MA Games Design - Research - Jonathan Ferguson


 Jonathan Ferguson



    This will be a short entry related to Jonathan Ferguson and why he is important to the work that I want to be looking at on the MA. 
    
    While not having a direct link to the games industry or games design, Jonathan is a British firearms historian and expert working currently at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds as the Keeper of firearms and artillery. His knowledge and expertise can best be seen on the Royal Armouries and Gamespot YouTube channels, where he breaks down iconic firearms either from history or from games and gives critiques and a font of information regarding their designs, mechanics and overall functions.

    As I briefly explained in my first post (Introduction to Myself) the firearm expert reacts videos that Jonathan is a part of on the Gamespot YouTube channel are one of the reasons I would like to explore weapons design in gaming and the realism element vs fun factor of a weapon and how it correlates to one another. His expertise, on not only the workings of a firearm and all the differences and nuances between say a small handheld firearm vs a more larger weapon such as an assault rifle, and his ability to recall the similarities between a completely fictional video game weapon and compare it to a variety of historical or real life references, will be crucial for the base knowledge I will need to develop in order to further my understanding of weapons design in both the real world and gaming world alike.

    I would at some point like to get in touch with Jonathan and pick his brain around a few things, maybe even get him to review some of my work and what he thinks from a professional firearms expert. But I first would like to develop my ideas further to a point at where I'm satisfied and can be confident in asking the right questions. 

    The links to the Gamespot and Royal Armouries YouTube channels are in my first post but here I will leave a link to Jonathan's page on Academia.edu where he has some of the books he has cowrote along with some other useful information and articles pertaining to firearms.

https://royalarmouries.academia.edu/JonathanFerguson
 

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