Way ahead of you.
Great, maybe I can learn from you!
Been streaming since a bit over a year ago. Had to stop for a couple of months due to computer issues but that was fixed recently. Although, on stream I normally focus on exploring a full experience, so completing entire games, and overall just having fun… but it nevertheless winds up being fascinating sometimes to see how some old games measure up in terms of mechanics and world-building in ways I hadn't noticed before.
Currently also stopped recording as I'm limiting myself in terms of how much memory to dump on the new computer until I get a storage drive. Currently I'm going through Link's Awakening which I had never really gotten to play before.
I have been having some memory issues myself. I am clearly a beginner in regards to the gaming industry. I hope starting January I can at least put 1 hour a week on streaming and continue to develop a critical eye when playing games.
Same for the essays, I've done those multiple times across different moments in my life. When I get really into a game I break it apart and try to learn as much about it as possible, and for a couple of them I've even written academic essays that I would submit in college for a variety of classes, namely psychology classes about learning and motivation. One time in particular I recall we started a video game history student course back in college where I went all the fuck out on an essay about why Donkey Kong Country 2 is an excellent game.
I also have more than once taken a game I liked and simply opened a word document to rant about it endlessly in terms of what makes sense to me and what doesn't. Mother 3 in particular is one of those that I refuse to shut up about. Even downloaded the localization assets from Tomato one time to try and localize it to latam spanish for fun, though that never went anywhere as my job staleness at the time ended. That game though, so fucking good. Using game mechanics and events to constantly convey narrative elements of the story and move the player towards particular conclusions? Fucking awesome. (and yes wagomu, undertale is still on the to play list)
Good stuff, jajaja I guess I can start a notebook to write down stuff as I play (or word document if I am at home). I had no way of gauging how much involvement you had, I figured quite a bit when I read your posts, but now it is clear. Most of the stuff I said was my own plans to submerge myself into the games. It seems I am heading in the right direction.
It also helps tremendously that I've done tester work on video games for about two and a half years now and after playing some games over and over and over and over again with the intent to cover as many areas as possible, you begin to see flaws in certain mechanics being broken, certain spaces being useless or unnecessary, the balance across the experience not making sense, etc. I think I've gotten pretty good at noticing the first order of strategy pretty early. Or games where the devs add like millions of weapons but ultimately everyone realizes nearly immediately that one is the best and ignore the rest as much as possible. As a result of this job I've also had access to game design documents and helped develop strategy guides more than once.
THIS! I am going to apply for so many testers jobs for next summer, it is super apparent that to be a good designer, you at least need some sort of connection to this part of the industry. Again, I just have to take a back step on the subject, as you are the sempai, sempai.
Only thing that's really changed is that I got tired of trying to seep into the gaming industry from where I am and figured I could do a proper course on it while still working. For background, I went into localization testing and currently I'm a lead in that, so we work with the tail-end of the development cycle where we are ensuring games are properly localized for different regions and that the game can pass cert to be released in time for the public. So I've been getting really good at the data and project management end of the scale, I just want to go back to the heart of the game a bit more too. Far earlier in development too XD
And yes, currently for class we are also doing game pitches and soon we'll be forming groups to tackle game design documents. Forming a OneNote document as I go along where I'm documenting everything that goes on in terms of the class and my experiences, and once we have a group I'll also probably, just based on my personality, be the one dealing with the organizational side of things to keep the document healthy. As an individual, I have always been a fan of documenting everything as much as possible, and if anything, having been a teacher really nailed that point home.
Fair enough, I added some games you could play in my previous post, I can recommend more, my library is filled mostly with indie games.
Right now my request for input was mostly the result of realizing that one of my core weaknesses is that in these past years I've limited myself to either games I'm working on, or games I'm playing and trying to complete at home. And while over the course of years that amounts to hundreds of games, it's a limit that doesn't really work anymore… I want to get myself out of the mentality of having to complete entire games before feeling comfortable digging through the experience. With this in mind I also noticed I've neglected a lot of shorter, more concise experiences in favor of full-on games that require several hours of attention. Which in part has also led me to ignore a lot of the steam platform and content available out there simply because "I don't have time, too many games as it is."
So what I was asking is pretty much me trying to remedy this weakness and give myself more versatility in terms of experience. Thanks for the input!
I see, understandable. Again if you want more games, I'll post them (though you have quite a bit to go through now, and some you can play over and over again, like Risk of Rain). I should be thanking you! I really got the information I needed.