Sunday 27 April 2014

Game Art Careers

For this blog post I'm going to be looking at current job openings in companies I'd like to work for and seeing what they want in an employee. From where I'm standing now I'd really like to work in 3D software rather than being a concept artist, at the start of the course I was very worried that I might not like the 3D side of the course and just want to draw and paint, but now after using 3D software since October I'm really enjoying using it and would love a job doing it.

As for where to work, ideally I'd like to stay in the UK so that I can keep in touch with family and friends, but if there's an excellent job offer in another country that I really want, then I wouldn't mind moving abroad.

So for jobs in the UK I've looked at two companies I am very fond of and they are Rockstar North Rocksteady. Both of these places are for and environment artist. Looking at what Rocksteady wants, the stakes are pretty high using "Expert use" and "Expert level". As far as programs go they want you to be able to use the Unreal Engine 3 or equivalent, 3DS Max, Photoshop and Z-Brush. They want you to have an understanding in the 3rd person action adventure genre as well as strong communication skills. As for Rockstar the stakes appear to be just as high, "Superior 3D art skills" the only programs they actually specify are 3DS Max and Photoshop but they do mention that you need to be able to use game engines. They want at least 2 years of post secondary school experience in 2D and 3D art production as well as over 3 years experience as a 3D artist in industry. Both these jobs demand a very high skill level with plenty of experience, they also mention that you need to have good communication and organisation skills as they ask you to be able to work closely with other artists and employees on the team.

An example of a company that I wouldn't mind leaving the UK for would be CD Projekt Red, a polish based company who makes the Witcher games. This job I'm looking at is to be a character artist, and from what I've read and heard from others is that character art is a very hard area to get into and only the best get jobs. So this is a bit of a day dream but I still want to aim for it, and even if I don't make it as a character artist I'd still be more than happy doing any other 3D work weather it be creating assets or environments. So in terms of programs they want 3DS Max, Maya, ZBrush and Mudbox. They want someone experienced in the industry as they want over 3 years of professional experience in game development and to have shipped at least one AAA title as a Character Artist. As for skills they want an excellent understanding and sculpting of the human form and excellent communication skills. As for a "Nice to Have" section they want an understanding of shaders, lighting and rendering abilities, animation and rigging and an avid gamer experience and knowledge of the industry.

So from looking at these I've learned first and foremost that to get into big companies like these you need to have worked in the industry for a while already. Ask for skills they're asking us to use programs that we're learning to use on this course, so it's nice to see that we're using the right software. What surprised me was that they didn't just want you to be very skilled in art and working, but also they need you to be a member of a team, to communicate and to work with others well. Hopefully with the upcoming group projects I will be able to improve my team working skills.


http://rocksteadyltd.com/#jobs

http://www.rockstargames.com/jobs/position/22dc86db/rockstar-north

http://cdpred.com/character-artist-3/

Personal Enquiry Final

For my personal enquiry I want to tackle the Story vs. Gameplay debate. I’m going to try to keep this as diverse as I can with the limited word count, I’ll be discussing my opinion on which is more important in a game by giving examples of games I’ve played and how enjoyable I found them with regards to the story they tell or the gameplay they provide the player. I’ll also look at others’ opinion on the matter by looking at what games sell better and what games are appreciated more and have higher review scores.

Some gameplay focused games I’ve enjoyed include: the Guitar Hero series (2005-2010), Tetris (1989) and the Payday games (2011 and 2013). These games have entertained me with their gameplay and although Payday and Guitar hero both have a narrative in the games, these are by far not the focus of the games and are merely there to justify the levels of the game. Despite Activision running the Guitar hero series into the ground by saturating the market with its games I found the series a lot of fun, it often gets criticised for mocking real instruments, but the game isn’t trying to replicate a real instruments. In a way it’s similar to a combat system such as the one used in the Batman Arkham games (2009-2013), you’re reacting to something that happens on the screen with a button press and it’s all about timing. The Payday Games provide problem solving scenarios that can be solved cooperatively which results in edge of the seat moments and enjoyment with friends. Although I wouldn’t consider these games and games like them to be the best games I’ve played, but they’ve defiantly provided me with a lot of enjoyment while playing them.
 
Here are some examples of heavily story based games: Mass Effect 2 (2010), The Witcher 2 (2011) and Beyond: Two Souls (2010). I generally really enjoy story driven games, at the moment I'm making my way through the Witcher 2, the mix of interesting characters in a well fleshed out world makes it a pleasure to play through. It's a really mature take on the fantasy genre, often in fantasy game such as The Elder Scrolls series (1994-2014) and the Fable series (2004-2014) are fun to play, but they feel as if they're catering to a young audience and don't really differentiate their worlds from other fantasy settings that much, the Witcher seems to really make the fantasy setting it's own by taking elements such as species and magic and really makes it it's own.





 Mass Effect 2 is a pleasure to play through as it creates this large universe with history and advanced technology, in a way it's similar to the Witcher in that it has taken an already existing genre, in this case a futuristic space setting, and gets creative and builds a really interesting universe and an enjoyable narrative to follow. These two games unfortunately share a similar downfall, they're lacking in the gameplay department, Mass Effect is a fairly basic 3rd person cover based shooter with some magic abilities and the Witcher has a solid sword and magic combat system, but becomes repetitive and dry.




 Beyond: Two Souls Screenshot
And Beyond: Two Souls is a film with a small amount of interaction, I appreciate that David Cage (Head Developer of Quantic Dream) wants to create a film like experience "The game industry is ready to create something much more meaningful, something that like films can change the world" (He mentioned this in this video). But I think that games have already taken enough from films, games posses interactivity and this interactivity needs to be used in it's own unique way, role play games such as Mass Effect and The Witcher are on it's way there with being able to alter the story based on your actions.



Metal Gear Solid HD Collection ScreenshotI want to make a third category here to mark the gray area between story based games and gameplay based games, here are me three examples of these sort of games: Portal 2 (2011), the Metal Gear series (1987-2014) and the Batman Arkham series (2009-2013). Firstly lets look at the Metal Gear Solid Series, the games posses a well built stealth  system that left me on the edge of my seat in countless occasions, innovative boss fights (Especially Metal Gear Solid 1, 1998) and generally good action gun play when it doesn't quite go to plan. The gameplay these games have are good enough to hold it's own in it's own game, but then these games have fairly long stories. The story of the series is very over the top, the majority of the characters are satires of currently existing characters in films and the plot is hilariously stupid, which has become it's charm, but it's full of memorable characters with big twists and turns that keep me interested in the series. Like it's gameplay, I would happily watch all of the cutscenes of the games in a series of films and would thoroughly enjoy them. But the Metal Gear games create a massive divide between story and gameplay when you play them, you'll play lengthy amounts of gameplay, and then be interrupted by long cutscenes, I'll never forget finishing Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) and wanting to get on with something else but the game throws a 45 minute cutscene at you, it was really great and all, but I wish that it could have somehow been split up a bit, or at least give me another chunk of gameplay afterwards.
 
The Batman Arkham games are much like Metal Gear in that it bares strong gameplay, accompanied by strong story. The gameplay consists of a classic combo based combat mixed with classic (for the most part) boss battles and very fun stealth predator-pray sequences that really make you feel like the Batman. And the story presents you with already established characters from the Batman universe and puts them in scenarios which put pressure on characters and the result of the strain put on characters is portrayed really well. The problem with the game I'd say is that although the story itself is good enough to be a stand alone thing, the gameplay without Batman and the rest of the story wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.


Now let's look at Portal 2, at it's base it's a first person puzzle game, and a very good one at that so major gameplay points for that, but then as you're playing it it feeds you this really good story that's very amusing. So it takes a strong story and strong gameplay and melts it together seamlessly, instead of what they do in Metal gear where there's a huge barrier between the story parts and the gameplay parts, Portal 2 creates the two elements one experience and because of this I feel that is the most successful game I've listed here.

So looking at these games I've listed if I have to decide if I prefer gameplay or story I'd have to say story. Although I have a lot of fun playing Payday and Guitar Hero, it's story experiences that grab me, the Witcher 2 is by far the best game I've played in the past year, the Metal Gear Solid series stands as my favourite game series, and Portal 2 is one of the best examples of brilliantly merging gameplay and story.

witcher_header 
So after deciding that I'd rather story over gameplay I'm going to look at what the general population prefer by looking at review scores and sales. For looking into sales figures I've looked at VGChartz, and the top 10 of this list consists of gameplay focused games, in fact the closest story focused game to the top of the list is at number 60 which is Final Fantasy VII. This undoubtedly tells us that gameplay based games sell better. Then for a look into which are generally the better games I looked at Metacritic, I saw that it was a similar story to best selling games in that the majority of the top rated games are gameplay focused games, but there was a greater presence of story based games on the highest rated list compared to the best selling list.

So to conclude, my personal choice between story and gameplay would be story as most of my favourite games are games with a strong story, but I do enjoy playing gameplay focused games. But what seems to sell is gameplay focused games, and the highest rated games are also mainly gameplay focused games. So due to the evidence of gameplay focused games selling much better and being rated very highly it looks like gameplay is what the people want and therefore more important than story.



Bibliography:

Guitar Hero series, Activision (2005-2010)
 
Tetris, Nintendo (1989)

Payday: The Heist, Sony Online Entertainment (2011)

Payday 2, 505 Games (2013)
 
Batman Arkham series, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (2009-2013)

Mass Effect 2, Electronic Arts (2010)

The Witcher 2: Assassin's of Kings, Bandai Namco Games (2011)

Beyond: Two Souls, Sony Computer Entertainment (2013)

The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda Softworks (1994-2014)

The Fable series, Microsoft Studios (2004-2014)

David Cage Interview: http://tribecafilm.com/stories/beyond-two-souls-david-cage-interview-ellen-page-willem-dafoe-film

Portal 2, Valve Corporation (2011)

Metal Gear Solid series, Konami (1987-2014)

VGChartz: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/

Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all?sort=desc

Photo Reference: 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/12/23/tetris-review

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/get-ready-for-the-witcher-3-by-picking-up-the-witcher-2-for-4-today/1100-6418996/

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/the_witcher_2/screenshots.html

http://www.gamesradar.com/mass-effect-2/screenshots/

http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/beyond_two_souls/screenshot-59.html

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/mgs_hd/screenshots.html

http://www.gamesradar.com/batman-arkham-city-review/

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/04/19/portal-2-review

http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/review/the-witcher-2-review/

Friday 25 April 2014

Story vs. Gameplay Personal Enquiry Draft 2

In the interest of finding out which sells better gameplay or story I came across a website called VGChartz. Despite its fairly immature title it was a gold mine for sales statistics on video games. Looking at the top 10 bestselling games of all time I was surprised to see that they were all Nintendo products, which is strange to see seen as Nintendo are widely considered to be the weakest games company at this moment in time. At the top we have Wii Sports with 81.94million sales, then Super Mario Bros. at 40.24m, then Mario Kart Wii at 34.44m and Pokemon Red Green and Blue at 31.37m.

After looking at those figures I began to question the validity of the website, as I couldn’t find Minecraft in the first 200 games of the list I looked elsewhere for sales figures. IGN reported on the 3rd of February 2014 that the Minecraft series’ sales had totalled over 35 million. I went back onto VGChartz and searched for Minecraft only to find that it only had the Xbox 360 sales figures, finding this out made me realise that the website divided up each platform sales for the games. This also explained why Grand Theft Auto V wasn’t in the top 10 with 32.5 million copies shipped as reported by IGN.

So this website isn’t perfect, but it’s defiantly one of the better sites of its type so I will be referencing it with its validity in mind. So anyways the top 10 of this list consists of gameplay focused games, in fact the closest story focused game to the top of the list is at number 60 which is Final Fantasy VII. This undoubtedly tells us that gameplay based games sell better, even with the website’s uncertainty, the fact that there isn’t a game anywhere near the top 10 games is enough for me to look past the websites imperfections.

So there are sales and there’s actual quality of games, just because a game sells well might not necessarily mean that it’s the best game ever made, that would be like looking at how many people eat food from McDonalds and assuming that they sell the best food in the world there. So to get this information I’m looking for the score from game reviews, and one of the best ways to look at review scores is to use a website like Metacritic which gathers review scores from a wide range of sources and works out the average and presents the information in lists.

Looking at Metacritic I saw that I was right for the most part to assume that bestselling games aren’t necessarily the highest rated games seen as Metacritic’s top scored game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was in 83rd place on VGChartz’s list. But there were similarities between the lists, for example the Grand Theft Auto series is high up on the lists on both websites, the same goes for Mario games. Story focused games had a much greater presence on Metacritic’s list, but they were still heavily outnumbered by gameplay focused games like the Grand Theft Auto series and the Tony Hawk’s series.

To conclude this research it’s clear that gameplay focused games are by far the most purchased, and they also bare a strong presence on top rated games list but there are still story games that are up there as highest rated. For the final part of my personal enquiry I’ll be looking at the information I’ve gathered here and compare it with my own opinions on this subject.


Bibliography:





Thursday 24 April 2014

Story vs. Gameplay Personal Enquiry Draft

For my personal enquiry I want to attempt to tackle the debate of "Story vs. Gameplay". I want to keep the enquiry fairly diverse, not just focusing my personal opinion on which is the superior but also how certain games present each one and how successful they are in using them. Also "what sells?", do consumers want a rich story movie like experience, or do they prefer just playing.
 

I'll be looking into various games that focus on the two elements. As for gameplay based games I want to talk about the Guitar Hero series, which although has quick cut scenes between levels portraying narrative, they're more justifications for the visuals of each level rather than attempting to portray a narrative. I'll also look at the best selling games of all time: Tetris, also the Call of Duty series, the Payday games and I'll probably find more games to include as I further my research.

As for the story side of the enquiry I'll be looking at games which I feel that narrative is the primary focus, some of these games will have interesting gameplay mechanics but if they're in this list I have looked at them and weighed up that the narrative is the primary focus of the game. I'll be looking into Mass Effect 2, Beyond: Two Souls, The Witcher 2, and like I mentioned before I will most likely find more games to fit into this category.

I'm making a third category here for games that aren't quite primarily gameplay based or story based, I want to explore how these games merge these two elements and ask the question of if one of the elements were to be removed, then could the game still stand? My list so far for these games is as follows: Portal 2, the Metal Gear Solid series, Batman Arkham City and the possibility of more.

To give an idea of how I want to look at this third category I'll dissect Batman Arkham City. So this game lets you become Batman for the duration of it's story arc, the game has this "easy to use, difficult to master" classic brawl fighting mechanic which is based heavily on counters and chaining combos. I find this to be a very satisfying feature, the rush you get from racking up a massive combo applying all of your concentration not to mess up is exhilarating. Then there's the hunter like stealth sequences where it's like puzzle trying to trick your foes and taking them out one by one while trying to remain unseen. Then there's the boss battles, they're classic and for the most part fairly simple, a lot of it is remembering patterns and learning how to react.

Then there's the story, I won't go into major spoilers for those of you who have not yet played it. So you're Batman (major thing) and you're essentially in a playground full of his enemy's, the game is set quite far into his career so it doesn't waste time forcing you into an origin story of each character, it assumes you already know most of these characters as they have become a part of pop culture, this allows for the game to get straight to the point, no unnecessarily dragging out characters. The situations that Batman is faced with are fairly extreme and make him question his morality and pushes his character into interesting emotional states. The story takes a lot of twists and turns throughout and didn't go the easy route of just following a specific storyline from a comic.

So which element is more important here? The enjoyable gameplay lets you become the Batman and kick some ass, but also I'll remember experiencing the story through my first play through and instantly want to play it again. So what happens if we strip the gameplay away? We're left with a film like experience in which we are presented with entertaining visuals and plot twists. And what about removing the story? We have a well designed set of different gameplay systems which although aren't exactly new and innovative, they play nicely. But one of the best things about the combat was it was because you were Batman throwing those punches and traumatising those thugs, the fact that you were this character improved the gameplay.

So if I had to remove one of the two elements, I'd remove it's gameplay, but the game wouldn't be nearly as good without it's great gameplay to accompany it, the game stands stronger with the two parts working together.

Wednesday 23 April 2014

Art Direction

As a topic for art direction I want to talk about character design and the ways in which it portrays the character of an individual. My example as you can probably guess by the picture is the comic book and film of Watchmen as the story has a diverse roster of characters who’s personalities are portrayed very well through their appearance.


For a bit of back story: It begins in the late 1930’s with a group called Minutemen. The Minutemen were formed because costumed heroes had become a harmless fad that people wanted to be a part of, the artist has used colours here to portray that everything was cheerful and fun. The colours are bold and eye catching, complimentary colours are used, most colours are primary and secondary, most of them are very saturated, and there are deep blacks that create contrast.

Then 40 years pass, the cold war begins among the passing of other wars, corruption, multiple hero deaths and the birth of a real super hero and we're left with a very different looking group of heroes with a grudgy and much less vibrant colour pallet, with the exception of the bright blue Doctor Manhattan but I’ll get to that later. This new and different colour pallet shows that very 
unfortunate events have occurred since the first set of costumed heroes.

http://puu.sh/8l2eg.jpg
This is silk spectre, her costume is an over sexualised tight latex suit that is coloured with the eye grabbing pairing of black and yellow. Her mother was a member of Minutemen who went by the same way; her mother loved the attention she received from her sexy pin up girl persona. Once her mother retired she wanted her daughter to follow suit by forcing her ambitions upon her.
 

Next up we have The Comedian, his costumes change a lot throughout the narrative as his career as a hero begins in the Minutemen, his later costumes consisted of the flashy stars and stripes. His costumes often consisted of comedic imagery, for example his costume he wore while he was in Minutemen was a bright jester outfit. He is also the barer of the famous smiley face badge. His whole persona is that of a tough guy who finds everything humours, he uses this persona of his as a mask to cover up lifelong regret of his unjust actions.





This is Ozymandias and his costume is much like a costume seen in minutemen in that it stands out with contrasting purple and yellow. This costume design reflects his great ego, he wants to stand out as a superior human as he claims to be able to catch a bullet. He strives to be seen as a modern day version of the Egyptian Pharaoh ‘Ramesses the Great’. His appreciation for Ramesses is not only portrayed through his name, but also the theme of ancient Egypt is seen in the architecture and interior decoration of the buildings he owns.









Probably the most extreme personality of the members of the watchmen is Rorschach. He can be briefly summed up as a severely ill human detective journal. His appearance reflects this as he dresses as a stereotypical noir detective with his face covered in a Rorschach test as if he's showing everyone that he's crazy.










And finally there's Doctor Manhattan, although he was once a human what he is now couldn't be much further from one. His body shape is that of a human, but that's as human his appearance goes. The piercing bright blue glow of his skin, the white out eyes and the neutral and un phased expression constantly on his face contribute to his appearance of being truly alien from everyone else

.



I hope I have successfully been able to show how well Watchmen's diverse selection of character designs are used to visually describe the individuals of the story and how important the art direction of character design is.

http://puu.sh/8l3dJ.jpg

Bibliography:

Watchmen Film (2009) Zack Snyder

Watchmen Comic Book (1987) Alan Moore