COP3: Lecture 1 Desconstructing

Context of Practice 3: Deconstructing Our First Lecture
After the lecture that we had a few days ago I wanted to go through the questions that we were asked as they were so helpful when it came to deconstructing our project and I found it brilliant to narrow down my title of my writing as I found that previously it was very broad and didn't have a lot of direction.

Planning the Project
Write down all questions you want to investigate about the topic:
- How is a stylised technique appreciated in the gaming industry?
- Is this stylised technique deemed worse than photo-realism?
- Why is photo-realism more popular at the moment in the games industry?
- Is a stylised technique only associate with bad game or ones aimed at children?
- Is it not as skillful or creative than producing something that looks photo-realistic?
- How do real world environments help to influence gaming world?
- Are games better when they have been influenced from real worlds or do they lack the ambition that fantasy world have?

Out of the questions that I looked at above I wanted to take two forward which would be my primary and second questions from the next stage of planning the project. I wanted to consider the questions and merits and differentials of these two questions and ensure they could be expanded well enough. For this I wanted to merge to questions together for my primary question as I felt that they worked well together and could be seen as one.

Why is photo-realism more popular at the moment in the games industry and is a stylised approach deemed worse than photo-realism in games?
- It can often be associated with children's games and therefore not be as ambitious?
- Due to advancements in technology, maybe creating realistic environments is more appealing?
- Different materials can be used to create stylised games - such as clay for example
- Are we truly at the stage of photo-realism or are we still using a round about stylisation to make up what we can't produce yet?
- Is it deemed less skillful to produce a stylised game than a photo-realistic one?
- Or could it be seen as more creative as you are adopting a unique style?
- Ultimately, how is it perceived in the industry and are they as popular to the mass audience as other games that could be seen as nearly photo-realistic?

Are games more appealing when they have been influenced from real worlds or do they lack the ambition that fantasy world have?
- When games take influence from real worlds they have a better starting point as they already have structural elements and composition of buildings already in place.
- Fantasy games have more scope to be creative but its difficult to start from nothing.
- So, is there a starting point that some fantasy games use? Do they look at landscape first to get the initial look to a baron wasteland on a planet and then look through the history of buildings to create settlements and build up the population?
- What influence do fantasy games use to create different material surfaces and how do they know what kind of light will be hitting them and how they will reflect?

What is the purpose of the study? Is your question researchable?
To be able to see if photo-realistic environments are more popular than stylised ones, and ultimately why, especially amoung the next consoles. The question is definitely researchable mainly based on opinions of players and people in the industry but also looking at the statistics of ratings and also awards even though these again are based on opinions but on a mass scale.

Project Outline
I have ensures that I have drawn up a suitable schedule that has taken into consideration that we have 15 weeks to complete project. This is looking timings of tutorials  and also time where we are already in uni and also ensuring that I have factored in the entire 400 hours taking into consideration, to ensure that I complete the module to the best of my ability, and taking into fact that I work at my job both Saturday and Sunday and the fact that I will need to take a week out at Christmas to see family. This schedule is then also fitted around 2 other modules that will be ongoing all year, PPP3 and our Extended Projects.

I have initially dedicated the first two weeks at least of this module for continued reading and also researching not only into the writing side but the preparation for my practical side too.

Literature Search
As stated before in my lecture write up, reading should take at least 100 of the 400 hours that I have for this project and I want to ensure that I do enough research and initial reading to make me confident when writing my essay.

Start by finding all the key texts on your chosen topic and focus on reading those first
I have initially decided to do my initial reading based mainly around level design books and art of game worlds to first get inspiration towards whats out there already and as to look at factors like composition, colour, lighting, texture etc. to see what works best with a stylised environment. I then want to start moving on to looking at books about architecture and stylisation and photo-realism in games to begin to finish up my research.

Find secondary sources
I then want to start looking at more academic journals and even magazines to be able to generate not only more quotes, but hopefully find opinions on the subject and therefore a conclusion to my study.

Referencing
As I am going through my project and initial reading I have already started to gather a number of quotes from different texts and started to keep note of page numbers and I've ensured I know the necessary details of the text to be able to Harvard reference in my bibliography as I move through the project.

Overall this exercise was well worth the time to deconstruct as it was incredibly helpful when it can to narrowing down my ideas and being about to focus on a certain topic and ensure that it was a good idea and had plenty of scope to move forwards. I am now very confident that I can begin to move forward with my further reading and start to make headway with generating a practical piece idea as well.

Questionnaires, Interviews and Observing
I decided to put these last sections into one because at the moment I am not quite sure what method I am going to be using to gain extra knowledge and information from people in the industry but I certainly think that producing questionnaires are a very good way of gaining that knowledge, providing that you can get enough people to participate. But providing that I can get the opportunity to do an interview I feel that this year this would be more beneficial and I would be able to focus on a particular topic and generate a more accurate and focused discussion.