Character Development, Growth

Character growth is an important facet of many games.  It is important to make characters incomplete so that there is room for characters to grow.  This is why in many games, characters will start at a young age with many flaws.  Another important thing to realize is that it is also important not to grow your character too quickly because otherwise a character could be complete and the player may lose interest.  When there is player or character growth in a game this causes the game to have more meaning.  Giving a character goals will allow them to achieve this growth.  When characters are striving to reach or accomplish a goal then characters will decide how the gamer plays with a character.  Also, when a player understands what is going on in the world around them, characters can grow emotionally, mentally, and physically.  Growth has many different facets and these help different styles of growth.  In games most people play to win.  However, in failing players and characters tend to learn more and have more area to grow.  Character growth really engages the audience and allows a more immersive game play.  Character growth is a very important aspect in games because it allows us to get emotionally attached to characters and what they go through.  We relate to them in certain ways and we develop a relationship.  

Character Development, Appearance

I am focusing on character development and there are many different facets to this.  If one part of the overall character seems flawed in any way the players experience may not be the intended one.  When considering what a character's appearance should be we should look at many different categories.  In many RPG games the player can choose what his or her character looks like through various types.  Some of these categories are pretty standard but can have a huge effect on what the character is able to do.  Some of these categories include:  height, weight, body type, eye color, hair style, race, facial hair.  This is looking at a character from who they are physically.  When you strip the clothes off and you see a character as their true self we can see how that character is and what our expectations of that character is merely through physicality.  This is what makes game play great because sometimes this can be the most interesting part of a game because some characters will either over or under meet our expectations and this will cause a person to have some sort of experience depending what the designer tries to give off.  Character appearance may be one of if not the most important part of a character.  Not only does the physical aspect of appearance come into play but also the clothing and other objects on the character will give off a certain feeling about a character.  Appearance can give off so many different feelings to a player and it is these emotions that connect the player with the game.  The more detailed a characters appearance the more connectivity a player will most likely have to the game which is what games are supposed to do.  Going to clothing and other items like jewelry or tattoos, will also portray a character in a certain way.  Depending on the color or what type of clothing a character wears, different emotions will be portrayed differing on what experiences the player has had in his or her life.  Not only does clothing give a sense of character development, but the lack there of or the increased number of clothing will show us different things.  Clothing can show temperature or culture as well as someone’s style or personality.  Clothes have so many different meanings and having different clothing on different characters can give a game a completely different effect.  When we look at appearance we really had to decide carefully in what a character looks like especially if there is an intended meaning.  Sometimes appearance doesn’t play as big of a role as other game features, but as technology advances and game plots increase in complexity we will see that characters appearance will be getting more and more critical to game play and we have seen this over the last few decades.  

Character Overview

 Choosing a topic that would interest me and be entertaining for others to read is my goal.  When I play games, watch movies, and read stories I always try to analyze the characters and try to get to know who they are and where they come from.  This is why the topic I am choosing is the development of characters from their appearance to their personalities.  Because this is a game design class it will be important for the characters in my game to be the most important item in the game.  When playing games the characters are the ones I pay most attention too.  Some people witness the beauty of the scenery around a game or even the story line, but it is the characters that have to go through these quests or life itself and adapt and react to their surrounding environments.  When reading up on character development  through a website called Gamasutra, it was interesting to see that character development is becoming more crucial in the game world.  With more technology and production costs going into games of the 21st century, the more people will immerse themselves into what is a fantasy world and a greater connection can be established through the player and the characters.  Also, with more fully developed characters usually the game review will be increased because of the connection players feel for these characters.  Character development is very broad so I may centralize or focus on one facet of character development, but for the moment I want to look at characters as a whole.  The International Journal of Virtual Reality tells its readers how important movement is for characters.  This is something I did not really realize.  If someone where to go to a very populated area it would be easy to see how different people move, but this is only if you watch closely.  In games characters usually have superhuman abilities and have different ranges of motion while still appealing to the player.  I will be more aware of different movements my characters would make and how these movements identify a character more.  For the moment my knowledge of character development is very limited, but I hope after researching and learning about this topic more that I can have a better appreciation for those who create and develop characters.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2369/it_builds_character_character_.php
http://www.ijvr.org/issues/issue1-2012/paper6.pdf

Helvetica

Text, is something that we see every day in many different forms and in different ways.  Whether we see text in books, online, or on signs that we pass while we are driving.  These different types are there if we realize it or not.  When you go to write a paper you can go to font and there are hundreds of different styles in which you can write.  Recently I watched a program called Helvetica.  This program was very interesting to me.  Helvetica is a type of font that was developed in Switzerland and has taken over a large proportion of the worlds typography.  Looking at different companies you can see that helvetica is a commonly used typography because of its uniformity.  Helvetica was developed over several years for a clean concise look that was spaciously good to be able to see and read texts.  This typography is the front runner in the whole world right now and it appears that it will continue to have this success because it has become almost second nature to people in the world and it is a default for many different programs.  Most people do not realize that this typography is the most commonly used in the whole world (when it comes to English) and appears all over the place.  Many typographers do not like this text simply because they feel like it has too much power and typography should change with the feel or ideology of a company or a person.  That is why there are many different fonts and why the formation of projects need to have different fonts for the right kind of feel.  I feel like it is a good thing though for there to be a main typography for texts.  It is easier to understand basics if it is formatted in a similar fashion as other tools and settings.  I am not saying that in every instance it should be used, but having a default typography allows other fonts to really come alive in certain instances and that typography will be really expressive.  Helvetica is almost like a control group in science and depending on the settings a person will feel a different affect when looking at different types of fonts.  After watching the clip Helvetica I realized just how many things around me are this typography and now I can see how typographers represent their ideas into fonts.  This was a fascinating piece and it has changed the way I think about typographer which is interesting. 

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation and its name originates from the Greek God Hermes, the messenger god.  The word exegesis and hermeneutics have been used interchangeably.  Hermeneutics is the more widely defined one however; and it is a type of knowledge and a discipline that deals with interpretation.  There are many different types of hermeneutics, but there are five that we will be our focus: natural, normative, scientific, philosophical, and depth hermeneutics. 

Natural hermeneutics is the spontaneous everyday interpretation that is usually unreflective when we break down the understanding of inter-subjectivity.  I am trying to pursue a career in broadcasting, whether it be television, radio, or some other form does not really matter to me, I am just interested in broadcasting as a whole.  When looking at natural hermeneutics to this career i see it as a very simplistic analysis.  People would be listening to the messages I would be portraying through their senses.  They would be absorbing the words i would be saying and they would understand which each individual word compiled together would make a story come into their heads.  The simple understanding of the signs I would be sending them would be able to make them realize what I was trying to portray.  

Normative hermeneutics is the art of text interpretation as a deliberate discipline by a specialist caste.  Judges reading law and interpreting the meaning would be a way of normative hermeneutics.  In my case the way in which broadcasting uses normative hermeneutics is simple.  Every word that is said is important.  Some words not only depict what item is being portrayed, but other words present a time.  If I say that I read in the newspaper, someone will be able to realize that I absorbed the information from the newspaper sometime in the past just from that one word. 

Scientific hermeneutics is the foundational discipline of the human or historical sciences.

Philosophical hermeneutics is a general philosophy of existence and it shows that interpreting is less what we do and more what we are- interpreters. 

Depth hermeneutics of hermeneutics of suspicion is the enlightenment project of emancipation and liberation from social dogma and oppression.    

CMS and Large Companies

More and more people, companies, businesses, etc. are using content management systems and when researching why, this became quite clear.  But first, what is a content management system (CMS)?  A content management system is a system used to manage the content of a web site.  CMS is used for people that do not have a lot of knowledge on graphic design or web design.  With this achievability of creating and editing web content easily and in many locations a wide variety of possibilities open up for the user.  More and more websites especially large websites are using CMS compared to graphically designed websites.  There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is that CMS allow easy edibility in different locations, and it allows websites to be altered with little or no problems.  Another great thing about CMS is that some of these systems are absolutely free.  With this feature people are able to save money while being able to convey what their website is about to their web audiences easily and readily.  Another reason is that CMS are very user friendly.  With the accessibility to find out how to edit your websites content by using tutorials and utilizing different forums, making a website look professionally done without expertise in web design is quite easy.  Also, many CMS have a huge community that develops new attributes that can be accessed by anyone.  Some of these cost money but most do not.  Also, there are many different types of CMS and depending on what is going to be on your website and how it is going to be used choosing the right CMS is important.  Sometimes choosing a CMS is not the best decision at all, it is strictly up to the content in which the author wants its information to be displayed.  Most large sites are using CMS because these sites are constantly adding and removing items that are on their websites and these systems allow them to do this at a fast rate.  Also, feedback is something that many companies want because it allows them to see what is wrong with their websites and what areas could be better.  With a community as large as what CMS have, this can easily be realized and utilized.  Because CMS are easy to use many people are using them and will continue to use them.    

Here are some of the sites I used to give me some ideas of how CMS are used and who uses them.

 http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/content-management-system

 http://www.business-website-designs.com/websites-articles/76-html-web-design-versus-cms-.html

 http://wpmu.org/6-reasons-big-companies-need-wordpress/

Successful Motion Graphics

http://www.psyop.tv/#psyop/new/projects/ibm-ahead-ofdemand-

This IBM advertisement did a great job in the way they created a great motion graphic to get their message about their company across to an intended audience.  In just 30 seconds they were able to tell a story through the graphics they used.  It is important when making a motion graphics piece to understand what people want to see.  Getting the audiences attention is the main focal point.  To do this fluid motion is important.  To go along with this fluidity the music playing and/or the narrators have to have the same pace as the graphics.  In this advertisement the way in which the narrator, the music, and the graphics were used to portray their company was entertaining and effective in what they wanted us the audiences to take a way from them; a way to see how they distribute goods to their consumers.  The color scheme for this advertisement isn't as vibrant as one would expect, but i feel that that was the point.  The company IBM wanted to really show that what they do happens every day, it is an every day task that packages get shipped from one place to another so using duller colors like brown, heavy green, blue, white, and gray seem to represent efficiency and order.  It is nothing flashy and that is how the company runs- orderly.  The color choice in any motion graphic is important because of the symbolism behind the word.  

http://www.psyop.tv/#psyop/new/projects/fanta-chase-halloween-

This is also a motion graphics advertisement on the product Fanta.  Fanta is a soda beverage and just like any advertisement it is important to try to get the message of the piece across well to the intended audience like I mentioned above.  In this case youth would be the audience.  Color, music, and the pace in which the advertisement was created is important in this piece.  The first thing that stands out is the vibrant colors that are being used.  Colors like orange and green get a sense of calmness or serenity while the upbeat tempo of the music and action itself creates a uplifting tone.  This motion graphic does a great job to create a sense of joy and energy in this ad so that their audience members can relate good feelings to their product.  A good motion graphic will really be remembered to those intended individuals and it will hopefully be a way to get a specific meaning across.

Defining Media Literacy

     When looking at media literacy you first have to understand which each word means.  Media is defined as “the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines that reach or influence people widely.”  Also literacy means the ability to read and write.  Together you could define media literacy as the way in which people interpret the world of media; the ways in which humans form ideas through what they see from devices that try to get our attention intently.  So why is media literacy so important?  Media literacy can define us as human being from the way it can shape our decisions and the innate power it has on our culture.

     

     The literacy portion of this phrase is the most important part.  This is in fact how people interpret what they see and what this understanding means can create a thought in a person’s head.  The ability to make someone think is one of the most powerful methods created in human kind.  The ability to control what someone thinks by the way in which it is presented can define a person’s being and can make someone act accordingly.  It is important for people to be educated on how to filter or sift out what is being said in our media.  Many times this does not occur however, and the media can be the only way in which and individual acquires knowledge about a particular topic.  When this is the case bias can be displayed depending on what type of media outlet a person is referred or displayed too. 

     

     The populaces in charge of media have more power then they realize and those people can control how a culture sees certain aspects.  For example, one of the Republican candidates running for the 2012 presidential election Mitt Romney is Mormon.  A lot of people will not vote for him for this reason alone because our media is controlled mostly by people of a different faith (Christianity).  Because these people have power to control what is being shown on television or what is being written in magazines, they may criticize the religion in a negative fashion.  This allows people who have weak filters to be influenced quite easily by accusations being made in the media.

   

     It is important for people to have a good media education and media study before they choose to be media literate.  That is a huge problem though because more and more we see that people would rather be entertained then educated and this creates it easier for people of power to influence those who are not media educated.  Media literacy is the skill of experiencing, interpreting/analyzing and making media products.  I believe it is more important to be media educated to an extent before we interpret what the meanings are.  Most of the time media literacy is referred to those people who analyze what they see and construe an entity from there, but for those who are not media educated they will not analyze media, rather they will merely soak up what is in front of them and not truly look into if the media is showing facts or not. 

Motion Graphics Example

http://elearningexamples.com/new-ron-paul-ad-big-dog/

This short motion graphic piece is pretty good, especially for a campaign.  Not only does it portray a message that is easy to understand, the graphics that go along with it are good images to portray what the intended meaning is supposed to be.  Also, it is a quick paced piece where it goes from one event to another in a fluid manner which makes it simple to follow.  Finally, the colors stay consistent throughout the whole advertisement which is a good way to show a particular mood or tone which is important in any motion graphics piece.