Feedback strategies

The following 2 articles explored different ways on how to give feedback and how feedback impacts people.
The first article that I read was "What Kind of Messages Help Kids Grow?" This article discusses how the language used towards kids impacts their mentality. Positive feedback to children can teach them to mentally have a model of how people learn and grow. Its important to introduce children to growth mindsets, from the research shown in this article growth mindsets help kids to view failure as a positive thing which they learn from and acknowledge their mistakes in order to improve in the future. The language used by parents towards their kids has a huge impact on them and their well being. If a parent congratulates their child on their failures they learn to see failure and mistakes as a learning process. The article also speaks about how a parent/teacher should tell the child what's good about their work specifically. The power of yet also comes into play again in this article. By telling the child they can't do it "yet" they gain perspective and positivity. By expressing a personal story on how you overcame a problem to a child makes them more resilient when confronted with a challenge. I found this article to be very informative especially when dealing with children either in a learning environment or a home environment.

The second article that I read was titled "Be a Mirror." This article discussed how we can give fellow students positive feedback and show them what they're doing well. In return this emphasizes the students growth and mindset qualities. The mirror aspect of this title means to give positive feedback without judgement. The article then goes through 5 main qualities of feedback  such as specifying an aspect of their work and focusing on that. Next is to focus on what exactly the reader is doing. Then we are told to focus on the amount of work the reader has put into what they're doing and the process. The fourth quality is to make sure it can transfer so its important to name what the reader is doing and discuss how they can use in a different context. The last quality is to take yourself out of the feedback. Start with saying the readers name and keep the focus on them.
Feedback is always important especially to students. These strategies really explore how we can give feedback the right way.

Positive feedback
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Game Idea Research

The game idea I chose to research is my first game idea which is a problem solving adventure game. The game play for this game would be to have the first person character go on a journey to solve the disappearance of another character. On his journey the character has to solve riddles and puzzles to progress through the game. The character also has the ability to roam freely around the game and find clues to solve the riddles.

Game mechanic 1 - Undirected exploration is one of the game mechanics in this game. The first person character has the opportunity to walk around and explore the town setting, interact with the local characters in the town and discover more clues in order to solve the riddles and progress through the game to solve the final mystery.
Link to article here. 

Game mechanic 2 - Riddle repeats until the character can solve it/difficulty increase. As the character tries to solve each riddle the level of difficulty goes up. If the character is unable to solve the riddle the first time they can continue to try until they succeed. Once the riddle is solved the difficulty level of the next riddle will increase slightly and continue with each of the following riddles as the character goes up a level.
Link to article here. 

Game mechanic 3 - Time. Some of the bonus riddles may have a limited amount of time on them. If a bonus riddle is solved the character gains another instant clue. If the character doesn't solve the riddle in time then the opportunity of the bonus riddle is no longer available for that level. Another bonus riddle will appear on each level despite this.
Link to article here.

I think these game mechanics are suitable for my game as my goal is to create a sense of mystery within the game. This will be portrayed through the riddles and puzzles. These game mechanics also give a good idea of what I hope my game will be like to play.

Detective game.
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Unity tutorial 02

From watching Unity Tutorial 4 and 5 I learned new aspects of creating a game. Tutorial 4 kicked off by teaching us how to import sound which can be downloaded from the Unity website. I found this part simple enough and didn't have any problems importing the sound. I also learned how to add and adjust audio and pitch which came in useful to alter the volume of the sound. I discovered how to rotate and add sound to the gem. The mesh element and the collider were explored in more depth in this tutorial also. I learned how to add in components and change the collider size. Once I pressed play to walk my character didn't move so I tried it again from the mesh collider and finally got it to work. Finally I learned how to add and create water from the environment assets. I found this a bit tedious but got it to work in the end.

Tutorial 5 taught me how to create a cursor and a main cursor for my game. I also learned how to use raycast and the value of static and what it does. I found this part a little confusing however after a few tries I understood it.
I enjoyed creating the water and adding more texture to objects and elements to further develop them and look forward to improving my game.

Unity image
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Game elements

I found the article"Formal Abstract Design Tools" to be very informative and detailed upon reading it. It started out by explaining to us what a modern computer game is made of. A modern computer game connects a technical base with the designers vision for what the players experience. It's important components that are used to form a game include levels, code, art and design.
As we all know over the years the games industry has greatly evolved. Screens have been developed to have better resolution, quality and more colours. Paint and modelling tools are also up to a higher standard now along with faster audio processing and newly developed sound cards.

All games from various companies and genres have evidently been built off past ideas as we develop and learn new techniques and abilities. The aspect of design in video games however has lacked evolution and lags behind the rest of the gaming industry. Design tasks determine the players goals as well as the pacing. It assists the code, levels, putting art, sound and vision in coming together to make the game. Without design we'd just be left with "a CD full of data and no experience" which is why another shared form of language of game design is needed according to this article.

The article also talks about the issue of not having a form of language to communicate innovations and mistakes through which is where a design vocabulary would come in handy. A design vocabulary would improve people's understanding of game creation, allow the discussion of underlying game components and help people better understand how it all balances and fits together. Refinement is the medium in which design evolution occurs.

The article also uses a game example which is the Mario 64 game. In this game the player has a whole world of freedom to do whatever they want. There's a choice of worlds and which world the player wants to explore/work on, each player can decided what they're next move or task will be. As for the design of this game each of the worlds have different goals at the end which provides the player with the element of choice. Although Mario worlds are often predictable with strange goals and objectives, the player has ease of the controls as they're made to be simple. This was the most enjoyable part of the article to me as I grew up playing this game so to read about how the game has been dissected and what the gameplay consists of in professional terms was eye-opening and had me intrigued.

In the next part of the article the author discusses what a story is and defines a game story as being a narrative thread which is continued throughout the entirety of the game. As for tasks each task requires different tools to suit each individual task. The game isn't player controlled however as the designer creates "cool" moments throughout the game. Whatever the player discovers it will impact the combat aspects of a game.

A brief description and summary of a few game genres are also explored in this article. SquareSet games are in short, storybooks. In order for the player to progress in the game they must win each combat aspect as they control the fight themselves. While sports and fighting games are generally tied into 1 by the tools they contain, fighting games have a consistent controller action which is visually shown in the on-screen characters. Sports games on the other hand have the players direct and control themselves while they select an action, watch the response from their chosen action and learn from it's outcome. I thought this part of the article was very interesting as it explained what each of these genres consisted of and how they connected together with their similarities.

Finally the article dives into the aspect of tools. Tools presents the player experience that the designer had set out to create. They do this by means of a vocabulary for analysis. The aspect of game design is better understood by means of tools which also boost the player's feeling of involvement.

This article dives directly into the dept of the world of game design, the evolution of game aspects and is an example of the game design breakdown process. I enjoyed reading this article despite it being fairly lengthy. I found it to be very educational and well explained.

Game elements
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