BA3 CS: Article analysis

My  analysis of :http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185676/the

As a small part of my contextual studies work I passed to review this article by game Sutra goes into the nifty gritty details about character and level design. In this document I will be reviewing this article and looking at the different messages to propose about games design and how this article talks about principles that have influenced ancient art and also modern games.

On the first page of the article goes into massive amounts of detail about three different shapes that are commonly found within artists work. These three shapes are cube circle and a triangle each one is meant to represent different meanings for example they say the circle shape is an example of innocence, youth, energy and femininity it also says about the square that that represents maturity, sustainability, balance and stubbornness then finally mentioning the triangle which is meant to represent aggression, masculinity and force. They then go on in the article to show examples of this within different types of media whether it be arts or common logos found today. The use the example of the Disney logo saying this is round as though to look innocent as this company that creates children movies this fits in very well with their audience and the also site logos bands like anthrax which is a heavy metal group is this representing the triangle as the text is jagged. As metal band as well is given that they are not interested in a child audience but by more mature audience and so they use this jagged shape to show the aggression without even telling the audience what they are about.

My thoughts on this this hypothesis is that it is fairly accurate in that circle do offering represents youth while squares represent security and triangles represent danger but I think to the extent that the writer of the article is using it goes a bit too far as in the article the writer tries to say that almost every design is influenced by these three shapes which I would disagree and say it is much more of a subliminal message that is often used vary slightly within certain pieces of media but I feel that hair overview of the hypothesis is correct and I would agree with.

On the next page of the article the writer goes into detail about certain pieces of artwork that include the shapes within their design such as a few historical paintings are meant to show different messages some of horror and some of happiness. The writer then goes on to say about how the shapes within a game environment have to be a lot more dynamic which is true. She talks about how in gears of War one of the maps is trying to represents part of its logo by being in a skull shape with multiple jagged edges but as the game is in three-day player does not get a view of the map from this Birds Eye perspective. So it shows that the shape has to be used in multiple ways to have effectiveness on such an in-depth media such as games. The writer then goes on to list five different game related features that do consist of these three shapes and how they affect the. The feature she sites are character shapes, character animations, environment shapes, pathways and player gestures.

With this part of the article I completely agree with the writer she does show valuable insight into piece of artwork and how they have used the shapes to their advantage and how they are very subliminal in their messaging but very effective this is a area that I have never considered before and has opened my eyes to certain possibilities that I can use within my designs I found this insight to be extremely useful and think her findings are well founded and well researched.

The writer then goes on to talk about Mario within the next page she talks about how the three different characters Mario, Luigi and wario and how they are different sides of the same coin representing the three shapes still being similar to a certain character archetype. She cited in the article that the three characters are based off one shape and that they all body disc different aspects of the three different shapes for example Mario embodies the circle shape with his circle moustache circled eyes and almost circle like appearance. She then goes on to cite luigi and how he is representing the square as he stands taller than Mario and has a more solid demeanour and he is the embodiment of the stubborn square. Then she goes on to talk about wario and how he represents triangle has his features like his moustache eyes and even his body structure are more jagged than the other two characters giving him an indication of the triangle which does trigger aggression and fear. Even to me someone who has never played many Mario games I know from just looking at wario that he is a villain and this is partly down to his triangular edged shapes.

As well as the Mario representation the author then sites a game called the journey and how this shows that character animation can still be influenced by these three different shapes. The author talks about at the start of the game that the player is able to move freely within environments without much resistance being three and also the environment around them is very smooth with no jagged edges as well the close of the player shown to be very loose with no jagged edges visible to other this shows that the circle shape lets the viewer have a feel of calm atmosphere. But then in the game when the character moves to a cold area the environment becomes jagged and so do the characters moving very slowly and jagged leaf through the snow clutching themselves are not moving gracefully as they once did before this instantly shows that the characters are in a dangerous even hostile place.

Again her findings on this turn out to be very true as even I can see this change within environmental look and personally I never saw this type of influence before the game and now that I looked more closely into it I can see it so perfectly and is an interesting concept that I’ll have to look out for within future games.

The article then goes on to talk about how characters move within their environments such as with a game like the journey the animations of the characters are often fluent even in the dangerous environments but take another game I gears of War for example as the writer has shown that the movements of the character tend to be faster and more of a knee-jerk reaction compared to journeys animations this again reinforces the triangle circle complex.

The final point that the article makes is about the environments used within the different games to for example gears of War often consists of jagged edges with very limited amounts of smooth edges while the journey is almost a polar opposite to gears of War. It shows how all this adds up very solely to create these difference subliminal messages that the audience feels towards these two different games and it’s very interesting to see Ali play out when it all pointed out to you in this way.

The final point that the writer makes is about actual fundamental games design itself. Talking about inching games like pinata, hide and seek and baseball and explaining how these are similar to the sheeplike complexes but also they are different in the way that it joins all three of the different shapes together for example pinata is often played in a circle with people on the outside representing squares by the personally inside representing a jagged edge for example they are the one holding the bat. Shingles on to talk about hide and seek how this consists of one seeker who is the triangle and all the other hide is representing circles while the environment which they play in is the squares. Finally she talks about how baseball is set up like a triangle with eight people who are the fielders represented as triangles against one circle showing that they are all ganged up against one player. The writer then goes on to say how levels are often design like this with the first level consisting of the player being viewed by all in the first stages then in the second stage the player is often required to go seek and find others and then in the final act the player is confronted by one large character or multiple characters in a final confrontation.

Again I can totally see the articles point on this and it does seem very logical in the way that this is set out but I do think that the writer is putting too much emphasis on the shapes influence within actual level construction I would disagree with this but say that it does have some subliminal value but not a massive influence as to structure out levels in this way.

Summary

Overall I like this article found to be very interesting and influential and may even help me to create better work in the future as I will make sure to consider these three shapes when designing characters or environment but I do think the reader takes the shapes onto much and thinks they have a much wider influence than they actually do but I could only find this doubt within her final argument about how the shapes influence levels but on all the other subjects I would totally agree with her hypothesis as it does seem very logical that the shapes have such a subliminal influence.