Does technological innovation improve or corrupt morality?

In response to this question I have created this looping animation.

When thinking of technological innovations and the creation of different media I believe that, as with all things moderation is key. A key factor of our online community today is the inclusion of anonymity, using an alias with which we can shield ourselves from the outside world whilst still impacting it.

This anonymity comes with negative traits, in that users can belittle or berate others without fear of reprisal. Often these people find pleasure in tormenting others in a way that would otherwise be clamped down upon, the “trolls” of the world. This has been an unfortunate circumstance with the rise of online interaction, the masking of their identity unmasking the ugly, potentially sadistic side of their personality, a flaw in their moral compass that the real world would have forced them to correct, else be shunned by society.

On the other hand there are some ways being anonymous online can be advantageous, to be able to try new things without judgement. Ask questions that have not been taught without fear of belittlement and to be included into cultures that would either be difficult to find or potentially exclusive.

There is a positive aspect to these new medias, as a tool they can allow a person to expand the reach of their business or persona. As a business, taking advantage of the viral nature of easily distributable media is a HUGE boon, a wonderful example of this is the teaching activity of taking a photo, sharing it on social media and asking people to share it whilst watching the mass of people it can reach.

My piece shows a user becoming flooded with information, slowly drowning in the overconsumption of these new medias that may narrow down our view of the world. These new media outlets can become the only perspective we look through and in turn see the world through their selected medias political lens.

This suffocating perspective is shown slowly engulfing the person, curled up and vulnerable within the pool of information. This pool can be left at any time by simply stepping outside, yet with hands over our own hands over our eyes and ears we cannot see the borders.

This pool includes the phrases “They're better”, “Be better”, in relation to the side of social media that crumbles away at a persons self worth. I myself have fallen victim to this very recently by comparing myself and my own works to that of another person. The posts that we see are the cherry picked high points of a persons life, or career, not something that we should compare our every day life to. Also within the pool is are the words “Hate this, Love this, Believe us”, stating the obvious persuasive attempts made by personalities and influential people that use this media as their weapon, former president Trump is a fine example of this pervasive and destructive effect of social media.

A final detail of this piece is our onlooker, taking a single cup with which to indulge in and observing the strange behaviour of our main character, baffled by their lack of action. I feel like a lot of this piece is on the nose metaphorically. In terms of colour and shape I really enjoy it, the perfect loop and clean logos having a satisfying completion to them.

The Answer

Are there methods of creation I do not employ that I can improve my own creative process The Reason for the Question:

Following on from the previous blog post I am continuing to explore new methods of creation. Throughout my time working on models, games and designs I have often found that I have fallen back in step with methods I have always used and have noticed that without a fresh perspective creating unique or new shapes and styles becomes quite a struggle.

To escape this rut, for the past two weeks I have read into new creative methods and theories, these methods range from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies (1975) which I have previously used and is my go to method for concepts that I would not normally think of, stretching beyond my own style and into otherwise random topics and ideas. R Wetzel, T Rodden and S Benford have written about Ideation cards which appear very similar to Brian Eno's work with Oblique Strategies.

In "Sparking Motivation and Creativity with "Online Ideation Games"" by M Witt and S Robra-Bissantz, they talk about the benefits of ideation methods beyond simple brainstorming, specifically that of using online ideation games, games to promote the creation of other games. This is done by creating motives, or incentives for the player, determining how the player is involved in obtaining these incentives, then analysing the different patterns and behaviours the player will need to adopt and building mechanics around them. This process has the potential to be drawn out and time consuming, I say this due to the prerequisite of needing a specifically designed game that helps promote ideas, analysing the results and distilling them down into usable mechanics and systems.

Discovering A Method

Whilst researching methods for idea creation I have reflected upon my prior learning and found a previous method used in many industry leaders such as Blizzard, Steam, Ubisoft a method which a previous lecturer – Jamie Lack – has taught a similar method to would be game designers during their bachelors. This method involves filling pages full of vague outlines or semi random squiggles before picking through them, spotting shapes or images that stand out or stoke your imagination. From there filling in these shapes to create a figure before adding layers to the image and fleshing out the details of whatever image is created.

The Method

With this in mind I have gone about creating a few pages of scribbles as below. From these rough and honestly terribly non-descriptive sketches I went about circling a few that stand out. The images selected had a shape, or line that was aesthetically pleasing or brought forth an idea of something interesting.

Refining

From this point I refined which pieces to work on. This led to the following series of images:

When looking upon these images I made notes on what they could potentially be built into, from the top left it looks to be a form of slime creature with hard sections almost as mandibles or hard collar.

The second looking to be a strange fruit or some form of spiked creature, being a slug or sea creature.

The third resembling a space craft or skimmer, a similar shape as that used in the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch to create the head of Captain Gantu.

The fourth looking to be a large shielded armature protecting a smaller body. This image brought about memories of a core unit in Starcraft 2 called the "Stalker" as present below. This one struck a cord with me and prompted immediate potential ideas, a great indication of the potential of the method.

This silhouette brought about memories again of another Starcraft model, the carrier, as seen below, an unfortunate outcome as I found it hard to not see this ship in the silhouette due to my fondness of the series. This made the question of where the shortcomings of this method are? Is this a common problem where overexposure of a certain theme or aesthetic influences the creator and inhibits original content.

The Results

Once the silhouettes are created and ideas of what they bring to mind established I went about separating the silhouettes into components and producing a visual representation of what is imagined. Below is the first draft of the silhouette technique, much the same as with game mechanic design this method is about iterations, quickly creating a wide swathe of potential models or images quickly before reflecting back upon the outcome.

Whilst building up this initial model the most important portion of the silhouette was the large shield or defensive arm. This was the first shape created, being held slightly apart from the body of the model. The center mass becoming a compartment of pilots seat small details on the rear for the potential of thruster devices. Upon reflecting on this model I see it as a huge success, it is not something I would create normally, very simple in its design and refreshing.

The next model being a small slime creature, reminiscent of popular culture impressions, a viscous puddle that is sentient and capable of deforming its shape. In creating this model I began to see a trend between the first impression of the silhouette, what was created and the expectations of the curves and mass of each object.

Another successful silhouette worked very similarly to the first, with the initial assumption of how the silhouette should look becoming their final form. Inspiration coming from the initial flow when looking over these silhouettes has appeared to prove invaluable, initial impressions inspiring a winged ship or flying unit.

The Failures

Below are the failures of this batch, those that made it through the first sketch and were selected to create silhouettes, then still holding promise of a potential model or image. The first two images being the spiked creature or plant looked like a serious contender for an interesting creature. The issue that arose was the lack of an overall idea of what the model should be, the object was initially going to be a slug like creature, or a bark like fruit, or even some form of anemone. This vagueness in the design in evident in the results.

This last silhouette is classed as a failure due to its similarity to an already existing object - being the Carrier from Starcraft. These similarities have clouded my capability to think of new or unique objects sharing similar traits.

Conclusion

When looking back on this process it feels like the natural step to include this process within my own method. With my go to method of creation being similar to that of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies deck of cards when suggesting new topics and mechanics, the inclusion of this silhouetting technique will assist greatly in rounding out assets and inspired imagery and models.

I am genuinely impressed by how effective this system works, having doubted its efficacy due to the time cost associated with the different layers. The final products speaking for themselves with different genres.

References:

Eno, B., & Schmidt, P. (1975). Oblique strategies. Opal.(Limited edition, boxed set of cards.)[rMAB].

Jamie Lack Interview (personal communication, 2020)

Kultima, A., Niemelä, J., Paavilainen, J., & Saarenpää, H. (2008, November). Designing game idea generation games. In Proceedings of the 2008 conference on future play: Research, play, share (pp. 137-144).

Nestok, B. R. (2016). Uninhibited Ideation: Childhood Games as Design Methods (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati).

Blizzard Entertainment (2010). Starcraft 2

Wetzel, R., Rodden, T., & Benford, S. (2017). Developing ideation cards for mixed reality game design. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 3(2).

Witt, M., & Robra-Bissantz, S. (2012). Sparking motivation and creativity with" online ideation games". INFORMATIK 2012.

What is the answer? Or even the question?

Whilst thinking of a question to ask that will kick start my creative thinking and improve my capabilities I have looked back at what I have learned through my studies, the methods I have been taught, or the concepts I have discovered on my own. The goal of this pondering is to find a question that I have no immediate answer for, that I can use as a catalyst to force myself to look deeper into my creative genre and come out of the exercise with a new skill to bring to bear.

In the process of searching I originally thought of the question "Are there any creative methods in game design that are universally applicable and always result in a positive result? Should these methods/method be taught as a standard for game design practitioners?". I realised upon looking at this question that there are many layers involved, ranging from teaching to game design methodology, even needing to take into account the preference of each practitioner for their own methods.

With these thoughts in mind I have streamlined the question I actually want to ask myself and others to the following, "Are there methods of creation I do not employ that I can improve my own creative processes with?". This question is much more direct and even selfish in how it can be answered. At the root of the question is game design methodology, how we create a system, what makes it interesting, is the design viable with the tools available? Availability ties into the selfish aspect of the question, what methods am I capable of taking advantage of? Are they applicable to what I aim to design and how flexible is the method?

To answer this question I plan to look back at an interview done with a lecturer from Griffith Uni to find the methods he commonly uses and trial them, reflecting on how they compare to my own methods of ideation. Refining my answer I plan to look into research on uninhibited ideation as well as games designed to promote ideation - games designed to promote the design of games. Below is a short visual map of how the different components of the question interact as I see them.

The methods for designing games come from many many directions, either games found through imaginative means, games created due to access to a certain thing or games found whilst looking at a certain theme. Witt and Robra-Bissantz(2017) looked at how we go about creative processes and the methods used and came up with a concept where the game creators play a game designed to inspire creativity and prompt new ideas. The way in which we can create games is ever changing and growing, and I plan to embrace that and hopefully find new or unique chains of thought and creativity.

References:

Jamie Lack Interview (personal communication, 2020)

Kultima, A., Niemelä, J., Paavilainen, J., & Saarenpää, H. (2008, November). Designing game idea generation games. In Proceedings of the 2008 conference on future play: Research, play, share (pp. 137-144).

Nestok, B. R. (2016). Uninhibited Ideation: Childhood Games as Design Methods (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati).

Wetzel, R., Rodden, T., & Benford, S. (2017). Developing ideation cards for mixed reality game design. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 3(2).

Witt, M., & Robra-Bissantz, S. (2012). Sparking motivation and creativity with" online ideation games". INFORMATIK 2012.