Week 12

Learning Journal: 

Activities 

We didn't have any set content for this week, so we started with our usual 'games we've been playing' discussion. Among the games we talked about were For Honor, which lead us into a tangent about what fighting games are, such as hack-and-slash as a genre. An example that was given was the Bayonetta series. For Honor looks like fun; in my experience, Ubisoft makes decent games so it would be interesting to give this one a try. 

Genre is just a framework of expectations; by classifying games into different genres, we expect certain things such as hallmarks or specific mechanics. The definition of genre is "a category of games that share similar gameplay characteristics" (MasterClass, 2021). Personally I find genre, in the context of games, to be kind of confusing. The sheer number of different genres is overwhelming, and I don't know how I'm going to learn them all. 

Other games we discussed were Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, the sequel to FEW: Three Houses, and Cult of the Lamb. The latter is an Australian-made game, whereby the hero has to balance leading a cult and managing a town. I mentioned in Week 10's Learning Journal that indie studios seem to do well in Australia, and Cult of the Lamb appears to be following that trend. I have yet to play this one but I like the concept. It's dark and spooky without being an affront to casual players, so I imagine it's going to be very successful. 

Following this, we moved onto continuing work on our assignments. Mostly, my group made another attempt to complete all of the tasks we had set for ourselves. I'm looking forward to handing it in and being done - as much as I've enjoyed working on it and exploring our ideas, it's become a source of stress and I don't have time to keep chipping away at it. Our desired outcome was to create a fully functional Game Design Document for Railway Nomads but unfortunately we don't have the time or manpower. I'm satisfied with the amount of progress we've achieved in such a short period, though.