Week 3 Journal

Week 3

16/10/07

This week I have concentrated on reading the final journals and books which are listed below.

This week we also had another meeting with Dr. John Charlton, in this meeting he gave us some more resources to look at including extracts from a book on emotion. (For more details, refer back to the team blog)

The final thing I have been doing is planning for writing my part for the literature survey. This is what I will be working on over the next week.

Reading

1.

Gibbs, John (2002), Mise-en-scene: Film Style and Interpretation. Great Britain, Wallflower Press
Chapter 1. The elements of Mise-en-scene, Pg 5-26

This opening chapter from this book outlines what mise-en-scene is, and gives examples from films and goes into great detail about each aspect of mise-en-scene.

2.

King, Geoff. (ed.) Krzywinska, Tanya. (ed.) (2000) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/interfaces. Great Britain, Wallflower Press

Chapter 5. Vision and Virtuality: The construction of Narrative Space in Film and computer games

Chapter 6. Watching a game, playing a movie. When media collides.

Both of these chapters proved useful. Chapter 5 was about how space can be used in computer games and compared it to the use of space in film. This chapter can be linked with a previous journal, Composing Space: Cinema and Computer Gaming - The Macro-Mise en Scene and Spatial Composition.

Chapter 6 was looking into games cutscenes and how game designers are use film techniques to make cutscenes fill cinematic.

3.

Block, Bruce (2001). The visual story: Seeing the structure of film, TV and new media. Great Britain, Focal Press

This is a very interesting book and I feel that this will come in very handy when we start to look into making our own scenes using a games engine. It goes into detail about how to utilise each aspect of mise-en-scene.

4.

Game Theory Episode 25 - Design
http://www.gametheoryshow.com/index.php?post_id=264810
Date accessed: 14/10/07

This is a Podcast that had a interview with Activision games designer James Portnow, in one section of this Podcast he discusses the role that colours play in games design. Listening to this prompted me to look for Portnow’s Games Design Column.

5.

Portnow, James (2007) GAME DESIGN: The Effects of Colour
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7288&Itemid=50&limit=1&limitstart=0
Date accessed: 14/10/07

This article goes into why colour is an important factor in games design. We have already read into this and this document goes well with what has been read already

6.

Portnow, James (2007), GAME DESIGN: The Bifurcated Mind
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6652&Itemid=50&limit=1&limitstart=1
Date accessed: 14/10/07

This was an interesting article to read. It goes into the choice that gamers are given throughout the game they are playing and weather this can be used to greater effect. It asks the question weather the choice we are making is just a calculation:

“Recognizing the difference between choice and calculation is essential.”

This goes very well with the link that we found between film and gaming.

7.

The Valve Developer Community, Colour Theory (Level Design)
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Color_theory_%28level_design%29
Date accessed: 15/10/07

This article explains why it is important to have the right colour in games. It has a good example where it looks at a screenshot of Half Life 2 and explains what colours are used and why.