Video game article game play

Introduction:
In this article I will be covering the following topics, Interaction model such
as: avatar, omnipresence, single player, multiplayer, narrative, game
setting (e.g. physical, temporal, environmental, emotional, ethical, goals,
challenges, rewards, player actions, rules, difficulty, game mechanics
(inventory, scoring, win condition), balance, feedback, game structure
(flow chart) and addiction. This article is continuing on from Video game
article visual styles and also compares the three games, resident evil 7,
alien isolation and the last of us.

Interaction models:
Avatar:

Avatar refers to profiles on games consoles,

online games and other games that allow you
to create your own characters, a common
example of this is GTA 5 online as each person
gets to customise their own character/avatar,
an image example of avatars is to the right.
The avatar on the example image to the right
shows a black box with options on how to
customise the avatar, the avatar is the
character you control when in the game, in the example (GTA 5 online) it
is how other people see you in the game, this can be edited a bit in game
as in this option there are different ways to change the appearance e.g.
makeovers, tattoos and clothing. This is not just in GTA 5 online as I
mentioned it is in a lot of different games where you can customise your
avatar, even if you cannot edit them, the pre made avatars/characters are
still avatars.

Omnipresence:

The definition of omnipresence is presence everywhere at the same

time, this is heavily linked into religions, however some games that use
omnipresence include:
Ronald and Rosalind Lutece (Bioshock Infinite)

Elizabeth Comstock (Bioshock Infinite)

Morganna (. Hack//Sign)

Mesprit (Pokmon)

Charlie (Don't Starve)

Azathoth (Demonbane)

Elder God (Legacy of Kain)

The Force/Gentle Pull (Super Mario Galaxy)

As I mentioned in the introduction, this article is a continuation from the
visual style article I wrote and in the article I wrote about the three games:
Resident evil 7, alien isolation and the last of us. There are not any links or
references to omnipresence in any of the games that I have chosen but in
short, omnipresence is presence everywhere at the same time meaning
your character or an object is everywhere all the time.

Single player:

This section will be quite short as there isnt much to writer about single
player, this is the same for multiplayer.
Single player refers to the game only being able to have one person
playing on the device at any time, this is because there in single player
games there is only one
character to play with, also
because there isnt any split
screen coded in the game. All
of the games I am writing
about are horror so it keeps
suspense and tension they are
conventionally single player,
the example image to the
right Is of one character from
the last of us to show that only
one person can play as there
is only one person in the story at certain points within this game.

Multiplayer:

Alternate to single player, multiplayer games

allow more than one person to play the
game, this is with split screen or just one big
image of the entire map like on Super Smash
Bros. To the right is two images, the one at
the top is of Super smash bros, this is where
the multiplayer game does not use split
screen as it only has a small map and just
displays the entire thing instead of breaking
up the display for separate displays.
The image to the right is where the map is
much bigger so the screen is broken up into
different sections for the different players.
The image to the right shows 4 different
display as all 4 players get of the screen to
see what they are doing, in this image it is Mario karts, on all 4 maps is
the whereabouts of all four players.

Narrative:

The narrative or storyline refers to what is happening in the game, instead

of writing out the entire storyline for all three games I picked I will search
for some brief descriptions and paste them
below:
Plot Summary. Twenty years after a fungal
infection obliterated most of the U.S. population
and turned the victims into infected
monstrosities, Joel is tasked with escorting Ellie
to the Fireflies to help reverse engineer a cure.
(Image of the last of us cover to the right).

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140553/plotsummary) The link to the right

is where I found the last of us plot summary. This is a very short summary
of what the game narrative is for the last of us, this narrative is a non-

spoiler narrative for the game, when going more in detail it is very hard
not to include some kind of spoiler.

Game setting:
In games settings there is a lot of sub headings such as: physical,
temporal, environmental, emotional, ethical, goals, challenges, rewards,
player actions, rules, difficulty, game mechanics (inventory, scoring, win
condition), balance, feedback, game structure (flow chart). So I will try and
write a paragraph for each of these sections so all of the subheadings
under this explanation is related to game settings, this is so that I do not
have to write game settings every other sentence on every single
paragraph below.

Physical:

The physical game settings would refer to the physical options that can be
altered or changed, the best example for this is when you can change the
controller settings e.g. (PlayStation controls used in the example) circle
does an action and does not do the original
action or the thumb sticks are inverted e.g.
instead of moving the camera angle or walking in
right by pushing in thumb sticks right they can
be inverted so by pushing them left it moves
right. The image to the right is of a play station 4
controller, the thumb sticks have two red boxes
high lighting the thumb sticks.
The controls are the main physical options that
can be changed on games, the other options are
audio and visual, for example, frame rate,
volume, resolution, colour opacity, brightness
etc.

Temporal:

After searching the definition of temporal I found that it refers to time, the
definition only states relating to time, this could mean two things in

video games, one meaning could be about frame rate e.g. the speed of a
game if it is lagging (12 frames per second) or is good quality (60+ frames
per second), to the right is two clips, the first one is 12 frames per second
(1st: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv08-FeoGKM) and the second is
60 frames per second (2nd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yBQHTG2dxs0) these two examples are a great way of seeing the
difference between 12 frames per second and 60 frames per second, by
having more frames per second the game is able to add in a lot more
content and realism to the game where as a game with 12 frames per
second/lower frame rate cannot allow for the same amount of content.
The other thing related to time could mean video games could mean is
how fast or time go in the game relative to the time in reality, moat
games will have a much faster in game time, an example of this is GTA
5/GTA 5 online where the game is 1 minuet in game to 1 second IRL (in
real life).
The image below is from another example where time goes
differently from IRL (in real life), to the right is an example
from the sims 4 where time can be sped up or stopped in
the game. This image is quite blurred as it is an older game
but it says Sun 8:23 here
And the controls refer to making in game time going at
normal speed (1 second IRL 1 minuet in game to double
that speed and triple that speed).

Environmental:

The environmental game settings would refer to the ability to change or

alter the environment in video games, this could be as simple as changing
the opacity or brightness of a landscape or moving/deleting/adding
objects to the environment, some video games do not allow the majority
of the environment to be altered such as the games I chosen like Resident
Evil 7, Alien isolation and The last of us, the games might allow some
aspects of the environment to be altered but this is
just because the story line allows t, this does not mean
you can break all of the walls or buildings etc. in
games. However, some games are based on realism
where you can break things and kill characters, an
example of this is Skyrim where you can kill characters
but if you kill an important character you cannot
proceed with the game as that character cannot give
the player quests or things to advance the story along. An image to the
right is of Skyrim.

Emotional:

Emotional game settings does not really make much

sense, the only thing I can write for the emotions in
games related to settings is the difficulty options in
games, the image to the right is of an option bar
enabling the player to choose a difficulty of the game,
some games restrict some content to medium or hard
difficulty to try and get more players to play on a
harder difficulty.

Emotional video games are quite common; this is a large section in video
games as some people like to play story driven games such as series
based games like the games from Tell-tale games that base series of a
game on television shows like game of thrones, wolf among us and other
popular television shows.
The image to the right is of the Tell-tale logo, this shows one of the
companies involved in making emotional games.

Ethical:

Ethical game settings much like emotional game settings is quite an

obscure title, I can write about ethical games as some games companies
will advertise that they pay all their staff a fair wage or they only use fair
trade products etc. to make the company seem ethical however there isnt
any main stream, I use the term main stream as there may be a very indie
game somewhere that uses ethical games settings however this is a very
low possibility.
The only way I can link games to being ethical is if the game does not
slander any one or discriminate against gender, age, race etc. an example
of this is going to be childrens games as in most games there will be
something in the game that offends someone. An example of a video
game that is mainly ethical (mainly as there might be some small aspect

of the game that ends up offending someone) image of ethical

game to the right.

Goals:

Goals in video games refer to the tasks involved in

video games, this is in most of the video games
made, this is because they mostly all have story
lines and to progress the story you have to
complete tasks that lead up to the end of the
story, in the games that I have chosen you get
objectives telling you what to do e.g. at the start
of Resident evil 7 you get the first objective to find a way out, once you
find the way out is locked the next objective is to find a key and so on. The
image to the right is of the exit right before you get the second goal or
objective to find the key.

Challenges:

Challenges/goals in video games are

basically the same, the only difference
is that challenges can also refer to
players challenging other players, this
can be multi player or online, an
example of challenges online are
leader boards online, the image to the
right shows an online mini game leader
board where players across the world
will play the mini game to beat all the
other players and get the high score.
The challenges online are basically just a big competition to show which
are the best players online, this can also be done in bigger games like GTA
5 online, COD etc. This shows the competitive players trying to beat the
other players to get on the leader boards.
Rewards: Player:

Rewards player would refer to applications or

smaller video games where by the player
completes a challenge and then receives an
award to try and get the players to keep playing
to receive more rewards, the image to the right is
taken from an application that offers rewards for
repeat playing. The image to the right shows an
example of in game rewards, this example was
activated by levelling up, this encourages players
to keep playing the game as the players will
receive more rewards for playing.

Actions:

There are actions in every game made, this can be as simple as tapping a
screen to driving or shooting or running etc. Actions in game occur when a
button is pressed or moved or the player taps on the device. An example
of actions is quick time events where a button appears on screen and the
player has to click in a second or they fail the QUICK time event, the entire
reason they are called QUICK time events is because the player has to be
quick and press the correct buttons or they will fail the challenger or
activity.

To the right is a controller, on this controller games

will respond differently to each button, as the player
goes through the game the players muscle
memory will start working were by the player
doesnt have to look at the controller to see what
button they have to press or even try to remember
what button to press to do a certain action to run or
shoot etc.

Rules:

In some games there are certain rules you have to follow, this is not
implicated in many games so this section will be quite short, this section

will also be short as the only thing to say about rules in video games is
that only small section of video games will have rules and if you break the
rules in a video game e.g. online games will either report you or ban you
from the session or server or game. The only
example I can think of for not following the
rules in a game is World of Warcraft where a
player might cheat and be banned as cheating
is against the rules. The image to the right is
of the World of Warcraft logo.

Difficulty:

The difficulty of video games can be altered easily on

most games that implicate a difficulty rating/system,
this is simply by going into the options then clicking
on difficulty and changing it to be harder or easier,
the image to the right is a simplistic version of the
difficulty options. The difficulty refers to the how
difficult it is to complete the game, by setting the
game to its hardest setting it makes the puzzles more
difficult, the NPCs/enemies harder to beat and the
bosses harder to defeat, by setting it to easy it lowers
the difficulty making it easier to defeat the
enemies/puzzles/bosses and generally easier to finish/complete/beat the
game. The best option is either medium (this is where the game is set to
the average difficulty and most developers/game makers recommend this
setting as some content is restricted to games where by only players
playing on medium or higher can see the content to persuade more
people to try and complete the game on a higher difficulty.

Game mechanics (inventory, scoring, win condition):

Game mechanics can refer to a few different things such as controls,

scoring, winning and conditions. With controls the game will assign a
feature to a certain button which is different on every game, the scoring is
where a player wins a point. Scoring is commonly found on multi player
video games where the players are competing and one player receives a
point for beating the other one in an activity. Winning is tied in with the
scoring aspect, by scoring more points in a game than the other players
the person with the most points win, this can be on multi-player games
and on online games, the image to the right is of a leader board on a mini

game online where players who get the most points win and receive a
place on the leader board.

Balance:

Balance in video games refers the

game being fair, this can be in a fight or
race or match etc. An example of being
unfair in video games is one of the
players with a high level item and all
the other players with low level items,
an example of this is GTA 5 online racing where one of the
players gets the fastest car in the game where all of the
other players receive the worst/slowest cars in the game. A
very good example of unfair/ unbalanced video games is a
character called Meta Night in Super Smash Bros where by
the character is too over powered against all of the other characters,
image of the character to the right.

Feedback:

Feedback from game settings is the sections in reviews for video games
that discusses video game settings, this will basically state whether the
video games settings are good or not, this section is quite short as the
only thing I can write about feedback for video game settings is that the
video game settings might be mentioned in gaming reviews, most of the
reviews I have seen or read mention aspects of the games settings like
the graphics (frame rate, resolution, opacity, brightness etc.) Apart from
mentioning some of the settings aspects in passing the reviews do not go
into much detail about the settings as the there isnt much detail to go
into about game settings.
Game structure (flow chart):

Video game structure is commonly based on the story line around the
game, the structure is exactly the same as in literature or films, the only
differences I have seen with games is that some games may have a few
more plot twists and shock twists, the image to the right is a simplified
diagram of what the structure of the common video game is, the intro

builds up to a plot twist (the top of the line, then it is

resolved and concludes.

I wrote up the addiction section in its own article, this

is because gaming addiction is a big subject and I
know that I can find a lot of different facts to write
about for the article, along with research, evidence
etc.