Advertising and Imagery: Century of the Self

     The early 20th Century saw many developments that would shape the world as we know it today; the way war was fought was changed by the onslaught of World War I, the idea of an international community started to gain favor for the first time, countries were moving towards more industrialization and city dwelling as being a norm. One of the greatest onslaughts though, was the advent of the consumer culture. Men like Edward Bernays saw opportunity in creating a culture in which people would constantly want more things, regardless if they needed them. Opportunity was seen if they could get people to be as indulged in peace time, as they were during war. People ate up propaganda during war, so why not do the same thing with them during peace? The question was how though.

     Edward Bernays solved that how, and started having companies make their products less about function, and more about glamour. Making people want something even if they didn't need it, because it would make them feel better. It was this consumerism though, that helped lead to The Great Depression. While Americans were enjoying the prosperity of the 1920s, it eventually became too much, and when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 hit, people stopped buying unnecessary goods once again. As devastating as this was though, it didn't stop the industries, or Edward Bernays for that matter. Eventually, consumerism came again, this time to stay.

     The United States was no longer a nation of citizens, but a nation of consumers; government, and especially businesses looked to sell them things. Not things they needed, but things they wanted. Bernays was largely responsible for this influence. He'd shown marketers how to advertise their products to people in such a way that people no longer were basing their purchasing on needs, but on desire. He transformed America into a country where people's desires were "fulfilled", yet controlled at the same time. The thing is, the consumer would never be fulfilled, because they would always be left with the want for more, and this is what would keep the market going. Manufacturers at first thought that they would run out of products to sell and/or that people would lose interest in continually buying things they didn't need, but they were incorrect. What they didn't realize is that people always want more, and that is something Bernays saw, something he took full advantage of.

     

Game Design: Academic Resources

     The six sources I found all had something in which games were tested with students, or teachers talked about games and their students, all relating to language arts.

    http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=0f9e230b-c404-4e15-b560-0af106818705%40sessionmgr4004&vid=0&hid=4109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=20430351

"Using Theater Games to Enhance Language Arts Learning", was the first one I looked at. What was done was different types of games were used in order to find out what ones students learned from most. Some were more visual while others were more verbal, as to test out different areas. All the games were theater games, so students were actively involved in each

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e207e8b9-f0cc-458b-a2a9-1cb3a25aab05%40sessionmgr4005&vid=1&hid=4109

"Promoting Language Arts Through Vocabulary Development with Internet Resources in the Elementary Classroom", had students use electronic games for learning vocabulary, rather than traditional school methods; they used, "hands-on-learning", and found that it was more effective than traditional methods of learning vocabulary.

    http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=3e4f1979-c0e5-4162-89cb-7ed9729a3b08%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4109

     "The Games Children Play" had children do learning games with parents and such at home, and found that students who did not participate at home, were outperformed by those who did, and that the games had helped those students who had played them at home. 

    http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=19b0cf37-1bed-4523-b903-49a2044753ab%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4109

     "Fighting baddies and collecting bananas: teacher's perceptions of games-based literacy learning" was about teacher's opinions on using games in their curriculums, and found that while many teachers do want to do this, problems of budget, perceived lack of administrative support, and even fear that colleagues would not approve, usually keep teachers from incorporating games into their students' learning experiences, limiting their students to traditional methods, not all of which actually help students learn. 

http://www.itu.dk/people/jrbe/DMOK/Artikler/Computer%20games%20and%20learning%202006.pdf

     "Computer Games and Learning: Digital Game-Based Learning" explores video games as being more than just entertainment in our digital age, and why they are good sources for education as well. One of the strongest arguments in this article, is that newer generations are "digital natives", people who are already used to doing most things over a digital medium, so it's not really a leap to learn through a video game, as much as it might be to learn through a more traditional method.

http://telearn.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/19/04/53/PDF/kirriemuir-j-2004-r8.pdf

     "Literature Review in Games and Learning" recognizes the importance of video games in the lives of children and in our culture as a whole, explores contemporary games for leisure as well as developing educational games for children, as well as the failings of educational games that have come out so far. It admits that while interesting, using video games in classes is also challenging, considering the unorthodoxy of the medium in classroom settings; the article even goes so far as to discuss the future of games in the classroom as well. It's a pretty long article, thirty-seven pages, but is quite detailed.

Comm 344: Female Game Characters

     In our modern age, one would think that having female characters as main, playable characters, would be fairly common; unfortunately though, for all the social progress that has been made, games are very strongly a man's world still. Nearly every game character is male, which, to be fair, is the demographic that is being marketed to, however, there has been a growing female presence in gaming, and with all the games out there, you'd think that there would be plenty of options for playing as a female character. Instead, there's a plethora of male characters, to the point that they are many times similar to male characters of other games.

     This to the point, to where in games like Assassin's Creed, the multiplayer characters are just different versions of the same male character. The Mary Sue points out that Ubisoft originally intended to create a female character to play as, but decided to go with different clothing swatches for the male character, because it was easier. Ubisoft claimed they would have had to create separate movement systems for a female character, however, The Mary Sue points out that they could have used the same engine for the character for movement, or similar; or even that they could have made the main character a female, which, in a game about the French Revolution, would be revolutionary in the gaming industry, considering that one of the only famous playable characters in said industry is Laura Croft in Tomb Raider. There have been several Assassin's Creed games already, so making the main character a female in this one might not have been a huge risk, considering their loyal fan base, and the people in might draw in. It wouldn't be all that different from the series either, considering that the series has female assassins already. It just seems like laziness or playing it safe of Ubisoft's part.

     The Flounce cites Jonathan Cooper from Naughty Dog, a big name animation directer, who on twitter, said, "Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone at Ubisoft tried to bullshit me on animation tech ;-)". I feel as though if other animators are calling out Ubisoft for this, that there is clearly a case to be made.

     Whether or not Ubisoft decides to respond to these criticisms by actually creating female characters as playable or even main characters, remains to be seen, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for that so far. Perhaps some other company will be more innovative and decide to do something different? Only time will tell...

Comm 344: Game Design Topic

     Over the years, the gaming industry has changed. Some changes have been good and others have been bad, but as time goes on, games evolve and so do our tastes for them, as well as the way they are made and how they are presented to us. I'd like to look at both the good and the bad in the industry; how interactive gaming and less limitation has improved games and gaming, while DLCs and character models have put a bad flavor in the mouths of gamers.

     Games have picked up from when the vast majority were sidescrollers, and have become more interactive in dynamic in certain aspects. We are able to do more with games, although that does not always mean that companies take advantage of these options. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a perfect example of an older game that has much more gamer interaction with the world than many games of today. When other interactive games are looked at, such as the Assassin's Creed series, they are interactive, but in a more...stale way. They seem a bit more structured and less creative. This isn't to say that all modern games are like this. Games like Bioshock Infinite incorporated first person shooter and interactive gaming to a balanced level of creativity.

     An example of a game that couldn't have been done in the older days of gaming is Minecraft; the game is incredibly large, and has many, many options for what the player may choose to do. The world is roughly 8 times the scale of the Earth...something that would have been very difficult to do on an older system.

     A more modern concept though, the DLC, is one that is mostly for the companies to make more money(so it seems)by releasing a game piece by piece, making someone pay more than what they would normally pay for if they bought a whole game at once. This wasn't done, at least not to nearly the same scale, in the gaming industry years ago; it would have been unheard of(I would think)to release a game that wasn't complete, and release pieces of it one at a time for the consumer.

     As far as character models go, one thing that hasn't improved, and might have actually gotten worse, is that most game characters, especially the main characters, are not that diverse. As far as character design goes, they have different looks, but there are so few female characters, or non-white characters. Now, I'm not one to normally complain about this, I think in many mediums, like movies, they cater to what they think is their target audience; that being said, we get excuses from the makers of the latest Assassin's Creed game, saying that it would be too much work to render a female character to play as...which is absurd. They make tons of money, and it really just sounds like laziness. I'm sure that there are some technicalities, but surely they could make at least one female character for the game to play as, especially since they already have character models from previous games.

     I'm sure there's much more to these things than what I'm just seeing at the moment, but after further research, these articles will be more fine tuned.