My Literature & Contextual Review

I am happy to announce that my Literature & Contextual review for the DE4101 Design Research 1 module is now finished!

The focus of my research for the review is atmosphere in games and game environments, and the techniques that designers and developers use to create atmosphere. My work on the review began in November when I started to gather books, then I gathered journals and websites and wrote the literature review and in the past few weeks I gathered the non-text based sources for the contextual review.

This has been an insightful process and I feel like I've learned a lot about how to create atmosphere in game environments, and I'm excited to put these techniques to use in my own work.

Here's the reviews:

DE4101 Design Research 1 - Update!

Here's an update on how my work is going for my DE4101 Design Research 1 work. My last DE4101 blog post was a month ago and contained a list of the books that I have gathered for my Literature Review. Since then, I have also gathered 10 websites and 10 journal entries and have finished writing my Literature Review (though I may tweak it further in the days leading up to the submission on January 2nd).

The focus of my Literature Review has been atmospheric game environments and how they are created. The texts that I have gathered are from a variety of sources and authors, including books, websites, magazines and journals written by all manner of professionals, indies and hobbyists. My goal for the review was to learn what methods are used to create atmospheric environments, mostly in games, but I also read a bit about film and stage sets.

Conducting this review has been a lengthy and demanding but ultimately very valuable process. I've plumbed the depths of literature on environment art and have uncovered some very thought-provoking arguments and concepts which will surely help me to further improve my creative process.

But my DE4101 work is not over yet! I will soon be getting started on the contextual review, which will cover non-textual sources such as videos, images, games and so on.

Watch this space for more DE4101 updates!

Gathering Books! (DE4101 - Design Research 1)

Gathering Books! (DE4101 - Design Research 1)

Regular readers of my blog (if such a thing exists?) will have noticed that its been a bit quiet - thats because I have been busy gathering research material for a piece of work for one of my modules; DE4101, also known as Design Research 1. The piece of work is a Literature & Contextual review and it is due to be submitted on December 9th.

Basically, I have to gather a load pieces of research material on a topic within the field of games design, and write a critical analysis of this material and the ideas they present. I have to gather 10 books, 10 web articles, 10 journal/magazine articles and 10 "contextual" pieces (anything besides a written piece) that contains useful information on my chosen area of focus. I then have to narrow the written pieces down from 30 to 5 and write a review on them. For the contextual review, I have to narrow it down from 10 to 5. I have chosen to research into 3D environment art and the methods used by environment artists to make atmospheric/engaging/realistic 3D environments.

I won't go into too much detail as it won't be terribly exciting to read about, but so far I have gathered all my books and the research is well under way. I got more than 10 books that included things such as game design books, game art books and some film/TV and stage set design books.

My next step is to find the 10 web articles and 10 journal/magazine articles, then I will decide which 5 I want to focus on for the write-up. Here's a list of the main books;

The art of Halo: creating a virtual masterpiece
By Trautmann, Eric S, 2004

Film: a critical introduction
By Pramaggiore, Maria, 2011

Game level design
By Byrne, Ed, 2005

Scene design and stage lighting
By Parker, W. Oren, 2009

Building interactive worlds in 3D: virtual sets and pre-visualization for games, film, and the Web
By Gauthier, Jean-Marc, 2005

Creating emotion in games: the craft and art of emotioneering
By Freeman, David, 2004

Game design for teens
By Pardew, Les, 2004

Challenges for game designers
By Brathwaite, Brenda, 2009

Game development essentials: game level design
By Castillo, Travis, 2008

Game Design Complete
Book by Patrick O'Luanaigh, 2006

Designing virtual worlds
By Bartle, Richard, 1960, 2004

Level up!: the guide to great video game design
By Rogers, Scott, 2014