Blog Introduction

Writing about myself seems a really daunting task but here goes. I’m Alex King and I come from a town on the outskirts of London called Dunstable. Throughout education, I had always shown strength in and passion for art related subjects whether it was art and design or graphic design, that was when it really dawned on me that I wouldn’t be a hundred percent happy unless I was working in an industry that involved art. Even though I have fairly strong drawing skills, I have always lacked 3D experience, so by joining this course I was hoping to build my skills more on the 3D side of things this year. This may be difficult for me at first due to having no experience what so ever on the 3D computer software, but after all that is why I am here, to work hard and develop myself as an artist. In the first year I would also like to build strong relationships with my class mates and lecturers so that i feel there approachable, as am I, for support when it comes to improving our weaknesses. Apart from gaming obviously, I enjoy the normal things a guy of my age enjoys, like music, going out, socialising and just generally having a laugh when I can. It’s good to keep a good balance between these and work so that working hard doesn’t seem like a chore.
When asking a game student what they dream to become when there older, I bet you get a lot of 'concept artist' answers, well here’s another one I’m afraid. I know it’s an extremely difficult field to get into but I'll give it my best shot. For me the most appealing thing about being a concept artist is having freedom with your imagination and drawing influence by simple observation, for example visiting a country with different civilizations then coming up with your own ideas loosely based on your experiences for a game or even film. The crucial skills for this area would have to be an exceptional imagination and a good understanding of perspective, emotion and mood to really capture scenes or characters in as much realism as possible. I think the whole aim is to produce a believable concept that would have as much of an impact on the viewer as a photograph or piece of fine art. 
At present I think I have the basics of a concept artist like the attention to detail, imagination developed through experiences in my life and a strong drawing style developed through years of fine art practices like life drawing. Having said that, my skills when it comes to computer aided work are very limited and I know that a large quantity of concept work is digitally editted. I also think that my personal experiences, when it comes to visiting new places and engaging with photography to document findings, could be broadened because it is a very usefull tool to improve my imagination and give me a better understanding of achieving realism within my work. I plan to improve my weaknesses by putting the time and effort into the digital and 3D elements of my work. To do so i will talk to second and third year students for support and advice and just practice regularly by modelling simple objects around my home.

A history of computer games, part three: 2000s

The first decade of the 2000s showed huge shifts in in gaming. Nintendo kind of faded into the background failing to hold peoples interest, Sega decided to pull out of making hardware in the gaming industry, Sony began to show its dominance and take the lead with the likes of the playstation and Microsoft, best known for PC software, made their own console. 

To kick-start the period, the Dreamcast was launched in 1998 and was the first console that came with the luxury of a built in modem for online gaming.  Every major console that has come out after this has had the ability to support an Internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket add-on.  This shows that the growing popularity of online gaming challenged companys to provide online services as this was becoming a deciding factor when it comes to console sales and popularity.

The next release, that over shadowed the dreamcast before it had even arrived, was the

playstation2. A year later Nintendo brought out the gamecube, but it wasn’t particularly a success

due to its lack of adult themed games and was deemed a bit ‘childish.’ So again, developers faced more challenges trying to provide for a growing adult audience, changing the trend in gaming and creating new types of games. Console gaming generally continued the complex and sophisticated adult gameplay trend, which Sony started. Even Nintendo, who were more known for steering clear of mature rated games, started to release games like resident evil to keep up with the public’s growing appetite for more complex gaming.  The popularity of greater realism and more complexity within games is still a huge demand from gamers today, for things like better graphics for a more intense gaming experience. The innovation that the playstation 2 started may be the reason it still sells steadily eleven years later.

2004 was the time when handheld consoles really took off. The Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP were brought out within the space of a month of each other.  In attempt to reclaim dominance over Sony, Nintendo developed their technology to a two screen system, which distinguished them from the rest of handhelds. The two screens, one for display and one touch sensitive was extremely popular. Nintendo continued to develop, bringing out the DS Lite in 2006, DSi in 2009, and DSi XL.

In November 2005, Microsoft brought out their Xbox 360 followed by the PS3 in 2007. These consoles were like nothing seen before.  Both of them had HD graphics, large storage and integrated networking.  They were the only gaming devices that could begin to rival PC's. They were huge developments in technology, becoming two of the biggest icons in gaming to date. Nintendo also brought out their Nintendo Wii shortly after the PS3, proving to be successful due to its motion interactivity and family friendliness , creating the big three: Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii.

With the fast development in technology, there was huge strain put on companies in the shape of larger development budgets needed. This created heavy losses for some developers, sometimes causing entire projects to be cut.

In general, the gaming industry are under a lot of pressure. Like the majority of the entertainment industry, there is huge pressure from us as consumers for these companies to churn out game/ films etc as quickly as possible because we're anticipating a sequel that's bigger and better. To do so these companies use a high turnover of staff and expensive technology which they never cash in on with sales making game development a constant losing battle. 

A history of computer games, part one: 1950s - 1970s

Who decided to use computers to have fun? What was their background? Initially, the computer system that was used to play the later games and linked to military use was a simulation firing at airplane targets using buttons, knobs and cathode ray tubes. The first real sign of a computer being used for fun was visible in 1952 When A.S Douglas, a Phd student in Cambridge, created the first graphical computer game, a version of Tic-Tac-Toe. Douglas's Phd was wrote on Human-Computer interaction. The student background of gaming  was also shared by the next innovator of computer technology, when William Higginbotham of MIT made the first ever video game called 'tennis for two' in 1958. In the space of 6 years you can already see that computer gaming was beginning to grow inside the higher education sector, using technology that wasn't widely available to the public because the majority of early computer games ran on universities mainframe computers in the United States and were developed by individuals as a hobby. Again MIT continued their exploration with computers but this time designing a game that was meant to be played on a computer in 1961. This was by a man named Steve Russell and the game was called 'Spacewar'. The game put two human players head to head, each controlling a spacecraft .  The simple fact that the game was designed to be competitive by facing players against each other and distributed over the internet, shows me that spacewar was purposely built for entertainment , therefore in my opinion, MIT were the first influential group to use gaming for fun. Even before spacewars, MIT were showing rapid progression within computer gaming with mouse in a maze; where you could control a mouse around a maze to find cheese whilst avoiding obstacles, Hax; which used two switches to control graphics and make sounds and a simple game of tic tac toe using a light pen. The next step for the computers entertainment usage was to be transferred for display on a television set. This was accomplished by Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison. Baer and Harrison were also joined by an MIT graduate. Again education shows its influence when it comes to shaping the early years of computer games.   Development continued till a prototype could run several games like hockey, ping pong and handball in 1968. The early 1970s showed the first signs of video games being used to make a profit, with the first coin operated arcade machine installed at the Stafford student union in 1971. Also in 1971 a coin operated version of spacewar was made, this was a landmark in gaming because it was seen as the first mass produced video game that was up for sale commercially.  Now you can see that the production and use of video games has slowly moved away from the educational sector and starting to become more mainstream due to its availability to the general public through arcades.  From arcades, video games were then made available in the home in 1972. This console was called Odyssey which was released by Magnavox and designed by Ralph Baer. It was released in the USA and driven by big marketing tactics like adverts, starring Frank Sinatra, to boost sales. You can now see a definitive shift in drive to produce games and consoles, they were no longer being produced for a hobby, but to make a profit in the entertainment industry towards the end of the 1970s.