Video Game presentation reflections.

When it came to our gaming presentation I think there were a few things we could have done better.  The first of them were gameplay mechanics of the game.  I felt that what we had, while good, was rather bare boned basically, we could have used a bit more detail the character abilities as well as giving a more fleshed out list than what we did.  We could have given a larger list of abilities other than just "swinging from vines...Stealth Mode...Disguise"  and created more detailed descriptions of each that grabbed the interest of the people we were presenting to. 
Anothing that I realized we could have done after the presentation was flesh out a few of the general goals, or at least adjust them.  With the idea that the game was an MMO (Massively Mutiplayer Online) game the way we described the goals seemed to hint at a finality to me while an MMO is basically supposed to never end.  For example we said one of the goals of the pirates was to capture ninja's inslands, but we never said what happened to the island afterwards.  Something that I think would have made the game sound better would be to have ninja's be able to try and recapture the island, thus creating a kind of tug-of-war mechanic to the game.  Something similar could be done with the pirate's ships as well.

Out of the four main points of video games that we were given I would have to say that mechanics is the hardest to show for a few reasons.  Most of the other points, Rules, Goals and Objectives can mainly just be listed to show them and a few words can describe them.  With mechanics, yeah, words can be used, but it is much easier to show how something works sometimes, not just tell how something works; this is how things work for me because I'm a visual learner.

Joke Critique

This  is the first joke video from our group.

Each of the videos is shot in the same bar type of area.  We used the bar itself as well as the bottle on the shelves behind the bar to give a sense of SPACE to the video.  This works because the LINE of the bar leads the eye from the foreground to the background.  In the first video the line leads the eye from the girl to the two guys, kind of giving them a feeling of significance; it was similar but reversed in the second video where the bar leads the eye to the woman who enters the room, which starts the video.  This is actually a form of CONSTRAST and AFFINITY because the room stayed the same, but the character positions changed between the two videos.

            When it comes to the differences between the videos, the first one was vastly different from the second for various reasons.  First of all, the first had actual sound while the second was in a silent movie format.  Another reason is that the first video added another area to the video, outside the bar.  This area added Depth to the video for a few reasons: the layout of the area drew the eye back as well as framed the characters, and the lines along the ground also helped lead the eye.  Because the second video was a silent film the characters expressions and gestures were much more important to the story than in the first film.

This American Life response.

This is Hiro Nakamura from the tv show Heroes (that annoying was canceled, I  loved that show).  He has complete control over time itself, and this is a power that I would like to have.  One of the main lures for this power to me is that it is so versatile.  Compared to some powers, such as invisibility or flight as suggested in The American Life control of time can let you do so many things.  For example, freezing time, slowing time, reversing time, or fast-forwarding time.  I also consider this basically the most powerful ability really.  No matter what someone else can do, if you can freeze time, they can't do anything at all, while you can do anything you want, and even if somehow someone get close to hurting you, you could simply reverse time and redo the entire thing.

When it comes to what I would do with this power, I won't lie and say that I wouldn't end up abusing it at some time or another, but I also wouldn't ignore someone if they needed help.  Also, if I ever heard about something horrible, such a major explosion in a public area or some such thing.  If it came to using the power for personal gains, I wouldn't do many major things, freeze time so I could catch up on my gaming back log.  Reverse time during school or college to before a test after I had taken it and gotten the answers to better, and in the same line of thought, actually restart college or something to get more of an education without having to pay any money for it.