Shua Her

I never thought that I'd be the one creating a game for others to test rather than vice versa.  I am a gamer at heart.  I enjoy playing all kinds of games, some more so than others (like Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Monster Hunter Tri, Pharoah, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy 6-10 etc).  Reasons why I loved games so much is mostly so that I can play and be comptetive with others gamers.  Story, music, characters, action, etc. are all part of what makes up a great game, however to me I can usually tell if I will enjoy a game or not is based on the "core" gameplay element alone.  For instance, in a game like Final Fantasy, it can basically be divided into three sections.  The first is the story, second is the battle mode, and third is exploration.  Of the three sections, the one that I believe is the "core" and thus has to be appealing (or else I won't play the game) is the battle mode.  Even if a game has amazing story &&|| a gigantic world to discover, I wouldn't be interested if the battle scenes sucked.  My prime example of this situation can be perfectly modeled be the game Oblivion (PC version).  Oblivion has got amazing graphics, awesome character customization, a world far too big to explore, and immerses the gamer into the world very nicely, however as soon as I got the feeling of what battling was all about, I just could not enjoy the game anymore.  To me, it was not worth my time and energy to go and get better weapons or face harder enemies when I couldn't even take the fighting seriously...I mean you don't even have to fight most enemies because you can just run away from all of them not to mention how buggy the game was.  However, I do play games for the story as well, yet even the greatest stories will never be head if the battle sequences aren't done right. 

Alright, so how does this relate to my topic about video game testing?  Basically, I was blown away when I discovered that our game was actually kind of appealing to younger children.  Originally, I thought that our game was doom to fail because it seemed a bit too simplistic and unrewarding.  If only the game didn't crash so much and some of the buttons actually worked, I'd say we did a pretty good job for our beta.  I look forward to seeing how this game will finish off in the summer.

One thing that I've realized so far in this course is that learning never stops.  For the past two months I have been searching and discovering new solutions to the technical and aesthetic issues I ran into.  For instance, learning Flash to produce animation was a huge step into unknown territory.  The most valuable thing I learned so far is that preparation is crucial because work is so inter-related with other teams.  Work needs to conform to specific guidelines and certain changes cannot be easily changed once they have been designed.  Art is continually being reworked as our game is still fairly flexible because of our now rapid evolutionary process.