Improving Productivity Using IT Assignment
Task 1
The creative industry includes various subject in which many
people enjoy working in whilst public spectators love to indulge in. However in
some aspects such as gaming, animation, film and music it can be difficult to
generate a good amount of productivity without the use of technology, meaning
it’s more time consuming and stressful which is the main factor companies and
studios try effortlessly to avoid.
High-tech soft wares are commonly used in these industries
who share similar reasons as to using those programs. For example Adobe
Photoshop is used to create realistic digitalised images using different style
brushes, effects, tools for maybe initial designs for characters, storyboards,
backdrops in gaming and animation. It can also be used for photography where
people can photo manipulate images, render them, spot deflect and mix images
together once again in Photoshop. For the fashion industry people (like the
game developers and artists) use this amazing program to draw their ideas of
clothes in a realistic fashion so they get a wider perspective on how their
clothes will look in real life, this then makes it easier for machinists when
they come to produce the clothes.
Having something like
Adobe Photoshop, it saves people on continuously using paper to supply their
ideas (economically brilliant), allows people to save the work done so it
doesn’t get lost, can get sent to where it needs to go via email (quicker than
the post, saving money) If one was to accidentally ruin their work unwillingly
the damage can be reverted with Ctrl+ Alt +Z allowing people to reproduce the
image to the best they possibly can. Even though this program is expensive it’s
cheaper in the long run and less time-consuming, because having to supply each
worker with correct art supplies is a fortune in itself and people are bound to
make mistakes on drawing their ideas, thus adding more pressure, stress and
time on making the product perfect.
“If you have
never seen Photoshop, you’ve missed one of those glorious rare moments when
software approaches perfection. Adobe is humble about Photoshop, calling it a
‘photo design and production tool,’ but no one who’s used Photoshop is so
reserved.”
– Quoted from Kevin Conner, Byte
Magazine
Maya and 3D Max is well known for their 3D modelling
features for game and animation industries. It means that realistic models can
be made on these soft wares making it easier for those who work in this part of
the industry. Imagine making a model out of clay or cardboard and somehow it
gets ruined by fellow worker, in the post or even by you. Like Photoshop your
work can be saved and transported around the internet freely and even free of
charge.
“From Autodesk: Maya software is a powerful integrated 3D modeling,
animation, effects, and rendering solution. Maya also adds to the quality and
realism of 2D graphics. That's why film and video artists, game developers,
visualization professionals, Web and print designers turn to Maya to realize
their creative vision”
-
Quoted from Unknown Author On
CNET Download (Maya Reviews)
Now in the filming industry they need software that permits
those to edit clips, render them with special effects like ‘lightning
flare/lens’ , transitions, credits/titles/subtitles and the use of bring in
music without it being abrupt to the viewers during the film- Sony Vegas Pro is
a great example of this.
“Sony Creative Software’s Vegas Pro 9 is an innovative, Windows-only
non-linear edit system (NLE) that has really exploded in recent years on the
market. Fully featured, the system also includes excellent built-in tools for
audio editing, graphics and titling, DVD and Blu-ray authoring, and more. Along
with ease-of-use and an affordable price, Vegas Pro 9 moves up to earn the TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award on our list of video production software reviews.”
-
Quoted from Unknown Author on Top 10 Reviews
(Sony Vegas Pro 9)
However secretaries and assistant managers, producers ect
will need a program like Excel and Word to keep track of the company’s
finances, schedules, deadlines and meetings. Word and Excel offer again save
and redo modes same as every other program, yet it offers a feature called:
Spell Check which corrects grammatical errors in people’s offering them a
digital dictionary/ thesaurus with the right-click of a mouse.
“By knocking back the visual mechanics of its spreadsheet,
Microsoft has made it far easier to concentrate on your work area, which now
has far greater prominence. Even the sheet tabs, which are coloured with a
subtle bevel, feel more functional rather than being ugly blocks on the bottom
of your pages. Excel 2013 makes it very easy to integrate data thanks to
support for a broad range of data types, including XML and MySQL, the latter of
which can be drawn from live database tables. If you need to import data from a
website -- perhaps where it's been published in a table -- you can draw it in
directly by clicking the relevant data within Office's integrated browser.
This was a little hit and miss in my tests and it was
always easier to select more than I wanted, but at least you can then go on to
strip out what you don't want. Grabbing less than you needed would have been
more problematic. Novice users will welcome the ease with which you can now find
your way around Excel and manipulate your data. The improved ribbon gives
direct access to all of the application's common formulae. By breaking them
down into colour-coded lists, it's made them easier to find too.
The
real boon though is the appearance of the smart analysis tool, which pops up
when you select a range of data on the active sheet. This presents relevant
formatting options for the selected data in a floating panel.
Dragging
your mouse across the various options, which include heat maps, data bars and
sparklines, lets you preview in an instant how the results can be presented in
a graphical manner, without committing to any one of them. If you need to
go further and render them as a full-blown chart, clicking to the Charts tab
gives live previews of each chart style in a floating bubble. The value of this
tool alone in making data analysis more approachable and less complex can't be
overstated"
-
Quoted from Nik Rawlinson on
CNET
With all these different
programs to aid us and our work in the creative industry sector, it allows
people to actually enjoy their work rather than feel as though it’s a chore.
Having this on board it gets people motivated to bring imaginations and dreams
to life- thus increasing productivity and better enjoyment from the public
spectre. Quotes above indicate how one program can ebb away the extra hours,
stress and even health problems, regarding some of the creative subjects,
because technology has advanced so much so little time.
Pre-production is where people design/ create and think
about all the aspects of what to do, which will lead to the development of the
final product for companies. In the gaming world and other subjects initial
concepts (characters), storyboards, story drafts, financial work, the style of art
used, script writers and much more; all of this is then sent to the developers
(in games) who put everything into place with a given brief.
“Every game begins
with a story. Often story ideas come from game designers themselves or are
pitched by outsiders, but increasingly they are based on other forms of
entertainment like popular movies. Other common sources are sequels or spin
offs of existing games and simulations of real-world events.
Once the basic game
concept is decided upon, writers and artists work together on a storyboard. A
storyboard consists of rough sketches and technical instructions sequentially
organized to depict each scene of the game. It is a visual representation of
the story and a reference for the writers, artists and designers just as it
would be for a film. But while a film has a single storyline, a video game can
have thousands of outcomes. Therefore various levels, or "worlds," of
the game must be sketched out.”
-
Quoted from The Video Game Revolution
Mentioned above it tells us about how games
start off as a story eventually developing into something more with the concept
of using pre-production methods. It proves that everything is always planned
first before any action is taken into producing a product for a certain target
audience- this also does touch upon morals and ethics when designing a game.
In the first section of ‘Task 1’ I noted a
few of the programs game production teams use, during the course of game
development from start to finish. I mentioned:
Ø
Adobe Photoshop- used a lot for initial
concepts, 2D graphics and maybe some 2D animation. SAI Paint Tool, Paint. Net
and Art Range are also good examples of this and share similar traits to
Photoshop. Another good animation program which might be used is Adobe Flash-
this concentrates purely and simply on animation giving the creators every
chance to make their motion picture move fluently during the course of 25
frames per second.
Ø
Maya – creates 3D polygonal objects that can be
animated or rendered to suit a realistic gaming and art style. Other examples
of similar programs are 3D Max, City Engine and Electric Image Animation
System.
Ø
Sony Vegas- this may not be used in the
production of games but in other places it might be used to piece together
animations, adding music, transitions and effects just like Windows Movie
Maker.
To make sure that the production of a game is at its best,
workers must be skilled in a number of things to help their company succeed in
publishing the merchandise. These skills could be:
ü
Good
imagination
ü
Sociable and team players
ü
Able to meet deadlines
ü
Work quickly
ü
Happy to do extra hours
ü
Artistic skills
ü
Take criticism
Task 2
Imagine that you’ve spent hours, weeks, months and even
years crafting a piece of artwork like a model using clay , cardboard or wire
when out of the blue one of your colleagues accidently ruins your model by
knocking it over- then what? At least if you were to model on software like
Maya there would be no problem in continuously saving your work, meaning if any
harm came to your project either by yourself, someone else or computer, the
original file can easily be brought back up and saved on the web, email, memory
stick or black CDs.
Having the option of saving work on various places as back
up creates a security for people, so that they know their work is safe from
harm, being lost or stolen (if copyright is set up) rather than using
traditional methods like pen and paper to jot down the ideas needed during
pre-production. Another good thing about using IT is allowing people’s imaginations
to come to life in the gaming industry because technology has advanced in
recent year’s software such as Photoshop and Maya, again, permit workers to
engage in this theory creating an accurate perspective of what their dream game
or world looks like to the open public- gaining furthermore credit, glory and
riches to suit the company’s benefit.
Finally another perspective of
using IT for pre-production is it’s slightly more eco-friendly because not as
many trees will be chopped down in order to supply numerous types of paper and
card across the globe. Sustaining the thought, the use of chemicals and
transport to first bleach the paper (making it white) and then transporting it
around the world using fossil fuel for gas and oil will also decrease in turn,
reducing air and water pollution which damages the ozone layer and in some
places creating a harmful compound known as Sulphur Dioxide that creates acid
rain. So the use of a computer can ‘throw all this out the window’ and have the
use of electricity rather than all the pollution cause by paper and its
transportation.
Before any action is taken a brief must be made about what
the game is going to be about and include. This could cover character’s
descriptions and roles as well, meaning that legal and regulatory issues should
be taken into consideration before any designing or production starts.
Regulatory Issues
Different rating groups protect different game companies.
Some are known as PEGI and others are ESRB. The main purpose of these companies
is to ensure the games are correctly rated so that the public know what they’re
going to witness during game play and what to buy for children or even adults
by looking at the rating. In ESRB their rating system is:
-
EC (Early Childhood)
-
E (Everyone) 6 years+
-
E 10+ (Everyone 10 years+)
-
T (Teenagers) 13 years+
-
M (Mature) 17 years+
-
AO (Adults Only) 18 years +
-
RP (Rating Pending)
-
K-A (Kids To Adults) 6 years+
Having systems similar to these help the public and also
guide game makers on what should be included in their game. For example, if the
target audience for a certain game was to be kept at an ‘E’ rating, there
shouldn’t be any drug use, gambling or sexual content whereas that would appear
in ratings such as :M, AO and maybe RP.
PEGI also uses ratings identical to these but they also show
images about why the rating is what it is. There are:
-
Fear (7,12,16,18 years)
-
Violence(7,12,16,18 years)
-
Bad Language (12,16,18 years)
-
Sex (12,16,18 years)
-
Drugs(16 and 18 years)
-
Gambling(12,16,18 years)
-
Discrimination(18 years)
-
Online (3,7,12,16,18 years)
Without thinking about these properly and wrongly
classifying the age restrictions it could lead to suing not only a company like
PEGI but the actual game company as well, sending them bankrupt and maybe
banning them from ever making games again.
Ethics and Morales
Ethics and morals also play a big part when thinking about
games because being careless about this situation could cause harm towards
certain ethnic groups, causing danger for the gaming company in general leading
to various lawsuits that can easily be avoided. However some games have been
known to be ethically ‘dodgy’ in how they are creating/displaying the game.
For example in Resident Evil 5 the first trailer shown game
footage of an American protagonist killing off African zombies which doesn’t
seem that bad until you realise there’s no white African zombies at all,
raising racist allegations from people across the globe who point out it’s not
right that it’s just this colour that’s diseased by the virus and getting
killed by a big muscle white American.
"There was a lot of imagery in that trailer
that dovetailed with classic racist imagery”
-Quoted N’Gai Coral from Newsweek Editor
Eventually Capcom
released another trailer showing a less racist side and also the protagonist’s
assistant, Sheva. However this did not put the controversy to rest as more
people found the game hadn’t been altered much still showing the hero killing
just black zombies. Capcom argued back that the gaming team is diverse and that
they can’t make everyone happy and they’re in the entertainment business - not
to promote something political to the public. A lot of people agreed with
statement saying it’s not racist and is in fact a good game.
Yet in a cut
scene it’s shown a white woman being dragged by a black man who’s infected into
his house, Eurogamer criticized it wasn’t ethically right because of black men
being stereo typed as ‘rapists who come after girls’ during the time when
America was going through Civil Rights. Japan isn’t educated much in this topic
as they see nothing wrong with game nor thought about any ‘racist issues’
during the development which is, from their point of view understandable
because they had nothing to do with the Civil Rights yet it doesn’t give them a
clean slate either because they should researched any problems before
development began so this controversy didn’t arise.
In my personal
opinion after having watched two trailers and various game play that’s been
recorded on Youtube I feel as though there is not an issue. Roles reversed if
Chris Redfield was a different ‘coloured guy’ and he shot white zombies, only,
there may be wouldn’t be as much as a big issue. On the other hand I’m not
disputing that people who feel it is racist is wrong because it’s all personal
opinions at the end of the day, those who see it’s not racist may not look or
feel as though it is compared to those who feel it is.
Another ethically
dodgy game is the newest Tomb Raider that will be released next year. It
focuses on Lara Croft’s past events and how she’s developed to the person she
is now. Having watched the trailer it shows Lara to be dependent on someone
else coming to rescue her because clips show her nearly getting raped and
having a slight mental breakdown, which antagonizes with her initial concept of
being an independable and indestructible
(in a way) female heroine, that many female gamers empathize with and in some
ways wish to be. Having seen these clips it makes some people feel as though
Lara needs to depend on a man which is what the director said he wanted to do,
so it can entice more male gamers to in a way to ‘protect’ Lara from danger yet
annoying female gamers because to them it feels as though people are trying to
say women couldn’t last or survive on their own, without something bad
happening to them in past like rape or without a husband/ male protector.
Therefore other females who think this way will no doubt not buy the game
meaning that the Tomb Raider’s sale of the new game will not surpass older Tomb
Raiders, thus turning the female target audience against future franchise.
“There's
been a lot of negative reaction - people have been saying that she doesn't need
be the survivor of an attempted rape, that using a male threat to make a female
character There's been a lot of negative reaction - people have been saying
that she doesn't need be the survivor of an attempted rape, that using a male
threat to make a female character seem 'vulnerable' is highly sexist and that
it's an exploitative tactic and what not.”
Quoted from ‘Macabre Magpie’s’ forum
on Deadlock Truth
In conclusion I agree with what many other girl gamers
believe and see from Tomb Raider: Reboot trailer and feel it is sexist and that
it depicts women as a weaker species compared to the male rival. I think Square
Einx, like Capcom, should alter the trailer and take out the possible rape
scene during the capture of Lara Croft. If they do this I would feel happier
about buying the game and playing instead of having a grudge against the
producers for they think is acceptable.
Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism
Finally when designing the game it’s important to understand
that the initial thoughts on when creating the brief for the designers is that
it’s original and not a copy of someone else’s work, this stands for everything
from brief to the producing of the game. Copyright protects people’s work from
others who dares to commit plagiarism, meaning that there are people who try to
steal the original work of someone else because they haven’t given credit to
the original owner, or proclaim the work is theirs when it isn’t.
A recent example of this is the plot behind Assassin’s Creed
III which is supposed to be released in North America on 30th
October 2012 under the PS3 and Xbox 360, later being released on 18th
of November as a Wii-U platform and the same for Europe but on the 30th
of November. John L.Beiswenger, who’s a research engineer and sci-fi author,
claims his book ‘Link’ shares various similarities as the game- insisting
Ubisoft are ‘allegedly ripping off his novel’ .
The book ‘Link’ explores an idea of memories recorded by an
ancestor that eventually get brought to life only by using a special device
known as: ‘Bio-synchronizer’. Another reason for the claim, made by plaintiff,
is the book talks about assassins and assassinations which at one point in the
novel, someone is trying to fit the pieces of the past together. Finally
spiritual and biblical tones with references of Jesus, God, the Garden of Eden,
forbidden fruit and a reliance on historical moments portrayed through
ancestor’s memories all lead identical occurrences in Assassin’s Creed series.
"Ubisoft have
directly copied, and directly and contributorily infringed on the whole of
Plaintiff's copyrighted work" with the release of games, guides, comic
book series and trailers”
Quoted from John L. Beiswenger
In addition to this Beiswenger is currently suing Ubisoft
for nothing less than $1.05 million with an increasing sum to $5.25 million
depending on the judge’s decision. Also he hopes to prevent the release of
Assassin’s Creed III and all related franchise. If this works in his favour it
will not only disappoint millions of fans across the world, but it will leave
Ubisoft possibly bankrupt if one of their best-selling games were to crumble
right before their eyes due to copyright infringement issues.
An additional case would be EA’s copy right infringement
lawsuit against Zynga not so long ago. ‘The Ville’ created by Zynga allegedly
shares identical reactions with EA’s ‘Sim Social’ game. Normally copyright
issues are exceptionally rare because it could cost a gaming company everything
they’ve worked for, sending them bankrupt and making the opposition richer and
seem more ‘innocent’ to the public eye.
‘The [games] industry
has developed a dysfunctional culture of copycattery’
Quoted by Prof. James
Grimmelmann
Prof. James is correct in a way because the technology and
the stories have developed that much in such a short space of time, people are
running out of original ideas and are turning to features they’ve experienced
in a game and enjoyed or just simply taking a lot of things from an older
version of the game and tweaking a few bits. An example of this would be
Pokemon (not Ranger, Link, Dash, Pokepark or Mystery Dungeon versions). From
personal experience I’ve noticed each game starts the same, contains the same
plot with the same goals and it became ominous as I grew up. The only things
that change in that game is the character names and designs, regions and the
extra 150 new Pokemon that appear every 2-3 years, leading me to go off the new
versions and play ‘old-school’
However going back to the original topic this is way some
people and wander unknowingly down the path of copyright. Under copyright law
everyone if free to possibly copy a basic game concept as long as some details
are altered during the development stage which is what Zynga did during the
development of ‘The Ville’. However the EA complains that Zynga didn’t do
enough to change some of the detail, and evidence has been shown of this, even
though it’s minor identical details which don’t create a very strong complaint
for EA.
However their plan is to create aggressive arguments about
copyright law to fit legal beliefs to its facts. In the end it will either seek
protection for its game concept-losing proposition under copyright law or if EA
does make progress on that, the new legal precedent would undermine the current
industry-standard practices about imitation. EA is no doubt going to argue that
Zynga needed to change its execution further if they wanted to avoid
infringement issues, on the other hand it will also mean EA have to work in
more development when they want to imitate someone else’s game meaning the cost
of development for them and Zynga will rise.
It is known however Zynga has built its business on
imitating other people’s games meaning if EA did win this lawsuit; it will harm
Zynga’s business significantly as well as eroding EA’s profits because they’re
threatening to destabilize the current industry’s rules on imitation. In my
eyes and other people’s it’s a battle Zynga can’t afford to lose and EA can’t
afford to win.
In the end it’s believed that neither company will win with
the case being settled on the outcome of Zynga making some low-cost changes and
keeping their basic implementation, giving EA a certain victory, even though
some believe when looking at the bigger picture about legitimacy and the
boundaries of game imitation are not going to be resolved during this case.
Thus, the big-picture legal
questions about the legitimacy and boundaries of game imitation are almost
certainly not going to be resolved here.
Coloured comic pages mainly Marvel so serious and based
around supernatural heroes in America.
-TMNT comic of the original turtles based in black and
white, similar to marvel where 4 super heroes fight in NY for survival and
pizza.
-Garfield and others like Wallace and Gromit are found in
newspapers and involve comedy pieces, so they’re not serious, more colourful
and less shading than Marvel comics.
-
Manga
features black and white colouring, with big speech bubbles and different ways
to show effects and lighting. The characters themselves also adopt a style as
well being drawn in a similar way. Manga can be portrayed in two ways, normal
and chibi. This features a page from Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) who rightly
belongs to Yana Toboso
-A
chibi styled manga (slightly chibi)
Improving Productivity Using IT Bibliography
Discalimer: I do not
own any of the below and I agree that I’ve credited the pieces used in my
assignment, giving the website address and the date/time of accessing this
information.
Task 1
A
(Accessed: 29/09/12 at 17:20 for Adobe quote)
(Accessed: 29/09/12 at 18:14 for Maya quote)
(Accessed: 29/02/12 at 18:26 for Sony Vegas quote)
(Accessed: 29/09/12 at 19:46 for Office Excel quote)
B
(Accessed: 29/09/12 at 21:07 for pre-production
quote)
(Accessed 29/09/12 at 21:50 for gaming soft wares)
Task 2
B
7.
(Accessed 30/09/12) at 22:10pm for
ESRB rating system)
(Accessed 30/09/12 at 22:51pm for PEGI guidelines)
(Accessed 03/10/12 at 20:17 for
racist quote on Resident Evil 5)
(Accessed 03/10/12 at 20:34 for information on the
controversy of Resident Evil 5)
(Accessed 03/10/12 at 21:29 for sexist quote on Tomb Raider:
Reboot)
(Accessed on 04/10/12 at 10:33 for Assassin’s Creed release
date)
(Accessed on 04/10/12 at 10:54 for Assassin’s Creed
copyright infringement issues)
(Accessed on 04/10/12 at 11:36 for EA copyright claim on
Zynga and Prof. John quote)
C
15.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=comic+pages&um=1&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=957&tbm=isch&tbnid=1PJ6577vckpjsM:&imgrefurl=http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/09/11/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-172/&docid=x4cB-uY5pm6HKM&imgurl=http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/991026-5.jpg&w=550&h=409&ei=R85lUK2XNafO0QWWk4DQBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=449&vpy=149&dur=150&hovh=194&hovw=260&tx=206&ty=104&sig=116359102878740546683&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=180&start=0&ndsp=65&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:74
(Accessed 04/10/12 at
12:04 for comic page)
(Accessed 04/10/12 at 12:05 for TMNT comic page)
(Accessed 04/10/12 at 12:06 for Garfield comic page)
(Accessed at 04/10/12 at 12:07 for Wallace and Gromit comic
page)
(Accessed at 04/10/12 at 12:07 for Kuroshitsuji manga page)
(Accessed at 04/10/12 at 12:08 for chibi manga page)
.jpg)
.jpg)
