When producing a product such as a game, it is always vital to study audiences and also have a marketing campaign that appeals to your target audience. In this blog post I’m going to be talking about how audiences have changed overtime in terms of culture, gender and age and also how demands from different audiences have influenced developers to create beneficial changes in their games.
In the early days of advertising for consoles such as the NES, gamers were typically portrayed as teenage boys or younger, in their room playing their console. Below is a video that shows 17 of the best old Nintendo commercials, so that you can get the idea of how Nintendo stereotyped their audience.
Obviously, methods of marketing campaigns have changed since then and have been aimed at different ages, different genders and different cultures, therefore expanding the target audience and how the target audience is portrayed. For instance, if you compare this Disney infinity AD and this Wii sports AD, which are family friendly and aimed at a younger and more universal audience…
To say the Call of Duty: Ghosts AD or EA’s Star Wars Battlefront AD, then you can clearly see that these entirely differ in style and audience and are supposed to be taken in by a more mature audience.
As you can see, these advertisements show how much marketing campaigns for games have changed for the better. This is because they’re more diverse in terms of race, culture and age, which is a huge change compared to the Nintendo AD’s I showed earlier in the blog post, which didn’t really show a variety of audience and mainly stuck with the imagery of the typical audience member being a teenage boy in their room.
If you have read one of my previous blogs (Evolution of Games Design: https://joshcgblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/evolution-of-games-design/), you may recall me bringing up how certain audiences have influenced developers to change the design of a game, mainly increasing the accessibility for disabled players. In fact it is vital to acknowledge each individual audience, no matter how able they are to play the game. The video below goes through how disabled members of the gaming community have helped improve and widen the accessibility for disabled players for Uncharted 4.
Overall, it’s always important to study your target audience no matter what their culture, gender or age. Each audience should also be respected and their opinions and views should be taken into consideration, to further improve a games structure.
For this piece I decided to use a variety of different pencils, ranging from HB to 6B. The reason I used the variety of pencils is so that I could easily shade and define parts of BB-8’s head and body. I also used coloured pencils to finish off BB-8 so that I could bring out his colour and I even discretely went over parts of BB-8 with a brown pencil where there was dirt in the reference image to really sell the effect that BB-8 had been through some tough times whilst rolling through the deserts of Jakku.
Overall I am really happy with how this piece has turned out and I may even develop on it further in the future.
At first I thought that the model was very plain and would’ve looked very boring if that was all it turned out to be, so I decided to add a bit more to the model. I decided to actually make the bath bomb, into a literal bath bomb. I did this by adding a sticky bomb to the bath bomb model. I thought that if I added a sticky bomb to the bath bomb, it would’ve gave the model a more unique design. Anyway, I modeled the sticky bomb separately from the bath bomb so that I could later attach it to the model. So I gathered another reference image and got modelling. The image below shows the 3 separate parts of the sticky bomb model I created, those parts being the timer, the bomb and the pieces of tape that would go round the exterior of the sticky bomb.
After this was done, I attached everything together, reduced some of the polys on the model and it gave me this outcome…
As you can see the model is finished however it is still yet to be textured. But to be honest, I’m quite happy with how the model looks so far. I think that next time I will focus on texturing the model and perhaps make a start on another model on that I have put myself down for making on the class google drive.
As I am more of an artist than anything else, I believe that I can improve a lot after looking back at some of my previous work.
If I were to become a freelance concept artist, my duties will include:
In conclusion, I believe that I still need to improve on a lot of things if I want to achieve my goal and get this type of job in the future. However, since being on this course I have been able to learn different techniques to help me out with my art and I have definitely been improving. Furthermore, I look forward to what the future holds for me getting a job in the industry.
8-Bit Adrian was the first pitch that I ever did on this course. I did this alongside my class mates: Jay, Nathan, Conor and Robyn. However, before we got to the actual games pitch in front of our tutors, I had to pitch the whole 8-Bit Adrian idea, as I did come up with this idea in the beginning. This was slightly awkward for me at first when pitching this to my colleagues, as I didn’t really know them that well in the beginning, but I got over this quickly. And in the end Jay, Nathan, Conor and Robyn really liked the idea and so we started work on 8-Bit Adrian. It was a week or two later that we actually did the pitch in front of our tutors.
This was my second pitch and in all honesty one of the best pitches I have ever done! This time, unlike the last, we had a chance to have a practice run of the pitch in front of our tutors, to see where we went wrong and where we could improve. Due to me and the others in our group, this time the group being formed out of: myself, Nathan, Jess, Jay, Caitlin, Gabriel and Andrew, taking in the feedback we had received previously from our first pitch, we did better. However there were still areas for improvement. I believe this practice pitch benefitted our group and it prepared us for the pitch with Stephen Hey from EA’s Chillingo.
The pitch with Stephen Hey went well and our team had improved compared to our recent pitch rehearsal. We had vastly improved, as we felt more confident in our speaking, didn’t ramble on , projected our voices more and made the PowerPoint stand out more (which was some of the feedback we got from our lecturers) and to be honest, the pitch we did couldn’t have went any smoother. The presentation we created for the pitch is shown below…
At the start of January this year, Myself, Gabriel , Jess, Cate, Jay, and Nathan decided to enter the Global Game Jam and create a game. The pitching for this game was mainly with members of the team, as I would offer ideas that add to the game such as assets, character design, level design, asset design, Animation and much more. For example, I pitched my character concept art to the group so that we could determine what art style the game was going to have. Some more examples of the work I pitched to the team, are shown below…
The pitching of Kartz is the most recent pitch we’ve done to date. This was pitched by Louis, Jess, Cate, Caleb and myself. To be fair, I think the pitch wasn’t that bad and our team had handled the pitch quite well. Personally, I felt as though I let the team and the pitch down a bit as I stuttered quite a bit and sometimes a took pauses within my sentences that were too long. However, apart from these hiccups I felt that the pitch went not so bad. I also thought that if we had a bit more time to run through the PowerPoint before hand, I think that I may have did a bit better, as we were running out of time and we did only get to do a quick run through of the Power Point before we actually pitched the game. The presentation we created for the pitch is shown below…
Once I had done this, I went and opened Maya and inserted my freeze frame I created earlier. I inserted this as an image plane. After this I then went on to inserting my new Spaceship model into the software. However, I decided to duplicate the model several times so that the scene looked like there was an actual invasion going on. Anyway once I did this so I could get started on animating all of the duplicated models in the scene.
I also decided that I would have a spaceship crashing into the camera instead of shooting it, as I thought that it would give the scene a bit more depth and make it more appealing to the audience.
Once I had animated the models, I decided to add Maya’s motion blur feature to the scene, this was so that I could use this as a reference for when I went into After Effects and added the motion blur feature there. I also adjusted the texture of the model in Maya slightly, so that I could get a more accurate result when exporting the animation out as a sequence. I then got rid of the freeze frame that I added into Maya earlier (as I used it as a guide) and it gave me this result…
You may have realised that I haven’t mentioned the mothership model at all in this post. The main reason being the models UV was done incorrectly; causing the models texture to looked stretched and not appealing. I’m working on that at the movement and I will add this into the animation later.
Overall, I thought that my work in this session was quite successful. This also means that the VFX Shot is closer to getting finished. I think next session, I will focus on masking over some of the UFO’s in the scene with a clean plate, so that it looks more believable and more polished to the viewer.
Video games in the early years, were simple and plain by the standards of today. But even with their simplistic design, they were revolutionary in both their design and structure. During the 80’s (in the days of the NES), games were fairly simple compared to today. Plus the amount of detail and information was limited however, by the systems 8-bit capabilities.
The basics of game design today however, remain very similar to what it used to be. It just became more complicated and detailed as the capabilities of the consoles increased. Designers still go through the process of creating concepts and sketches to bring out the games content, programmers are still faced with the games coding, musicians still create music to draw you into the world of the game, and games still go through long periods of testing to iron out the bugs and glitches within the system.
The usage of 3D graphics enabled game producers to create games where the world seems to come alive before you; you are no longer restrained by only being able to go either up, down, left, or right. And when games implemented full 360 degree controls, it truly felt as though you could enter into a whole new world.
You could say another reason of how game design has evolved is due to the controllers that are used with the consoles. These impact the sorts of games that developers can feasibly make due to the dual analogue controllers and such.
A good example of how controllers have evolved with the design of games is the original Mario and Zelda games on the NES. With the NES controller, it was effortless to move Mario and Link around on a 2D plane in game. However, when arcade classics came to the NES such as Marble Madness for instance (which was controlled in the arcade with trackpads), this was awkward for players to control with the capabilities of the NES controller.
When games went 3D, the D-pad was no longer fit for purpose. This can clearly be seen in PS1 games like Tomb Raider. The N64 controller really made a difference in how to move a character around in 3D space, such as Mario in Mario 64. Sony, at around about the same time, came out with the Dual analog stick which was later replaced with the Dual Shock controller. The video below goes into more detail on how controllers have changed gaming over the years.
This was brought to Naughty Dogs attention in the first place, by a person by the name of Josh Straub, who is a big fan of the Uncharted games but mentioned that he couldn’t complete Uncharted 2 due to one of the events in the game, where you had button mash in order to knock down a series of doors. This lead to the developers making the game more accessible by giving the player the option to change some settings in the game so that when an event happened where you had to mash a certain button a certain amount of times (such as in combat), it would recognise that when you had a certain button held, it would count as you pressing that button a certain amount of times. This is shown in the video below and it shows how important it is to acknowledge your audience in order to improve a games design…
Overall I think the pitch wasn’t that bad and our team had handled the pitch quite well. Personally, I felt as though I let the team and the pitch down a bit as I stuttered quite a bit and sometimes a took pauses within my sentences that were too long. However, apart from these hiccups I felt that the pitch went not so bad. I also thought that if we had a bit more time to run through the PowerPoint before hand, I think that I may have did a bit better, as we were running out of time and we did only get to do a quick run through of the Power Point before we actually pitched the game.
Overall, I think that I personally need to work on my speaking more to improve my pitching skills. However I do look forward to working on ‘Quacky Racers’ soon and seeing how the game turns out in the end!
From each group in the class, we had to come up with an Idea and pitch the idea to the class, then we would all decide which idea was best and the class would work on that Idea. The game had to be do-able, due to the fact of us only having 4-5 weeks to complete the game.When coming up with the idea we had to consider the following things:
Just like any other racing game, the objective is to finish first in the race and the rules are, there are 3 Laps and the one who finishes first wins. The game is kind of like a class based racing game, much like if a game such as Mario Kart met Overwatch.
For example, if you wanted a fast character, there would be a fast character class that is based on speed, however if you wanted a character that was good at handling, there would be a character that has better handling and able to make better turns, but is slower than in speed.
The game is definitely feasible as each group can produce 1 character and one map for the game. There is also a decent amount of tasks to do and there is lots of room for design, asset creation, and programming.
The first generation of games consoles lasted from the 1960’s to the mid 1970’s. These were fairly simple devices that allowed simple home entertainment. The consoles in this generation that were the most recognised, were the Magnavox Odyssey, the Atari Pong Consoles and the different versions of the Nintendo Colour TV.
Similar to the arcade version, several companies released clones to capitalize on the home console’s success, many of which continued to produce new consoles and video games. Magnavox re-released their Odyssey system with simplified hardware and new features, and would later release updated versions. Coleco entered the video game market with their Telstar console which featured three Pong variants and was also succeeded by newer models.
Nintendo released the Colour TV Game 6 in 1977, which played six variations of electronic tennis. The next year, it was followed by an updated version, the Colour TV Game 15, which featured fifteen variations. The systems were Nintendo’s entry into the home video game market and the first to produce themselves (they had previously licensed the Magnavox Odyssey).
Atari PONG was released in June 1972 and is the first commercially successful video game. This tennis sports game featuring two-dimensional graphics is one of the earliest arcade video games, which may be considered one of the most revolutionary games due to its success which led to development of ‘Home Pong’ which was marketed in 1975.
This change in how video games were played could be seen as one of the most revolutionary of all, as this furthered the development of more home consoles which people could play all day in comparison to spending money to play for a few minutes at an arcade machine.
Generation 2 of computer and video games began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F and Radofin Electronics’ 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System. It coincided with and was partly fueled by the golden age of arcade video games, a peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium.
The Atari 2600 was a home video game console released on September 11, 1977 by Atari. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and ROM cartridges containing game code, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F video game console in 1976. This format contrasts with the older model of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware, which could only play the games which were physically built into the unit.
The console was originally sold as the Atari VCS, an abbreviation for Video Computer System. Following the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982, the VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600, after the unit’s Atari part number, CX2600. The 2600 was bundled with two joystick controllers (the controllers had one button and one joystick), a pair of paddle controllers, and one game cartridge.
The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. Development of the console began in 1978, less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. The word Intellivision is a portmanteau of “intelligent television”. Over 3 million Intellivision units were sold and a total of 125 games were released for the console.
The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries’ second-generation home video-game console which was released in August 1982. The ColecoVision offered a much more powerful game machine system compared to competitors such as the Atari 2600, along with an ability to expand the system’s basic hardware. One of these was a add on that allowed Atari 2600 games to be played on it.
Generation 3 (1983) marked the end of the ‘North American Videogame Crash’, and helped bring Japan out as the dominant in the industry, thanks to the Famicom, or NES in America. The three best-selling consoles of that era where the NES, Master System, and Atari 7800. It also gave birth to the rivalry between SEGA and Nintendo. It’s in this generation that franchises like Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, Metroid and Castlevania were found.
The NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), or Famicon in Japan, was the best selling console of its time, and was the main contributing factor to helping North America recover from the Videogame Crash. One of the things that caused the crash was low quality games continuing to disappoint the public. Nintendo put a stop to that by introducing a new business model that made games more polished – licensing 3rd party developers restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval. The main appeal of the NES was being able to play games from home, rather than having to go out and pay at the arcade. It allowed for more long lasting, story driven games to come through.
The NES sold over 61.9 million copies, with the market for Nintendo cartridges outshining all the previous demand for home computer systems. The success of the NES was so strong it caused competitors serious financial trouble come Christmas. In total, there were 713
The Game Boy is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America on July 31, 1989, and in Europe on September 28, 1990. Upon its release in the United States, it sold its entire shipment of one million units within a few weeks.
In its first two weeks in Japan, from its release on April 21, 1989, the entire stock consisting of 300,000 units was sold; a few months later, the Game Boy’s release in the United States on July 31, 1989 saw 40,000 units sold on its first day. The Game Boy and Game Boy Colour combined have sold 118.69 million units worldwide, with 32.47 million units in Japan, 44.06 million in the Americas, and 42.16 million in other regions. By Japanese fiscal year 1997, before Game Boy Colour’s release in late-1998, the Game Boy alone had sold 64.42 million units worldwide.
Sega’s first foray into the third generation of games consoles came in the form of the SG-1000.
This gaming system was both a sales and cultural failure, providing little influence on the north american and European gaming scenes, with only slightly wider spread in Japan.
Nintendo’s SNES was originally released in 1990 in Japan, making its way to N. America in 1991 and finally Europe in 1992. The SNES was, for it’s time, quite a powerful advancement in terms of video games and consoles, boasting advanced graphics and sound capabilities; combined with the 6-bit and range of enhancement chips integrated within the console, it made it’s mark in gaming history.
The 16-bit design of the SNES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that allow tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some supposed significant advantages over the higher bit-rate competition such as the Genesis.
Also known as PC Engine was developed by Hudson Soft and NEC. First it was launched in Japan on October 30, 1987, and latter in America in August 1989. It was successful in Japan due to in part that it used the new CD-ROM format. The console failed to keep up sales or make a strong impact in the American market and therefore stopped manufacturing in America in 1994.
The fifth generation of video game consoles, often referred to as the ‘3D era’ refers to consoles released between approximately 1993 and 2001. Notable examples from this generation include the Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64.
Notable games from this generation include Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy XII, the latter being notable for pushing the industry towards using CDs due to storage issues on the Nintendo 64’s cartridges, despite all previous Final Fantasy releases being Nintendo only. This was known as the 3D Era which introduced us to higher quality 3D graphics, Higher resolutions, CD-ROM storage, high quality 16 bit audio, analogue controllers and 24 bit colour.
Due to Playstation, this era also marked the end of cartridges as far as home consoles go. Despite the Playstation being 32-bit as opposed to 64-bit, its use of compact discs allowed the games to be much, much bigger. A notable effect of this is that development of Final Fantasy VII was shifted from Nintendo to Playstation due to its size. The game went on to become the second best selling Playstation game, a devastating blow to Nintendo. As the sixth generation was ushered in, all of its home consoles utilised CDs.
The sixth-generation era includes Xbox, Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Sega Dreamcast. Game Boy Advanced and N-Gage were the handhelds released in this era. The era began on November 27, 1998 and ended in November 2006 as the next generation of consoles were being released. The sixth generation of video games sold a record-breaking 180+ million consoles and 85 million handheld systems.
Microsoft’s use of PC technology when making the Xbox allow for a greater performance when compared to other 128-bit consoles. However, sales remain behind that of the Playstation 2. The greatest success for Xbox proves to be Hab: Combat Evolved, one of the most popular titles in video game history.
The PlayStation 2 was the first 128-bit system that featured backwards compatibility, the ability to older 32-bit PlayStation games and functioned as a DVD player. This aided the Playstation’s sales as the system was being purchased by many people who did not necessarily care about the vast library of games, but wanted a DVD player they could justify spending money on.
With the strength of titles like Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy, the Playstation 2 became the most popular console of the 128-bit era. 127 million units (as of December 31, 2007) were sold. The Playstation 2 also marks the rise in popularity of console games played over high-speed internet connection.
Nintendo’s GameCube was their first system to use optical discs instead of cartridges and one-upped the gameplay and graphics of the Nintendo 64. May 1999, the console was first publicly announced as “Project Dolphin”, the successor to the Nintendo 64.
The release of the Dreamcast also included reviving the Sonic the Hedgehog series that seemed to be on hiatus during the 5th generation. The Dreamcast is notable for being the first major console to have online support built in, as well as MMO gaming.
The GameBoy Advance is a backwards compatible, portable system that plays games from both the GameBoy and the GameBoy Colour. The LCD screen can display over 32,000 colours.
In the late 1990s, gamers increasingly carried both mobile phones and handheld game consoles. Nokia spotted an opportunity to combine these devices into one unit. Nokia announced in November 2002 that they would develop the N-Gage, a device that integrated these two devices. Instead of using cables, multiplayer gaming was accomplished with Bluetooth or the Internet (via the N-Gage Arena service). The N-Gage also included MP3 and Real Audio/Video playback and PDA-like features into the system.
The seventh generation includes consoles released since late 2005 by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment. For home consoles, the seventh generation began on November 22, 2005 with the release of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and continued with the release of Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nintendo’s Wii on November 19, 2006. Each new console introduced a new type of breakthrough in technology. The Xbox 360 offered games rendered natively at High-definition video resolutions, the PlayStation 3 offered HD movie playback via a built-in 3D Blu-ray Disc player, and the Wii focused on integrating controllers with movement sensors as well as joysticks. Some of the Wii controllers could be moved about to control in-game actions, which enabled players to simulate real-world actions during gameplay (e.g., in the Wii sports tennis game, the user swings the controller to hit the on-screen image of a tennis ball).
Joining Nintendo in the motion market, Sony Computer Entertainment released the PlayStation Move in September 2010. The PlayStation Move features motion sensing gaming, similar to that of the Wii. Microsoft joined the scene in November 2010, with its Kinect (previously announced under the working title “Project Natal” in June 2009). Unlike the other two systems (PlayStation 3 and Wii), Kinect does not use controllers of any sort and makes the users the “controller.”
Having sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on the market, Kinect has claimed the Guinness World Record of being the “fastest selling consumer electronics device”. While the Xbox 360 offers wired controllers as a standalone product, all PlayStation 3 controllers can be used in wired and wireless configurations.
The Seventh Generation of games consoles also introduced us to many Handheld consoles, on the November 21, 2004 starting with the Nintendo DS , alongside Nintendo’s existing Game Boy Advance and GameCube consoles.
The Nintendo DS features a touch screen and built-in microphone, and supports wireless IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standards. Additionally, the revised version of the NDS, the Nintendo DSi, features two built in cameras, the ability to download games from the DSi store, and a web browser. 
The PlayStation Portable (PSP) released later the same year on December 12, 2004, followed a different pattern. It became the first handheld video game console to use an optical disc format, Universal Media Disc (UMD), as its primary storage media. Sony also gave the PSP robust multi-media capability, connectivity with the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 (only on some games), other PSPs, as well as Internet connectivity.
The multi-million-dollar pre-sale success of Ouya, an Android-based micro-console initially founded through crowd funding has raised open-source development and the free-to-play model as key issues to be addressed in later firmware updates to the seventh generation consoles, as well as by the eighth generation consoles.
The micro-consoles like Nvidia Shield Console, MOJO, Razer Switchblade, GamePop, GameStick, Ouya, and even more powerful PC-based Steam Machine consoles are attempting to compete in the game console market; but even though some of these are theoretically powerful on paper, they are however not often referred to as “seventh generation” consoles.
The eighth generation includes consoles released since 2012 by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment. For home consoles, the eighth generation began on November 18, 2012 with the release of the Wii U, and continued with the release of the PlayStation 4 on November 15, 2013,
The Xbox one is Microsoft’s latest Xbox and was released in late 2013. The Xbox one suffered a disastrous launch which was plagued with bad ideas from the offset. These included DRM and always online connectivity which was not helped by the way Microsoft’s marketing department delivering an E3 conference based mostly on the things the console could do not relating to games. This all lead to the console being out sold by both the Wii u and PS4 at launch. This only changed when new head of Xbox Phil Spencer made welcome changes to the console causing it to leapfrog the Wii U in sales, however the PS4 had already had an unreachable gap.
Another technological advancement is the integration on DirectX 12 which allows a systems hardware to be ran more efficiently, as well of this the introduction of windows 10 is allowing more Xbox exclusives to be sold on PC and for cross platform play. As well as this there was an advancement in controllers with the new vibrations motors. There was also the elite controllers which allows you to customise your D pad and add paddles to the controller if you wish as well as map out your own controls.
The PS4 (Playstation 4) is Sony’s games console for the 8th generation. It follows the PS3. Release dates around the world were 15th November 2013 in north america, and November 29th in Europe, south america and Australia and 22nd February 2014 in Japan.
Some of it’s new features included share play and live broadcasting and you are also able to share a screenshot or video clip of your own gameplay to Facebook, Youtube and much more. The most impressive thing is that all of this can be done at the touch of a button. The PS4 is also the first to include a WebKit-based web browser.
Another major change is the option to buy your games digitally through PS Store, Xbox Store and many others. Lets also not forget that, with these consoles being able to have a larger hard drive with more storage, we are able to store more games on our consoles than ever before.
The Wii U was a console developed by Nintendo and was the follow up to the Wii. This certain console was released in the November of 2012 and was Nintendo’s first addition to the eighth generation, not including handhelds.The eighth generation began with the release of the Wii U but if we were to include handhelds, the Nintendo 3DS takes the spot, with it being released in February 2011.
The touchscreen can be used as a way to play the game handheld or a form of local multiplayer without having to use split-screen. This console is the first Nintendo console to support HD graphics.
Josh CG-Next Gen Blog 