Game Balancing Design

The gaming industry is often seen as a hybrid of industries in the world, due to the fact it tries to cater to so many different elements in each game in produces. Games must tell a compelling story and narrative, they must have interesting and innovative game play and finally, something that is regarded by many as less important, but for others, it's seen as the most important feature of games today. Their competitive side, where the ambition of being ranked number one in the world can control someones life, or when defeat can cause complete disarray and astonishment. This is the world of competitive online gaming.

Online gaming is a world that is expanding rapidly. Originally confined too PC's, the accessibility to online features with the latest consoles means that more and more people have become involved in competitive gaming. Online gaming however, requires different presets than single player or co-op games. One of the toughest parts of creating and maintaining an online game, is making sure the game is balanced. Making sure that there is noway in the game to have an unfair or over powered edge against other people. This takes a delicate balance of many many factors and is something that must be watched continuously.

For my Design Document i'm going to talk about something that is crucial too balancing games and that is an issue for many Australian gamers, ping. Australian gamers are generally at a disadvantage due to the location of servers for most online games, this contributed with the low quality of ISP's in Australia can create less than ideal balancing and can in fact ruin some games. Our game will have a secondary service available for players outside of the optimal playing area, this service will have an in game client with the ability to create a secure shell connection which will streamline the packet handling by forcing it out straight away instead of bundling each packet with additional data packets. This will decrease ping significantly for users with high ping but lesser to people with stable connections in a good zone making it not a requirement therefore making it hog less resources.

Another thing wanting to implement into the game to make increase balancing is UI that takes into account all game play into player matching with other players. This means that instead of a first game determining your player matchmaking statistics, the game matches you with equal opponents easier and makes the game much more enjoyable for those whose abilities increase quicker than those and removes as such a grind feeling to a lot of the game.

Disney Exhibition Reflection

"What inspired you in this exhibition and why?

How might what you have seen influence your work?

Choose a theme, for example it might be colour and develop your writing

around this theme.

Think about the settings in relation to your dioramas.

Think about the Disney style and what reasons might there be for this style."

To be successfully at the forefront of an industry is difficult to do. To sustain your position at the forefront of an industry for continuos decades is an even greater feat and something that makes Walt Disney one of the most impressive and successful companies in history. The Disney exhibition highlights many of the reasons why their company has become successful, such as their innovative use of developing tools, such as going the digital era of animation, their ability to adapt well known stories and characters with out ruining their original counter parts and even their artistic ability to give less than life like characters a life like feel. However i believe that the core of their accomplishments come from something that holds all the other elements together and is something that the Walt Disney company does better than almost any other company in the world, and that is the way that the company has formed itself so that whenever anyone sees a disney production people already have predictions of what to expect from the overall tone and feel of the film. This gives Disney a huge edge on other companies and is personally something that i think contributes too their success greatly.

Watching movies and television is a pastime that almost every person today takes part in, hence why the industry is one the biggest in entertainment and many companies strive after the advantage that Disney has obtained after many years, the advantage that they already know the mind set of the average person who is going to be viewing their movie at a time. People have such a strong expectation of what a Disney movie feel is going to be, which means that the choice too watch a Disney movie often only occurs when someone is in a mood that suits the movie. For example if your in the mood for a thrilling movie too make you think, generally you would past straight over a Disney movie, not because you dislike it but simply because you are not in the mood. The same works in a way that if your looking for something to cheer you up or where you see a good triumph over a evil you know that a Disney movie will do it even without knowing the story beforehand. Disney revolves around this and it is reflected by the pieces in the exhibition.

Disneys whole production work around making sure that their "feel" stays within peoples minds without making their films seem like repeats and completely predictable. It stems from using characters that are already well known, such as Cinderalla. Most people already know these characters which means that generally when people begin the film, they feel as if they have a connection with the character from a level outside of the film, this greatly enhances peoples sympathies with the characters, so when a good outcome happens, the feelings of happiness are relayed back to the viewer much stronger than if the characters was unknown before the film.

The Disney exhibition personally was most enjoyable to me because i believed that it showed a lot of the thought process which went into the way that their company was shaped and the way it showed how Walter Disney had a vision for his company and the way he built his company too mean more than an animation studio, but create almost a Disney emotion.

Graphics Resolutions Affecting Character Perceptions.

Many industries are often expected to produce work with many different flawless qualities that make up the whole package, if one of these qualities is lacking, often regardless of the quality of the end product, it is still doomed a failure. The games industry is one of the leading industries with this issue.

Gamers all alike expect certain things from a game, but two of the most crucial areas are Graphics Resolution and Character Perception. Personally i believe that the two don't always run hand in hand with each other and in fact, they can even harm each other.

Too make a character someone can easily connect with is no easy challenge and can be something that can make a good game great or even a good game average. The core of this challenge is split into a few characters and whilst graphics resolution does play a role, it is not the most important. One of my personal favourite games is Conkers Bad Fur Day, (released on the Nintendo 64, 2001) the games central character Conker, is so likeable that it made me feel connected with the character, making me care more what happened to him and generally more engaged with the game. These feelings were strongly affected by character dialogue, using other characters behaviour to contrast agaisnt the main character to increase his like ability and finally the artistic design of the character. However as the ability to upgrade and upgrade the graphics resolution of our characters increased, our other elements that made us enjoy our older characters stayed at the same level and infact, with more and more resources being needed for graphics resolution, it could be said that the other elements started to decrease. So many games now have a kind of "yeah my character looks awesome, but what makes him so awesome?"

So personally i believe that while graphics resolution does play a crucial role in your perception of a character, there is a simply a lot more than just looks.