Paige’s Graphic Pitch
When offering the suggestion for Paige to also explore the devices and consoles the game’s graphics are presented on I was drawing from information the week 1 lecture where the different elements of game media was discussed. The software (platforms, code, programs), hardware (game console, servers, social interaction) and the content (visual design, world-building, character design) work hand in hand, therefore when Paige is discussing the content and the reasons behind the aesthetics it would be useful to analyse how the console impacts this.
I wanted to provide an engaging example of this impact through the example of Sonic the Hedgehog and how the design reverted back to the “classic” style whilst being on fast powered high-quality new consoles. The tangible outcome of Sonic Mania doubling Sega’s sale for the year was meant to support Paige’s notion that nostalgia influence players sense of self. This in combination with the source “Post Digital Games: The Influence of Nostalgia in Indie Games’ Graphic Regime” to provide research resources on how nostalgia impacts graphics.
Being able to focus in on one part of the game media paratext such as the graphics is surprisingly complicated, as it seems Paige will also have to draw from many other elements in order to assess this such as my suggestion of the console but also the context of when the game was created, the surrounding culture and promotions of the game.
Yidi’s Animal Crossing Pitch
Yidi’s pitch discussed many interesting aspects of Animal Crossing but one part of the game’s paratext that I thought could be further analysed was the real time events. In the week 2 lecture we discussed McKee’s Textual Analysis, which involved the examination of how particular cultures inform the way we make sense of texts as well as considering the different values that other cultures give to texts. This influenced my recommended source “Gamifying Content Culture” as it pointed out how players can become informed of other cultures through the feature that celebrates real-world events from all different cultures.
As Yidi is examining many parts of the games paratext I wanted my suggestion to offer a specific topic that could be focused on whilst involving sections of her pitch, as real-world events could be explored through gameplay and online discussion. By also offering an Animal Crossing event calendar source I hoped this would help to aid her as she explores more of the Animal Crossing experiences.
My comment focused on a specific suggestion, so for my round two comments it might be useful to also provide more generalised feedback on the progress. While explaining a specific suggestion is useful, it also means that she was unable to get feedback on other parts of her pitch.
Josephine’s Pantone Games Pitch
Since Josephine will be exploring and analysing the graphics and aesthetics through her study of games colours I wanted my suggestion to include the storyline. In the week 6 lecture we discussed how game developers are typically trained visual artists and similar to the cinema theory they have distinct control over their style. Therefore the use of aesthetics to progress a storyline is particularly important, as it is demonstrating how developers consider many parts of the games paratext and how they will work together. Josephine mentioned that she will be focusing her DA on puzzle mobile games, which is why I offered the suggestion of considering to explore mobile storyline games as it is different to what she was already considering, but could be applied to her overall theory. The aim of my comment was to provide an angle that Josephine may not have considered yet, but in future for the second round of comments I will focus my feedback more on the work she has already done instead of other paths she could include. I found Josephine’s topic particularly interesting because when researching I found many sources that aimed to examine games ability to use colour in their storyline, I guess because you can’t always have a game to heavy on dialogue so developers can make up for the emotions they cannot express through colour.
References:
Dealessandri, M (2018) “50 Shades of Gris: How Nomada Studio created ‘a game that evolves visually, not only mechanically” MCV Develop
Dickmark, E (2015) “The Use of Colour in the Game Journey” Case Study, Faculty of Arts, Department of Game Design
Hirst, J (2020) “Animal Crossing: New Horizons is holding its first pride festival” Q News
Sakamoto, M & Nakajima, T (2014) “The GamiMedia Model: Gamifying Content Culture” Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japan
Sonic Central (2020) “24 Sonic Games, 24 Consoles” YouTube
Thibault, M (2016) “Post Digital Games: The Influence of Nostalgia in Indie Games’ Graphic Regime” Gamevironments, Issue 04, Article 1
Thorn, E (2020) “Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Holidays and Special Events Calendar” Metabomb
Vasile, C (2020) “Best story-driven adventure games for Android and iOS” Phone Arena
Bees and Bells 