Unit 4 – Production Management Project & Unit 5 – Working to a brief in Media

Initial Ideas and thought process

As I mentioned previously, I had an initial concept for the game which I chose not to go with - I planned on creating a first-person horror, script heavy based game, with cinematic cameras, cut-scenes, a heavier story line, jump-scares, etc. This concept was set to be in a late night lonely office environment, with clowns chasing you around trying to kill you. The concept really never developed beyond that point, since I chose not to progress with it - although, I didn't completely got rid of it, I simply adapted it to the new concept which I'll mention.

However, I decided that this wasn't the best idea for a game, since I am a one man team, with no experience. 

This is when I moved on to another concept - the one I stuck with, a first-person, arena/arcade, round-based clown shooter (similar to COD Zombies). This concept was set to also be in a late night lonely office, except you could now walk out of the office, into the street.

The backstory would be the following - you are an office employee that has a tone of work to do and little time, so you decide to stay at the office instead of going home, for a late night session of working. However, the amount of stress and tiredness upon you is larger than the amount of work and sanity that you still have, and therefore you fall asleep and hallucinate in a dream. The lucid dream makes you think there are clowns chasing you, the clowns representing your co-workers, tasks, fears and stress overall. This fight for your physical life in the dream represents the fight for your mental and social health in-real life.

Needless to say, the gameplay for this concept represents the dream.

In terms of gameplay, I wanted the game to have certain pick-ups, such as health and possibly others that would boost your players character briefly. I wanted clowns chasing you, trying to kill you, and you having to defend yourself with a guns (plural because I also wanted to have multiple guns).

In terms of environment, as I said, I wanted an office, and a street area by the office, with stores on one side of the road, the office and another building (which took my a while to decide what). I wanted a late night time setting, with fog to emphasise the fact that it was all a dream.

Development process and how it meets the original brief

The transaction between the first game concept to the second one was a successful idea in my opinion. It allowed me to save time from potential scripting, animating and story-telling, whilst still letting me be creative with not only the looks of the game but the coding and troubleshooting.

In terms of gameplay, both in technical and practical aspects, the game could have been better. Some parameters such as the concept of having clowns, guns, health packs, round-based, clowns chasing you and all the killing - were met.

As for parameters such as the concept of having more guns and more special pick-ups, those weren't met.

There were a lot of challenges I had to go through while coding the game. Numerous bugs with blueprints - some were resolved, some were kind of resolved, some were not and forced me to take different paths. 

An example I can give is the enemy spawner, I had to completely remake certain blueprints in order to spawn clowns. The healing pickups and HUD also brought some complications.

There were a few big changes from the brief that occurred: the gamemode mechanic - it was planned to be a round-based game, play until you die, although it turned out more of a difficulty setting based game (with easy, medium and hard difficulties), play through difficulties. This was due to complications with coding as well as lack of time;
There was neither gun variety or pick-up variety. This was due to lack of time and experience;
The gameplay changed due to a huge bug with the AI - the pawn-sensing not working as intended with the spawn portal. When the clowns spawn through the portal, they will stand still, instead of roaming around like they are supposed to. This damages the gameplay and feel of the game really bad.

In terms of environment, the brief was 110% met, everything ended up looking exactly how I wanted it to. Again, there were challenges throughout the development, due to inexperience mainly, although, they were all surpassed. I recall having a lot of trouble with the park, because I had to learn how to use foliage. There were a lot of issues with the LODs and draw distances, as well as lighting and props since they were causing performance issues.

The main changes to the original brief were: I decided what the missing building was going to be (a public park). Other than that, there weren't any other major changes, and everything turned out almost identical to the brief.

In conclusion

The best feature in the game, in my opinion is the environment, especially the park and the night time setting with fog. I think it simply looks stunning. The place makes sense to have a small public park, which looks amazing, enhances and emphasises the power of the Unreal Engine by showcasing the foliage tool - animated, realistic grass, flowers, etc. This combined with the late night setting, dark blue sky tone, and last but not least the intense fog and fog clouds, in my opinion, make the game look awesome. 

Needless to say, the landscape was the main focus of the game, since it allows me to use one of my stronger tools - creativity.

Although, you can't just judge the game by the looks. I recognise that the gameplay was bad, even though the idea was there - the delivery wasn't good, yes mainly due to bugs but still.

Overall, I think I did a decent job.

Reviewing Object Oriented Design

Object Oriented Design Review: Koulrophobia

Since my project is finally reaching the end goals, as I finish the final details I can get to the conclusion that, overall, I have met the Object Oriented Design targets that were set throughout the year.

Object Oriented Design was mainly used for the visual, artistic side of assets in the game, although also used for the more technical side, and overall code/blueprints/gameplay

Let's start with the level design:

I had a very vague yet decisive idea of what I wanted to do with the environment - late night, an office and an abandoned street. As the concept was indeed vague, I had to add more to the area and come up with more ideas. I had a huge part of the environment that was empty, which I came up with many solutions for - a bank, a large grocery shop, and finally a public park which is the one I thought was best. Other than that, there were a few changes I had to make which I will mention later.

Here is my first sketch of the level design. It represents the office area from a side view.

At first, (and as I also mentioned in previous assessments) I planned on making a different type of game than the one I decided to make - a scripted, cut-scene heavily based game, with an even more detailed but smaller (hence only the office) environment. I later decided that I wasn't going to continue with this concept for my game, so I changed it up, although keeping the office area that I had already built part of.

Side and front views of the office in-game.

Base floor, Reception.

If you compare this screenshot to the sketch, you can see that nothing really changed from the initial idea, if anything I just added a bar, a few tables and bathrooms.

2nd (and 3rd) floor, Work-space floors.

For these floors, I decided to remove the storage rooms that were presented in the sketch. This is because it interfered with the way I had already built the staircase, and it was just easier this way. I can still add whatever to the empty space if I have the time.

Staircase

Due to technical problems, I had to adapt and move the staircase to a different position than showcased in the sketch so that it wouldn't mess up the whole building. 

Here is the first sketch of how I wanted the street to look like.

Here is how the street looks from the same exact angle.

Same angle again, but unlit and without the fog for better comparison.

As we can visualise, I stuck the the OOD plan throughout this part of the environment, only making very minimal, technical, but inevitable changes.

Below are some more screenshots showing the level:

Moving on to another sketch:

This is the other sketch of the street. You can spot a couple of differences here, such as the traffic lights and the To Be Decided building (which I was going to turn into a bank).

Decreased fog so it's easier to compare

Unlit and reduced fog for better comparison

The obvious differences here are that I didn't build a bank, but instead a public park (which I will show later) as well as how the traffic lights look. I felt like the traffic lights I went with look great and fit the environment a lot better than the ones in the sketch. As to the park, I felt that the game didn't need another building but instead another open, large area, since it's a shooting, round based game that involves a lot of moving around - meaning closed spaces with props and obstacles just are not ideal. This way I ended up giving a new look to the environment, a more natural look - not to mention I also learned how to use foliage in the process.

Below are some screenshots of the park:

Now, the fact that I built a park after sketching multiple different things does go against the whole point of Object Oriented Design. It is more of an improvisation if anything. I remember cancelling the grocery store that I was building and decided to go ahead with the park in that same minute. Now, it wasn't a complete improvisation - I did plan as I built but I did think of building a park before, I just didn't sketch or document it.

What I learned from this is that even though it turned out fantastic (in my opinion) and it is okay to improvise and let the creativity take over, it is always better to plan things out, sketch everything and face the project with a very clear image of what you are going to do and how.

Now let's focus on the blueprints:

Let's start with this problematic blueprint:

Heal

The blueprint Heal is supposed to be a pickup that spawns across the map in various spots. When you collide into it, it gives you a small amount of health if your player is injured, and afterwards it destroys itself, only to respawn sometime later at one of the spots.

The way it relates to OOD is that I planned since the very beginning of the year that I wanted to have heal pickups spread across the map.

Here is the blueprint setup of Heal as well as other setups which I will describe:

Simply put, if the player character collides with the Heal, it will update your current health with +25 and then destroy it self.

After destroying itself, it calls two event dispatchers which I will mention later. 

Prop Rotating and Floating

You can also see here another set of nodes - every tick, the prop moves up and down and also rotates. Basically a looped animation so that it looks more alive. This works absolutely fine.

HealDestroyed Dispatcher

One of the event dispatchers is HealDestroyed. So when Heal is destroyed it calls HealDestroyed over in the level blueprint, and it spawns another Heal within 40 seconds (doesn't show in the screenshot but it is 40 seconds) in a random target point where a Heal isn't already spawned - notice how it says 'Do Not Spawn' on the 'Collision Handling Override', meaning Heals won't spawn inside other Heals (if God wants it that way).

BloodDestroyer

The other event dispatcher is BloodDestroyer. Basically, when Heal is destroyed it calls this event which tries to get rid of the blood-splatter effect on the screen by changing the alpha channel to 0 (making it invisible). This works in an unexpected way - instead of clearing the screen as soon as you collide with Heal, it only clears the screen when you get hit by an enemy AFTER you collide with Heal. Don't know how to fix it, tried multiple times.

Overall, the blueprint does its job, but it can be very buggy sometimes, like I mentioned the blood-splatter bug, not to mention that sometimes it doesn't respawn at all or it respawns inside another Heal pickup. Sometimes it also freezes the health regeneration, other times it just does not heal you at all. It is complicated.

Next I am going to talk about my AICharacter blueprint as well as my EnemyPortal blueprint.

The AICharacter blueprint followed the initial OOD planning, and it behaves just like I planned it to (except for a few bugs which I will talk about):

AICharacter works fine on its own - if I spawn it manually, it will do what it is supposed to. 

Although, when it is spawned through the EnemyPortal blueprint, it will not roam like it is supposed to, instead, it will stand still until the OnSeePawn event is triggered (only moves when it sees you). This shouldn't happen.

AI Moves to Random Location

The problem isn't in the AICharacter's setup, since as I mentioned, works fine when I manually spawn it. 

Enemy

This is the EnemyPortal blueprint, you can only see 1 but there are 3 difficulties, and they each have their own assigned numbers in their own blueprints (number of enemies that spawn, how fast they spawn, for how long). At the end there is an event dispatcher that links with AICharacter, but it seems to do nothing at the moment. I do believe the solution is in an event dispatcher, and that I have to somehow trigger AiMovesToRandomLocation as soon as the enemies are spawned through the portal. This is what I will work on.

Another example is my Night Time blueprint in the level blueprint:

Very simple setup, the main light source in the sky rotates very slowly (pretty much stays frozen) and the time is set to night hours. The tone of the environment set in the world settings (dark blue) also helps with the night look.

This blueprint was set at the start of the year, when I planned on making my game at night time, so it obviously followed the OOD method quite easily.

Last but not least I will demonstrate some of the blueprints related to the player's health.

This is part of the OOD method since I planned on making a shooter, arena type game, with the purpose of the clowns being to kill you.

Player Dead

Very simple blueprint, if player's health is less than or equal to 0 then a message will appear on the screen and the game will end.

This is obviously necessary, since the whole point of the game is to stay alive as long as possible.

Health System

This is the health system, more specifically health regeneration. If your player's current health is less than the max health (100), then it will regenerate every second until you're full health. This also links to a widget which displays a health bar on your screen,

It is a pretty useful blueprint since it gives you crucial info to succeed in the game.

Core

This is what actually allows the health bar to appear in the viewport as well as what activates the delta seconds for the health regeneration/checks if the player should be dead.

Overall in terms of Object Oriented Design and blueprinting, I have created most of what I wanted to do, and what I have created is at least at acceptable standards. I will add more stuff though, especially blueprints that I had planned before.

Object Oriented Design in Unreal Engine vs GameMaker

As we know, GameMaker has its limitations, and can't even be compared to Unreal in terms of potential or/and power. I will try to keep this in mind and take every critic with a grain of salt.

Below are some screen-shots with OOD from GameMaker.

Portals

Before making BrainBox (my GameMaker game) I completed Portal 2 and I loved that game. I thought the idea of the portals could work out in my game. From there I planned it and created them.

DarkEco/Point System

One of my favourite games of all time has these purple orbs that float around and feed you power, and I thought making purple shards would be a good idea.

Enemies

Didn't really use OOD for the spiders, just improvised.

Blueprinting/Coding OOD Comparison

In Unreal, I have been using the blueprint system. It is a simpler way of coding, but without typing a single line of coding. While this does sound awesome, well, it pretty much is - although, it does have its limitations. Since I've been working on a specific version of Unreal, watching tutorials may confuse you more than actually help you - this is because as the engine gets updated, they tend to make changes to blueprinting, so what you're watching on YouTube might not be useful to you anymore, because you are working on a newer version.

However, this is pretty much the only downside of blueprinting that I personally came across. There are many pros to it such as: It's easier to learn, understand and read the whole thing. Obvious one, at the start of the course I didn't know a single thing about blueprinting, let alone coding. Few months later I can come up with my own blueprints, troubleshoot them, improve them, find ways around them, etc. Which leads us to another pro - It is easier to troubleshoot blueprints. The nodes and the wires make it extremely easy to see what's wrong with your functions and to modify them too. 

I remember having nightmares with the coding while working with GameMaker. From not fully understanding what I was doing, to staring at lines of code, to trying different ways and failing. It wasn't a good time, I'll tell you that much.

Overall, compared to C++ and GML, Blueprinting doesn't even feel like coding, and that's a really good thing.

Level Design OOD Comparison

I'll put it like this: Unreal feels harder to master but way more rewarding, while GameMaker feels much easier and not as rewarding. I'm looking at the tools and possibilities here, not power of the engines - Unreal gives you a lot more tools, such as free default grey references and props, default animated characters, default environments and project setups, default textures and particles, better working tools (scale, move, etc), dynamic cameras. 

May sound like GameMaker couldn't have these things but it could.

GameMaker feels more straight forward. I remember learning it quickly as I picked it up.

Game Trailer Brief

Overview of the concept

- trailer
- 30 seconds or longer
- close shots of a clown
- camera cuts
- camera works its way up, showing off the clown model, starting from his clown shoes all the way to his face, which would be the at the end of the trailer.
- shots of the game environment OR/AND written bits teasing the backstory of the game - in between camera cuts

Target Audience

Same as the game. Rated M for mature, targeted at 17+.

Materials required

Finished model of my clown, including rigging; 3D environment from my game.

Overall style/look

The idea is to emphasise the sense of intimidation from the clown. Fully dark background, with only one spotlight pointing at him in-front of him, mixed with closed shots of a moving camera. I could make it so that there would only be shots of key spots of the clown, such as his hand holding a machete, his face, etc.
In terms of animation, I could also make a walking animation on loop, within the same dark environment and lighting, and with the clown walking towards the camera. This would be at the end of the trailer.
As I mentioned, there will be shots from game itself or/and text teasing the backstory of the game. This is obviously to tease what is in the game, without showing too much, as well as to give a theme to the trailer.

Storyboard

Timeline

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - Analysis

Analysis of a computer game

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Today I'm going to be critically analysing and reviewing the latest game of its franchise, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

Contrary to what fans believed before release, the game did not stray away too much from its roots - just the right amount. It kept many known gameplay features and stayed true to the Resident Evil experience whilst simultaneously feeling like something totally new, not only for the industry and genre, but especially the franchise.

If it wasn't for how the story turned out to develop (which, was pretty good but could have been a lot different as it was portrayed at parts of the game) and a few other minor issues which will be discussed later, the game could have been a master-piece.

Analysis of the game

In terms of graphics, this is one of the most realistic and best looking games to date. The level design is excellent and really helps to portray the horror experience. The characters look very realistic, although some of them have clunky looking hair (Mia). Aside from that, they really nailed the topology of their faces as well as character animation.

The sound in the game is pretty good, but I do have to point out that the voice-acting isn't the best. Considering what's going on in the game, you would expect the main character (Ethan) to be frightened for his life 90% of the time - although, this isn't portrayed at all. Most of the dialogues sound like normal conversations or as if what's happening isn't that scary or messed up. Even when Ethan is injured, his vocal expressions just don't sound intense. However, the ambience sounds are on point and make an excellent pair with the level design, other sound effects and quality of sound in general is great.

In terms of construction of content, codes and conventions and gameplay in general, as I mentioned, the game stuck to its roots, and although being something new it still felt like Resident Evil due to certain mechanics, such as the Inventory system - you still have to smartly manage and organise your inventory like in past games - and also the Crafting system - you can collect materials which are spread out across the area in order to craft useful items such as health packs and stronger ammo.
The shooting is also similar to previous games but isn't a huge asset in the gameplay - 90% of the time you will be mindlessly shooting the molded creatures whose only purpose is to waste time and bullets, since they are super easy to kill. Almost like they are there just to be there, just to brainlessly add more to the game. It just feels like there isn't much strategy involved, apart from saving as much ammo as you can, whereas in previous games you would have to plan out which weapons to use on certain enemies and what moves to make.
Last but not least the boss fights are quite exciting and unique and definitely contributed to the nostalgia feeling of Resident Evil. The puzzles are creative and fun to interact with.

Narrative Structure

Now a bit more about the story,

Ethan (the main character, and who you will play as for almost the entire game) receives a rather strange message from his wife (Mia), who was thought to be dead for 3 years, apologising to Ethan for lying. He drives all the way to Louisiana to rescue her, after being told by her to "stay away". After minutes of wondering into the Baker's residence and finding odd clues, he finds Mia sleeping in a dirty bed, looking frightened and unsafe. She acts very strangely and keeps mentioning the words "family" and "daddy". She isn't clear about what's going on, only that they have to find a way out. After not finding a secret exit in the room, Ethan tries to find another way out but she disappears after a scream, only to be found again minutes later, but this time with a twist:
she attacks Ethan with a knife, hurting him multiple times as he defends himself, confused by her sudden hostility. Eventually she stops stabbing him and turns back to normal, saying she can "feel her clawing her way back inside me", as she knocks herself out by banging her head on the wall multiple times.

At this point, it is very clear that there is something very wrong with Mia and the current situation.
Mia eventually wakes up, throwing Ethan through a wall with unbelievable power, and starts fighting him to death with a sharp piece of wood. Ethan and his axe eventually finish her off with what would appear to be a killing blow. The phone rings and Ethan picks up, as he receives an instruction that there is a way out through the attic from Zoe (a member of the Baker's family).
Although Mia isn't done, as she comes back, clearly being unstable, and saws off his arm with a chainsaw, oddly walking away as the mumbles strange things. Only to come back again and this time getting shot, appearing to be dead this time (again).
As Ethan leaves, he is surprised by an unknown old man (Jack Baker) with a punch that leaves him unconscious, only to wake up sitting at a dinner table with the rest of the family for a disgusting supper, eventually being able to escape. This is where the start of the game ends, and gameplay progresses.

Ethan is guided by Zoe, an outside helper, as he progresses through the story. She vaguely and briefly informs him of what's going on through phone calls. She tells you that the objective is to get serum, in order to cure themselves and get out. You slowly find out about what's going on as you play through the game. At this point, you realise the people in this house are infected with something that changes their behaviour radically, and also that you are pretty much on your own, fighting for life.
Throughout the game you will also finds old tapes which contain footage from Mia and others, and you are able to go back in-time and play through the footage to understand a bit more of what happened.
You also get a few small hints about a little girl called Eveline and how everyone praises her, even though you won't meet her until the end of the game. Eveline is a young girl, and the responsible for all of what happened. She has the power to infect people and control the mind of the infected as well as other ridiculous things.

You face each member of the family as boss fights, eventually defeating everyone. Throughout these boss fights, it's easy to tell that what affected these people has made them physically inhuman.
Also, one of the members of the family is grandma, she is quiet and appears in random spots of the house, normally right before something is about to happen.

After getting a hold of the serum, finding both Zoe and Mia and killing Jack, you have two options:
Since you only have enough serum to save yourself (since you too are infected ever since your arm got chopped off) and someone else, you have to choose between saving Mia or Zoe.
Saving Mia will result in both of you leaving in a small, towards, and as Eveline realises you are trying to leave, she sinks the boat and takes Ethan hostage. At this point you control Mia, and have a flashback in order to understand what actually happened.
Turns out Eveline is a very powerful weapon used by a group of people in order to threaten and therefore control the worlds biggest organisations, the government, economy, etc. Although, she has to blend in so that no suspicions are raised, and this is where Mia comes in: she was paid to "babysit" Eveline and act like her mother and a close person to her. They were on a ship when things started to go wrong and Eveline threw a tantrum huge enough for everyone to get either infected or killed.

Long story short, Mia has to save Ethan as she sacrifices herself. She is able to resist Eveline because she took the serum. Ethan has to defeat Eveline. Now, one of the side affects of Eveline's condition is fast ageing (you find this in one of the documents, she ages up to 25x faster than the normal human if her injections are skipped). It turns out that all along, Eveline is actually grandma, the final boss. As Ethan is losing the battle against Eveline, who is a huge inhuman monster, a chopper with a group of soldiers comes in. Eveline is defeated and one of the soldiers introduces himself as Redfield. Both Ethan and Mia get on the chopper and escape, safe and sound, with the soldiers.

Saving Zoe, results on her being petrified minutes after you leave Mia, who dies when she sacrifices herself when saving Ethan, since you didn't give her the serum.

The end.


Now, I think the story is really good but there's a few things that I don't like about it. First of all, the first 15 minutes of the game or so, for me at least, felt like they were trying to send the story in a completely different way. I am not sure how to explain myself at best, but I could have never imagined that it would turn out the way it did. Even after hours of gameplay, they didn't do a good job of portraying what was going to happened, they kept everything mysterious until the end.

Last but not least, what happened in the end was the most confusing thing ever, I even had problems myself trying to understand the twist and even more problems explaining it. I had to read the explanation off the internet. This speaks millions. The people I've spoken to about the game and the people I watched completing it were also dazed.
What I'm trying to say is that the delivery, especially and the start and end was not the best.

Representation of Characters

The main character, Ethan, I still question myself who were they trying to make him seem as. Since the voice acting wasn't the best, and his emotions were almost non-existent, I can't tell if he was a bad-ass that feared nothing or just a regular guy.

Mia was one of the best represented characters I believe, she wasn't the typical fragile woman, she was strong yet careful and just the right amount of frightened.

Jack Baker was also represented excellently, especially in boss fights. He gave the impression that he was the alpha-dog in the family, scared of absolutely nothing and confident enough to show Ethan that he can't die by shooting himself. He was also kinda portrayed as a stereotypical redneck family owner, very protective of his family and rude towards outsiders.

Zoe was kind of the in-the-middle character, not much interaction but enough to understand what she was like, especially when you meet her.

Lucas, Jack's son, was this mentally ill, game-lover psycho. They got the message across quite well with him, as you could easily tell was he was like, by the way he talked, moved and his actions in general - and obviously his sick games.

Marguerite was also represented as a mentally ill character, probably the worse out of all of them. The fact that she was constantly yelling and laughing easily showed how messed up she was. She also falls into the category of redneck house-wife stereotype.

Eveline was the definition of impure child. She knew exactly what she was doing and she loved it. She had a terrible mind which was greatly represented.

All the other characters are not relevant enough/didn't get enough exposure.

Target Demographic

This game is rated M for Mature, so it is aimed at 17 or older people. Since it's a horror game, with tons of graphic violence and gore, as well as faulty language it isn't appropriate that people who are younger than that age play this game. 

The audience is addressed naturally since the game belongs to an old, popular horror game franchise. Obviously the trailers, title, case and images from the game suggest that it is a mature game.

The Horror Genre

The Horror genre has been progressing at a tremendous pace this decade, due to how technology is evolving and how much it affects the potential of the genre.

The most obvious thing to point out is that the less pixels on your screen, the less scarier the game will be. What I mean by this is that the less quality in the game, the less realistic it will feel, the less you'll be immersed, the less the spooks. Obviously gaming has been evolving throughout time, and nowadays we can easily expect photo-realism. My point is that, games will only get more and more deeply into actual horror since there is always more potential tomorrow.

Take in consideration level design, ambience and characters - how often and quickly game engines are being updated and upgraded, allowing developers to create more realistic and therefore scarier games;

Take in consideration indie development - how many free engines are available to the public with the necessary tools as well as things like Kickstarter, allowing the developers a chance to make a name for themselves and build up experience and recognition.

I'd say the majority of indie games are horror games without even looking at statistics, since nowadays you just see so many.

Overall, the genre has a lot of freedom for creativity, and we are only see it flourish recently, with titles such as Outlast and obviously the new Resident Evil. The Horror genre still has a lot to offer, as it never really gets old.

Do violent video-games turn under 18's into violent people?

Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products

Task1 - Audience Response and Behaviour

• Audience Theory

Do violent video-games turn under 18's into violent people?

The mentality that some people have towards violent video-games, especially elders/older adults, is ridiculously biased - they believe that these realistic feeling, violent video-games are bound to turn every single child into psychopathic, serial killers, and they keep linking real-world catastrophic events, such as school shootings, to the gaming addiction. While some games may strike a nerve here and there, I am going to talk about violent games and how instead of turning you into a criminal, how good they are for you and how they may save your life one day.

The people I've mentioned above can almost even be considered as gaming haters. They will seek out specific, brain-washing media reports, research biased results and alleged facts in order to attempt to make their points valid - Gratification Theory. They will also blindly accept every word that their favourite media says without questioning it, regardless if it is right or wrong or even made up - Passive Consumption.

The people arguing against them believe that violent video-games do NOT turn anyone violent, some saying that the catastrophes that have and will happen are super rare anomalies and even then, there isn't enough evidence to link them. Some of them also argue that video-games actually benefit you. Similar to the other audience, they may also use biased media reports and made-up facts to make their points, although not as often. Last but not least they may and may not question research results - Active Consumption.

• Effects Debate and Responses

Positives

- Children can socialise if they play together - meaning they can learn from each other and build friendships as well as basic social skills.

- Quantity is more dangerous than quality - the other audience often forgets this. When people spend a lot of time doing a certain thing, the chances of there being frustration increase. This translates to gaming in a way that playing games for hours MAY be more of a problem than just playing for 1 hour for example, regardless of game genre.

- "Studies potentially linking violent games with aggression do not always compare them with games involving similar levels of competition and difficulty" - most of the times, children and teenagers don't choose a game because it contains violence but for other additional aspects such as competing against other people or because it's challenging. Again, these will cause frustration which may lead to aggression.

- Other media such as films and TV shows contain just as much, and most of the time way more violence and disturbing scenes which are titans compared to video-games, yet there is no fuss about that. - This is the wining point right here, and it only goes to show that people arguing against are just throwing a tantrum because the concept of gaming, technology and the future in general hurts their elder morals. Everyone said that the invention of telephones were the Devil, yet here we are.

- Action games help you with split-second decision making. - This is a great skill to have and can be very useful in real-life situations such as car accidents or self-defence. Action games also stimulate your sense of awareness and ability to multi-task.

Negatives

- Too much time playing can cause children to care less about academic work.

- Some violent scenes can cause mental scarring. - Then again, so can films.

- In some rare cases, the person might commit a crime, all the way from minor to heavy.

- Violence is just not appropriate for children. It just simply shouldn't be apart of their life so early.

- Some violent games may also contain sexual and even drugs which may lead the person to get a wrong idea of what being an adult and growing up is like.


I came up with a survey addressing teenagers/young adults about violence in video-games and the impact that it has on people's way of thinking/behaviour. Below are the questions along with some answers. 

Personally I think that from the 18 participants, there were a lot of a anomalies and alternative opinions, some of the answers not correlating with others, meaning the results aren't the best. Although, conclusively the majority agrees that violence in games isn't that big of a deal and don't necessarily impact people's decisions in life. They do mostly agree, however, that whether or not it may affect them, it depends on the person.



In conclusion, it is a very rare occasion that video games have a heavy enough impact for children to do something awful later in their lifes, even rare for their behaviour to slightly change. Even though there are negative side-effects of playing violent games, the positive effects out-weigh them.