choose them. For example, if you have a Lv:70 Charizard (in Pokemon), you aren't going to swap it out for a grass-type against a Lv:10 Magikarp, just because fire is weak against water. No! You'd wipe the floor with it! Flamethrower would utter crisp it up! If the lecturers were to consider this, dominant strategies are less prevalent than they would think. As for unbeatable attacks... well, obviously they've never played Ratchet:Deadlocked, because the only way any normal person could beat Gleeman Vox on Exterminator difficultly (and this took me the better part of an afternoon) is with a Level 99 Supernova, the strongest weapon in the game. Oh, and other maxed-out weaponry once I had run out of ammo. Sheesh. Dominant strategy? Finding a strategy that works is the hard part!
The really annoying part of these lectures are that they take the Trinny and Suzannah approach (i.e what not to do). Yeah, you can fill innumerable books with that. What we want to know is what we need to do.

Week Seven:

Challenge. Oh yes, the perennial favourite. No way this could be boring. Right?

Maybe.

Actually, this lecture wasn't as boring and as snub-nosed as the previous ones. This one actually provided some useful information regarding rewards systems and challenge. I particularly liked the applications to Mario and the intrinsic skill and stress information.

Week Eight:

Now, this is stupid. FUN is not an emotion. You don't say 'I feel very fun today', at least you don't if you want people to think you have grammatical skill and dexterity. FUN is when you are in a state of enjoying something. It might not be fun for someone else, but it is for you. Fun, therefore, is a state of being, not an emotion. So after last week's good effort, we're back to being high 'n' mighty and slightly snub-nosed. Ugh. As for the emotional responses, well, quite obviously some of those headings could have been grouped together (violent/negative, positive, competitive, etc.). As for Hillary Clinton in Thompson's quote, he'd be surprised at her history (yeah, I've read American Rhapsody. There ain't much about the Clintons that I don't know. Before anyone makes any jibes about the Ice Queen, you have to know where she came from).
And the endless lists! What's the point? It's not like we're being quizzed on the recall of them. Perhaps incorporating some sort of weekly quiz on the lecture in the tutorial would help retain the information.
But the best thing about this lecture was... FINAL FANTASY VII! Hurrah! Finally, something I could identify with! Of course, Aerith's death was so upsetting for most people that it's one of the most iconic events from the series (apart from the entire storyline for Final Fantasy X and Tidus' painful parting from Yuna). Perfect example for evoking emotion. That and the finale of Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Clank's separation from Ratchet at the end made a lot of the die-hard fans very upset.

Week Nine - blessed relief!

Week Ten:

Multi-player games! Woo! This week's lecture began with another tour of history, involving the royal game of Ur and senet. I did like the work on cheating or 'betrayal' as they worded it. But come on, how many times have we all used cheats in games? I've found a couple of good ones myself (for Kingdom Hearts II, mainly). Game designers deliberately put them in. American McGee's Alice is a prime example. There are any number of lists of cheats that designers have left in from when they used them to check levels. The ones I found were on www.gamefaqs.com. But there are so many others.
There were some good questions to ask when designing our assessment games. I think there's a a fair few of us doing board games. After the awesome lecture over in Interactive Writing from the SCOOT team (who do location-based games), I wonder if maybe a location-based game would have been a more imaginative choice. Hmm, something to think about.

Week Eleven:

Phew, just two weeks to go! And, unfortunately, I can't access the notes for this one.

Or the week after. So this wraps up my lecture recaps. Finally.