Playerunknown's Battlegrounds (or PUBG for short) is a game based on war and conflict between 30-100 people per session. The game is a first-person shooter where you start the game inside of an airplane. You choose on the map where you want to drop and parachute to where you alone playing solo or with your team. Once landed, you must very quickly start looting the zone because if someone else is with you it’s a battle to the death. Over the past two weeks, I've played a great ordeal of this game and came to know the map solely from looking at the terrain instead of the maps landmarks. Both from geological structures but also the colors, height and terrain monuments. For instance, the two images below are one of the map, and one of a player parachuting below into a city. Before I tell you, if you don't already know where he is trying to land, I want you to try and guess based off the map and land marks that the second image shows you.
This game shows examples of many of these landmarks which make it very easy to navigate, especially for inexperienced players. Even for players such as myself, I could say to my team: “Hey I’m heading over the wheat field now” and the team would know exactly where I’m going.
By investigating a more in depth perspective of what I interpret about the game, I will try and decipher what is happening in the greater scheme of things. Players are prisoners sentenced to death and the only escape is to fight against other players in a world that has been contaminated with radio activity. Since you play in an abandoned world where no people live and everything is left in place, you would assume natural or nuclear war is coming or has come. Perhaps the blue zone is what everyone was warned about and are fleeing for safety. The people running the games are millionaires that watch from afar and place bids on players for their own greed and fun. Abstract worlds
For this assignment we were assigned to play one of the two abstract games; Kairo (Pc demo) or Memory of a Broken Dimension and come up with some greater understanding of the world. Kairo is a game that really takes cubism to the interactive world successfully. If we look at this game through an abstract lens, the game doesn't really tick all the boxes in the sense of intangibility or the non physical. But how does this game help us in understanding the newer genre of games that have picked up the interest of media recently? A game cannot simply be called abstract, through adding random objects in a scene and left to the interpretations of the player to make out their own meaning, the objects have to have some sort of context and symbolism to have real meaning behind that in-tangible aesthetic. This game does have some design choices that resemble Cubism (abstract art) by breaking down the level design and almost going back to its grey box format. We can also tell that this was intentional as these blocks are also textured. I'm not sure what this really resembles in terms of the games narrative or purpose but this does make being able to understand the themes a little easier. If we just look at the games name, I would think that this game was based in Cairo, seeing that the names are very similar and this is where some of sarcophagi are being held. The reason being that I bring up the sarcophagi is that the first level has a tomb like structure with thrones. Usually I would associate such structures with that of Egypt and how they buried their "royal dead". As you proceed through the levels, you stumble across what resembles silhouettes of monolithic monuments. Not only do these structures resemble some monuments of Egypt, but they also have the same texture as sand stone. Even though these traits don't resemble the actual structure or themes directly, it leaves enough room that it could be interpreted a whole other way. Claude Monet created a series of pictures that he calls the Haystacks Series, where he created numerous drawings of haystacks. But not everyone agreed that they were haystacks and some couldn't see them at all. An opinion that really intrigued me was "That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognise it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing". He goes on to state that the sensation of confusion and surprise was the purpose of the painting. It was the sense of realisation that the painter was going for. If we take this mentality to the game, I don't think the game has that same grip on me like the Haystacks series did on another person, but it did make me feel I was in another place completely. Prior to this assignment, we were given a lecture about abstract art and how these tie into the real world. How to differentiate between two or more types of abstract thinking. By breaking down some of my own conclusions on my take of an abstract game such as Memory Of a Broken Dimension (MOBD) I hope to understand what this game is trying to tell me.
MOBD is a game developed by Ezra Hanson-White (XRA) set to release in 2017. You start the game with a command prompt shell that allows the player to enter code into what appears to be a database infrastructure of memories from someone or something. Playing through the first minute or so you begin to notice what you had written beforehand starts to be forgotten or broken, this could be a symbolic gesture of time or desolation of memories. You start mindlessly typing and imputing various commands into the shell console, if smart enough you will eventually enter one of the memories. The first memory that I came across starts you inside of a cube like room where if you walk into one of the sides you appear on the other side like Pacman. The screen is all distorted and jumbled with lines and filters that make up 70% of the screen. Dense parts of the screen make out what looks like a stone or rock bridge man made structure leading upward into a hole or entrance into another part of the memory. This may mean that this is the entrance or gateway into what is to come or perhaps the comfort bubble people describe as their 'getting to know someone' stage. The structure has no collision and you simply walk through it. Once you get to know the game you understand that they want you to see things from their perspective, as you do this, only then can you emerge from the outer layer of understanding and truly grasp what the developer is trying to tell you. To see things, you must walk over a line that sprouts up out of the ground with a cube indicating perhaps a camera or lense. You stand there looking around until a white haze lights up the bridge structure. The bridge becomes walkable and you can step fourth into the next stage of the memories. As for the next part of the story I was left utterly confused and ended up walking into nothing for ten minutes before I gave up. Overall the game has depth uncompromised and open to many interpretations. This was my view on what the world was trying to tell me as the player. Games like these don’t often intrigue me but for some reason I can see my life or at least a part of my life with that starting CMD screen where people may try to get to know me, and after a brief period of trying I may let them see who I really am. But then again this is just a game isn’t it. We were assigned to re imagine the Rainbows End theme park in New Zealand. The point of this exercise was to be able to lead your customers through the new theme park in a way that feels seamless and is enjoyable. This theme park is mainly based around enjoyable sites as well as small roller coasters and a water park. The park is laid out so that you attempt the sections clockwise starting from the Volcano, as the rock aesthetic of the water park blocks you off from that direction. This route leads you on a well paced where both the adventurist and the not so adventurist can enjoy their time.
WORLD DESIGN THEORY - BLOG POST #1 - lighting as a Navigational tool in Bioshock - Conrad Turzynski4/4/2017 Lighting in Bioshock is one of the games strongest features, and it is used constantly throughout the game to subconsciously guide the player through the labyrinthine halls of Rapture. The player begins their journey spluttering in the sea amidst the burning wreckage of the sinking plane they just crashed in. Immediately, the player is used by the guiding light of the flames of the wreckage; there is a gap in the wall of flame, and this negative space, or lack of light, is what leads the player through this scene (see image_01). This proves that not only light, but the lack of it, can be a powerful too when guiding a player. The next thing the player encounters is the lighthouse, a monolithic landmark, silhouetted by the moon. The colour palette used for this lighting is very cool, but still very bright, and this cool light contrasts heavily to the roaring orange and gold flames of the planes and wrneches the players eye upward to ward the next place they need to go (see image_02). Upon scaling the steps of the lighthouse, the player is confronted by a massive, ominous door, inside of which the room is pitch black. The only light the player sees is a slit of light crawling in through the slightly opened door, and this light works as a line for the player to follow inside (see image_03). Once inside the room is lit up, revealing a rich golden environment, and a confronting statue of the games primary antagonist, Andrew Ryan. The player then heads downstairs to find a bathysphere, with a rich golden mist steaming out. The light from inside the bathysphere catches the mist in the air, and acts as a golden glow to beckon the player in from the dark room they currently stand in (see image_04). After travelling down to the bottom of the sea in the little subnuatical, the player is introduced to neon lights, which guide them into Rapture. Neon lights are another powerful tool that is used in Bioshock, and effectively highlights objects in the world (see image_05). The next scene players find themselves in, is their first hostile encounter in the game. From the apparent safety of the bathysphere, players watch as the silhouetted figure of a man is torn to shreds by a woman with what appears to be hooks for hands. The scene is almost pitch black, aside from a window directly adjacent to the player, across the room. This window casts light towards the scene from behind, creating strong silhouette, and the light passing through the window sets up a stage for the scene on the floor See image_06). The player then escapes the bathysphere and heads off through the halls of rapture, finding weapons along the way and fighting splicers. The final notable use of light used in the Bioshock demo is towards the very end, where the player must acquire their very first plasmid, electro-bolt. The game leads the player into a room, towards a broken door, with a malfunctioning lock, sparking with live electricity. After noticing the lock, with it's bright sparks, and going over to inspect it, the player has no choice but to turn around and look for another way, or a solution to the broken door. Upon turning, the player is shown a sign that they cannot miss (see image_07). A large neon sign, depicting a hand firing lightning from it's fingertips, with the words 'Plasmids' strewn above it, guides the player upstairs to their first plasmid. The players receives their plasmid, and is shown a brief cut-scene where they inject the plasmid into their arm and have an adverse reaction to it, falling down from the upstairs level to land right in front of the broken door. The sign, whilst seeming a little blunt, is actually blended into the world contextually, and so instead of seeming tacked on, the player simply accepts it as a part of the world, and so subconsciously follows it, as opposed to consciously.
Having played through the entirety of Bioshock myself, I can safely say that the lighting techniques used in this demo are continually re-used and developed throughout the rest of the game to great effect. Bioshock is a great example of how lighting can be an extremely powerful navigational tool in games, and how a world can be built with lighting in mind and incorporated into the world itself. Lighting is something that we as humans take for granted, and so when it is manipulated in clever ways, we really don't notice, and this allows game designers to lead players through complex places without having to hold their hands. Memory of a Broken Dimension begins with a command prompt interface reminiscent of old DOS systems. This system is known as RELICS, and through this system, the player must gain access to an abstract, distorted 3D world. This 3D world is the real flesh and bones of the experience, but my experience with this game is solely with the RELICS interface. The prototype that developer Ezra Hanson-White has put out to the public is the only experience available right now, and is the version that I have played. I spent and evening within RELICS trying to decode it's cryptic codes, and intrigued I was determined to go ahead without help. Initial results from words such as 'run' proved fruitless, and hitting the escape key only prompted the worlds 'THERE IS NO ESCAPE'. The game is extremely eerie, and visually is very noisy and disturbing. Such a safe environment as a command prompt system feels very alien and threatening, and I was determined to reach the 3D world buried within. After getting nowhere for long enough, I did end up looking up a guide on how to reach the 3D portion of the game.
Phrases such as 'REMOTE', 'VOIDSCAN' and 'S-DIVER' yield results if entered in a certain order. These cryptic clues can be found within the abstract words and letters that constantly rearrange themselves within RELICS, and only players with a keen eye have noticed these thus far. The game felt very deep, and very alienating at first, and I certainly felt like I was messing with something I shouldn't have been. I also felt an irrational feeling of being watched. The way RELICS constantly shifts and rearranges itself makes it feel very alive. This first portion of the game is an intangible experience, and really sets the tone for for the second half, the 3D world. Upon entering the correct command prompts, you enter a fractal 3D world. This world borrows heavily from a myriad of ideas fro many schools of art. of The world is in black white and shades of grey, and the forms are distorted, and become a mishmash of lines and shapes. None of the imagery in this world seems to depict anything from the real world, aside from a bridge with a rocky texture that appears if you solve the games first puzzle, which involves the player standing in just the right position for the fractured shapes to form together into a physical object you can walk upon. The game has expressionist elements, as the world is distorted in order to set a certain mood.The mood or vibe of the world seems more important than the physical reality itself, although the puzzles within the world to rely on physicality. The way the world smashes itself into lines and planes riffs heavily off of cubism, as objects are broken up and reassembled before the players eyes. At times, there also seems to be multiple viewpoints of a single objects, as the pieces rearrange themselves. The world does feel violent and turbulent at times, and seems to have borrowed this partially from futurism. The game seems to rely heavily on some kind of shader, that takes what must be a generic 3D scene, and rearranges it physically and visually. This would mean that the developer could focus on the content of the game, without having to worry so much about the aesthetic, as this would be generated by the shader and whatever other scripts are effecting the geometry under the hood. In the end, I couldn't get past what I assume is the second puzzle. I didn't want to have to look anything else up, as this would seem to defeat the point in the game; trying to guide a player through a world that doesn't make much sense. The concept of navigation through an abstract space is very intriguing. How does one create an experience that leads players through a world that only loosely represents their own? A world where we don't initially understand any of the rules or laws? I'm not sure this game taught me much in that regard, but it was a cool experience, and one that has had me thinking long after about abstract worlds, and how they work. Reference: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/17/hack-this-memory-of-a-broken-dimension/ |
World design theory (WDT)DevelopersThe goal of this blog is to relate current and past attempts at world design to further improve our understanding. Archives
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