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[rynnx]

The College Experience So Far

I have been loving college so far. I can safely say that I have started to enjoy going to college rather than it just being a stressful experience as a whole as it used to be. At the start of the semester, everything about college had stressed me out: the bus ride there and back; attending lectures; assignments in groups with people I didn’t know. It didn’t help matters when we were split into two separate groups for some modules and I realized I was in a different group from the one friend I had in the course. It also didn’t help that I have been going through a particularly tough time in recent months.

As the semester has progressed, however, I have begun to feel a lot more comfortable in college. I have gotten used to taking the bus and now the bus ride in and out have become my favorite parts of the day. It is relaxing and gives me time to listen to music, which is one of my favorite things to do to unwind. And because of my erratic timetable, the bus is often rather vacant. As for in college, I have also become a lot more comfortable in lectures and around the campus. The lecturers are kind, and that has helped me to stop the dread of attending. My peers are also a friendly bunch. While I wouldn’t say I have become friends with most of them, per se, I have become rather confident with myself around them. I just wish I could force myself to interact with the group more and stop worrying about what they would think of my personality. Maybe with more time.

All this put forward, I haven’t engaged much with the college events or societies. I joined with many societies during freshers week, but I haven’t encouraged myself to go to any of their hosted events. Whether this is because of sheer forget or an aversion to anything particularly social I couldn’t say. But it is something I hope to mend in months to come.

[rynnx]

The Game That Inspired Me

I know this blog is way too long, but this is something I am very passionate about and I may have gotten slightly carried away.

The games that inspired me to study game design in the first place was the original Pokémon Red on the Game Boy Color. My first ever experience with this game when I was but a wee youngster, about 4 or 5 if I had to put an age on it. It was my sister’s game and console - she was about 8 at the time - and she let me run around in her save file one day; nothing to extreme. She probably didn’t trust me enough to battle anyone important (frankly I wouldn’t have either). Being so young at the time, games were just something to play in my eyes. The mechanics behind everything you can and can’t do never crossed my mind once, and just running around in a save that wasn’t mine bored me into submission fast and I stopped playing.

Fast forward a couple of years. I was around 7 or 8. My sister having long forgotten about the dusty game cartridge (I don’t believe she ever beat the Elite 4, either), I decided to pick up and play the game myself. My experience with the game was vastly different. I was personally introduced to the game world, something I didn’t have last time I played. Having my own save file fueled me with creativity. I could play the game how I wanted without the brick wall of possibly ruining someone else’s game file. All of this being said, I was still young and still didn’t put any thought into the mechanics or rules of play that I do now. But I knew something I didn’t know before. This game was different. I didn’t know why, but I could tell this small, obscure game would become something. Something huge. I played through with dangerous levels of enjoyment.

Time shift again. It’s 2011; I was 13. The game industry was exploding, and I was happy to admit I was hugely invested in it. I continued to grow up with the Pokémon games. Pokémon Black and White had just released in Europe and I, keeping with tradition, bought as soon as physically able. I played through White and loved it dearly, it being my favorite in the series so far. I finished the game fast, in a week or two, and had just started work on the arduous but rewarding task of filling this Gen’s Pokédex. About a month later, while school had shut for the summer, I friend of mine asked me if I could help them with Pokémon Blue. Filled with nostalgia from hearing that one color, I obliged without hesitation. They needed help getting past one of the Gym Leaders, Sabrina. They lent me their game for a day and I started to get to work. I beat Sabrina easily, as I’m just so amazing and skilled, and handed the game back. But my lust for some OG Gen 1 had not been sated, no no no. I dug out My own Pokémon Red from the pit of the lost and booted up the dusty Game Boy. I was surprised it still worked. Pokémon Blue was good and all, but it lacked the beautiful, bright ruby hue that Red had (Red is better, fight me). Having played countless games since playing Red last, I was able to naturally see games in a different light, and was by this point very in tune with the production process of games and how they work. And, as impossible as I thought it was, I was even more blown away then before. 

It had been years since I had experienced this game, and I was surprised to see how well it held up to this day. There were so many intricate and complicated features and mechanics in this game that I never realized before. Mechanics that I never imagined would have been as consistent in such an early and small cartridge. With a total of 151 Pokémon coded into the game, it offered a ridiculously huge amount of customization (probably way more than any other game at the time) when assembling your ‘Dream Team’, with well over 1000 different possible 6-Pokémon teams. On top of that, there is a move-pool of 165 unique moves that Pokémon can learn from, with each Pokémon being able to learn roughly 40 of those moves between leveling-up and TMs. But each Pokémon can only know 4 moves at a time, upping the customization levels even further. There are 5 stats - HP, Attack, Defense, Speed and Special - that are all different for different species of Pokémon. Even Pokémon of the same species can have different stats thanks the the IV system (called DVs in Gen 1), a system that gives all of a Pokémon’s stats a random number between 0 and 15. This number affects the growth of that particular stat when the Pokémon levels up, with a higher number resulting in better growth. This is a mechanic that I am very familiar with in the newer games, but had no idea the first games were even capable of utilizing with their limited power adaptability. Then there are the 15 different types that all interact with each other in different ways and add that huge level of strategy that not a lot games offered back then. Even the small stuff like: random encounters with wild Pokémon and different encounter rates for different Pokémon - a way of making stronger Pokémon harder to find; battling against AI trainers and Pokémon, trying to predict their moves and counter against them, while the AI will vie to use moves that are super effective. 

All of these are things that amazed a 13-year-old me, while an 8-year-old gave no thought about it. Even stuff like the simple but appealing and comfortable to look at graphics astounded me, and actually started me to make pixel art of my own (a hobby that I’ve carried through my life still) that I hoped to use in my own games someday. Even the music was phenomenal giving the limitations the archaic Game Boy Color had in the music department. Pokémon has been a constant presence in my life for as long as I care to remember and pretty much started my love for gaming single-handedly. Pokémon to me is just the perfect RPG with a massive amount of customization capabilities. And that’s why it sparked my interest in the mysteries behind game design and made me want to make my own games so I could leave my own mark in the industry, just as Pokémon did. Pokémon will forever be in the HALL  OF  FAME !

[rynnx]

TED Talk: “This is what happens when you reply to spam email”

While browsing the TED Talk archive for this blog, there was one added quite recently that instantly caught my eye from a man called James Veitch, a British writer and comedian whom I have been a fan of for some time. Veitch stars in a short web-series called ‘Scamalot’ for the Youtube channel Mashable, where he responds to his spam emails and reads through the resulting interesting conversation.

In this TED Talk, Veitch does the same thing. He takes two of his many spam email conversations to the stage and lets them roll. Veitch is a hilarious comedian who has a huge stage presence. He looks like a huge nerd and is frankly just adorable. I loved this talk because it relates to something everyone with an email address has experienced, but takes it that one step further and does the one thing that everyone has always wanted to do but just never had the will to do it. The conversations are bizarre and amusing and great fun to read through. While it is questionable as to whether these email conversations are certifiable or staged, it doesn’t halt the fact that they are great fun to watch. I highly recommend you go watch this talk at :

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_reply_to_spam_email

and if you like it, check at Veitch’s content at Mashable :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8Nxsa1LB9DrMTHtt3IKiw

[rynnx]

1st Presentation Experience

 The transition to college didn’t help my presentation skills. In fact it may have made them worse, since I never really had to do presentations in high school. My high school teachers were usually merciful on my public speaking difficulties and I could usually avoid most of them. Unfortunately, in college, presentations are a large and mandatory part of the curriculum, meaning that there is no way out of them, and I expect to do more presentations in my first year of college then I did in my whole time in high school.

That said, I do find making presentations in college substantially easier than the few I made in high school. Despite being very uncomfortable with speaking to a group, I find it a whole lot easier to talk about something I am passionate about. Being a games design course, most presentations are about games or something relating to games, which is something I am very passionate about. And I am speaking to people who are also passionate about games, which makes it just that little but easier.

That said, the presentation still wasn’t easy by any means. Looking back, I know I froze and stuttered multiple times and didn’t engage much with my listeners physically. I could have had more of a presence while standing up there but instead just stood still, hands behind the back, looking straight down the aisle of the room trying to avoid eye contact with everyone all at once. But when I did make the occasional eye-contact with someone, I would notice them looking back with kind eyes. It made me feel more comfortable knowing that the people who I was presenting to seemingly accepted the troubles I had, and that is something I will now know going into any following presentation.

[rynnx]

Early reflection on college

I was extremely nervous about starting college. The transition from high school to college worried me much more then doing the Leaving Certificate itself. I am a person who is not particularly fond of change, so the thought of beginning a new huge stage of my life terrified me. I also suffer terribly from social anxiety and can’t deal with people I don’t know well, so I was afraid of losing the few friends I had made in high school. But I was lucky enough to have one of my best friends apply for the same course, so I took solace knowing there would be at least one person I could talk to comfortably.

I realized upon starting the course that my worrying was all for naught. Everyone in the course - lecturers and peers alike - are easily approachable and friendly, and I’ve already made more friends in these first few weeks than I made in a whole six years of high school. We all have similar interests, so there is always something to talk about.

The biggest difference between high school and college that caught me off-guard was the reliance on independence. In high school, you almost have your hand held by teachers. Everything is told to you directly and teachers ensure you do not forget about any important assignments or class tests. Meanwhile in college, most news is online. It requires you to stay up-to-date with your college e-mail, web-courses, google classrooms and others. This is something that I will need to get used to, and has caused me to fall behind on some assignments more than once.

[rynnx]

First Experience with '𝑊𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑜𝑙𝑓'

 Werewolf is a party game for a large group of people (we played with roughly 24 players). In the setup of each game, all players are given a role, indicated by cards that are handed out. 

 The roles we played with were: 

Villagers

Werewolves

Seer

Witch

Defender / Bodyguard

Elder

Cupid

Hunter

Tanner

 There are many, many more roles that we did not use. There was also a moderator who oversaw the game and kept the narrative and rules in check.

 While the game was a lot of fun and a great method of team-building and getting to know new people, there were a few issues I noticed arising straight away:

 The villagers would prioritize and gang up on the quiet players, even if that is their natural resolve, like it is for me. There are some roles that center around how verbally active a player is, but we did not play with those ones.

 Another issue is that some players might not take the game 100% seriously. When we played, a majority of our lynch decisions were based on a person’s name or where they were sitting in the room.

 Overall, Werewolf is a highly enjoyable game with a huge amount of replay value. There are over 50 different roles, and even room to create your own, so it is a game that needs to be played multiple times to experience everything it has to offer. It is a must play game, but only if you can organize a group large enough to play it to its fullest.