Are you a boat? or a grill?

A lot of games made today allow you the choice of creating your own avatar. This is a great mechanic for games, as it allows layers to be creative with who they play as and provides with a lot more choice (usually with class, race, abilities) that can cater to how they like to play. But there is one choice players must always make before they can get to fun stuff of making an avatar. Play as a Boy? Or a Girl? (Note: for this discussion I’ll be talking about the societal representations of gender and not the biological sex of people, as Boy and Girl are different to Male and Female)

When you talk to people about whether they prefer to play as a girl or boy in video games, you can usually put them into two groups. Those who play as the gender they are and those who play as the opposite gender. And weather people say so or not there are reasons behind why we play the gender we chose to play as, even if it’s as simple as “Because I can”.  First looking at why people play as the same gender as they are is usually because it’s familiar and the ‘default’ to them. When they go to play a new game that offers avatar creation, some people will automatically chose the same gender as they are because they are about to go into a new game they might know little to nothing about the world, rules of the game, other characters in the game etc. Because of all this ‘new’ they might feel more conferrable with choosing to play as their own gender. These players usually make this choice unconsciously as well, going straight for their own ‘default’, what is familiar to them.  

On the other hand, there are players how will chose to play as the opposite gender to themselves. Unlike the ‘default’ players these players have usually made the choice to play as the opposite gender through a process of playing several games. The most common reason for players to play as the opposite gender is because they find it easier to ‘role-play’ as a character of the opposite gender (role-play meaning that the player finds it easier to get into the game as the opposite gender). By plating as something foreign to them but made of a concept they can understand, means that players can act differently to what they usually would with much more ease than playing as their own gender would allow them.

Another interesting point to mention about choosing gender in video games is that when playing a MMORPG or any online game, there are additional reasons to choosing what gender to play as. Online games offer in real world opinions when you play them and sadly, this means gender biases comes into play. In most online games playing as a female character is a disadvantage, as the gender discrimination that comes from the (bad side) of the gamer community is expressed. While on the subject of playing as a female in online games, sometime player will offer more help to players if they use a female avatar. However this is not to be considered an advantage as it still stems from a belief that girl players need more help/are more inadequate then boy players.

The reasons people play as the same or different gender to what they are many and varied but there is always a reason behind the choice.  

Watch this take on playing as the opposite gender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFOVVAhnAns

The Sims and gender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMBYFXZknGQ

Video Games: Combining Genres and Genre is different than Theme

Video Games have become more and more complex over time, and considering how little time has passed, they got complex real quick. Sadly, with this complexity comes confusion from both developer and gamers alike, take genre for example. Unlike movies or books, genre in games has become a very confusing subject. When you can have games like ‘Portal’ that are classified as FPS (First Person Shooter) but are more like the Puzzle genre, knowing what that actual game will be like based off genre alone is near impossible.

One solution to this problem is to combine genres. Weather that be to simply classify and game as having two or more genres or taking aspects form different genres and combing them into one new genre. The problem with this however is that not all genres go well together. When a developer choses to make a game with two or more genres, making sure that the different aspects of the genres fit is just another obstacle to overcome. For example adding in puzzles to solve (Puzzle genre) to a Survival Horror game can help keep the player engaged in the game and alert. However allowing the player to defend themselves with weapons (Action Genre) in a Survival Horror game can lessen the ‘horror’ aspects of the game. Matching up different aspects of genres to make the game cohesive is a difficult task, especially if a developer is looking to make their game unique, as most genre combinations that go well have already been used. In this way, the combining of genres might not help lessen the confusion surrounding genres in video games and might just new meta-genres to mix and match, adding to the confusion. Just to note: this is all problems on the developer side of things. The gamer side of this problem seems to be sorting it’s self out. One good example is Steam Tags. Steam Tags allows players to tag the game with specific words and themes that relate to the game, making it easier for other players to find games that are relevant to their interests.

 A newer more player invented solution, is too divide a games genre into Themes and Genre. When people talk about a game with two or more genres you can often hear descriptions such as “It feels more like an Action game” or “Plays like an FPS” etc. This is players separating Genres (How the game plays) and Themes (What the game feels like) that relate to the game. Using an example, a game like Dead Space 3 feels like you’re playing an Action game (Theme) but it’s classified as a Horror game (Genre). Or a game like Portal feels like a Puzzle game (Theme). By describing games like this, might start to clear up the confusion surrounding genre in games. However this is just one possible solution and there may be better solutions in the future.       

Have a gander at Extra Credits view on Combining Genres

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOQwakqWs7k

So, what does your favourite game genre say about you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqSJGDUyf1I

Narrative in games: It's inevitable, you need to accept it

Sure you could say that games don’t need narrative or plot like other entertainment mediums (like movies and books) do. You can easily make a successful game with mechanic alone, take Candy Crush, Flappy Bird and Bejewelled or even Agar.io. All brilliant games made with mechanics alone. But what do you notice about all these games? If I asked you to name 5 games off the top of your head, it wouldn’t be any of those would it? That’s because games made solely with mechanics in mind are made to be time wasters, they aren’t made to be something that sticks in your mind. So how do games stick in your mind? Why do some games seem more remunerable than others? Putting aside games with exceptional fame (Mario, Pokémon, CoD), a game with a good plot will stick with you more than a game with bad narrative or none at all.

If you’re asking yourself why that is, it’s an easy question to answer. People aren’t good at remembering things, only a few exceptional people in the world can say that they are. Most people can only remember 7 articles in their short term memory and long term memory can be just as bad. As time goes on we begin to muddle our memories and sometimes the longer we dwell on them, the muddier they get. We mix things around, forget certain things completely, add in things that didn’t actually happen and can be influenced by other people. However, there is one thing that people can easily remember, even after years of not thinking about it, and that would be Narrative. By stringing together a series of events with plot, people can easily remember what happened and can do so more accurately. Narrative can be used as a mnemonic device (something that can help you improve memory).

So how does this tie in with games? Well if you want to make a memorial game what would you do? Hopefully it would be to make a games with good narrative (after what you’ve just read).  You have to remember that games are an entertainment medium just like books and movies and what sells books and movies? A good plot. And what do you want your game to do? SELL! So just like books and movies, games have begun to take upon more complex and more engaging stories. While I’ll easily admit that games are appalling at telling narrative, we are getting better at it (it’s still a relatively new medium after all).

Narrative in games is finally starting to become a normal thing (here’s hoping good will come of this) and more narrative driven games are getting bigger spotlights. As more publishers and developers start to figure out that narrative is a good thing more people who wouldn’t usually even look at a video game might start to gain interest, because narrative is something anyone can use and can easily remember. It’s what is at the base of all our big entertainment sources and not only that but we’ve been at this for thousands of years, we like it and games adding in more focus on narrative is an inevitable thing and hopefully, a good thing.       

Take a look at Daniel Floyd’s take on Narrative in Games 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdG2LHair0

A good look at how Narrative and its Mechanics 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU

A quick look at mnemonic devices

http://psychcentral.com/lib/memory-and-mnemonic-devices/

Realistic Graphics: Realistically Achievable

We’ve all noticed the direction big budget games are going in, bigger, better and more realistic graphics. AAA Games seem to have entered a phase where the more realistic you can make a game look, the better the game will be, and there is nothing wrong with this view point. You really can’t deny that recent blockbuster games like The Witcher: Wild Hunt and Batman Arkham Knight aren’t graphically amazing but when you really think about it, is it really possible to achieve perfectly or near perfect realistic graphics in games?

Honestly I don’t think it’ll be possible. Just looking at the system requirements for the a fore mentioned games and already the games industry have hit a problem. You already need a very high-tech computer to run them on, and a lot of people can’t afford to buy a computer good enough to run these games (or buy new parts for their computer) or have no need for a new computer. Already the graphic requirements for the game has limited the potential customer base for the game and no real need to state that this is very bad for the publisher and developer ( The Witcher 3 had a budget off $15m, GTAV had one of $265m) every dollar counts. With this trend this can only get worse in this respect.

So we’ve already hit the point of needing expensive hardware and software just to play some of these games but there is a bigger (and more likely to happen) problem. The Uncanny Valley is a term used for the emphatic level people feel toward inanimate human constructs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEikGKDVsCc

The Uncanny Valley is just the tip of the iceberg when talking about humans recognizing something as not being real and this is demonstrated really well by virtual constructs. Watch any of these videos and they will look to be very realistic                 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAZIvyAJfeM

However, show this to enough people and you’ll start to get reactions where they will immediately become skeptical and doubt that it’s a real person (and not just because when you ask them “is this real” they think “well of course not, because you’re asking”). There are parts of our brain that are dedicated to identifying threats and recognizing faces, and these are dedicated to our survival. When they see virtual constructs they instantly know something is up and begin to make you doubt. You begin to examine things more closely and look at things in a critical view.

Pair the functions of our brain with the graphical requirements that we’ll need to run games with “Realistic Graphics” and I don’t think it’ll be possible (or wise) for games to reach this point.

Although, when it comes to environmental graphics things like Alison Road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__i_LoRKhJ0) are already real….well who knows.