Hello and Welcome

I recently graduated with a B.A. in Studio Arts and a minor in Game Culture and have been searching for a job as a QA Tester to start my career in the interactive entertainment industry.  Videogames have been an influential, if not pivotal, part of my life in terms of arts, music, and creative writing.  Because of this, I want to contribute to the industry and perform something innovative to the games that we play.  What was once an entertaining activity I was restricted to playing has now become my life.  I read about the industry, watch the market fluctuate as the leading business in entertainment, talk about the latest games, and compose music to videogame projects with my team on a daily basis.  Initially, I had a blog that was only available to my friends where I wrote about my daily life in school, projects I worked on, and what I've been up to.  Just recently, I read through some of my posts and realized how much each post related to videogames and how detailed I went into each one (one post was 18 pages double spaced).  Seeing how I am reaching out to several different jobs in the industry, I decided to work and improve on my writing skills in order to apply for editorial as well.

After adjusting into a daily routine of reading news about the game industry and diligently playing through unfinished games to learn more about game/level design, there was so much I wanted to say and share.  Not wanting to randomly rant on a new subject each post, I categorized five different types of posts in (hopefully) witty names for specific discussions viewers would like to read and talk about:

NewNews: Opinions and discussions on the latest news within the industry.  I never realized how often new information from the industry frequented the news pages of the media until this summer when I started reading them each day.  Here's an example:

NewNews - Keiji Inafune quits Capcom


Source: http://kotaku.com/5676403/mega-mans-creator-quits-capcom  (I will always try my best to link back to where I read the information.  I will frequently share other blogs sites on here as I believe that hearing the ideas and perspectives of more than one person helps understanding a subject).

WHAAAT?  I am rather surprised someone as great of an asset to Capcom such as Inafune leave.  I suppose some suspected that was going to happen after his criticism at the Tokyo Game Show 2010.  Well, I wish him the best of luck and hope to see more of his great work in the future in whatever he has planned.

GameLight/GameLight Review: A highlight promotion or discussion/review of a particular game.  Using Game Spotlight seemed to lengthy, while Game Limelight made me crave for a citrus-y, fizzy drink.  Here's an example:

GameLight - Blacklight: Tango Down

Link: http://www.playtangodown.com/#/us/home/ 

I had the opportunity to try out Blacklight: Tango Down at E3 2010 this June and enjoyed how fast paced the gameplay was and how sleek the futuristic art style added to the overall feel of the experience.  It just came out on the Playstation Network for $15 on October 26, 2010 and added new content and functions (new maps and a "join mid-game" function).

Source: http://windows7themes.net/black-light-tango-down-wallpaper-theme.html 


I eventually bought the game on steam during a 50% off deal and got to experience the actual game with other players.  I can understand now what people were upset about when it took long durations to get into a game, the lack of players logged on, and the way both teams seem to either camp in the enemies' spawn point or their own.  But despite those setbacks, the game is enjoyable with various customizations to the weaponry and armor loadout, challenging co-op missions which contribute to your experience points, and exhilarating frag fests.

Note: For game reviews, I go in-depth into each aspect of the game and discuss on both strengths and weaknesses in graphics, audio, gameplay, story, multiplayer, etc.

Retroview: A glimpse into a game from the past not within the current generation of consoles.  I've started playing videogames when I was just a few weeks old (according to my parents) and thus given the chance to play many old games that most kids and even gamers did not know about.  Example here:

Retroview - Zanac (NES) 

Zanac is a vertical shoot-em-up that boasts in its amount of detail in graphics, difficulty, and gameplay.  I was drawn to the game because of the amount of power-ups the player could utilize and how catchy the music was.  The music was so catchy that I decided to work on a remix project on it.  Before I worked on it, I realized I never actually beat the game.  So I sat down one day and went through it as best as I could and completed the game in 1.5 hours.  (Image by Shuriken)

I forgot how fun the game was!  Games during the 8-bit days were so limited in functionality and memory space that developers had to keep everything simple, but still entertaining.  The gameplay was straightforward: Shoot baddies, avoid getting hit.  The shooting part is easy, the avoiding becomes a challenge later in the game when the player faces indestructible enemies.  I was also surprised to see a "one-page" credits screen at the end of the final boss.  Videogames nowadays are so intricate and detailed that it takes several hundred people working on one AAA game.  Perhaps I am exaggerating the numbers, but it does seem to be a rather large number of people in one team.  A friend of mine who played through Metal Gear Solid 4 said that the credits went on for over half an hour.  It was a movie in itself.  Perhaps he was exaggerating on the numbers as well.  Zanac is available on Nintendo's Virtual Console if you log onto Wii right now.

GameOn: A series of posts with one underlying theme.  These could be a week long, or an entire month!  I am excited about this type of post the most since it will allow me to focus and dissect the many aspects of a particular genre, series, or community which will (hopefully) inspire ideas and discussions to the readers as well.  A very brief example would be:

Theme: Publishing companies!
Monday: GameOn - Activision
  Blah blah blah, they published awesome games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Call of Duty 
Tuesday: GameOn - Electronic Arts (EA)
  Blahdy blahdy blah, they focused on sports games first and then became a publishing giant 
Wednesday: GameOn - Konami
  Blah blah blarg, coming out with the latest Castlevania, I am so excited! 
Thursday: GameOn - Square-Enix
  Final Fantasy XIV, hahahaha...blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, expected it but I feel sorry for them... 
Friday: GameOn - Atlus
  Blah keeps bringing so many great games from Japan, blah Souls so challenging, but so fun

VGCulture: A post relating to Videogame Culture.  This could be art, music, literature, or the community.  This might sometime count as NewNews and vice-versa depending on the situation.  Example:

VGCulture - Literature: Ghost Recon 

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5JcpHKpTjUC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&l=220

Has anyone noticed the amount of videogames being turned into novels?  It's no longer surprising to see games turned into movies, and then read bad reviews about them.  But I have heard that some of the literature being written for a series or based on a series are actually decent!  A friend of mine read through all the Halo novels and felt it really connected back to the game but at the same time it did not ruin the image of the game itself.  From what I understand, that's what Halo: Reach is following right?  It follows the story of the last few Spartans from the novel?  I'm not sure since I haven't read the novels (I want to), and I haven't had the chance to play Halo: Reach (I REALLY want to).  What I have been reading is Hellgate: London.  Sure the game might have failed, but what many gamers missed out on was the rich, background story to the series and how everything came to be (which was revealed in the novels).  The game is actually really fun.  Rather than a point-n-click isometric RPG, it was a 3D Action RPG that exemplified what large scales fights should feel and look like in an action setting.  But back to the books.  I saw Ghost Recon at Borders a few years ago and wanted to read through it.  Unfortunately for me, I am not a reader type.  The day is taken up by music, art, writing and developing games, and I read a lot during the mornings to catch the latest news.  There is a big debate whether story is important to a game, and for some it isn't.  I should really get back into reading more, even if its books based off of games.  I think it'd be a great way for me to get more ideas on how to tell a story in a videogame.

I understand that was a lot to take in at once, but seeing how this is my very first post on this blog, I do not think I have to worry too much about viewers trying to get through all of this.  From now on, I will treat this as my job and keep it to a Monday-Friday basis with at least one post a day.  So blog posts won't usually be this overwhelming.  If you've made it this far, thank you very much for taking the time to read through all of this.  It is my intention to not only share my ideas and thoughts, but to also entertain and expand the community of gamers in the world.

For all the visitors: if you have any suggestions of anything videogame related, please feel free to leave a link in the comment form.  No spam or trolling please, respect your fellow gamers and keep it civil.