Communicating my view.

Most of my friends decided to present their views with a talk on their own individual topics, I on the other hand decided to communicate my view on my blog. This allowed me to communicate my argument to as many people  as possible rather than a select few who were at the talks. Unfortunately that didn't go fully to plan as after a number of weeks no debate had arisen so I had to direct people using Facebook to the blog to create a debate.

Finally My Final Piece

I have finally finished my final piece for my second time. Tell me what you think.

Event Feedback.

Visitors filling out feedback forms.

At the end of the day we asked the visitors to fill out a feedback form and after reading through the forms I have found that the overall feeling of how the day went was positive with the only issue being that the heating was off. In retrospect that would have been something we should have looked into and if I was ever going to do this kind of thing again I would ask the owners of the venue to ensure the heating was on. However apart from this I would call the day a success. 

Overall we got very good feedback.

The Event!!!!

The day had finally arrived. We started to set up at 10:30am to give us plenty of time to deal with any problems or hiccups.

Visitors to the event trying
out some of the games

Some of the enthusiastic visitors
checking out the games.

The event attracted quite a crowd.

As Technical Coordinator my job was to ensure that all the equipment was working and set up correctly.

Our small mishap with the computer
 during Adam Graham's presentation.

Alan showing some of the visitors
his section of the exhibition.

The day went very well with only one minor issue with the talk from head of ANT Creative Adam Graham. During his talk on the similarities between videogames and films his computer lost audio. As a result of trying to correct this mishap all the presentations we had planned for the day were pushed back, meaning we finished later than we expected. However apart from this issue the were no real problems.

Planning The Event

Set up

We started planning our event about a month in advance to ensure when we came to the day we would have all the equipment required and we would have enough time to advertise the event.

Roles:

Vigneshwar Paleri –Event Manager

Charlie Roberson – Production Manager

Alan Ng – Marketing Executive

James Anderson – Technical Coordinator

Nathaniel Graham – Programme Coordinator

Budget:

We were given a budget of £100 to cover equipment, hiring venue and advertisement.

Location:

To reduce the costs of hiring out a hall or other venue we decided to try and hold the event at our school. Although this gave us more of the budget to spend on any advertisement such as posters and flyers, using the school as the venue meant that we were restricted to the dates we could hold the event.

Event Format:

The location we were given had a large hall with five rooms coming off it. We decided to base one of the rooms around each of the topics of our Gold Arts Awards with the main hall with general interactive art based reports and photographs of what we had been doing. My room was based around multiplayer gaming. However due to the lack of an internet connection I was unable to do any online gaming, instead I decided to show games such as; Portal 2 and LittleBigPlanet 2 and displayed some reports on the affects of multiplayer gaming. 

Alan designed our fliers and brochures.
This was our greatest dent into our budget.

Advertisement:

We decided to only have a invited audience of friends family and those who had helped us with our gold arts award. This meant that we only needed to advertise to a small group of people. We did this by sending out invites and flyers.

Online Multiplayer Gaming vs Single Player Gaming

 I have laid out the arguments for both single player and multiplayer gaming below. In my opinion I am pro single player. But don't let that sway your mind give your opinion in the comment section at the bottom.

Online Multiplayer Gaming Social Community – Online games allow you to play with people from across the world and socialise with people you wouldn’t normally meet. With single player games you are unable to communicate with others and are in fact drawn more into an unsocial environment. Allows People to be creative and share work - multiplayer games such as LittleBig Planet allow people to create their own levels and characters and share them with people across the world. Creates competition between gamers –due to the ability to connect with anyone in the world with an internet connection people can play each other at games and never meet again. This creates a competitive atmosphere in gaming which can be shown in to an extreme in my post ”Shut up you F#*!ing Noob”. However this can also be a good thing, stopping the game from becoming stale and boring.

Single Player Gaming Gives you an opportunity to learn throughout the game – with single player games the game is designed to build up your skill as you progress. Whereas in online games you are thrown in the deep end and are put up against more experienced players. Lets you experience an in depth storyline – modern single player games have such a complex and deep storyline that could match any film. Games such as Uncharted 3 have such complicated dialogue and characters and Heavy Rain with its tension are more like films than games. However multiplayer games do not have the ability to create such in depth plotlines and characters due to their shorter levels and large number of players.  Greater developed platforms – due to the size of the average level on a single player game the game player platform for these games  needs to be much larger and as a result the game play is a lot smoother than on multiplayer online games and is a lot less likely to crash.

Ctrl - Alt - Del.... NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I should really back up more often. I had planned to have my final piece as some game footage with me narrating and explaining my point of view of the gaming industry and in particular the online multiplayer community. Unfortunately for me when I had almost finished my computer crashed and I lost all my work. I am remaking my final piece but this time I am having to slim it down.

Feedback from Adam Graham of the Berwick Film Festival

After the Berwick Film Festival  Adam Graham, volunteers manager for the festival was kind enough to give me some feedback for how I did during the day:

"James seemed a little unsure of what was expected of him at the start of the day but immediately stepped up to the challenge and became one of the most valuable volunteers. Thinking ahead and informing the festival staff of any problems or potential issues was invaluable and he took to the role with confidence and enthusiasm."

An interview with Mark Sample

After our training days, Mark Sample, game designer for Ubisoft, kindly let us ask a few questions about the industry and his career.

Berwick Film Festival Volunteering

Me and Alan working outside "Mastering Bambi"

Whilst volunteering at the film festival I was left responsible for directing public to certain events and explaining what was on. During the morning I was working in one of the ice houses in Berwick which had on a film called “Mastering Bambi”. This was a short film based around the forest in the Disney classic “Bambi” the only difference being the lack of living creatures which of course is the main attributes of “Bambi”. 

Me and the guys after volunteering.

One of the things that I found so amazing was that you were not sure if the images were computer generated or filmed, the graphics were that good! Also the music in the film was so provocative that it was as though it became the character of the film, dictating how the audience felt throughout the film.

During the afternoon I was working in the town hall in particular the old jail, where a different short film was being shown in each cell. As well as this there was a talk with all of the artists who produced the films. Included in the films were the longest hand painted film in Britain and a film sponsored by the Berwick council showing the effects of the rising tides though dance.

The Film Festival was set over three days and even though I was only able to do one of the days I had a great time and have to say it was a great opportunity. 

An interview with Liz Ritson.

After visiting the Woodhorn Videogame Nation Exhibition I sent an e-mail to the Exhibition and Events Officer, Elizabeth Ritson, in the hope of her answering some questions. This was her response:

1.       Have you done any other exhibitions like this?

"We haven’t done another exhibition on gaming specifically but we do show a ‘blockbuster’ style exhibition each year at Woodhorn. These are large scale, charged-for exhibitions on diverse themes. Exhibitions in the past have included Wallace and Gromit, Cars of the Stars and Walking with Dinosaurs. These exhibitions bring new experiences to Woodhorn’s visitors and to the wider region. They also offer the museum an income stream, as the rest of the museum is free."

2.       What do you intend to do next?

"The next large-scale exhibiton in 2012 is ‘Invasion’ which features props and costumes from Science-Fiction film and television."

3.       Have you found that the older or the more recent games have been more popular?

"The older games had more of a novelty/retro/reminiscing factor for adults. The visitors who played these games in the past were less likely to still have them in their homes which gave them strong appeal within the exhibition. However, young visitors who were used to gaming on newer consoles such as the Wii tended to spend longer with the games and consoles they were familiar with. We also found younger visitors tended to be more intuitive with all the games and quickly mastered games they had probably never even heard of until visiting the show."

4.       Many games have certain age restrictions, has this caused any problems in showing these games?

"The curators were very conscious and careful about this issue and there was a section dedicated to more controversial games such as Grand Theft Auto and Bully. Rather than have these games available to play, we showed short promos of the games or articles about the games which were suitable for family viewing."

5.       Have you had any problems that you have had to overcome in the showing of this exhibition?

"The main problem we faced was communicating the subject of the exhibition without making it seem like it was just an arcade/opportunity to play games which visitors may well already have access to at home. I don’t feel we were hugely successful at overcoming this barrier as we found visitor figures for this exhibition were sadly lower than for previous blockbuster exhibitions."

6.       How many visitors would you estimate have come to the exhibition?

"We had just under 9K visitors to the exhibition, but this is less that half of the visitor figures we would expect for our blockbuster exhibitions which have previously ranged from 19-24K visitors."

7.       Now that the exhibition has finished is there anything you would have done differently?

"I think we have learnt a lot from this exhibition and we will be in a stronger position to identify risks in the future. For example, for our next exhibition we have been much more clear with the organisers from the outset about our expectations of exactly what comes with the package and given ourselves stricter deadlines. This has given us more time to plan the exhibition build which means we can make the most economic choices.

We have also learned that our audiences appear to be more attracted to/willing to pay for exhibitions that are very child/family focussed such as Dinosaurs rather than more specialist in nature such as the history of gaming.  However, Woodhorn is committed to maintaining a diverse exhibition programme rather than simply being driven by the most popular subjects. "

Retro Game Exhibition

Everyone outside the exhibition.

Nat enjoying the retro
gaming merchandise. 

The Woodhorn Videogame Nation Exhibition was basically a timeline of the development of the gaming industry and the technology brought about from it. Starting with a selection of games from consoles such as the Commondore 64 the exhibition showed that the first games were mostly based around puzzle solving problems similar to those seen in modern games such as Little Big Planet. This seemed to be the result in part to the lower quality of graphics allowing the most simple of shapes made from very large coloured pixels, and the processing power of the machines which only allowed a simple 2D platform to be created.

Retro gaming consoles

The exhibition then continued on through the history of the gaming industry showing not only the games and consoles but also the effect of gaming on society with game related merchandise. This helped show the effect that computer games have had on society as well as the development of the game consoles themselves from the tape readers to the games on cartridges.

Me and the gang showing off our
Donkey Kong based ties

Charlie checking out
the arcade games

Further through the exhibition there was the more modern game consoles including the pioneering Xbox Kinect which allowed you to use your body as the controller which was a step on from the Nintendo Wii’s use of the motion controlled console. 

Feedback from Mark Sample

After the two day training experience, Mark Sample of Ubisoft Reflections kindly gave some feedback on how it went. He said:

"James would often step up during the sessions to get the ball rolling in our creative workshops. His attitude to challenge concepts and deliver new ideas really helped with the team dynamics. I found him articulate and convincing. He could well be a future design or producer in the games industry."

Mark Sample, games developer for Ubisoft Reflections.

Ubisoft Reflections Training Days

A group of us did 2 days of training with Mark Sample, a game director/producer with Ubisoft Reflections at the Tyneside Cinema. He showed us the basics of how the concept for a game is created, how the characters will develop, how the story will unfold.

During the training days we did brainstorming for a number of different game ideas whilst under a number of restraints and game specification. In the end we had ideas for both app based games and online purchase games.

Our app based game or “crisp packet treasure hunt” as we called it was based on the Google app Goggles which allows you to search the internet using pictures you have taken. The basic idea was to go on a treasure hunt to find generic objects from a list, such as a packet of Ready Salted Crisps and take a picture of it.

The online purchase game we decided to design was based around stealth as we thought that this would fill a gap in the market. We designed multiple levels for it and multiple characters. However after only a couple of hours we realised how much work would be required to develop a fully fledged AAA game. After about an hour we were told that we had to pitch our game to Mark. This helped us see what it was like to have a sudden deadline.

These training days were probably the most interesting experience so far of the Gold Arts Award. 

I'm Back...

So after a bit of a break I’m back working on my gold arts award. Trust me I know it’s been a long time but since my last post but a lot has happened in that time. Between university interviews, exams and school work I have volunteered at Berwick film festival, complete my training days with mark sample and organised and complete my event.

During this time away I have realised that my original time table did not take into account other work that I had to get done. This has resulted in me being drastically behind schedual.