By Bubba Clim


With the skyrocketing subtlety in PC technologies PC game design continues to raise its game. Quicker processors, faster more efficient and larger memory, greater storage location and faster more complicated graphics and sound display, means larger better more convoluted, better looking and better sounding games.

The games industry is starting to look more and more like the Hollywood film industry with huge groups of programmers, multiple writers and games designers, artists and composers all working together to make what is increasingly being described as a work of creativity equivalent with the output of the film business. With an increasing consumer base crying out for more games the budgets grow along with the production crew and each game release takes on more glamour and clamour.

The truth of the matter is that at the heart of an excellent game is an element not unfamiliar to a film producer; a good story. Games may be interactive and this interaction will permit the player to feel in charge of their destiny within the gaming experience; but at all points in the game a tale is being progressed which was made by a writer much as a film is authored by a scriptwriter. The elemental facts behind our entertainment is that whether we are reading a book, watching a play or film, or playing out a game; story is how we conceive of and appear sensible of our experience.

One thing occurs and another thing occurs because of it, one event leads to another event, and if you put enough of these things together you have got a story. That is precisely the form of a PC game, level one leads to level two, you knock this over and that occurs; a game designer or writer constructs a universe in which categorical events will inevitably lead to other events which together form the substance of a story with you as the hero.

Good games are so sophisticated that you forget yourself and feel as if each decision you make is yours, each outcome produced from your actions alone. A good game designer is like an unseen god who has set her creation in motion and watches from above, knowing where you may go next and what you'll do even if you don't. Bad designs, of course, allow you to remember you're in a game and disengage your feelings like an awful film will have you having a look at your watch. Computer game design is an unsung new art that may even, one day, have its own Oscar awards rite.




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