The History of Monkey Island [Final]

For the personal enquiry part of my researched I wanted to talk about one of my favourite games series, Monkey island, a series of five adventure games. These are games fairly dear to me as it's something that my sister,dad and I would play together, and is what eventually got me into adventure game genre in general. Throughout the history of games lectures we've had, amongst new information the one company name that stood out for me was Atari. My dad would frequently tell me of how he and my mother played the secret of money island on the Atari ST, until they got stuck and gave up. This inspired me to do more research on Atari as a company as seen in my blog post "The history of video games part 2".

The monkey island games were produced from 1990-2009 by LucasFilm/Arts with each game  reflecting the change in video game technology at the time. Monkey island develops from VGA pixel art, and side scrolling based game play, to full on 3D animated worlds. Though this game is mainly part of my childhood gaming experience, it also recently resurfaced in adulthood, with "The Tales of monkey island" (Monkey island 5).  The charm and humour of monkey island is present in all of its games, though as I'm older some things that amazed me from the games make me cringe now.

Yeah....

To start my research I figured I needed to find all of my old Monkey island CDs, Unfortunately upon putting in all of the CD's I found that none of them actually work on my PC so I had to find an emulator for this to play my games. Fair enough, these games are 20 years old. Throughout this post I'll be focussing on the overall look and game play of Monkey Island throughout the years and how this reflects the game industry.So to get people in the mood:

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991)

The Secret of Monkey Island was developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastic version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles.
Secret was developed in 1990 in an age of arcade adventure games such as Space Ace and Dragons lair ( both released in 1983) Secret was an answer to the frustration felt playing these games, as some were insanely difficult due to how easily the player could die, one hit deaths and death due to quick timed events were common in games, the difficulty of these games is partly due to the aim of getting kids to keep putting money into the arcade machines, and partly because games were short, a game that takes hours to master, with a perfect play through would only take 10 minutes to get through. You would never reach a dead-end. Though process could be slow going, there was never a penalty for getting things wrong, Loosing a sword fight wouldn't kill the player, you could surrender and try again.There was never a death screen that led to restarting the whole game.  In fact I believe that there are only two ways to die in monkey island, ones's an Easter egg of sorts (Threepword lists in his special skills that he can hold his breath for 10 minutes, later in the games you can test this and if you are underwater for more than 10 minutes you die.) The other way is a spoiler for the last game,(and doesn't really count.)

This is the first scene of The Secret of Monkey island, and sets the main goal for the beginning of the game. 

The style of Monkey island 1 is pixel based VGA graphics. The aim of the game (and later games) is to guide the hero, Guybrush Threepwood through the world using commands such as "talk to" (for communicating with characters) "look", "use" "pick up"(for collecting items) in order to successfully solve puzzles and complete the game. While conversing with other characters, the player may choose between topics for discussion that are listed in a dialogue tree. Secret is one of the first to incorporate such a system.
In the 1990s gaming technology was limited, so certain aspects of games just weren't possible so Lucasarts had to come up with solutions for it. One of these solutions became an iconic task in the game, and something that always made me smile. Insult Sword Fighting.

When you try to become a pirate in this game, one of you tasks is to challenge the sword master Carla to a sword fight. A lightning reflex based sword fight was not possible with the SCUMM engine and point and click controls. Instead LucasArts decided to take advantage of the dialogue tree present in the game and make the fight about insults thrown at the opponent or player. If you were successful in your insults and comebacks you opponent would be thrown off and you would eventually win.

Insult sword fighting is probably one of the most popular parts the the Monkey island series, and has been feature in all of the games, with some changes. For example,in The Curse of Monkey Island, while fighting on board ship, all insult comebacks must rhyme with the attackers line.In Escape from Monkey island Insult Arm Wrestling replaces Insult Sword Fighting.

Le Chucks Revenge didn't differ much from its predecessor  in game play or graphics. Though The game was one of the few adventure games that offered the player a choice in levels of puzzle difficulty. In some versions, before starting the game, the player can choose between regular version and "Monkey 2 Lite", (1) The graphics updated from 16  to 32 bit graphics but besides that the game didn't have any significant changes. in game play and aesthetics. 

The Curse of Monkey Island (1997)

Curse marked the height of the Scumm engine, using   charming cartoon style animation to present the game. Curse is personally my favourite of the series due to this style. during this time game were actually making the shift towards 3D with games like GTA, FFVII and Tomb Raider II being released in the same year. Though monkey island kept with 2D style, this worked well in their favour. To this day Curse is considered to be the best out of the series visually.

Though The Curse of Monkey Island is still a point-and-click adventure game. The interface upgraded. It now consisted in a coin-shaped menu, with three icons: a hand, a skull and a parrot, representing actions related to hands, eyes and mouth, respectively. These icons implied the actions Guybrush would perform with an object. The hand icon would usually mean actions such as picking something up, operating a mechanism or hitting someone, the skull icon was most used for examining or looking at objects and the parrot icon was used to issue Guybrush commands such as talking to someone or opening a bottle with his teeth. The inventory and actions were thus visible on click, rather than on the bottom of the screen as previous point-and-click games by Lucasarts. The player controlled a white 'X' cursor with the mouse, that turned red whenever landing onto an object (or person) with which Guybrush could interact. Holding left click over an object, whether in or outside the inventory, would bring up the coin menu, while right clicking it would perform the most obvious action with this particular object. Right clicking a door, for example, made Guybrush attempt to open it, while right clicking a person meant talking to him or her.

SCUMM and GrimE

Monkey Island 1-3 use the "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion" (SCUMM) engine. SCUMM is part scripting language, part game engine developed at LucasFilms/Arts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion. the original version was coded by Aric Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert in 1987, with later versions enhanced by Wilmunder and various others. SCUMM was subsequently reused in many later LucasArts adventure games being both updated and rewritten several times. LucasArts finally abandoned the SCUMM engine in 1998 when they switched to GrimE, using the free software scripting language Lua, for the games Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island. There are a few in jokes related to the engines used in the games SCUMM bar is the name of the first location you should travel to in Monkey island, renamed to the Lua bar in Monkey island 4 as homage to the scripting language used in the GrimE engine.

Escape from Monkey Island (2000)

Escape was actually the game that I started out playing, when my dad first introduced my sister and I to the series, and consequently point and click adventure games. Escape is the first monkey island game to use 3D polygon based graphics and was produced in the GrimE engine. The change of engine and graphics was in response to the rise in 3D games of 2000, the playstaion 2, Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast were all released around this time. The industry was settling into 3D. Back then I never noticed the graphics, though now replaying the game I'd say that visually Escape was the worst to look at (in fact I kind of hate the graphics now.) The controls were also an issue as LucasArts abandoned the point and click controls in favour of keyboard controls for this game. The famous insult sword fighting was largely replaced with “Monkey Kombat” a glorified “rock ,paper, scissors” type game. Because of the reasons above Escape is definably my least favourite in terms of gameplay as well, more so now as I've been learning about 3D modelling, at De Monfort. All the mistakes of the game are glaringly obvious, and a little cringe worthy to me. The first 2 Monkey islands were remade into "Special editions" with updated graphics and part of me wishes that they went a little further and remade 4 to fit in with the style of the 2009 release of The Tales of Monkey Island.

The Tales of Monkey Island (2009)
Nine years after Escape, LucasArts collaborated with TellTale games to bring The Tales of Monkey Island, the seemingly final instalment of monkey island. Now when I found out that there was going to be a monkey island 5 I was excited as hell, along with my family, especially as I knew Telltale would do good wok with it as shown by there game series a wolf among us. I was right, Tales did not disappoint. Tales used modern 3D graphics that I am used to now, whilst still very much keeping the humour and feel of the previous games. It seems the story of monkey island ends here,especially as LucasArts is no more, but then again that was said about Escape from Monkey Island.

My dad always joked about my sister and I making the "next Monkey Island” But now with myself learning about the art of games design and game development and my sister learning about the programming side of games, it could actually become something serious. One day I would like to make an adventure game, maybe if it hasn't been done yet, redo Escape. Even if its just a small thing made between my sister and I for our dad, that'd be a cool thing to do, Either way the game play and humour in the Monkey island games have made it my favourite games series to play, and I don't see that changing for quite sometime. 

1.'The Curse of Monkey Island - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia' viewed  April 2014
2. Bevan,Mike,"The SCUMM Diary: Stories behind one of the greatest game engines ever made." (2013) Viewed April 2014
3."SCUMM" Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia',viewed  April 2014

A Brief History of video games [PART 3] MOCAP and Minecraft

In the last  post I wrote about the great video game crash of '83 . Despite the setbacks of this crash the video game industry has continued to grow. Video game graphics have moved 2D pixel games to  high polygon 3D games and back again, thanks to independent games.

Modern  motion capture (MOCAP) techniques has allowed games to come extremely close to reality, to the point where many big budget games will use these processes as standard. I never paid much attention to  Motion capture until I plated Beyond Two Souls; A game that revolves around the life of a person called Jodie Holmes who is connected to entity that Jodie calls Aiden, an entity that allows her to preform supernatural feats. Something that struck me when seeing the trailer for this is that Jodie looks a lot like the actress Ellen Page, and that's because she is. In beyond Two souls the motion capture was so prevalent that the  names of the actors the characters are based off of are on the front of the game package, something that's more associated with films. In the 80s large companies would only need a few people to produce their games, now at the higher end of the industry hundreds of people are needed to produce something successful in the current triple A market. With perhaps the exception being more iconic games and characters,that will draw in customers without the need for high poly graphics.

Another noticeable development in recent years is the rise of independent games. The high amount of resources available to people has opened the door to ammeters and professionals alike making games and applications. In some ways I find this a throwback to the 80s where small teams of people (or even one person) came together to make a game, only this time it's working. Independent games are still compelling, even if they don;t have the technology to become high poly. A great example of this is Minecraft a sandbox indie game. Minecraft is an open world game that has no specific goals for the player to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.With the core game play revolving around breaking and placing blocks, and crafting other items from said blocks. The game world is essentially composed of rough 3D objects (mainly cubes) but is insanely popular none the less.  Now small indie games like Minecraft are keeping the interest and variety in games alive, rather than crashing the whole market. Don't get me wrong, the market is still saturated, there are millions of games new and old out there to play. But a huge difference in games back in the 80s and games now is that now we can digitally download them. Having thousands of games out there isn't as much of an issue when the games don't need to be physically put on disks and into shops. Even games that come in these physical packages now have the option to be bought online and downloaded  (or just downloaded if you're into piratebay.)

So really The current games industry is a mixed bag, with high end motion captured games, small stylised games and everything in between. Which for me is not a bad thing at all. It seems that currently There's something for everyone, because so many types of people have gone in to making games. Something for everyone's being made, and shared either by  the larger game companies funded by past successes, or small independent companies funded by a kick starter. I think there's a danger of the industry at the top of the spectrum coming to a stop in development, as they're already so close realism in their games. Despite this the indie developers will still becoming up with unique low budget, sometimes low poly ideas that work because the game play is still compelling, and at the end of the day that's what gets people to play games, and keeps the industry alive.

Gallegos, Anthony. "Minecraft Review — PC Review at IGN". Retrieved April 25

Joley,Matthew. "Beyond two Souls: Video game review of the week" retrieved April 25

The history of Monkey Island [DRAFT2]

( A more refined set of ramblings.)

For the personal enquiry part of my researched I wanted to talk about one of my favourite games series, Monkey island, a series of five adventure games. These are games fairly dear to me as it's something that my sister,dad and I would play together, and is what eventually got me into adventure game genre in general. Throughout the history of games lectures we've had, amongst new information the one company name that stood out for me was Atari. My dad would frequently tell me of how he and my mother played the secret of money island on the Atari ST, until they got stuck and gave up. This inspired me to do more research on Atari as a company as seen in my blog post "The history of video games part 2".

The monkey island games were produced from 1990-2009 by LucasFilm/Arts with each game  reflecting the change in video game technology at the time. Monkey island develops from VGA pixel art, and side scrolling based game play, to full on 3D animated worlds. Though this game is mainly part of my childhood gaming experience, it also recently resurfaced in adulthood, with "The Tales of monkey island" (Monkey island 5).  The charm and humour of monkey island is present in all of its games, though as I'm older some things that amazed me from the games make me cringe now.

Yeah....

To start my research I figured I needed to find all of my old Monkey island CDs, Unfortunately upon putting in all of the CD's I found that none of them actually work on my PC so I had to find an emulator for this to play my games. Fair enough, these games are 20 years old. Throughout this post I'll be focussing on the overall look and game play of Monkey Island throughout the years and how this reflects the game industry.So to get people in the mood:

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991)

The Secret of Monkey Island was developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastic version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles. (1)
The secret of Monkey island was developed in 1990 in an age of arcade adventure games such as Space Ace and Dragons lair ( both released in 1983) monkey island was an answer to the frustration felt playing these games, as some were insanely difficult due to how easily the player could die, one hit deaths and death due to quick timed events were common in games, the difficulty of these games is partly due to the aim of getting kids to keep putting money into the arcade machines, and partly because games were short, a game that takes hours to master, with a perfect play through would only take 10 minutes to get through. You would never reach a dead-end. Though process could be slow going, there was never a penalty for getting things wrong, Loosing a sword fight wouldn't kill the player, you could surrender and try again.There was never a death screen that led to restarting the whole game.  In fact I believe that there are only two ways to die in monkey island, ones's an Easter egg of sorts (Threepword lists in his special skills that he can hold his breath for 10 minutes, later in the games you can test this and if you are underwater for more than 10 minutes you die.) The other way is a spoiler for the last game,(and doesn't really count.)

This is the first scene of Monkey island, and sets the main goal for the beginning of the game. The style of Monkey island 1 is pixel based VGA graphics. The aim of the game (and later games) is to guide the hero, Guybrush Threepwood through the world using commands such as "talk to" (for communicating with characters) "look", "use" "pick up"(for collecting items) in order to successfully solve puzzles and complete the game. While conversing with other characters, the player may choose between topics for discussion that are listed in a dialogue tree. Monkey island is one of the first to incorporate such a system.
In the 1990s gaming technology was limited, so certain aspects of games just weren't possible so Lucasarts had to come up with solutions for it. One of these solutions became an iconic task in the game, and something that always made me smile. Insult Sword Fighting.

When you try to become a pirate in this game, one of you tasks is to challenge the sword master Carla to a sword fight. A lightning reflex based sword fight was not possible with the SCUMM engine and point and click controls. Instead LucasArts decided to take advantage of the dialogue tree present in the game and make the fight about insults thrown at the opponent or player. If you were successful in your insults and comebacks you opponent would be thrown off and you would eventually win.

Insult sword fighting is probably one of the most popular parts the the Monkey island series, and has been feature in all of the games, with some changes. For example,in Monkey Island 3 while fighting on board ship, all insult comebacks must rhyme with the attackers line.In monkey island 4 Insult Arm Wrestling replaces Insult Sword Fighting.

Monkey island 2 didn't differ much from its predecessor  in game play or graphics. Though The game was one of the few adventure games that offered the player a choice in levels of puzzle difficulty. In some versions, before starting the game, the player is prompted to choose between regular version and "Monkey 2 Lite", (1) The graphics updated from 16  to 32 bit graphics but besides that the game didn't have any significant changes. in game play and aesthetics. 

Monkey Island 3 1997
Monkey island 3 marked the height of the Scumm engine, using cartoon style animation to present the game. Monkey island 3 is personally my favourite of the series due to this style. during this time games........... though there is a 
Monkey island 3 is also the first of the series to include voice acting

SCUMM and GrimE
Monkey Island 1-3 use the "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion" (SCUMM) engine. SCUMM is part scripting language, part game engine developed at LucasFilms/Arts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion. the original version was coded by Aric Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert in 1987, with later versions enhanced by Aric Wilmunder (a.k.a. the SCUMM Lord) and various others.

SCUMM was subsequently reused in many later LucasArts adventure games being both updated and rewritten several times. LucasArts finally abandoned the SCUMM engine in 1998 when they switched to GrimE, using the free software scripting language Lua, for the games Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island.(source)

There are a few in jokes related to the engines used in the games SCUMM bar is the name of the first location you should travel to in Monkey island, renamed to the Lua bar in Monkey island 4 as homage to the scripting language used in the GrimE engine.

Monkey Island 4 2000
Monkey Island 4 was actually the game that I started out playing, when my dad first introduced my sister and I to the series, and consequently point and click adventure games. Monkey island 4 is the first monkey island game to use 3D polygon based graphics and was produced in the GrimE engine. Back then I never noticed the graphics, though now replaying the games I'd say that visually number 4 was the worst to look at. in fact I kind of hate the graphics now. Especially as I've now been learn about 3D modelling, all the mistakes of the game are glaringly obvious to me.  the first 2 Monkey islands were remade into "Special editions" with updated graphics and part of me wishes that they went a little further and remade 4 to fit in with the style of the 2009 release of monkey island 5. But I digress. The change of engine and graphics was in response to the rise in 3D games of 2000........

Monkey Island 5 2009

Nine years after monkey island 4 Lucasarts collaborated with TellTale games to bring monkey island 5, the seemingly final instalment of monkey island. Now when I found out that there was going to be a monkey island 5 I was excited as hell, along with my family, and monkey island 5 did not disappoint.  Monkey island 5 used updated 3D graphics whilst still very much keeping the humour and feel of the previous games.

The History of Money Island [DRAFT]

( NOTE:This is an incomplete draft of ramblings and unfinished notes.)

For the personal enquiry part of my researched I wanted to talk about one of my favourite games series, Monkey island, 5 point and click adventure games. these are games fairly dear to me as its something that me my sister and dad would play together, and is what eventually got me into adventure game genre in general. Throughout the history of games lectures we had, amongst new information the one company name that stood out for me was Atari as my dad would frequently tell me of how he and my mother played the secret of money island on the Atari ST, until they got stuck and gave up. This inspired me to do more research on Atari as a company as seen in my blog post "the history of video games part 2".

The monkey island game series were produced from 1980-2010 with each game passes from pixel art, side scrolling based game play, to full on 3D animated worlds with cut scenes. This is a game that is very dear to me as its a game myself my sister and my dad played together over our childhood, and recently adulthood, as the game monkey island 5 came out. Though as I'm older some things that amazed me from the games make me cringe now. By some things I mean the whole of monkey island 4. Just all of it.
So to start this first off I needed to find all of my  old monkey island games CDs, Check
upon putting in all of the CD's I found that none of them work on my PC so I had to find an emulator for this to play my games, but fair enough, the games are 30 years old. Throughout this post I'm going to be addressing the overall look of these games and the game play, and how this links in with how the gaming technology and industry was at at this time.

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

The Secret of Monkey Island was developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastic version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles. (1)
The secret of Monkey island was developed in 1990 in an age of arcade adventure games such as Space Ace and Dragons lair ( both released in 1983) monkey island was an answer to the frustration felt playing these games, as some were insanely difficult due to how easily the player could die, one hit deaths and death due to quick timed events were common in games, the difficulty of these games is partly due to the aim of getting kids to keep putting money into the arcade machines, and partly because games were short, a game that takes hours to master, with a perfect play through would only take 10 minutes to get through.

(placeholder for SCUMM Engine research)

This is the first scene of Monkey island, and sets the main goal for the beginning of the game. The style of Monkey island 1 is pixel bit graphics. The aim of the game is to guide the hero, Guybrush Threepwood through the world using commands such as "talk to" for communicating with characters and "pick up" for collecting items between commands and the world's objects in order to successfully solve puzzles and thus progress in the game.[5] While conversing with other characters, the player may choose between topics for discussion that are listed in a dialog tree; the game is one of the first to incorporate such a system. The control are fairly simple and within a few minutes I'd settled back into the swing of things.


Monkey Island 2 1991

Monkey Island 3 1997

Monkey Island 4 2000
Monkey Island 4 was actually the game that I started out playing, when my dad first introduced me and my sister to the series, and consequently point and click adventure games. Monkey island 4 is the first monkey island game to us 3D polygon based graphics.......... back then I never noticed the graphics, though later after playing the previous games I'd say that visually number 4 was the worst to look at. Now looking back on it, this opinion hasn't changed at all, in fact I kind of hate the graphics now, especially as I've now been learn about 3d modelling, all the mistakes of the game are glaringly obvious to me. Part of me wishes that like the remakes of 1 and 2 there should be a remake of 4 to fit in with the style of the 2009 release of monkey island 5. But I digress.......

Monkey Island 5 2009

Points to write about:
Previous Technology
Game engine
Gameplay
Sound
Graphics
Overall feel
The gap between monkey island 3 and 4 and monkey island 5
future of monkey island and point and click adventure games
Write about the change in graphics in more detail

write about the change in companies and platforms, for the Atari,arcade, and pc

write about other games like monkey island (broken sword, Sam and Max etc)

write about why I think monkey island is the best game in the world

write about how its become a classic adventure game.

A Brief History of Video Games [PART 2] The Great Crash of 1983

In 1983 the North America video game industry crashed. Revenues had peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, (Liedholm et al) then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent). The crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America, and lead to the bankruptcy of the fastest growing U.S game company at that point. Atari.There were several reasons for this crash:

1. Poorly made games:
Atari made more games than consoles on several occasions, publishing game prototypes and rushed ideas in time for the holiday season. For example in 1982 Atari ported Pac- man, which was a insanely popular arcade game at the time, (and a iconic game today) onto their Atari 2600 console. Atari manufactured 12 million copies when there were only 10 million of the Atari 2600 consoles sold. Atari was confident that consumers would pay $200  to play a game that was originally available in arcades for a 25 cents. 

The released game also barely resembled its arcade version.

While the port is the best selling Atari 2600 game of all time, selling 7 million copies, and was the best-selling home video game of all time when it was released, customers returning the game in large quantities. In short this move was a complete disaster and put a dent in consumers confidence in games.

Another blow to Atari was the release of the game E.T, which is considered the worst video game in history. The game was made six weeks after Atari spent $20 to $25 million on the property rights. Atari skipped quality testing and released a Prototype instead so the game could make it to market in time for the 1982 Christmas season. The result was of course a terrible game. The game play consists mainly of falling down holes to find random bits of a telephone. About four million copies of the E.T. video game were shipped, and according to Atari's then-CEO Ray Kassar, about 3.5 million of those copies were returned to Atari. (Bruck 1995). When I heard that this game is cited as one of the causes of the video game crash I thought that this was exaggerated and the it couldn't have been that bad....

Oh my God.

2. Too many  games/consoles

Nowadays we have 3 main companies competing in the home console market,  Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. But in the early 1980s you had dozens of consoles all by different companies that wanted a piece of the action. Around the 1981 through 1983 mark, the number of consoles that came to market was astounding. Another reason for the '83-'84 console crash: System saturation. Too many game consoles,without enough decent games to sustain them. Though Three machines, the Atari 2600, The Intellivision and The ColecoVision, dominated this generation of consoles in terms of sales,  there were still many consoles on the market. With the increase in poor quality games from the smaller consoles and the big companies (looking at you Atari) consumers lost interest in video games. This led to overcrowded shops trying to get rid of their stock, games that were $30-$40 at release were dumped in $2 bargain buckets.

3. Loss of Programmers

Atari also struggled with its game programmers, who felt they were underpaid (they were), and were frustrated about being denied the option to sign their names to their work, as Atari feared they'd be snapped  away by competitors. This was a big deal back in the day as programmers were responsible for all aspects of the game. 

"In those old far-off days, each game for the 2600 was done entirely by one person, the programmer, who conceived the game concept, wrote the program, did the graphics—drawn first on graph paper and converted by hand to hexadecimal—and did the sounds."Warren Robinett, programmer for the game "Adventure" (2009)

This  treatment led to the formation of one of the first third party video game developers Activision. 

Programmers and developers saw what the ex Atari workers did and decided to also leave their companies and make there own games, The industry was at its breaking point.

4. The rise of the PC
The nail in the coffin for the game industry was the introduction of affordable home computers like the Commodore Vic-20, the commodore 64 and the Apple II.Computers provided better graphics than home consoles and could be used professionally. Overall they were of better value. While the three home consoles companies were taking the brunt of the failing market, computers thrived. The move towards computer gaming was the same in Britain, where the ZX Spectrum reigned for much of the '80s. The home computer market also began a generation of amateur coders. So even while the console market was sputtering, its future game builders were learning the tricks of the trade. Out of the Crash, came the next generation of game developers. (Oxford 2011)

With all this in mind the crash wasn't that disastrous to consumers. As consoles and game prices became heavily discounted, families he previously couldn't have afforded the $200 consoles before could now buy them. This kept some interest in video games alive and primed the market for the well know NES which experience a popularity boom in 1985 two years after the crash, and would kick start interest in games again.

1. Liedholm, Marcus and Mattias. "The Famicom rules the world! – (1983–89)". Nintendo Land. (2010) 

2. Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner, (1995) pp 179-180

3.Agger, Michael (March 9, 2009). Slate.com.

4. Nadia Oxford "Ten Facts about the Great Video Game Crash of '83" (2011)

Something ideal [PART 2]

A few weeks ago I posted about not being sure about where I am going in terms of jobs, unfortunately leaving that post as is doesn't complete the task that was set out for me, to look at a job description, dissect it somewhat and figure out what I need to do to achieve that. So I looked around and tried to find something that was close to what I wanted, without really knowing what I wanted. With that I went with a job posting by Blizzard games, for a 3D character artist on World of Warcraft. I figured I could apply this to other aspects of games, like asset and environmental building, since out of all the aspects of games design characters is what I have the most experience in, I put that as a focus.

The job posting can be found here:

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/careers/posting.html?id=140005C

(working as of April 2014)

3D Character Artist

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Office: Irvine, California, United States

Blizzard Entertainment is looking for an exceptionally skilled 3D character artist to join the World of Warcraft team. The ideal candidate has experience modelling and texturing a diverse visual range of characters and creatures. A solid grasp of form, structure, color, and light for both 2D and 3D art assets is essential. The character artist must be skilled in another form of art production as well -- illustration, modelling, texturing, animation, concept drawing -- and be well-versed in related tools --3ds Max, Photoshop, etc. The ideal candidate also works well in an environment with peers who are passionate about making great games.

Requirements

• A minimum 3 years’ experience in game development modelling and texturing characters using 3ds Max and Photoshop (or equivalent 3D and 2D programs).

Assuming I don't drop out, this requirement is pretty much fulfilled with my three year game art course course, obviously I'll need to show enough growth in that time to show that I have spent at least 3 years on this, if my work currently, looks the same as my work when I graduate, It won't exactly scream 3 years of work.

• An exceptional understanding of human and creature anatomy and a keen eye towards form, shape, structure, and silhouette in regards to modelling.

Again this is something covered in my course, and I can't really think of any specific way of working on this, besides just doing it, and practising.

• Superior eye for light, shade, colour and detail in creating texture maps.

This is something that I plan on working on extensively during the summer, as right now my texture work on models that I have done haven't been great. I'd like to over the summer improve my hand painted texture maps with some kind of project, what that project would be exactly I haven't decided yet, But at the end of it I'd like to have a scene of a game modelled in 3D

• Self-motivation, good communication skills, and a great team-player attitude.

Self motivation is an issue I need to work on, as I definitely have a problem with staying motivated on one task without being distracted by other things.

• Skill in one or more of the related creation tasks - illustration, modelling, texturing, animation, concept drawing.

though modelling, texturing and concept drawing are skills addressed in my course, I want to start learning animation as animation has always been something that I loved and would love  to do, but something I couldn't have been taught until I was at university level, and self teaching myself animation wasn't exactly an options during my A-levels, as I was already self teaching digital art to get into my course, and I was (rightly) under the impression that animation takes a hell of a lot more time and dedication that I had to give at that moment. 

Pluses

• Have shipped AAA PC or console titles as a 3D character artist

If I was to go straight from university into this, I probably would not have this experience to tick off on the application, unless I gained a job/internship  to work on a triple A game during my studies, which is not exactly common. So I guess I'll leave this one.

• Strong foundation in the traditional arts, including but not limited to figure drawing and illustration

Though parts of this is covered in my course with life drawing and observational drawings, this is something I definitely need to work on in the technical sense. As my technical drawing skills are lacking at this moment in time. Though I would continue the drawing studies I have going on here, with people and places sketching, I think I would also really benefit from researching what I'm drawing in a more I guess academic sense, studying anatomy, architecture etc from  books as well as from life, to the point were I can merge the two to create more accurate observational drawings and drawings from imagination.

• A passion for developing online games

This is a given for me, online gaming is what got me into the wider world of gaming, and is MMORPG games are still my favourite games to play. However I don't really know how these games are developed and what skills and level of work go into producing them. Though not entirely relevant but something that's sprung to mind is researching how the character customisation of online games work. Especially to the level that games have now. What kind of base meshes, UVs, textures etc. would you need to produce a changing model that goes from thin to fat, lanky to muscular, short to tall, young to old. Are certain programmes in place for automatically producing subtle variations, instead of making each individual model in that spectrum or is it all done by hand? Anyway researching game development in general (with a focus on characters) is something I do need to look into.

• Understanding of the visual style of World of Warcraft and a passion to push it to the next level

World of Warcraft  worlds have a style that I can only really describe right now as "painterly", which I tend to prefer than the more realistic style worlds. With all the textures being hand painted onto the models of characters, creatures, armour, weapons and all parts of the world, and the creatures and characters obviously not being realistic This is a style that I am planning to explore more in my free time when it comes to me just creating my own concepts and 3d models in 3ds max. From there I hope to improve my texture painting skills, especially when it comes to this style.

Submission / Portfolio requirements

 Resume

Cover letter

Portfolio, and / or reel demonstrating relevant artistic skills required.Only online artwork submissions will be accepted (e.g. website, blog or online album)

 So at some point I'll need to create and design my own website to put my portfolio/demo reel on. Adding to this I could establish an online presence on other sites (like blogger)though I do need to post more of my personal work on here. Then when It comes to looking through and finding portfolio pieces for my main site/portfolio it won't be as difficult and I' have a lot to choose from, whilst still keeping the pressure off my work by having an informal online outlet to put them on.

So a summary TL;DR list for myself to go back to:

-Graduate

Develop my:

-3D modelling skills

- Technical and observational drawings

-Hand painted texture maps

- Research game development in MMO games (with a personal focus on character customisation) 

-work on staying motivated/focused on a task

- Learn basic-intermediate animation skills

- Keep posting my work on Blogger (or something similar.)

-Create and design my own website to put my portfolio/demo reel on

 At some point I'll also need to find out the processes I'd need to go through if I were to up sticks and move abroad for a job like this.

Art Direction- Dofus

In this little post about art direction, I'll be talking about one of my favourite looking games Dofus. Dofus is a Flash based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Ankama Games. I first started playing this game maybe at age 14 or so, back then I was looking for a new MMORPG game to occupy my time (as naturally I'd grown too old for Runescape) and what drew me to Dofus was the style in which the characters and world were drawn. This style continues to inspire me now.

The character's and creatures in Dofus are vibrant, with a lot of variation and life in them, something you didn't really see in MMORPG games at the time. Besides maybe World of Warcraft it was mainly the set warrior. mage, rouge class. with the basic races of elf, human and dwarf. After going through a tone of these games I got bored as one elf from a MMO would look pretty much the same as and elf from another. With the only massive variations lying in the clothes and armour given to the players.

http://utopies-charlene.blogspot.co.uk/

Games customisation has come a long way since then, but beforehand these mainstream types of characters were extremely limited in variation in terms of faces, bodies, age and race, which was a bit detaching as the style was trying to be realistic. I found I didn't have as much of a problem with this as the style of character was cartoony, as it wasn't trying to be as close to reality (well as close as a sword wielding elf could be), so I guess I didn't judge them as harshly as other games.  I also noticed more desaturated and darker colours were used in the worlds of other games and the worlds which again really didn't grab me as much as Dofus did.

Though at the time I didn't exactly have a high end computer that could display high end graphics, however with dofus it was made to translate well into a less graphic intensive format. The concept and promotional images make used of a limited colour pallet in that there are 2 or 3 main colours and shapes that cover large areas of a character forming the basic silhouette.This use of colour and shape lets this style covey itself in both promotional images and in game sprites without becoming unrecognisable.

Promotional

In game menu

This vibrant cartoon style was present throughout the game, from the characters creatures to the levels to the assets. The game style is uniform, again with minimal colour pallets for levels and at the time was maybe suited more for animation, or now would be associated more with mobile and tablet games. (Ironically Dofus have been made into a mobile version and a cartoon series after the success of them game.)

Despite the initial draw of the vibrant saturated colours of this game the drawing style still works well with darker colours whilst still keeping the style uniform With promo art still not being far from in game assets.Even in the darker pallets purples are used to being warmth into the level rather than blues or greys. All the levels characters and assets in Dofus have the underlying warmth in there pallets. The combination of the cartoon style art warm pallets make it a friendly game ideal for young and old audiences alike.

A Brief History of Video Games [PART 1]- Where do we even begin?

The history of Video Games could be considered a very short one if we start from when the first video game was made, but to be honest I would like to start with a brief history of computers themselves, and how they led to the development of video games and consoles.
The question “When was the first computer was made? “Is not an easy one to answer because of the different classifications of what a computer is. Do we start at the first concepts of computers that we have today? The first computer to be commercially sold to the mass market, the first programmable computer, how about the first digital computer? We could even look to the word itself. The (recorded) use of the word computer goes all the way back to 1613 when computer was used describe a human who performed calculations or “computations” (Braithwait 1613.) a definition that stuck until the end of the 19th century when it became apparent that it was in need of an update. So let’s start with the definition of a computer and why it went from:

1. (noun) A human who performed calculations or computations
to:
2. (noun) A device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information.(Oxford dictionary)

So when, and why did feel the need to make the shift from humans, to devices? In 1821 Charles Babbage proposed the concept for his Difference engine, an automatic mechanical calculator designed to calculate polynomial functions.1 His concept was created out of the need to produce error free mathematical tables, which beforehand were written by teams of human "computers".

Close up of The Difference Engine

Now I've had my own personal battle with mathematics, polynomials, trigonometry and algorithms a like and I am very familiar with human error when it comes to maths. So I can see the need for this machine, but the algorithms themselves don’t impress me as much as the fact that the completed machine weighs five tonnes, and measures 11 feet long by 8 foot high. It consists of 8,000 parts of gears, rods, levers and springs. Cast in Bronze and steel. Where every turn of the machines carry lever moves said part to release precisely aligned number wheels through a helical arrangement of steel bars. (Swade 1991) Now that is pretty damn awesome, what is even more impressive is that this machine was never made in 1820. This was only a concept, which was later built to exact specifications in modern times but Babbage's concepts had begun the industrialization of calculation, the foundation of all computers and was a stepping stone to modern day programming.

As great as the difference engine is, it is not built to be changed or reprogrammed once built,this only changed over a century later in 1944 the Havard Mark 1 computer was built, the first reprogrammable computer. From then onwards computers advanced, once only being used for military purposes, such as the Colossus machine in ww2 computers were quickly making the shift from military to business and finally personal use. In terms of video games the early-mid 1900s marked the beginnings for the companies responsible for the games and consoles we know and love today. (Herman et al 2002)

Harvard Mark 1

Nintendo:
In 1889 Fusajiro Yamauchi establishes the Marufuku Company to manufacture and distribute Hanafuda, Japanese playing cards. The company changed its name to The Nintendo Playing Card Company in 1951.

Panasonic
In 1918 Konosuke Matsushita establishes the Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works. During the next 70 years, the company established a multitude of companies, including Panasonic.

Sony
In 1947 Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka set up the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company. In
1952, Ibuka and Morita barely raise the $25,000 fee to become one of the first foreign companies to
license the transistor patent from Bell Labs. They then use the transistor to create the world's first pocket-sized battery-powered radio. The transistor radio is a success in Japan, and Ibuka and Morita begin looking at marketing their products in the United States and Europe. Realizing the English translation of their company name is too cumbersome for English-speaking people to remember, they changed their coperate name to Sony.

SEGA
in 1954 David Rosen sees the popularity of mechanical coin-operated games on US military bases in Japan, so he starts Service Games to export these games to Japan. In the 1960s, Rosen decides to make his own coin-operated games, so he purchases a Tokyo jukebox and slotmachine company. The name SEGA, short for "SErvice GAmes," is stamped on the games that Rosen produces, and eventually Rosen adopts it as his company name.

Now, in 2014 computers are everywhere, in our homes, on the street, in our pockets. You’re staring at one right now (unless you have decided to print out a hard copy of this post to spite me, if so you are a bit strange). In the next part of these posts I'll focus on the development of computers and games consoles, and the video games crash of 1983

1. Braithwait, Richard "The young man's gleanings" (1613)
2. Swade, Doron. Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines. London: Science Museum, 1991
3. Leonard Herman, Jer Horwitz, Steve Kent, and Skyler Miller. "The history of computer games" 2002

Catching up and moving forward [UPDATE]

A few months ago I posted about doing a personal challenge, of drawing a vehicle everyday over February, I said that I'd update my progress over a few weeks, so why am I only updating it now at the beginning of April? The main reason that I left this so late is that I did not complete this challenge as I'd hoped to I made it to day 10 of my 30 day vehicle challenge. However that's not to say that I didn't draw everyday in February, I just didn't draw a vehicle. As I wrote before the inspiration for this challenge came from a task to design my own vehicles, and from that realising that I really don't know how to draw vehicles. But immediately after that task was completed another was set, to draw an interesting character. This project is where the rest of my 20 days went in terms of drawing everyday. For this project and the days after I went out and drew people everyday and took what I observed and put it into a character that I am pretty proud of. In hindsight I could have drawn some vehicles whilst I was out drawing people, but live and learn. And though I did not complete this challenge properly still managed to keep the goal of drawing everyday in that month, so not a complete success, not a complete failure.

So without further a do I'll show the work produced over the course of February. Firstly the 10 days where I kept to the challenge of drawing vehicles:

  to begin with I just started random drawings of vehicles,using the same methods of drawing that I used in the vehicles project (silhouettes, thumbnails etc) though I did get better at generating ideas as I went along, I didn't get that far with this, and my vehicles lack believability unfortunately.

  A few days of this challenge also went to redesigning my initial vehicle for modelling in 3D. This was one of the fun parts of the vehicle projects, as I hadn't worked with clay in years I found this process therapeutic.

 I also did a few observational drawings of cars and finished off the 3D modelling project set in games production.

Now for the rest of the month I sat in cafes, pubs,restaurants and just out and about drawing people living their lives. And it was a very fun experience seeing the differences in peoples faces, the way they walked, the way that they held themselves. And seeing the similarities as well, at the end of the first week it was very hard to find someone not wearing this style of large coat. From my observations I singled out this little lady as my interesting character. What drew me to her initially was her retro looking make-up despite her age, then it dawned on me that when she was my age this was the style that people wore, things have just come full circle now and its back in fashion. She also wore a large coat like many others I saw. So I decided to see what type of coats were worn in the 1970s sort of era to influence her design. And though she was initially tall I decided to give her the statue of another older woman I drew who I found interesting due to her size. This was then exaggerated to give the final feel of my character.

Though this is where my drawings for the February challenge ended, I did not stop developing my character, the final is below.

During the February challenge I found that I can't approach my learning in the same way for every subject. Though going out and drawing  people and faces came easily to me, this just didn't work out with vehicles. I think when it comes to vehicles I'd need to take a more technical approach to my learning, knowing how engines work, why cars are shaped the way that they are, what are they made of and why how are they made and most importantly the limits of vehicles, Before I can go out and draw a convincing vehicle let alone draw them consistently over a month. So not a complete failure, not a complete success.