Reviews and NGJ

What issues face reviewers? Firstly i feel the majority of game reviewers who do their job with passion and professionalism don't have it easy when it comes to reviewing a game,because if they are doing it coherently to the book so to speak, it takes a long time to comprehend and absorb the story line and each and every aspect of a game and analyse its ins ans outs thoroughly enough to make a well founded review of a game. in even then after days of playing a game and conjuring a meaningful review its still only your opinion and there will be people that have contrasting views on the game and will choose to challenge your review. But at the end of the day if your review is fundamentally based on a non biased view of the game then it will cover the general scope of opinions people have for the game.

Games reviews are not like film or music reviews, and not simply because they’re more time consuming. The antiquated review model for those other mediums may still serve them well, but for games it feels hopelessly limiting. Every game requires, in a way, its own investigative report. For example a game that portrays a different planet has to be treated as if it were real life, if you cant convince yourself that your on another planet subsequent to a bad story line or implausible aesthetics then it can't be that good of a game. The whole point of a game is to allow you to escape into an alternate world and once your in their you can start reviewing.

Overall if your a company who's got a game up for review and you know the game you've made is amazing, don't take notice of the reviews. From what i have read games companies are to eager to please the reviewers, just because of the power they posses in giving the game a successful or sour launch. With reviewers working on the fast paced deadline they do I'm sure half of the time they don't even know what their writing and contrary to what they write they still get paid. Also the objective ranking system they have in place to determine a games stature amongst others isn't particularly useful as all it takes it for one reviewer to have a personal dislike for a game and it contaminates its release into the games industry, out of the thousands of people that are potentially going to play the game why do only certain people get to decide whether they want the game to be avoided or popular, what makes them so credible, people will by the game because of the trailer or because their a fan of the last game they made, not because of a Number out of 10. 

Personally i feel that new games journalism is a really great and innovative idea, it adds another dimension to games. For a long time video games have been said to have lacked any literary genius, because they are meant to be played of course, but this form of writing reestablishes the literary side of games and enables people to express themselves and their experience of video games further.

When i get into writing i feel passionate about arguing the points in my mind that seem most rational,  i cant write about something that doesnt make sense to me ,espeically when im doing an anaylsys of a game or else ill end up sounding protentious even though its just excitement for how involved in the game i am. In the way that i write a feel i veer more towards subjectifying and onbjectivity portrays things in a negative way. i feel its easier to describe a subject if you dont objectify it.

My Gaming History

I have vague memories of playing video games from my childhood. My earliest memories date back to playing on a Sega round my Friends house, trying to get to grips with the strange controller layout and harder still trying to make out what I'm actually doing on the pixellated screen. however the enjoyment was still there. In my house games weren't really allowed, my parents always enforced me to play outside or read a book, something supposedly more productive than saving the world from aliens. Subsequently being able to play a game was like a treat, which i suppose was good in a way because i was never able to play games so much that i got bored of them.

If i was lucky enough to get to play a game i would always have to play with my elder brother as it was his PlayStation 1 we would play on. I remember always feeling like we had to make the most of our time on it because we knew our gaming time wouldn't last long, unless we kept quiet so they forgot we were playing it. I used to be mesmerised by the fact you could play two player games on consoles because it didn't make sense to me how you were both in control of what happens on the screen. From what i remember of our game time we would either play a cooperative game or i would just sit watching my brother play one. About 60% of my gaming experiences are from watching other people play, as i like watching what happens and how the game works without having to engage in it. However if we were to play a cooperative game we would normally play something aggressive like Tekken or WWF something where we could kick each others heads in without actually getting hurt. To me that is the key element within a game, escapism, the fact that your able to forget about your worries temporarily and transport your mind into a virtual characters. I didn't really have that many experiences with the PlayStation 1, as a year later i got my own Xbox. Not that i could ever play it, but when i could i used to play a game called XIII, which was a First person shooter, that is comparable to Borderlands in the sense that it had the same comic book, heavy black line aesthetics. It was after this that my brother and i discovered the magical game Halo. We loved playing anything that we could team up in and kick ass, and this was the perfect game for it. I just finished Halo 4 yesterday and now the wait begins for the next one.

Between the process of getting a PS1 and getting a PS2 i got a Gameboy Advance Colour SP, which was awesome, it meant i could play games under my bed sheet without my parents knowing or play it in the car on long journeys, even though it made me feel sick. For my Gameboy i had quite a few games, two of my favourites were, Need for Speed Carbon and Robot Wars, both were games that i could customize my car or robot and i think that's what i enjoy in games, being able to alter things to how you like them rather than just having a generic unchangeable character. I feel that kind of power makes the player feel more involved with the game, as it your character your playing as.
 
After the obsession with our PlayStation 1 and Xbox had deteriorated my brother got a PlayStation 2. Which looking back at it made the graphics of PS1 games look rubbish. One of our favourite games to play on the PS2 was Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. The fact that you could smash the police out of the road was somewhat appealing. Another game we both played a lot was Burnout, another game in which you smash cars to bits. After this we discovered Grand Theft Auto and all hell broke loose. We were addicted to this game purely because of the fact it was the first game we had were we could roam around freely without having to conform to set paths or missions which was refreshing from a game, and for the fact you could go mental and destroy everything and everyone with a wide range of weapons and cars.

After the rein of our PS2 my brother and i both got PSPs,  which similarly to our Gameboys meant that we could play on the move and if we wanted to we could connect to each others devices for multi player. There's something quite special about playing a two player game with someone but still being able to lie in bed and have the game right in front of you. It made a change from the years of going split screen on the cold floor. One of my favourite games for PSP was The Warriors. It is yet another fighting game but it just seemed really advanced for a PSP game, the fighting sequences and movement seemed really smooth and physically correct. Another thing that helps enhance game play for me, realism. The more realistic i can believe it is the more attached to the storyline and characters i am. I bought The Warriors film just to see if it was as good as the game, i know have the film soundtrack constantly playing on my Ipod.

It Wasn't until i got a PS3 and my brother got an Xbox 360 that i started to notice things like improvements in graphics and the way different assets work within a game. Before it was just all guns blazing with my brother but when we started to play less games with each other i actually took the time to sit back and analyse what was in games and began to intrigue myself. For example in one of my favourite games Fallout 3, i will spend hours in one area just looking at everything and taking in the atmosphere and scenery created, similar to Elder Scrolls. I find it relaxing to play an open world game because if i don't want an intense battle i can just wonder around looking at things. I rarely buy game anymore, i don't see the point because ill spend all that money, enjoy being in the moment for a while finish it, and then be bored again. I've just got into the habit of borrowing games from friends. I feel I'm at the stage where id rather design games for myself, because i know strongly what I'd want out of a game and there aren't any out there that fulfill it yet. However If i were to create a game it would definitely be compatible for two players as the best experiences iv had with games are the ones iv played with my brother, i see them more as family memories as apposed to gaming memories.

The history of computer games in 2000s

From the 2000s onwards the games industry becomes a constant competition between companies as they upgrade and tweak their consoles to match or do one better than their rivals, i am not complaining however because it is subsequent to this rivalry between companies that increasingly amazing games are enabled to be produced.

In 2000 the Sony 'Playstation 2' was produced and was said to have better graphics capability than a PC, which enabled games with aesthetically pleasing graphics to be produced, such as 'The Sims'. Sony's 'PlayStation 2' was released in Japan as the follow up to its highly successful younger brother the PlayStation 1, and was also the first home game console to be able to play DVDs, which was a massive leap forward in the games industry, and put it at the forefront of video gaming. Which makes it understandable why it was the best selling home console of all time to date. Sony redesigned the console in 2004 into a smaller version, because if it can do the same thing but in a smaller box, then why not. The smaller anything is in household technology the better.

In 2001 Microsoft entered the game console market with it’s 'Xbox'. Microsoft's 'Xbox', released in North America, was the company's first video game console. The first console to employ a hard drive right out of the box to save games, and had similar hardware specifications to a low-end desktop computer at the time of its release. Though criticized for its bulky size and the awkwardness toward operating its controller, it eventually gained popularity subsequent to the success of the Halo franchise, which because of the vastly improved specifications of consoles such as the Xbox was allowed to blossom. Significantly 'Xbox' was also the first console to include an Ethernet port and offered high speed online gaming through the newly see 'Xbox LIVE' service. Which in itself opened a whole new world of possibilities in gaming and inspired many generations of consoles.
The Nintendo GameCube, released in 2001, again in North America, was Nintendo's fourth home video game console and the first console by the company to use optical media instead of cartridges. The Nintendo GameCube did not play standard 12 cm DVDs, instead employing smaller 8 cm optical discs. With the release of the Gamecube Game Boy Player, all Game Boy cartridge's could be played on the same platform. Which in terms of profit probably wasn't the best move as it meant people didn't buy many more games as they already owned them on their GameBoy. The Nintendo Gamecube was discontinued in 2007 with the release of Wii.

In 2003 even Nokia were trying to benefit from worlds obsessions with video games by introducing the first console / mobile hybrid,the 'N-Gage' series, which allows for a portable gaming experience such as that of the Nintendo GameBoy.

Microsoft kicked off the seventh generation with the release of the Xbox 360 - 2005 in the United States. It featured market leading processing power until the Sony PlayStation 3 was released one year later. You can have up to four controllers connected to the console wirelessly. They caught onto the Wii's secret weapon of motion gaming, and cleverly went one step further by fitting the Xbox with motion gaming that doesn't require a controller, which they named the 'Kinect'.Sony's PlayStation 3 was released in Japan in 2006. All PlayStation 3s come with a hard drive and are able to play Blu-ray Disc games and Blu-ray Disc movies out of the box. The PlayStation 3 was the first video game console to support HDMI output out of the box, utilizing full 1080p resolution. Yet again Sony did one better than their rival by allowing for  seven controllers to be connected at the same time to the console using Bluetooth. In the same manner Microsoft and Nintendo did, Sony enabled their machines to have motion capabilities, which they called the 'PlayStation Move'. Also to keep up with the ever growing technological world the PlayStation 3 can play 3D Blu-ray movies and 3D games. Also before this in 2005 the Sony 'PSP' was released, which meant Sony could compete against the handheld console market.

The Nintendo Wii was released in North America in 2006, It is bundled with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. Unlike the other systems of the seventh generation, the Wii does not support an internal hard drive, which places it behind its rivals. It also has a maximum resolution output of 480p, making it the only seventh generation console not able to output high-definition graphics. However the Wii defeats its rivals in the unique way that it is backwards compatible with previous Nintendo consoles, as it is capable of playing Nintendo GameCube games and supports up to four Nintendo GameCube controllers. Which means if you feel like playing your retro classics from years ago you can. It also includes Virtual Console, which allows the purchase and downloading of games from older systems.

With the current stage we're in, in the games industry everything a games company does has to conform to and match the modern world of technology, if a console doesn't support the latest technology it will start to lose money against the rivaling games companies who's consoles do. However, to me its seems that now due to this rivalry between consoles to quickly obtain and take on board everything modern, for example 3d gaming, Blu-ray and motion gaming, there isn't a lot of places left to go with consoles, at the minute all they can do is tweak their consoles for performance and graphics but nothing sensational or innovative is left to be included into a console.  

Have an adventure with Manic Miner!

http://www.darnkitty.com/manic/

The history of games from 1980-2000

The 80s marked the peak in popularity for American home's to own a console, the first example being Magnavox's Odyssey in 1972. However it was the Atari that was becoming commonly seen in a teenagers bedroom. It was in the 80s that games began to develop into the conventional style of games we see today, seen for example in 'Pac-man'.



In 1980 the game previously named 'Puck-Man' (featured above), but changed to the less tamperable name 'Pac-Man' when realised in America, resembles the start of real character design in games. You play as a hungry yellow creature who eats everything and destroys evil along the way, which as a gamer gave you a real sense of compassion and interaction with the character because of his attached personality, even the enemies had the designated name's; Winky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. Which was never present before in games as you just played as a generic spaceship or blob. Subsequent to the clever addition of a lovable character, that could chomp his way around a two dimensional maze avoiding baddies, females began to divulge and interest in the game. Possibly because it veered from the masculine games where you blow things up. However Toru Iwatini, the creator of the game, claims to have anticipated the sudden interest from females as it involves eating. Which admittedly isn't something i would deem appealing to girls, but he is the genius.

'Pac-man' became so popular Midway were making 1200 machines a day. An extreme case of its popularity that i found in an article, is about a boy who was so addicted to the game he played it for a continuous 31 hours on one quarter before he finally died. This emulates the hypnotic power video games posses, which to me is quiet scary.



Soon after, the infectious Pac-Man was overtaken by 'Asteriods' (seen above) the latest craze in video games, which offered more influential features to the games we have today. 'Asteriods', created by Ed Logg from Atari, was the first game to feature five buttons as apposed the previous use of joysticks, which called upon ambidextrous people to apply a certain amount of skill to play the game. 'Asteriods' was also the the first game to enable the player to enter their name into the high score menu, which created a new kind of interaction and rivalry in playing the games. Another of the games significant traits were its graphics, it used wire frame vector graphics which produced crisper lines for better aesthetics.

Along with Asteroids many other ground breaking games came from the 1980s, such as the Atari games 'Defender' made by Eugene Jarvis, 'Missile Command' made by Dave Theurer and 'Battlezone' made by Ed Rotberg.

At this point America and Japan were at the forefront of computer games, while Britain was falling behind. A few renditions of the game 'Pong' ruled our arcade's for a while, but it was Clive Sinclair who redeemed the games industry in Britain in 1980 by creating the 'Sinclair ZX80' the UK's first mass market home computer for the less than £100. It was Sinclairs aim to have a computer in every British home, and his later computer the 'ZX Spectrum' was. Naively bought by parents for the children to do homework on, the 'ZX Spectrum' (seen below) became the hub for a new generation of games. The 'ZX Spectrum' enabled the player buy games that simply slotted into it and even allowed them to buy magazines that had games you could programme in yourself, which encouraged even the least inexperienced of users to become games programmers.


'Manic Miner' (seen below) a game produced by 'Bug Byte' inspired by the Atari's 'Miner 2049er', was Britain's first software blockbuster, a game in which you had to venture through twenty screens of brightly coloured two dimensional platforms, as the humorously named character 'Miner Willy', collecting keys and trying to reach the end without dying. It was the first game on the 'ZX Spectrum' to feature in game music and was thought impossible to do. I have played the game recently and though it sounds simple it is actually quite hard to complete. I will add a link for it online. Though it holds no significance, the creator of this self programmed game 'Mathew Smith' Mysteriously disappeared for a couple of years after creating his second game 'Jet Set Willy' and websites had recently been put up to help locate him. I personally think he was just recovering from the amount of years it must have taken him to programme the two games by himself.


In America 1983, the video games industry hit a wall and many arcades closed down, the console market collapsed, powerful home computers made Atari's 8 year old VCS look ancient, also a swarm of terrible games for the consoles were realised and dampened the fixation and novelty of having a console at home, however when consoles such as Clive Sinclairs Spectrum allowing any average Joe to write their own games it was bound to lose its marvel over the years.

In 1985 Shigeru Miyamoto saved the games industry by bringing 'Nitendo' into fruition. Originally starting out by selling playing cards and toys, Nintendo marginally began to venture into the video games industry by securing rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console in Japan in 1974. However Nintendo then began to produce its own hardware in 1977, with the Colour TV home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles were produced, each including variations of a single game. Soon Nintendo had taken over Atari as the iconic console to own, and with the production of ground breaking games such as 'Super Mario' - 1983 and 'Donkey kong' - 1981 it is understandable how they accomplished it. The introduction of  'Super Mario' was vastly influential to the games industry and more specifically two dimensional platform games. People found it invigorating to play as an average short Italian plumber who could save princesses and fight bosses, his iconic face had become more renowned than that of Micky mouse. For a man who started at Nintendo doing graphics for packaging, Shigeru Miyamoto definitely made the right choice by moving onto making computer games, as his lovable Mario is still appearing on our screens twenty years later.


  
Nintendo continued to rein in the 80s subsequent to it filling a niche gap in the games industry for a handheld console by creating the 'GameBoy'. The innovative idea of having a mobile games console you take with you appealed to both adults and children and its selling point was that by buying it you could play the newly realised and addictive game 'Tetris' made by Alexey Pajitnov in 1985. The game is claimed to be so additive because of our human nature to wants things to be straight and tidy, testing ourselves in trying make the geometric shapes fit neatly. Sadly Alexey Pajitnov didn't actually get any money for the game as it was technically owned and sold by the Soviet Union to Nintendo.


In the 1990s the PlayStation 1 was produced. it was considered the console that made video games cool, and seen in nightclubs across the UK featuring fast pace racing games such as 'Wipeout' in 1995. One of the most significant early games to come out on the PlayStation 1 was 'Tomb Raider' - 1996 (Featured below), in which the role of Lara Croft is played. Not only was it strange to have a women as the heroic character, it was also strange seeing the world in a three dimensional form. It is considered widely influential, serving as the template for many three dimensional action/adventure games that followed. However such a diverse game was not easy to make, not like the two dimensional games you could programme yourself on a Spectrum. The creator Toby Gard had a team of artists, musicians and programmers working with him on the game which was never seen in the production of games before. 'Tomb Raider' depicted how much video games had matured and developed since minimalist games like 'Pac-Man'. The game opened the door to a new genre of games, ones in which story lines and dynamic individual characters could be portrayed in game, allowing for a greater sense of involvement and attachment in the game as you play. This is also evident in Shigeru Miyamoto's Nintendo game 'The legend of zelda' - 1998. Along with the iconic PlayStation 1, the lesser known consoles 'Sega Genisis' and Nintendo 64' were produced in the 1990s which also enabled the next genereation of games to spawn.
With the gradual appearance of handheld consoles, smaller and more powerful home consoles and the higher standard of games beginning to develop such as that of the epic 'Tomb Raider', it is clear to see that the games industry in this time period in slowly starting to portray signs of the battle that now exists between games companies.

A very informative and helpful video about Steve Russells notorious game 'Spacewar'!

http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/computer-games/16/189/2213

Tennis for two gameplay and description. William Higinbotham - 1958

The history of computer games up to the 80's

Astonishingly computers had been around for about 20 years before anyone had unearthed their true potential of creating computer games. There is one machine however that was produced many years before in 1849 and is arguably the first ever computer. The 'Difference Engine' (depicted left) created by Charles Babbage, was a hand powered mechanical computer that printed out precise decimal numbers of up to thirty digits, to prevent human error. Though it doesn't conform to the typical aesthetics of a computer it did the same job computers a hundred years later were doing, which is what makes it so spectacular. There were a few similarly significant computers that were produced after this such as the first Hewlett Packard computer in 1939 'HP Audio Oscillator 200a', which unlike its future generations just produced a noise changeable in pitch. Also there was the 'CNC' computer, which despite the fact it was hand powered had features that were influential to the typical modern computer such as screen and keyboard. later in 1946 a computer called a 'Enaic' was dubbed as the first commercial machine, another in 1950 called an 'NBS Seac' was the first computer to use transistors in its circuit board to speed up its processing, in 1951 'Univac' introduced the concept of recording programmes onto a tape so you could re-run them, in 1956 the small computer 'MIT TX-0' was build in an attempt to achieve the execution of a compact office computer, and lastly in 1958 a computer called 'Sage', used by Americas military to target and destroy missiles, featured a gun like pointer that you used to aim at the screen to target a missiles, which to me sounds possible to be to source of influence for remote controllers seen with consoles such as the Nitendo Wii. All of these small incremental additions to computers over the years are what have led us to produce the typically stylized computers we see today.

The first glimpse of the games industry was seen in 1957-58 in the minimalistic games 'Bouncing Ball' and 'Tennis Programming' (featured in the Youtube video). Utilizing the technology behind the oscilloscope, it was man's first attempt at creating a computer game. However the first fully evolved computer game didn't emerge until 1961, an era in which computers five times the size and ten times the price as the ones we are blessed with today dominated the technological world. These monstrous machines were primarily used by lab dwellers and the military for calculating vast amounts of information. In 1961 a similar computer called a PDP1 was obscenely, yet innovatively manipulated by a revolutionary man named Steve Russell to create a basic two dimensional two player game called 'Space War'. The game was played by using a number of ugly looking switches beneath the monitor and was programmed on the computer by feeding a strip of paper depicting patterns of dots into it. The game play consisted of two space rockets that were able to fly around in an outer space and shoot each other. The concept for this game is understandable, subsequent to the fact that America in the early 60s was infected with an obsession of space exploration. Though the aim of the game was somewhat simple, merely to destroy the other player before he destroyed you, and the aesthetics weren't exactly enticing, the execution of the game as a whole was mind blowing for its time and highly influential. To me it symbolises the start of an infectious plague that caused billions of people to misspend hours of there lives staring at a screen having incomparable fun for the last 50 years. Which dubs it an important milestone in my history book.

In 1972 the famous games company Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell, a man who utilized the invention of the first computer game seen from Steve Russell and not only made it more affordable but also made the computer generated line drawings more appealing to the public eye. Bushnell was notorious for creating the worlds first video arcade cabinet 'Computer Space'. However, though his creation was magnificent to his engineer friends the people who attempted to play it in the pubs that bought these machines were alien to the technology. To solve this dilemma Atari decide to make the classic game 'Pong' 1972, which was a proved a success as everyone knew the concept of table tennis, drunk or not. As the notoriety of the company increased, the iconic Atari was bought by Warner Brothers for thirty million dollars, and bearing in mind Bushnell only made an initial two hundred and ifty dollar investment into the company it shows just how much the world went mad for computer games.

Also in 1972 the 'TV Typewriter' was introduced which under analyses echoes similar traits seen in the modern day games console, as it comes in a compact box that plugs into the back of your TV, this is perhaps where the idea spawned from. Just as significant, in 1973 the computer 'Superpaint' was produced which was the first computer to feature a graphics pack. People where starting to see computers as more than just machines for calculating numbers, you could now achieve different outcomes from them, altering them for pleasure purposes rather than business.

'Space Invaders' (depicted right), made by Tomohiro Nishikado and realised on the Atari 2600 in 1978, gave birth to many key aspects that we see featured in modern games, such as the adoption of a high score board, the progression of destroying waves of enemy's and the introduction of fully animated characters. The popularity of the game is subsequent to these intelligent additions, making it so addictive that the police ordered arcades to close earlier,as the obsession was getting so sever one girl even ran away from home because her parents stopped her from playing the game. 

 

Images and information sourced from:
www.computerhistory.org (Useful for any technical information on computers)
www.giantbomb.com (Useful for reviews and descriptions of classic games)

My First Post

My name is Jak Warne, without the "c" strangely. I came from the city of Lincoln which since I’ve come to Leicester has been revoked of the honourable title ‘The most awesome city in the UK’,  subsequent  to the amount “Neva’ heard of it” answers I get in response to telling new friends where I used to live.  

I was originally set on doing Fine Art at the University of Lincoln, but after a visit to De Montfort and I couple of... “What the hell am I going to do with a Fine Art degree”... moments, I wisely chose to do Game Art Design. Reflecting on the decision, I’m glad I made it, as the once cloudy path to my future has now cleared and I feel as if I’m on track. I once used to be excited to play games, but now I’m merely fond of them. The reason for this lack of excited for games is because whenever I play one I now find myself stopping every ten seconds during an supposedly intense game to analyse what’s behind a fence, or to see what happens if I shoot the paint work on a car. To me twenty hours of game play is no longer fun, it’s more like twenty hours of frustration from wanting to run around recklessly shooting people but instead feeling the urge to test and analyse every asset in the game. This uncontrollably anal way of playing games is how I knew that I would be well suited to a course in which you spend your time analysing and creating every element seen in a game. At least in this profession I can look forward to the day when I can sit back and actually enjoy the storyline of a game, knowing there is no reason to scrutinize everything in the scene as it was me who designed it.    

I feel I generally conform to the typical traits an art student possesses. I’m calm and laid back (lazy), slightly insane, use music to aid me in making artwork, have an eccentric and childish sense of humour and even went through a stage of having untamed long hair.

I normally veer toward watching a film than playing a game, but that may be because films come on the TV for free and games sadly don’t. However the games industry is undoubtedly the career choice for me. To answer the question “What is my dream job” I comically answer; getting paid tones of money for producing one concept image a month, as would 99% of all Game Art students. However, as much I can dream, this job doesn’t exist. I have grasped that if you want to succeed in the games industry the reality is you have to be adaptable to the companies requirements and produce what they tell you to without question. It has also become apparent that the person with the multitude of skills will prevail in an interview process over other candidates with only one applyable skill.

If I were to choice a job aspiration at this early stage I feel I would currently like to veer toward an Environment Artist job as I feel confident with 3D and I have a good sense of scale and overall values of objects and structures within an environment. After researching jobs currently available in the games industry, there are a few for the role of Environment Design, a high end example of one is a requirement for a Senior Environment artist to work with BioWare a subdivision of the company EA. To apply for the job they require someone with “A passion for building new and innovative worlds”, which I feel is something I already possess. They also ask that their portfolio demonstrates the following: “An ability to think in 3D. Drawings/sketches that display basic skills as well as any modeling and texture work related to objects, buildings, natural terrain, etc. Excellent sense of form, weight and volume. Good use of light and shadow. A Breadth of artistic styles. An understanding of optimization. Excellent sense of scale and level of finish.” At the current stage I’m in of the course I feel confident that I could manage the traditional drawing elements of the job, however even though I feel confident with working in 3D, I don’t think I’m at the suitable standard to produce realistically textured and scaled objects that make up the environments, as I have only just learnt to do basic textures and forms. I believe I will accumulate these skills over time, they are achievable through experience and I feel I will attain lots of it over the three years becoming faster with time. The trial and error process I’m going through at the minute using 3Ds Max is enabling me to learn more about the software, and soon I will find shortcuts and more efficient ways of producing aesthetically pleasing models. One step closer to being at industry standard.