Writing and Games Journalism, an overview.

There are many forms of games writing in the world today, but the two main categories are formal and informal. There is the Games Journalism which will be for magazines such as pc games or PSX. These forms of writing are very professional and are written so that the majority of readers will understand. These come in the form of reviews, news, events ect. In the gaming world. The wages for these writers would be paid for by the publisher, for example the new games blog is published by the guardian online and also they do some writing in their newspapers. But there is a lot of informal work out there, unpaid, by people who just want to get the message out and people who are passionate about games and writing.
I’ve had a look at some of the websites and the style of writing does alter between each one. In the unpaid blogs the writing is very informal and is generally written how the person would talk. The formal writing uses a lot more technical terms and usually gives an unbiased view if it’s a review.

A high percentage of games writing is reviews and these are essential for the sale and marketing of new games. A good review in an established magazine could determine whether or not the game is a hit or a flop. There are also reviews on blogs which tend to be more biased to peoples preferences but can be a good way of gathering information about which game to buy.

A brief run through of the art for gams from each gen

Start - 1970's

Games 2000 - the future

The "current" history of games

In the 00's Games are becoming ever more expensive to make and require usually somewhere between 50-200 people to make a successful game, however with this a game that’s a 'hit' can reap in many more millions in profits for the producer. A good example of this which I sourced from http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/crossplatform.ars/2 shows the comparison between developer costs and profits of two of the most successful games of their time. The first being the 1982 release of Pac-man for the Atari compared with the 2004 game halo 2 for the Xbox. Pac-man cost only $100, 00 usd to make but sold over 10million copies and $30 each, and was written by 1 programmer over a few months, where as Halo 2 needed 190 staff of artists, programmers etc and cost more than $40 million usd to make, but sold for $50 a time and to use its full capabilities needed a subscription to Xbox live online service for up to $20 a month. This just showing that games are increasingly becoming more expensive to manufacture but are turning over roughly the same profits as 20 years a go.

This leads me to my next subject which is the increase in power and technology of consoles. With the introduction of "next gen" consoles, the Xbox 360 being the first in November 2005 (I debate whether or not it is next gen) and the ps3 well this blog is a little late so coincidently today in approximately 12 hours in the US will be on sale. I have learnt to believe some people have been queuing since the 6th of November for this, eherm I won’t say any more. The Nintendo Wii is also set for release in December which will no doubtable take Japan by storm with its innovated new controller which, I think is awesome and its what Nintendo do best by showing you don’t need ridiculous budgets and ridiculously real graphics to be a hit and stay true to just having good, new and exiting games.

I think form here things can only get better and more expensive and soon enough i'm sure there will be thousands of game artists working on matrix like games where they appear real by accessing the mind. Either way it’s good, more jobs for me ha-ha.
I think there will be some significant pressures on the gaming industry if the hardware continues to increase in power as it could drive smaller companies out of existence, I’m willing to bet Nintendo won’t be around in 20 years time and I’m pretty sure Google will have there own platform out by then too.

Week 3 task: Video Games 1980's-90's

the 1980's was the decade of the computer games industry. Companies began to produce video games just for the commercial market. The early games produced by these companies were replicas of the existing games except technology now enabled them to be created much cheaper and smaller for a mass market.
The 3 main computers developed in the early 80's were:
Commodore 64
Apple II
Atari 800

The 80s was also known at 2the golden age of games". Many games in the 80s contained elements of what is used today. The game Defender, a scrolling shooter game(a shoot 'em up with a scrolling background) was the first game to contain a viewport outside of the players view, this was simply a radar displaying the enemies but it is still used widely today on the same to much bigger scales.
The game "Dungeons of Daggorath was the first to use a "heartbeat" health monitor which is widely adopted in most modern games.
Pole position a racing game from 1982 incorporated a rear view mirror (using pseudo 3D graphics) where the player could view what or who was behind them in a race.

The first "cult" game of the 80's was pacman however which acclaimed world wide popularity and was the game industries first "celebrity"

The 3rd Generation console’s
the first of the 3rd Generation consoles was the early Famicon also known as The Nintendo Entertainment system (NES) which dominated North America with Super Mario bros in the Mid 80s. This undone by the sudden rise in the 3rd generation consoles. The Sega Master system was one of these. The master system dominated the UK market.
The 3rd Generation consoles adopted the gamepad as opposed to the joystick and paddles, and it was on these consoles that many of the modern games consoles’ develop their ideas.
1987 bore the first Final Fantasy, an RPG which has now has over 10 sequels and won numerous awards and become the most successful RPG franchise. 1986 the first Zelda game was released and 1987 saw the first metal gear solid hit the shelves, all introducing a new genre into the gaming community.

The 1990's
If you were to consider the 1980's the decade of the rise and development of the computer game the 90s was surely the 'Hollywood' era where games were given huge budgets and increasing amounts of staff who worked on them. Larger companies were soon to take over the market being able to produce games of better quality and cheaper.
3D was the new format hitting the 90's, and Demo's. Shareware became a very popular way of selling games by giving the user a demo before they buy the game. Doom was one of these to adopt it and soon became one of the great games of the early 90's.
1992 saw the release of Dune II an RTS, not the first in its genre but help set the game mechanics for future blockbusters such as Warcraft and Command and Conquer. Alone in the dark (1992) set the standards for the now very popular survival horror genre.
The 1990's saw maxis develop the first Sims games such as sim city and sim earth.

The fourth generation consoles
These included the megdrive and the Snes and dominated the commercial market introducing games such as Sonic the hedgehog and super Mario to a new level and becoming increasingly popular.


Fifth generation consoles
These sprang up in the late 1990's and included the Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn.
This also introduced the first commercial CD-Rom based console (possible excluding the Sega CD extension for the megadrive, which indecently was appalling I’m not sure) both the Saturn and playstation adopting this format. The Nintendo 64 stuck with cartridges however which could be considered a bad move because it caused the final fantasy series to move to playstaion. All the 5th Generation consoles wanted to show off their 3D capabilities, the 64 used Mario 64 as its flagship title and became a milestone for 3d gamers.

Here we are week two of the blog, including now my summary of both the history of games 1950-1970 and a brief incite into my gaming history.

Task 1

History of games 1950 - 1970

The beginning of computer games started in 1952 by A.C Douglas at Cambridge university, where he wrote his PhD paper on human-computer interaction and created a the first graphical computer game, tic-tac-toe or noughts and crosses as its better known as on a . Then in 1958 William Higinbotham Developed the first real computer game as we know it today. It was a very simple game called "tennis for 2" and was developed and played on Brookhaven National laboratory Ocillioscope. His idea was to create an interactive game with an analogue controller where the computer could determine the projectile of the ball.

This is A screenshot of Tennis for 2
played on the ocillioscope.

In the 60's computer games were mainly creating using university computer mainframes by people who programmed them in their spare time. The first one of these to get acclaimed was "spacewar" created by a group of students at MIT in the USA, the team included Steve Russel on the new computer at the time "the DEC PDP-1" The game pitted two human players against each other, each controlling a space ship capable of firing missiles. It was then distributed with every new DEC machine and became the first "widely" available game on the market

Screenshot of Space war

The next significant step in the gaming world wouldn't come until 1966 when Ralph Baer created the first playable game on a TV set beginning the revolution that is the games console. It took him 18 years to develop and the final result was a game called "Chase" . This was merly the beginning and Baer went on to produce a prototype console that included a table tennis and target shooting type game.
It wasn't until 1972 that the first games console for home use was available to by, it was called the odyssey and came programmed with no less than 12 different games. This was generally known as the first generation console.

The second generation consoles came out in the mid 70's, and no longer were games hard wired onto microchips like the Odyssey. This brought the birth of cartridges. A program loaded onto a ROM (read-only-memory) chip that were cased and could be added to the console. The 1 machine which outsold all their competitors and really started the mass buying of games consoles was the Atari 2600, released with 9 available Games during the holiday season.The Atari became the most widely sold console of the 70's and was a real step towards the mass popularity of gaming.


Arcade Gaming

• Computer space was widely regarded as the first arcade game and its founders would later go on to start up the Atari company.
  
  
• Pong - 1973 became a huge hit and was shown at various expos and traveling fairs alongside various other mechanical games.
• Space invaders 1977 changes the way arcade games were played

Thus concludes my brief history of games from 1950-1970 I hope you found that inciteful.

BTW just done a word count on that last blog and its bang on 1000 words bang on so sorry Mr P ill try and cut it down next time hehe

safe

In the beginning etc etc there was me Jabba, coming to DMU to get pissed and end up rich. It never really occured to me that i'd actually have to sit im my room ad do work. Only kidding i know this blog is goin to turn out much better than that last minute essay written on a napkin with an argos pen that probably would have been.

So any way whats been up?..

This feels like some sort of filler in heat magazine, i really should be asking what really turns me off about a woman but to be honest, thats pretty irrelevant and i am both the inverviewer and interviwee, and im pretty cretain no one wants to hear if i believe in love at first sight or some bull like that.

Anyway this week has been pretty awsome met some really "safe"(cool) people and generally been going out a lot. Theres some decent clubs and bars in leicester although nothing compares to london, i do like the closeness and convienence of it all. Took a trip to manchester to see an old friend this weekend, its ace up there although rather difficult and a lot of effort to get to various places as buses generally smell of wee and diesel which is not a good combination (on their own their not great either). Came back via nottingham to see a man about a dog then pretty much slept and ate since.

Last week did some skating, not to bad here, met some other skaters joined the society which looks great, it feels good goin out and doing something constructive and healthy as its the only thing keeping me from generally just lying in bed watchin my stomach hit my knees.

I also joined the ski and snowboard society as im a pretty keen snowboarder, dont really know what else to say on that so ill post a picture.

Here we go..



What about work?..

Whay about it? haha i'm really enjoying my course at the moment its jus something i love doin, I love using the PC as a medium because the possibilities are endless and i find i can express myself more using one. Don't get me wrong i am also an extremly skilled artist . But i do love drawing also and being able to work on my skills without the pressure of having to justify why a drew what i did it is a great release for me and will enable me to enjoy work a lot more.

So why Game art?..

Basically because it contains two of my great passions, Games and art, simple as that. It made chosing this course a whole lot easier and i feel that this will be something that i will persue as a career and enjoy myself greatly doing it which i think is essential in a line of work as i tend to have a ery short attention span with stuff that disinterests me even if it is important, EG that bloody library lecture i got up at half 8 for 2 weeks ago after approximatly 2 hours sleep thinking it was a very importand lecture... so dont bore me ha.

I've Enjoyed playing games pretty Much all my life I remember dying to get the megadrive what an awsome console that was ive never devoted so much time to anything in one sitting as i did to sonic the hedgehog ahh the memories. Modern times call for modern solutions however and since my megadrive us up in the great arcade in the sky i stick to playinng most my retro games now on my psp emulator which in my opinion is amazing, "fanjita" your a legend check out his website he is a true genious, Click here for fanjita's place.

Give me any modern game and i think ill enjoy it except full on japanese manga shite which really does annoy me. At the moment im playing a wide variety of games but generally i play a lot of simulation, RPG, FPS, and sports games i would say thats is where i gain most of my enjoyment.

My top five games at the moment (just for the blogs purpose)

1. UT 2004 (multiplayer) - PC
2. The Sims 2 - PC
3. Zelda 64 and the ocerana of time (awsome) - N64
4. Pro Evo 5 - PSP ans PS2
5. Dont laugh - Lego star wars trust me is simple yet amazing - PC

My Top five games of all Time

1. Sonic the hedgehog 2 - Megadrive
2. The sims (all) - PC
3. Golden eye - N64
4. GTA (all) but san andreas ultimatly - PS2
5. Quake/Doom im un decided - PC/PSone

My top 3 games of the future which i will own

1. Spore - Will Wright's (sims) new creation not heard about it u will to, set to be the most customisable game ever - PC check the official website.

Here is the trailor link


And some gameplay footage just for you HERE


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2. Assasins creed - PS3 and Xbox 360

This game was set to be the head turner for the PS3 but now it is also being released on Xbox 360 but however i am still extremly lookin forward to this game as you will see in this video 3. GTA IV - PS3 & Xbox 360

Yes i know there is a the release date is not till october 07 (im not expectin till at least march 2012 over hear in our little country) but hey will be something to do after the olympics. But any way its definatly something to get exited about and who doesnt love the GTA series (no aggressive replies please) check the website for updates here . not much going on at the moment but patience my pet.

That concludes my Blog for today, well the last few days really taken a few drafts and a lot of drinking in between, do have a lot more to write but i thort i best get this up A.S.A.P so i dont look like a lazy bum

Stay tuned people

PS excuse all the millions of spelling and grammer errors the spell check button was not working, its 1:15 and may decide to proof read once posted and repost if it is completly diabolical.

Welcome