Culture is what bonds us together.
Culture is also the foundation of society and our social interactions with each other.
Learning how games are made in our culture
AND ALSO OTHER CULTURES, learning one culture and its CAR needs can be detrimental to interculture communications and therefore we should learn about how we can adapt our media to other cultures, i.e CENSORING.
HBO effect- the way that a small group go together, produced a pilot, which went viral, producing a highly loved show.
HBO are the company that gave us Game of Thrones, it started small, with only a few followers, and grew quickly going Viral, meaning it picked up a huge following over a short period of time.
Won’t necessarily be employed by someone.
In this industry there are very few opportunities to be employed long term, in most cases designers and developers will have to find short term work, and sometimes even personal projects, taking individual jobs as they come up, particularly in website and app design and development.
About 18 hours of work on prosthetics in GOT. Keeping the production “in house” no having the cultural diversity in the team, both positives and negatives involved.
“you’re only as good as your last job”
This is a quote and not to be taken seriously, it is more of a mentality that has seeped into our interview process over the course of a few decades, in my opinion, looking at this it may be a contributing factor as to why the youth of today struggle so much to find a job.
Digital tools are central to production now, not just little add ons.
Games and films are based on patterns.
Less profit can gain a greater following.
Less profit may gain following from the “indie” community, the company not being labelled as corporate and gaining “sympathy” from gamers, as though the devs are on their side.
Culture helps decide on small aspects of the industry, even without knowing it.
Culture can have a huge impact on games, especially in terms of censoring, a good example of this is MegaMan Zero, it is thought that Japanese children are more mature in their ways, and thus the game depicts blood coming from enemies when they are attacked, however in the European and north American releases, the blood has been removed. This could be why different countries give games different ESRB or PEGI ratings (based on age).
Social media has enhanced our “judgement” mentality.
Gamers can “make” and fund the game for you, in gofundme campaigns
A good example of this is the recent crowdfunded campaign “Undertale”. Starting with an initial target of $5,000 and instead made little over $51,000. This ties into the next part on Vlastics. Gamers will always fund something that they want. This also means that in a lot of cases, a crowdfunded game will do better than a commercial game, as you are pitching to your audience rather than a large scale financial backer.
VLASTICS ‘PICKLE PICKLE’
Refers to research surrounding what people want (see game theory: innovation episode). In short, the research demonstrates that people don’t know what they want until it is already available to them. The coca cola example really hits this point home.
We have to make sense of things from our culture.
One of the key points here is that we have to understand our own culture before we can begin to comprehend others, once we have mastered our own, then we can point out key differences in others. Outlining these important differences in other cultures helps us create better games that satisfy our CAR needs (competence, autonomy and relatedness) it is extremely difficult to make a game that satisfies all 3 to a high standard, not only that but these needs change from culture to culture
Skill and creativity, MAY make you money
Instincts NEARLY always right.
Emphasis on nearly, however, during the design phase of a project, go with your instincts as much as possible, sure think about the law and the acceptance of your culture, but new ideas can be ran through focus groups later in development. If on the other hand something seems like a good idea, and it doesn’t break laws and is suitable for your target audience, than it is worth including when pitching your idea.
EX Machina
DON’T BE BOUND TO YOUR OWN TRIBE, DON’T FOLLOW TRENDS, DEVIATE FROM THE NORMS FOR MORE DIVERGENT THINKING
Doing this will expand your knowledge and understanding, which in this industry is highly important, for example, a game can be directed to a western audience which has heavy eastern themes, therefore exposing your audience to cultural diversity. This may provide a causality for the reduction in global intolerance.
Engage in something.
Different people flourish in different environments.
BOX OF BROADCASTS
Really about visual training. WE ARE STILL ART STUDENTS.
Understanding video games
Mark scheme at bottom of module guide.