JWilkins

So I just played dwarf fortress for about half an hour and lets just say the world creation process already had me lost confused and it seems very in depth which is good I guess if that's your thing it took me 6 minutes to even start actually playing the game and all i can say was I didn't think I could be more lost but this game proved it was possible. A few minutes later im now honestly at the stage of giving up, there is so much crap on my screen, honestly stumped i have 0 clue on what's going on. The music is already annoying me. Apparently a snow storm has come??? I've now only played for 11 minutes and I'm giving up. In dwarf fortress’ final breath it crashed my PC when i tried to close it…. Well that was a trip and a half. First of all, I'm sure this game has a lot of potential to be fun but the horrific UI and ridiculous amount of menus confused me and killed all desire to play, controls made me want to die i had a list of controls and i was still confused. The music also sucked. I may at some point in my life pick this back up and try again if they ever make the game easier to understand. If i downloaded a graphics mod it might honestly make it much more playable especially if the UI design was a bit more player friendly, the game is supposed to be getting a release at some point on steam so I may give it a try and see how it handles.

This week I read an article on Procedural generation, after reading it all i don't really agree with the writer, he states the problem with no man's sky release was its use of procedural generation and its the technicality of it and its naming conventions but I feel the problem with it is how the developers went about it all saying it was a boundless galaxies with infinite possibilities when in reality that's not true and not exactly what the views thought they were getting, they were shown beautiful and complex planets with lots to do and see and we given something completely different, yes they were right with the lots of possibilities but also went about it wrong showing the literal best case scenario all the time and not all of the boring stuff that made the rest of the game. The problem isn't the naming conventions of procedural generating its the end product the player receives, the player doesn't care what it takes to get the game, they don't care about the numbers they don't care about the codes, the problem is giving false hope to those that expect the best.

As someone who has done small amounts of game design the idea of diegetic UI and whatnot boggles my mind, in some instances it's obvious like have the character pull out a physical map  but others are so much harder and yet some games nail it. My prime example of this is dead space where the majority if not all of the user interface is in the world, menus projected off of the players armor, laser sights coming out of the guns it’s amazing, some things are just so much harder to do, another game that does it successfully is the Metro series, with a lot of non diegetic UI there is still some good stuff in there like the use of a watch to determine remaining oxygen. Sometimes it good to have non diegetic though as often I've found it's far easier to understand as a player especially if there's a lot you need to focus on, can you imagine a fighting game where you only know each characters health based on how badly they look, to much tension and not enough info being given, yes it seem realistic but also takes away from the experience.

I want to start this by first saying i hate the term “Gamer” i just find it super cringy, i just hate it. Even though i am very clearly a gamer and the term describes me perfectly it's just the actual word itself i don't like every time i read it my brain reads it in a stupid voice just out of association, like if someone asks me what i do i will never say “im a gamer” yet is someone says i'm a gamer i won't argue it at all because its so accurate. In what i believe to be captured perfectly in the second paragraph off of this link, i've never felt so perfectly summarized in just one paragraph… i feel like the term gamer used to be something negative and something you didn't want to be, it meant you were a nerd who sat in your parents basement spending all day playing video games with no human contact, whereas nowadays most people in the world have video games easily accessible to them either in the form of a pc, console, portable device or even on their phones and most people play video games on some degree. I think the term gamer now is only for those who play games most of the time so it wouldn't apply to everyone but just those who dedicate a decent amount of time to this hobby and as much as i hate it i am a gamer and one of the ones that the term truly defines these days.

Today i read about this history of Pokemon and i have to say being one of the most well know and longer lasting video games of all time is an impressive feat not many will ever get close too, though a lot of people don't enjoy Pokemon as a game it's safe to say almost everyone has at least heard of it and can definitely identify the mascot, that damn yellow mouse, and i think it's safe to say it as a series isn't going anywhere especially after seeing it jump back into the spotlight a few years back with Pokemon go. Originally being launched in japan and later being brought to the US Pokemon took the world by storm a brilliant turn based RPG with a focus on collecting cute and unique creatures and battle them to become the very best… like no one ever was. Pokemon changed the handheld game back on the game boy and only in the year 2019 will the series be moving the main series to a home console being the Nintendo switch which to be fair is a handheld crossbreed only took them 22 years. The series also created many spinoff series some of which i enjoy more then the main series being the mystery dungeon series with an amazing soundtrack and actually amazing story, trust me 12 year old me balled my eyes out to this stuff. The series as a whole seems to adapt and overcome any obstacle thrown its way to push on as one of the greatest series of all time.

Subnautica has a special ace up its sleeve, where most survival or horror games lose their edge is when the player no longer fears death or certain enemies because they have died to many times or have beaten the enemy enough times to make them seem inferior. Subnautica actually strips down most weapons from the player as a jab at gun laws in the world and leaves the player with only a knife, which they have to actually craft themselves, this means the player usually doesn't kill many creatures and mainly uses the knife to scare them away and even if the player does kill the creature it drops no loot for the player to use making it useless. The game also has a another hidden method most players don't realize, to actually avoid having the player die too much the game has a few features which give the illusion of near death but are actually far safer than they seem. For one when a player is going to dye due t lack of oxygen once the meter reaches zero there is still about 10 seconds before they die as the screen fades to black slowly and is still actually possible when the screen is completely black. Secondly the more important of the two. Most if not all of the aggressive monsters of subnautica have been programmed so they usually won't kill you on the first hit but will need to make multiple attacks to actually kill the player, some even include a quirk where the will attack the player then leave for a second then begin pursuit while continuing to roar to scare the player and make them believe it is after them while really they have plenty of time to escape giving the feeling you just escaped every time. 

Killers: These players often found ACTING on other PLAYERS usually in a negative way, usually harassing or even bullying others, this isn't exclusive to other players though, in single player experiences instead the player may abuse AI characters in the game or they may become very destructive instead but they always seem to take joy out of this, these players are often trolls

So basically the writer of this post claims that Undertale isn't as peaceful as it seems as they feel the game tried to force them into killing certain enemies in the game as the game didn't make it obvious that you could spare them, this is seen near the start of the game as one of the characters won't let you leave a room and when they would usually react to your diplomacy this character does not and this is a trick used by the game to fool players into thinking you can't do it peacefully when in fact you can, if you persist long enough eventually the character will let you leave but that is the point it is meant to show you sometimes diplomacy isn't as easy as it seems, which is part of the themes Undertale looks at, it shows that talking things out is often harder than just brawling it out just like in real life.

In this article the writer discusses how they aren't impressed buy the lack of female representation in video games at this years E3, her main argument seems to be based on how only 6% of games showed had a female main protagonist, and that male protagonists made up 22% but i felt it was unreasonable for her to gloss over the fact that 66% of games featured choice of gender which i feel should also count as representation for women in games and the writer also complains that this is the year with the lowest percentage of female only protagonists while ignoring that its also the year with the lowest percentage of male only protagonists, this is because more then half of the games shown featured the choice of sex for the protagonist which i believe completely nullifies her entire argument, because shouldn't the choice of protagonist be more important because it fills representation of both sides and removes the issues entirely then we can also move on to featuring characters who don’t fit into those 2 roles

Hi there, my name is Jeye Wilkins im a student at JMC academy, im 20 live in Sydney and im a bit of a gamer if I do say so myself. I stream occasionally on twitch and have a very small following, but main just play games on my own, I own a lot of game around 600 to be more exact but i don't get to play them all a lot most games i only have about 5 hours in but some i have way more. I really enjoy doing 3D animation i find it the most find and find it similar to playing with action figures as a child, getting to act out scenarios from my head. I believe video games need to have a good gameplay cycle to begin with, something that keeps bringing you back but another major factor that determines whether or not i return to a game or series is customization, whether that's just looks or stuff like builds or classes, all of my top ten games playtime wise have a lot of customization giving me the opportunity to make all sorts of stuff really brings me back, my best example is Skyrim all the different builds and specific characters I can make has lead to over 10 different playthroughs. And i honestly think Skyrim might just be my favorite game of all time, the amount of hours I have poured into that game is ridiculous, I've bought it 5 different times and it just constantly draws me in again and again at least 200 hours in the game if not more. I think Skyrim also fills my goals in life as well, there is lots of cool animations throughout the games like the spell casting and shouts but also the finishing moves and what not, it also satisfies me with the amount of customization as well every playthrough is different, just read some of these reviews to see what I mean!