Why go to College to make games when you have tools like these?

You could spend four years of your life in college learning a trade that ,like many, in the computer sector changes and updates yearly if not monthly. So yes you could learn the basics but in truth if you don't continue you to learn after your education your skills will become null and void, well College doesn't guarantee a job in the game industry anyway. Until now everyone had to work their way in and teach themselves. So I invite you to do the same. Here are a few programs you can download and buy to help you learn the basics and advanced sections of game/level design! I hope these tools will help you as much as they helped me.

RPG maker (VX)

This program will cost you some money but in the long run its really worth it. I feel safe to say many if not all computers can run this program and there are a great deal of help forums on the Internet where you can get answers for any question you might have. You may import any sprite you can find and even make your own. With this program you can design an entire story driven RPG, you can even request and share completed games and resources. This program will allow you to design an entire story driven RPG.

Cons:
-It's not free and if you want others to enjoy your game they have to download a program to load your project file.
-Even with help the battle system could have more options.

Game Maker 8 (YoYo games)
This program , like RPG maker, costs money ( the "pro" edition will run you $25) but if you want to just get a feel for the program you can always download the trail version and see if it's what your looking for. This program takes tasks and scripts and makes them building blocks that just need to be placed in the correct sequence of code to preform its correct function. This is most popular in game programs for the public and again there is an option to write your own code and import it into the game.

Cons:
-You wont be making the next blockbuster with this program.
-The trial version is very limited in what you can do once you figure out the basics.

Warioware D.I.Y (Nintendo DS, Wii)

The Big N is sick of making games for you so now it's your turn. This new title in the micro games series is a step in the right direction for fans and indie developers mainly because it gives you a near endless amount of tools to not only make a little game but control the music and scripting of it. There is something for everyone here...whether you are really into making just music or drawing your own sprites this title gives you all that and allows you to package and send your games to other DS and Wii users. This is of course a retail game and one of the more expensive "game makers" but its the charm and easy access that might get most to over look the price and limitations.

Cons:
-you have to have a DS to play and a Wii to download the extra distribution channel.
-You can't really make a full game its mainly 5-10 second mini games.
-No matter how you make it most of the games will end with touch this to win...but again if you have a DS and some extra cash this should be your next DS purchase.

There are also many other programs out there that all offer different things. I didn't list them mainly because I haven't used them but I know Unreal 3 would be the best for modding and even Never Winter Nights if you can run it. both are not expensive anymore and can even be bought and downloaded from your computer. I recommend checking those out as well as the ones I have listed. Good luck and happy creating!

April 15, 2010

Adding Moral Choices to games...do they really matter?

"Game developer Andrew Doull recently asked readers of his blog whether players of his upcoming game should be able to get enemies to surrender"-Kotaku.com. It's a concept not completely new to games but it seldom works. If the game gave the player the option to choose for example a surrendering enemy I would say 9 out of 10 times they'll still kill them. Why not, with games today pushing higher and higher body counts the environment for morality seems like a mute point. If it moves, kill it. that's the state games are in right now and no one really is crying for choice in their FPS murder romps. And if there was such an implementation of choice to let one live in a fire fight it begs the question what's to stop them( the NPC) from picking up the gun once you turn your back? As for right now this AI addition has a hard uphill battle to seep into games because gamers have nothing to attach emotion to. Red Steel tried to reward the player more for letting defeated foes live but at the end of a hard fight with no emotional connection to whom your fighting why not just finish the foe because the only reason I can see letting one live would be for the reward mechanic but its still shallow at best, nothing is done in the game to encourage an honorable fight when they are constantly yelling you suck and are a "gaijin" (a Japanese slur towards westerners) So Kotaku brings up the discussion to get both sides of the argument but as for what I think Games and the players of today have been too accustomed to if it moves shoot it and when you give no incentive or reason to spare someone, why do it? So ask you the reader what's do you think? Would you welcome this addition or fail to see the point? Add your comments.

January 8, 2010

What games can teach us...nothing?

It's sad but true over the past I don't know 20 or so years I have been a user of games ( sounds like a drug addiction and its not far from it) at first they were just that fun and it was something to fill time as a child growing up as were action figures and playing outside. They are things to help you develop as a person and learn values to then take those "skills" and apply them to your life as an adult. As a kid I loved gaming but it came with limits such as play time and sharing. These simple rules in my opinion were the only things that kept me from getting addicted but sadly many of us are now way beyond that point as it has encroached on every facet of our lives to the point we don't even have real goals anymore. A great example would be from my time working a eb/gamestop for about 3 years. I was in college to learn game design to really put my passion to work but i slowly lost that feeling and my goals were dumbed down. It became this job sucks but (enter title here) is coming out I can't wait it's going to be so much fun. Gaming really is an addiction and those who are under it's influence need to come to terms with the fact that no matter how much fun it is and how cool you feel doing it your real life is suffering. I used to be upset with my brother over how could he not care about such and such a game when it was so close to release or the concept of the game sounded so cool but he would act as if it didn't matter to him and that's not to say he didn't like it , he did but it wasn't the end of the world for him like it is for most of us. I am jealous of that now I am starting to see that games are not everything and reflecting how "hooked" and committed as a user I was to not even see what a hold it had on me. I once made a joke that if my history class was about games I would get an "A" and that was proven years later when I began college to study how to make them but I now think about how stupid I must be to be proud that I can ace a game test about Nintendo's history but struggle over the western advances in the world markets in a business class which is a topic that relate to the real world and truth be told is far more valuable to know then what Mario's fist name was (jump man). I feel like I was brainwashed and allowed it to happen. For a few months now I have been living in an area that isn't controlled by games, games here are like a second thought still and for me that was a hard reality to get used to at first. "Your telling me I can't get the newest online xbox 360 game or the cool new DS game that uses all these features" That was gone for me and for a long time I was just like a drug addict doing anything I could to fill the hole. Download PC games on torrent sites watch game news more then real news and begin to dwell completely on trying to only solve one problem...how to get what I want where I am. Just listen to this blog it sound insane. I sound insane. So much time with only goal which all gamers share to experience the next big ride or high if you will. To be apart of it but what does it give back? Now to the meat of this blog. If your a gamer in any respect reading this then pay cation to my words this far because if your not in as deep as me its still possible and its highly destructive to every part of your life. Games as a medium so far have been attempting three things:
1. Emergent play, by this I mean creating stories and worlds that draw you in just like any movie or book. By drawing you in you can let your self go and be entertain for hours coming away from it excited to what's next or what just happened and when this happened you need more to feel that way again just like any-other addictive substance.
2. Attach loyalties, this product placement is proven with any top ten game list where the Super Mario Brothers always tend to find a way to the top three spots and that's because for many they were your first "joint" of games and so that game forever becomes something you will pay attention to even if it never lives up to your expectations you fight with yourself to stack it up with your childhood to that first Mario hit you took and compare them, you are using even when you didn't want to.
3. Taking your money, I'm sorry but this is a business and that's the thing that makes the world go round. they get you on a product sometimes under false pretenses, such as the DS isn't just a game system it can train your brain, which leads to once you have "trained" all you can train you ask "what else does this thing do?" *looks at a wall of games* and then WHAM GOTCHA! You have now went from a moderate user to a casual user and it only "levels-up" from there until your right where the rest of us are. Game don't DO anything for our lives. They are a smoke screen most of the time for us a world to hide in away from this real one. I used to joke about such thought but it's so more true now then before.

Overall games are entertainment and the trick is to not let them control you as much as you control them. Games are not more important then setting life goals games should never be a goal in your life trust me if you looked at the worlds most successful people I would like you to ask yourself if they are hardcore gamers? I would argue probability not even close and if they did play it would be minimal at best. I will leave you with one more quote I thought I was living by when it came to games but ended up being a huge hippocrate to:

"In order to be a great game designer you need to get out in the world and experience any and everything you can you don't create worlds in a basement" Shigeru Miyamoto
Now what If you take two addictive substances and use the in the same instance, such as smoking and playing games. I ran a test on myself recently on the ratio to cigarettes i smoking while engaging in a game over spending a night watching TV. During this time i would allow myself to smoke any time I felt like it for whatever justifiable reason I felt to smoke whilst playing a game "left 4 dead/Battlefield 1943" or watching Television "The Daily Show/The X-files". Let's look at the results. While playing game i tended to reward myself for good playthroughs or kills by smoking like palvios dog, then while watching TV i tended to only smoke when I became board of the show or someone in the show began to smoke making me a sheep big tobacco as a brainwashed drone. When I stopped doing both activities with smoking the effects became more noticeable while gaming. I would kill another play and become excited and begin to look around the room for cigarettes and then the game become more of a annoyance because i couldn't smoke and became aggravated and short tempered. Now people should be able to control their emotion at least behavior with games and many argue both sides but it is true if your easily aggravated in life games can amplify there emotion if you let them.

January 7, 2010

Why does the Wii sleep alone at night?

This isn't a hard question to answer for most but all fanboy flame wars aside, why was the Wii such a hot seller if roughly 75% of the software being released was [below] passable to the game community? Why have sales continued to surpass the other two leading game hardware companies such as Microsoft and Sony. It seems to be a combination of things that are going on behind the Marketing over at the house that Nintendo Built. It's no hidden fact that the Wii could barely be duct-taped together fast enough( Sorry I set it up for that) to get out of the factory and into your home, living room or bathroom (that would be tricky to play...) but still as soon as they came into the store they were eaten up like a fat man at a Chinese Buffet. So let's be serious now, The Wii is a fresh new take on gaming and had its fun in the first year with games like Red Steal and the Wii-version of Zelda TLP but these games weren't perfect control wise and left the player more excited for the potential the next wave of games would bring but instead of doing just that the game well dried up and suddenly the Wii was still hard to find but the software was spilling out of the flood gates full of Herpes and Aids which forced many players to abandon their Wii's for risk of getting a shovelware STD. So this is where we are now at the Nintendo "river" or pipeline (whatever works for you) and its a quickly flowing stream of games (water...) but in that flowing river of games lurk the Leechware* waiting to suck you dry of your now very hard to earn money forcing you to put old Wii out to green pastures and turn toward the other systems but some of us (myself included) have hope that Nintendo can still clean up the mess other companies have left at it's house after what started as a fun party and get ready to start playing with the big boys and releasing Fresh water software that pushes the system and the control mechanic to a level that makes Wii fun again..sadly until then I will play No more Heroes and Mario Kart and hope....just hope....

April 17, 2009

*Download Content* The selling of incomplete and broken games!?

Now more then ever "DLC" or Downloadable Content as it were, has taken the gaming market by storm (mainly on X-box 360) and is showing no sign of slowing down. It has gotten to the point now that companies are including this content as a long term plan to draw out the life or replay value of their games so that they are being played longer after their release. But what if this isn't just a plan to stretch out the life of a game but more a fall back for when a game releases with bugs and glitches due to short production schedules? So if a game gets a poor review...they will say "wait!", there's more! and if you pay the additional 800 ms points (=10 USD) you can have what we meant to give you but were in a hurry to complete! thus making a USD 59.99 game into a USD 69.99 game plus local tax from when you first bought it. But this trend shows little sign of stopping from both sides the game companies love it and they have the users now looking forward to the next quick update and additional level to play that's about 3 dollars an hour if you think that's your moneys worth... Sound off your opinion in the comments section! Happy DLC day!




*UPDATE- Another major point is the pricing of this content and what happens when you are left with an overage. For example I will preform simple math to illustrate my point. Lets say you have purchased the new fallout 3 (which this games quality is not in question 10/10) and it's either one of the two standard price tags 59.99 or 79.99 (limited edition lunchbox) and lets add local Vermont sales tax to this purchase. So, you have 59.99, which already is a false asking price and add 7% sales tax, with 6% of it being state tax and 1% Burlington tax and this game at it's cheapest comes in at $64.19. The point system is different in retail and on the Microsoft Market place. Retail a point card comes in two flavors 1600 points and 4000 points (19.99 and 49.99 respectively) and on the site is ranges from 1000 points up to 7500 or something, I'm starting to skip steps to hurry my point sorry, and Fallout 3's DLC is 800 ms points. Well either way you have to get the points from either a retail chain or the site both will cost you more then the needed 800 points which leaves you with an overage and with nothing but pictures and themes to try your luck at spending the rest of your points on, which is a sad way to keep your points at bay or generally wasted or leave you with a 80 point gamer pic!! while you now have 70 ms points left thus returning you to buy more point cards should you want another Fallout 3 DLC and this would put you around over 80 dollars total for a game that was already costing you more then half a hundred from the start...I am not upset I just really wish I was apart of that financial pie!

March 5, 2009