MA Games Design - Introduction to Myself
Intro
Hello everyone and welcome to the first post of m
y MA blog. Here I will be documenting research, progress, experimentation and reflection towards my work on MA and I am excited to see what the next year holds.
This first post will be an introduction to who I am, what I have to offer skills and knowledge wise, then what I would like to explore/achieve throughout my time here.
What skills do you bring?
The most recent accomplishment before starting the MA is my graduation of BA Honours in games design from Uclan. I graduated with 2:1 overall and learnt plenty of useful skills and information over my time studying. Here I'm going to list a few key skills that I believe will be of use and very applicable to the work I want to focus on.
- Moderately proficient in modelling and texturing 3d assets and props using Maya and Adobe Substance Painter. (A main focus in weapons modelling during my 3rd year).
- Effective communication of ideas and presentation of work, through many group projects and individual projects, where the focus was to get the idea across to someone.
- A critical analysis of my own work, through peer and tutor review/feedback, with an emphasis on reiteration/experimentation in order to move outside my comfort zone and try alternative methods to achieve the desired result.
- A deepened understanding of the inner workings of the games industry, how certain parts move within a company as a whole and the importance of co-ordination between teams, time management and the best ways to go about communication between peers.
What interests you?
It would be a little on the nose to just simply open with the fact that games interest me, as that is what I am studying after all, instead I'll go into areas outside of games that catch my eye and fuel that creative spark within me.
- Alternative forms of media outside of gaming that interest me are; Anime, Books, Films, Music. I am probably the stereotypical "nerd" or "geek" as the more popular definition of the word is portrayed these days.
- Being a 3d weapons artist I do genuinely find weapons as a whole unique and fascinating, along with their design and functionalities, the whole processes from start to finish are a thing to behold.
Historical Firearms;
Blacksmithing;
(9) That Works - YouTube
(9) Alec Steele - YouTube
What is your initial idea for MA?
Since my main focus during 3rd year was weapons design and specialisation I will be diving deeper into this area of games design and how it has been influenced over the many years and how it can now be further influenced going forward.
My ideas are fairly loose at the moment as I want to be driven by my research so before I am able to get stuck into that I will briefly touch on some areas of weapons design that I feel could be a good general direction to go in before further refining it over time.
- The theory and history of weapons design (What makes weapons function, interesting and how they have developed over time?)
- The function of weapons in games, why are they there? how do they work and how have developers/creators innovated on their designs inline to meet player's expectations.
- Silhouette, Shape, Colour theories of weapons and their designs. How they influence a player's choices and playstyles. What appeals to a player and what doesn't?
What things are you going to look at?
As explained above I won't go into the specific areas of what I am going to look at but instead just try to summarise as to why I think it's important to study these points of games design and where I am going to start looking.
One of the reasons why I would like to look at the development of weapons is down to the Gamespot YouTube series "Firearm expert reacts..." where they look at different games weapon sets and compare them to the real world variants or a variant that is as close to the weapon design as possible. They then go into the functions of the weapons and the design choices from a historical firearms experts point of view but not from a weapons designer's point of view.
A lot is explored in these videos, especially whether they have a real world application and are faithful to the original weapon/s they are based on. I find this idea fascinating in relation to how much of a weapons design is carried over into a game in order to make it functional and what is cut or modified to fit into a player's need for enjoyment using the weapon and whether or not there is a direct correlation between a weapons faithful and realistic nature vs the weapons "fun factor".
To finish, I will begin at collecting references of weapons from games that are popular and trying to match them with a real world counterpart (if one exists) or look at the functions of the weapon and how they have been modified to fit a certain aesthetic, theme or mechanic for a game. I think this is a good place to start my research and I am hoping to have a better understanding once I get further down the line.
Great to meet you Lance and looking forward to seeing what you can achieve during this MA course. The "firearm expert reacts" videos are also a guilty pleasure of mine as I'm a sucker for the rule of cool when it comes to big shoots lasers in games such as Fallout and then seeing them get torn apart in terms of how unrealistic they actually are.
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