ECGC was an amazingly fun experience for me. I personally enjoyed the experience of being at the conference. Outside of the talks, there were lots of people that I talked to like the people at the Unreal Engine and Insomniac Games booths. I also tried some of the VR booths and had a blast. The only things that I didn't like at the conference was the wait for certain things that I would have liked to try, but this is unavoidable. The other thing is that there were certain time slots where there wasn't a talk I was interested in. I attended talks and the one that I liked most was about narrative writing and how to go about writing for video games. The lady giving the talk works on Star Trek Online, Destiny Rise of Iron, and is working on Destiny 2. She talked a lot about how her and her team came up with ideas for what to make parts of their game around. When she talked about this in relation to Star Trek Online, she said that they had tons of options on what to do and what they did for part of the game was they took a race of people mentioned once briefly in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. What they did first was take this race of people and look at all that they new about it (which was very little), and then they had free roam of what the characters became. She also talked about how when they didn't know what to use as new content for Star Trek Online, they would use the game to fill in plot holes that were created in the show. The most valuable piece of information I think that she gave during the talk was that "Every noun is a story". This really spoke to me because it makes so much sense. When you think about it, all games have an predominant "bad guy" and this bad guy has a name. They whole story is built around that idea. The speaker referenced this when she talked about the creation of Destiny Rise of Iron. She said that the Destiny community wanted more information on the Iron Lords (characters mentioned in Destiny's lore). The speaker said that her and her team looked at all the info on the Iron Lords and with the little they had they could make the story what they wanted. If for instance there was a weapon mentioned in the game, you could build an entire background on it and then that noun would have a story. The speaker also said that it was important not to do more world building than was necessary. She said this as also important so as to not get too into the backstory and being able to start the actual game. The main thing I leaned from the talk was that making a game's story is something that isn't set in stone even when you are making the game and that you have as much story as you want to make. There is no end to what you can do in terms of story.
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The first day of ECGC was really fun and I attended some really good talks! Today my favorite talk was about narrative and it really caught my attention because the speaker broke things down and really explained what makes a good story and where you could get ideas for your game's story and world building from. It was also really cool because the speaker worked on Star Trek Online and explained how their team made hours of game play out of something that was mentioned in the show very briefly during a conversation that wasn't very significant. This really opened my eyes to the fact that you can make stories out of anything, even if it's small. Lastly, the conference was really fun experience and I'm glad that I got to experience before going to Advanced Studies next year as it will come in handy.Up to this point, Unity has been fun and helpful when it comes to me getting used to the skills and learning things that I will use for next year. The most useful thing I've learned was how all the things that you use in code work together and shape what you can do. I have learned, roughly, how all the puzzle pieces fit together but I'm still trying to make sense of some of the things I'm learning. I believe this will help me for next year when it comes to trying to code and solve issues in my code. All in all, the Unity tutorials has helped me get a rough idea of how everything works in union. |
AuthorMy name is Kai Hart and I am a senior at Durham School of the Arts. I am taking the game design course at school and am curently in Advanced Game Art and Design. I want to work my way into the game industry and hope to one day be a game writer of some sort. Archives
May 2018
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