Feedback Strategies

 Feedback

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For this post I will be discussing Feedback, and they ways in which it can be given and received. I began my research into ways to approach giving feedback be it positive or negative by reading an article titled How to give feedback without sounding like a jerk. This article was very informative and explained some of the psychology that is involved when it comes to giving someone feedback, it explains that the vocabulary a person uses can come across in a negative way even though a person may not notice that they are being negative. Instead when it is worded a different way a persons feedback can come across as constructive and the person receiving it will be more inclined to be open minded about receiving it. 

The next article I read was Why do so many managers avoid giving praise  . I could relate to this article the most as I have experienced some of the dilemmas in it first hand both at a job and in my time playing sports. Thinking about what the article discussed I have to agree with what the majority of it says in terms of people who are seen as leaders not being able to give positive feedback for reasons such as, If a manager of a company gives an employer positive feedback that the employer would become complacent and begin to slack. While this is certainly not always the case, I can say that I have seen this happen and understand why some managers shy away from it. I have learned much from this article about how someone can be perceived after they give feedback be it positive or negative.

I find it interesting about how the article discussed how managers did not give feedback for various personal reasons but I can help but think that this is a sign of someone who is not intended to lead, surely if you are to give someone feedback be it positive or negative it can only improve that person but the person in power may be worried about how they are viewed afterwards. In my opinion, someone who can give feedback without coming across as rude or belittling is someone who I would rather have as my boss.     

Game Idea Research

 My Idea

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When thinking about what game I was going to make I initially thought of a type of time trial game where the user has to complete some sort of race and achieve their best finish time. I want my game to be able to be played over and over and have the user wanting to better their score every time. I remember playing the last mission on a call of duty game more than 100 times because there was an achievement for completing the level in a certain time limit and no matter how much I hated that I couldn't achieve it I kept playing it, if you want an insight as to what I am talking about you can watch the quick video clip here. 

My point is that this kind of gameplay kept me coming back to better my time and I feel like it is a good hook that I can add to my game. I am going to create a side scrolling game where the user controls some sort of vehicle be it a plane or a car and has to traverse a course filled with obstacles in order to reach the finish line and be given a high score.

 1. The first game mechanic I research is going to be a Rising and Falling mechanic, you can read some more about it in the link provided. This mechanic will work for the player when they are trying to avoid obstacles on the course.

2. My second mechanic will be a timing mechanic. I plan on having the player be able to hit a powerup marker that will give a brief boost to their speed and help them finish faster, only if the hit it though.

3. For my third mechanic I would like to put in a resizing mechanic where the player would have to trigger something in order to resize the vehicle in order to fit through a part of the course, if the player does not get this "item" then it will result in a game over as they will not be able to progress further. I found this article that talks about my 2nd and 3rd game mechanic ideas to give you some insight as to what they are about and how they operate.

Game Elements

 Game Elements

This weeks reading was all about getting a better grasp of the thought process that goes into making a video game and to understand the component parts and how they combine to form an end product for a consumer.

The first article "What are the qualities of games" was a very interesting read and I found it to be really informative about the components that have to fit together from the beginning of the design process in order to have a functioning game that makes sense and is fun to play. Once the designer has these components in place and is happy with how the game is going to be played it is important for then to be able to carry out a critical analysis of the game to understand what it is that is making the game an enjoyable experience for the user and what can be added or removed in order to improve it. The article gives an insight into what sort of questions a designer should ask themselves in order to analyse the game as a whole and I found it very informative as I would not have thought about asking some of the questions that is stated in it, so I will use this information going forward with my own project.

Going forward it is important to begin a prototype of your game and get a feel for how it plays. The video(Which can be found here!) talks about how it is one thing to have your game idea on paper but if you really want to see if it is going in the right direction, make a prototype! Here you can get answers to some of the questions you may have as a designer such as " do the game mechanics make sense" and " do the components of the game fit together". If the answer is yes then its all well and good but if it is a no then changes can be made, I get the feeling that it is a fail forward kind of approach, which I think is a good way to create something that works.

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Unity Tutorial 02

 More Unity

I had returned to Unity this week to complete the challenge 1 task. For this task I was to programme a plane to be able to fly in a forward direction and have the user be able to control it by moving it up and down in order for it to be able to traverse the course.

To start with, I think I made the mistake of thinking that it would be as easy as the first task which was getting the car to move but I couldn't have been more wrong. My skills as a person who is new to programming were severely put to the test with this task, as were my nerves. After about an hour of tinkering with my code and getting nowhere with it I resorted to going to the hint section which did help me significantly, god bless the hint section! 

Overall I would say that this task did help me in some ways of thinking about what the code is doing and why but after completing this task I feel that I need to do much more learning in order to fully understand by myself the what and the why when it comes to adding code.

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