First Class Baird, Reporting In!

Bachelor Of Science (Honours) Computer Games Design And Production With First Class Honours

Thanks to my family and friends for their encouragement, to the sage guidance and advice of my lecturers and business mentors, and of course, to my glorious and beautiful fiancé for her grace, compassion and support…

WE DO IT!

Gaming Addiction

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash.

Today the World Health Organisation is notifying governments that they are to treat gaming disorder as a mental health condition, in line with its 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

When reading various media outlets coverage of the story my mind goes back to a dissertation I wrote in college. The subject was whether or not video games can be considered an art form.

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Video Games Design as an Art Form: Choices and Their Consequences

This dissertation assignment was submitted as part of my final year studies at Gateshead College, where it earned me a Distinction grade mark towards my H.N.D. Creative Media Production qualification.

The module was a special subject investigation on a subject of our choice. For which I chose to explore the subject by examining the role of game design and the consequences a developer’s choices have for the industry and society.

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Always Look Twice

Feeling grateful today as there are only two weeks and four deadlines left before I finish university and head off to Japan. While the workload is high and time is ticking away I feel like I’m finally riding a wave of pressure that is manageable. Yesterday I took another look into the past as I dig up two old posts for the blog archive and realise how far I’ve come these past five years.

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Dissertation, Dissonance and Desertion

Last Thursdays scheduled post is delayed, as I was working overtime to finish up my individual project for university. Scheduled programming shall resume this week and a post for the individual project will come after the marks are released, sometime early June I expect. However, with that monstrously sized assignment out of the way I’ve only three more assignments before I’m done with my degree course. What a journey it’s been!

My mind and my desk still haven’t recovered from the chaos caused by my individual project.

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‘Mummy, I Want A Pony!!!’

This assignment paper was written as part of my final year studies on the B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Game Design & Production course at Northumbria University. I have also included the marks and comments from the lecturer, Nicholas Lewis.

In this assignment, we were tasked with producing a task-based report that presented a proposal for a video game, adapted from one of three ideas. I chose the pony one.

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How Leveraging Business Models Levelled-Up the Video Games Industry

Today I would like to present the most recent assignment paper that I wrote as part of my final year studies on the B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Game Design & Production course at Northumbria University. I have also included the marks and comments from the lecturer, Dan Hodgson, in the hopes that any students who read this may be able to avoid the errors I made that were brought up in the feedback.

In this assignment, we were asked to write a paper, in the form of a position, a review or an investigation. This would be like an essay, but we were expected to write it to academic standards, similar to papers that are written for academic journals.

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Why You Should Play Bloodborne, Dan!

Introduction

This is an e-mail I wrote over a course of correspondence with Dan Hodgson, lecturer on the Professional Game Design module at Northumbria University. We’d had a seminar where we focussed on horror games and he’d asked for feedback. It surprised me that during the lesson I was the only person to bring up Bloodborne and its horror elements. Especially in a room full of game design students, where every one of them views the Dark Souls trilogy as sacred.

With a friend recently converted to the cult after picking up and finishing the game last month when it was offered as part of the PlayStation Plus subscription, I thought it may be time to bring up my argument for the genius of Bloodborne’s horror.

The e-mail in its entirety follows… Continue reading “Why You Should Play Bloodborne, Dan!”