Blog post- Class makeup Monday 11-7-11

Ok so this is a post to makeup for being out of class this Monday.

To start off,  I found the reference to Donald Norman's work to be interesting.  In a culture where implementation of the newest technology is widely promoted, the concept that the technology 'under the hood' is "wholly redundant" and "may be dismissed as nothing more than a smoke and mirrors marketing routine" caught my attention.  I have always enjoyed seeing what new technology can add to the gaming world, but the idea that it has no real effect on anything other than marketing was unsettling.  While I do agree that technology itself has no real effect on the way a narrative is told, it does enable the designers to create new, incredible environments and game spaces.

This reference to technology is continued in the chapter's discussion of game spaces.  The limitations of technology have always controlled the size of a game's environment, such as the single-screen environment of Asteroids.  This then expands into the much larger, explorable world of Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 64.  For me, technology has played a huge factor in enhancing my gameplay experience due to this fact.  I love being able to explore my environment in a game, and the larger and more detailed the better.  Better technology makes this possible.

After that the chapter discusses the evolution from single man projects to game design teams.  When videogames first started to rise, many were the projects of a single person working by themselves on a pet project.  However, as time has passed and technology and gamer tastes have evolved, it has become nearly impossible for a single man to develop a game on their own; as such, the development team has risen.  Each development team has certain components: management and design, programming, art, music and miscellaneous, and quality assurance.  Each of these parts a major part in the development game.

Also coming about with the evolution of technology was the transition from single-game systems, such as Pong or Pacman, to the multi-purpose console, like the XBox or the PSone.