Week 09 Reading & Writing

Hi again and welcome back to my blog! In this blog post I will reflect on all the reading and writing work I have done to date.

Overall, I have found the reading and writing assignments interesting and very useful. I have always found that summarising something after reading it allows me to take in the information better. By writing the blogs, I have definitely got a better grasp and understanding of what I was reading.

My favourite reading so far was Lost Garden by Daniel Crook because I learned so many new things that I would never come across by myself. Crook discussed "Dunbar's Layers". This is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. The average person can have up to 150 relationships but once you look into all the layers, it can drop down to just 5 intimate friends. This suggestion can then be applied to game design. He also talked about how emotions are a huge factor in games. I found this very relevant to modern day life as emotional intelligence is a necessity.

I also enjoyed reading an article by Greg Aleknevicus where he spoke about what makes a game more appealing. I never thought to take into account some of the things he discussed. One thing that made me think was the fact that a huge percentage of users could be colourblind and that I need to take my colour choices into account for these people.

I think the readings are giving me a better insight to what components my game needs to have. I've found that writing down notes while going through the readings has been the best way for me to learn from them.

I think my biggest accomplishment for this class is learning how to use Unity. I still struggle with it but I have achieved a lot from watching tutorials and then practicing what I have learned.

The following image is my favourite out of all the images I have used for my blogs. It is a diagram briefly explaining "Dunbar's Layers", which was one of my favourite readings as mentioned before. It doesn't go into to much detail but it helped me understand what I was reading better.

Favourite Image

Looking into the future for this class, I think I can definitely push myself to find more additional readings of my own accord. I just need to manage my time better and prioritise each thing correctly.

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