Task 1- Are Games Good For You?

Analysis of Shooter Games

When it comes to talking about the mixed views towards shooter games and how they effect society it is debate ably even with how it is received in the world.

Against Shooter Games

On the one hand, there is the group of media and a vast amount of parents who are against the idea of their children playing shooter games on their consoles like Call Of Duty or Battlefield. They have many valid reasons for why they would have such a strong, negative opinion towards the shooter games and their effect on children. One of many crimes that have occurred supposedly because of shooter games would be one that was committed by a college student by the name of Aaron Alexis. He was the gun man who caused a mass shooting that killed 13 people at Washington Navy Yard. Aaron supposedly played up to 16 hours of shooter games at a time. From that case there are many questions that occurred to me that seemed to not be noticed like: Did Aaron’s parents know that he was playing 16 hrs of games at a time? Should’ve Aaron’s friends of tried to stop him playing for such long periods? This case shows how little control parents and friends have to preventing their children/friends from playing shooter games for too many long periods.

Once that case was released to the media many parents jumped to many conclusions on how safe it is for their children to be playing the same games. Like any parent they instantly went against the game companies as they believed that the game was more the reason why Aaron went on a rampage whereas the length of time he played the games would have a similar to a more valid reason for the shooting. There is also a point that can be made that parents don’t control their children enough for them to be free whilst the parents know everything their children are doing. As you could mention that parents don’t know the full effects of the games and how they can tamper your attitude if your on it for long periods of time. That case is very similar and has occurred quite a lot through out the last 10 years.

When doing my research on some of the cases of the shootings this website (CNN) helped to inform me of Aaron Alexis’s case.

(http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/18/opinion/bushman-video-games/index.html)

For Shooter Games

On the other hand, shooter games have been a well known form of gaming entertainments as of how it started off with a game by the name of Doom and has evolved rapidly through the years to create games like Call Of Duty and others with similar attributes in the games. Shooter games can have it’s benefits as of how it is a form of entertainment on the consoles that is well known and is basic enough to be understood by a wide range of gamers. In addition, you can improve certain factors about you like your reflexes and spacial awareness from simply playing the games. Many sports players play the games as of how it helps their reflexes as that benefits them in their matches to have an advantage over their opponents.

There is also the point that the shooter games try and recreate certain parts of peoples lives that you wouldn’t be able to experience until later life. Like how it tries to represent certain levels in their games like your in the army for you to experience it for yourself, without the same consequences as an actual member of the army.

My Conclusion

I believe that when it comes to talking about shooter games and how they effect society there are many questions and situations that should be taken into consideration as I feel that they can explain a lot about why certain events,that have been spoken about in the media, had happened. In conclusion I feel that shooter games are bad for you as of how they can effect your attitude and decision making for certain choices in your life. However I feel that shooter games have the same effect on people like films do whereas in the games you feel like you have more control to make it seem more realistic as that’s how it can have consequences on your life outside the shooter games. For my final point I believe that the parents of the children who play the shooter games should hold responsibility as of how they are willing to complain towards the companies who create the games but they are the ones who buy the game for their children even though it would have a age rating that’s older than their actual age.

My Game Design Document

World War 3 is a military game action fiction first person shooter game, it could fall into the action category. Some conventions that would would be thought of in this genre are:

• First Person Shooters
• Hero Persona
• Collectables
• Violence and Gore (Action)
• Linear Narrative
• Good vs Evil

My game World War 3 will be a first person game which means that the player will be playing the game through the characters perspective.Whereas a third person game is played through a camera that follows the main hero, which means you have a more broad view of the hero’s surroundings as that can give the player some benefits when playing the game.

Task 2- E-Sports

Evolution of E-Sports

When it comes to talking about the evolution of E-Sports it would be best to start at the beginning. E-Sports started off with the genre of fighting games like Street Fighter. E-Sports was and forever will be driven by the players as if it wasn’t for the players then there would be no one winning or competing for a prize.

E-Sports (Electronic Sports) is when many competitors compete for a final prize. The E-Sports are functioned in a tournament structure to make it the most fair and beneficial way to succeed in the tournaments.

However a unfortunate circumstance that one of the competitors could face is if they play bad in their games as of how they could’ve been late to their match or if there was other problems that affected the players focus on doing well in the match.

As E-Sports has evolved through out the years there has also been an increase in certain factors of the E-Sports tournaments as of how the prize money in the finals have increased to a crazy amount. For example in the Call of Duty XP Championship 2016 the prize money was an almighty $2,000,000 which is insane. Whereas some of the prize money rewards at the very start of E-Sports would be like £100 or more as of how there wasn’t as much money invested into the E-Sports tournaments by sponsors or the company themselves. There is also the factor of how much money the teams earn from their sponsorship.

Many games these days take into consideration E-Sports as of how it has many benefits towards the company and their games reputation but that’s only if their version of E-Sports is done properly. There have been many failures of games trying to do E-Sports as there has been many reasons and consequences that those games/companies have had to face because of some simple errors that hadn’t been thought of by the company. An example of a game that has failed to do E-Sports is a game by the name of Evolve.

The major reason why Evolve failed to do E-Sports is because of how from the very start the company heavily influenced the game to be E-Sports of which at first wouldn’t of been a bad idea. However E-Sports can’t be told to the players as it’s their choice if they want to do tournaments on the game to a progressively large extent. As the players are meant to make their own decision if the competitive side of the game is the way they want them to go, as they need to enjoy the game enough just by playing it casually for them to think about playing it competitively.

Whereas the game Overwatch have changed some factors of their version of E-Sports. Blizzard (the creators of Overwatch) have done really well on doing their research on the parts of E-Sports that have been successful and the parts that have failed in games so that they can fix them the best they can to make their version of competitive: easy to understand, fun to support and exciting to get involved with. One key factor that has made Overwatch so successful is that Blizzard let their player base evolve to the point that they are constantly receiving ways from the players of how to improve the game to make it as enjoyable as possible for all types of players. In addition, Blizzard didn’t try and influence their players to E-Sports like what Evolve did, as Blizzard let the players have the control over whether they want to commit to competitive.

Also Overwatch has taken into consideration the major problem that FPS (First Person Shooters) encounter when they try and do E-Sports is that the viewer can only see on players perspective at a time. That means that if there are viewers who haven’t seen those games then they wont have that good of an understanding of what is going on. The way that Overwatch have seen and improved that factor of FPS games is by having different camera angles of the gun fights that are going on so the viewers can see what players are in a gun fight and who is winning and losing.

My Game as an E-Sport

When it comes to thinking about my game and how E-Sports could get involved. I believe that if I was to incorporate some form of E-Sports into the game then I would have to make sure that there’s a large player base that would be willing to play the game competitively. The reason I’m planning to let the player base increase is so the game isn’t forced to be played competitively, because if I pushed the games limits too far then the popularity of the game would drop dramatically.