Nigel Kershaw guest lecture report

 

Nigel Kershaw is an online games at deep silver, during his lecture he talked about different things a games designer does for the development of the game. He talked about what he works on when working on a game, he talked about what is play and the difference in types of media and which video games fall into. There are two types of media “Passive” and “Interactive” both these have clear cut elements that separate them, “Passive” media is mainly made up entertainment sources that the audience has no input or control over examples of this are films, comic books, novels and TV show. The reason there are “Passive” media because the participant can’t effect what is happening where as “Interactive” media is where the participant can affect what is going on with prod eminently. Examples of “Interactive” media are pool, crafts, poker/gambling and sports. These are classified as “interactive” because the participant is responsible for the outcome like how many points are scored when playing sports and what you make exactly whilst doing crafts.

 

Even with media being clear cut as that games can be put in both categories, as there are some games out there that give you no control but make you sit and experience it, these are usually made of interactive novels which actually have more in common with novels than games. The mass majority of games actually has more in common with past times such as pool, model making and sports. This is because when playing games the participant has clear control of what the playable character or game world does, depending on what the player’s input is depends on what happens within the game.

 

There are others that agree that video games are interactive media, Grant Tavinor states in his article on “Videogames, Interactivity and Art” that video games are “strongly interactive”.

 

Reference to Grant Tavinor’s article:

Tavinor,G.2009. Videogames, Interactivity and Art” that video games are.[Online]{Accessed 11th may 2015].Available form: http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=44