So, back before the course started I was job hunting, and almost acquired a position as GUI Designer. I, therefore, spent most of my time working with interface designs and narrative construction - how it worked; the page-to-page process/screenshots - and had only remembered my previous year's projects based mostly on nostalgia within my designs; thus applying MY own personal interpretation of how MY own games - concept wise - would look, feel, play and reward the user.
Video games, ever since I can remember, have influenced anything I've drawn, designed or played. Because of this, the passion to present personal tributes to moments and games passed have always been an aspiration and an emotional agenda of mine.
With that being said, nostalgia - therefore - was one of the first concepts uttered out of my mouth when classes began in September.
"Nostalgia."
I hadn't figured out, specifically, what I wanted to focus on with the project, I just knew the theme of nostalgia was potentially a major part of it.
I'd worked on concept art, games and level design throughout my third and final year of the Honors as the years proceeding it had rhythmically determined my own personal journey, and thus; yearn to study these specific areas.
With my concept and games designs - for my Honors project - I presented a game proposal, the influences, early concepts, and final designs into a year long project. Fluently the process was natural to me, and helped to cater further development on other potential projects - as concepts, character designs, world themes have always played a major part in my childhood narrative.
Or what I consider to be 'good' character design, or 'clever' level/environment design.
Honors seemed to be all about the actual creation of a project, with influence and research being a small part of the process - to me anyway - whereas, so far, Masters goes for brains, and the thought-provoking processes of creating something; how an idea is thought up, and the constant and consistent dissecting and analyzing of what can be considered 'good' and 'clever' with relevant evidence and feedback, to then implement these ideas and reasoning into said creation.
For me, the older and more recent retro-feel video games have always been an interesting area to dissect - as, growing up with the early renditions of Nintendo and Sega warm the cockles of my heart, and will continue to do so. Yet, it's the yearn, that mystery of what, therefore, nostalgia is, how emotion is triggered from memories past, and what influencing designs can I create, based on these.
The concept of nostalgia, and it's inhabitants within all of us, is a keen topic to explore.
Recently I've been fascinated with the satirical advertisement agenda - not specifically the use of advertisements in video games, though some have catered specifically towards satirical mock-ups within their designs, Bioshock comes to mind - but how influential advertisements and potential propaganda-based marketing can affect it's audience, within a game.
The use of They Live's bold, satirical mocking of our consumerist society for example provided the kind of concept that I'd like to research, analyse and discuss, and the idea of a finished product at the end of next year is a daunting yet exciting one as this is a potentially whole new prospect within design that I'd always noticed, but never studied and used knowingly in design.
This, however, WILL coincide with nostalgia. It will be great to blend both concepts into each other, whether it'd be based around specific years and time periods, for example, that encapsulate and reimburse the idea, overall, that will then be presented in an end of year design.
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