A Game Is Born: My Final Products

My Final Game






http://gamejolt.com/games/platformer/dr-squishe-phd/18044/

My Final Games Packaging 

My Final Magazine Advert

Making My Game: Design Stage

This is the start phase that can make or break a game. A bad idea may not be saved by great play.

So using data that I collated from my survey I started to work on my story and I knew that I needed to do two things with my story: Make it simple and make it very subtle. The reason for this? Because I want to recreate the feel of an NES game, A game that (Due to massive data constraints) had little in the way of being able to tell any complex story and in the case of Mario and the like would

be subtle and heavily implied.

So as a result the story is the simple "You are a blob." and while just like in NES games there is more in a manual this is all you get in the game, the story is only fully seen in the description on the developer page, a simple reference to the days of the NES and SNES.

Pre-Alpha

Alpha

Beta

The Five Pointed Star Of Game Development

Me a large group of friends in the game developer community have decided on the 5 points that are important to game creation.

1. Sound design
As a game developer whenever I mention that sound desighn is important I always get the same response "Music in a game is just an after though." and not telling a lie this actually annoys me to no end, for a few reasons:
Reason 1. Sound desighn is not just music.
Reason 2. MUSIC IS TOTAL IMPORTANT. 
so let me explain my points.
When i use the term sound design I am also making reference to literally every sound in the game and while this includes music, this  also incorporates everything. Using the well Mario games as a reference sound design includes: The Music, that sound when you press a button to enter the game, the jump sound, the sounds of you hitting a question block, even the back gfround ambiance you dont even notice while you play.
now to my second point. Music is an integral part of a game. music has a way of  churning up emotions and a particularly good piece of music mixed with a little level design can even change the way you play the game, a great example of this is in the game "Hotline Miami" to which Ben "Yahtzee" croshaw so eloquently explains as "changeling the rage that comes with living in the 1980s". with a combination of level design and music it turns what could be a thoughtful game if tactics in to a rage fulled, lethargic melee, showing the magic that music can bring.
As a side note if i where ever to be asked to give an award for "Number one game that would be awful without any music at all" I would have to say the indie game "Keyboard Werewolf Fucking Drumset" a game that has playable mini game styled game play but is given all of its charm by the music played in the background adding to the strange and random nature of the game, you can find the song here alongside game-play: HERE

2. Art
in a short phrase this can be described as "EVERYTHING YOU CAN SEE". The art work is an integral part of the game and just like the music has a way of steering up emotions in the player of the game.
an amazing example of art work in side of a game is in fact one of my favorite games of all times "The Binding of Issac" and its remake "binding of Issac: Rebirth". The art work in these games are basically the same and has a way of forcing a guttural response from the player from as you traverse the disgusting, terrifying and at times down right scary basement of Issac's home.
Despite the two games being the same the remake adds so much to the game-play using nothing more than the art work, Like for real this is the only difference between the two games and yet ,the second feels so much better to play.
What the second game does to change it up is that the second game actually changes the graphics to a more "low res" style harkening to the era of the SNES and if I had to put a style model to it it would have to be that of the SNES castlevania mixed with the bold look of the "Super Mario world" game also on the SNES.
What can just graphics add?
Well i am glad you asked hypothetical man who likes to ask me questions. In the example of the binding of Issac it adds two main things to the game. Number one being that it makes it easier to play the game, for a start your character actually stands out more from the backfround and so does his outline meaning that his hit box is also easier to spot, and so are the enimies hit boxes (A hit box is the area of a sprite that has physical qualities, sometimes it is the whole image or sometimes just some of it :see "Castlevania Dracula fight")
the second thing that an update in graphics does is add the the game feel. you can't feel scared if you are walking around a field with "My Little Pony" in the background. Infact if I had to narrow game design to just two catagories it would be gameplay and game feel.
Here is a playlist from the game grumps that shows the game-play of the game "Binding Of Issac Rebirth".

3. Coding
A word that makes me flinch as well as smile. As far as building a game goes this is the most time consuming part of the creation of any game and unlike any other part of the game is something that is worked on for the whole time the game is being developed, let me explain.
A game in pre-alpha has the basics of the game with only basic graphics and the games basic physics and mechanics coded, also the story will have been done before all of this.
Alpha then has the graphics and even more coding to see what works and is where you choose the mechanics.
The Beta is where all the graphics have been finished and this is where the sound effects and the music is added in to the game to match the graphics, gameplay and everything else.
the final product is a few months later and is worked on by coders even after it is released, as they still need to address any glitches in the game they may have missed without an arduous beta testing cycle.

4. Story
This in many ways is more difficult than writing a story for any other form of media as you need to work out how the story fits in with a difficulty curve. you can't just have the main character fighting super death beasts on the first level and them just normal soldiers the next with the soldiers being inexplicably more difficult that the aforementioned super death beasts.
when it comes to story you need to be able to do three things:
1. Make it orientated to the game-play.
2. Do everything a normal story would do and do it a bit better.
3. Finally you need to make the story worth making a game about.

Story also involves the dialogue with characters and not just the main ones that move the plot. I mean as an example look at the dragon age games that have a ludicrous amount of side missions as well as just random NPC's that will talk to you just to add more life in to the game. as well as dialogue many games will have codex pages so you can learn more about the world that you inhabit.
the actually brings me on to one of the most difficult parts of story in a game and that is Lore. While in a story you can make things go as you pleases with little to no issue as everything you read is the lore but in a game everything is the lore of the game. From the back-story of every character all the way up to the large castle in the distance that you occasionally hear about, this is all the lore and is something that is very difficult to construct.

5. Cohesiveness
If all that alone feels difficult then I may have some shocking new to tell you as this is the section that makes literally everything to do with making a game so much more difficult and that is cohesiveness. You need all of these aspects to work together and while in a good game they work together and you find it difficult to find any contradiction, in a truly great game they work with each other and compliment each other so that sometimes it is difficult to find where one aspect ends and the other begins.
A beautiful example of this is in the game "dragon age: inquisition" (there I go talking about that game again) when you enter the tavern in the main hub of the game and you meet a character who is a bard in the pub and just plays music. The lyrics she sings are all relevant to the game lore and she even tell tales of legends that you can investigate within the game world. and this is an amazing way to bind, music, game-play and story in to one single package,  that while very subtle is exceptionally well worked.
When you have no cohesion with a game you end up with with a game that is odd and just frankly bad. One issue is called pseudo-narrative dissonance, when the story doesn't match with an area of the game. a perfect example is the game "Nack" a PS4 exclusive launch title that was a mess in my opinion. SO what is the issue? Well the issue is that in story cut scenes your player character is invincible and is unable to be destroyed but while outside of the cut scene you are clunky and can have large chunks of your health taken from you from just a standard attack by an enemy. This makes the game feel strange and a little bit off when you see yourself as an invincible beast in one scene but in the game you are easily killed.


1ne Game 5ive Points
So (It honestly feels that I use so as an opener way to often) I am going to look at one game and briefly talk about the five points that this game encompasses.
The game? Oh yeah, been pretty vague. The game is one of my favourite games I've under mentioned and that is "Five Nights at Freddy's 3", a game that made me literally jump out of my clothes to reveal every hair on my body had been scared white.

First lets look at the sound design of the game, its funking good.
The sound design of this game is amazing as it is designed to disorient the player of the game by creating false positives for hazards while at the same time it is a vital part of the game as it is almost impossible to play the game through without the audio without a lot of luck and guess work.
As well as this the sound design of this game adds a new angle of fear to the jump scares as the sounds the hazards in this game make are not only inhuman but also distorted to a good effect.

Secondly lets have a peak at the art for this game. So every FNAF game is nothing more than a series of still images and a small handful of animations to go around however the graphics look fantastic for a game that is so easy on your processor, it's little more than a powerpoint thats only dream is for you to wet yourself.
the textures in this game are exclusively grimy medium to high polly areas and eery black spaces and shading. This makes the game crazy atmospheric as nothing within your vision seems safe it is either hidden in shadow or is textured in a way that it seems distrustful.

Next is the coding. As I said before the game is little more than a slide show at the Lecter house hold and yet is effective. In this game think of every area as little more than a curved picture you can't see past the edge and what you see seems to be 3D, but it isn't. The game is exceedingly simple making three things happen, number one all PCs can run it, Number two you can have as high a frame rate as you want and finally 3 it must be more innovative to succeed.

Game Cover Art And Magazine Adverts

Here is the beautiful final product of my Games Case and Guess what right now I am going to talk about how I actually created this with the help of Photoshop, Pickle and My Wacom Bamboo.
Firstly, while looking at old NES covers for dimensions, I used my Wacom Drawing Tablet on a basic Photoshop file (Depicted Bellow the Cover photo). After cleaning it up a little I used the pen tool to create the shape for the top section and used the right click function on it to create a work area and chose the fill shape option. I did this because it is not only easier saving me a large amount of time but also it is more accurate and easier to correct if you make a mistake.
Next with feathering and bi-linear resizing disabled to create a slightly more sifter look to the main character, this is a style choice by my decision however is something that the NES covers did not originally do. The reason I had to change so many settings is due to the size of the original image coming in at only 32 pixels tall due to the fact that this is an image from the game made using Pickle.
To create the speed effect to the main character all I did was create a duped layer from the layer with the character and I placed it below the original and used the motion blur tool to create this dashing effect.
Then I added all of the main text on the cover, I chose which font would look the best and in then end decided on a font that when altered looks the most like the classic NES font. The altering of the font was just to use the skew tool in conjunction with the rotation and the perspective tool on Photoshop.
Next what I did was that I created the hand drawn logo for my game company in Photoshop using my drawing tablet and two brushes, one a pencil styled one and the other just a good brush for filling colour with some blending.
The ratting on the bottom-left of the image is from the website that the game was originally published as getting an indie game to get an ESRB or equivalent rating can be a little bit difficult and frankly often is pointless unless you intend on physical distribution over or in conjunction with digital distribution.

Old Games? I Fudging Love Old Games!

Or more specifically I am looking at NES, SNES, Sega Genesis and Sega jaguar (Indirectly also looking at GameBoy and GameBoy colour games) styled Platformers as in its own it is its own genre as they did many things that aren't done in modern games or done before this time in gaming.

I want to talk about one thing that is in the standard platformer of that era that I am not willing to include in to my game and that is the lives system. In the day of arcades the lives system was used to get more money from the player as when they die so many times they would have no lives, to get more, put in more money in to the arcade cabinet.
This was carried on to the NES and is so ingrained it is still used. I wish to allow people to see how many times they have died but I also wish people to not get frustrated at the game itself due to an arbitrary number of deaths setting them back to the beginning of the level.
This was completely removed from all games when hell froze over. I mean you would never look at "New Super Mario Bros. Wii U" or even at games like "Scott Pilgrim" to use such an awful system that is so outdated and rubbish (can you tell I'm being sarcastic?)
Okay so games that use this system add nothing but cheap challenge. Now on to the next thing that actually explains what I bloody mean.

In video games there are four types of difficulty and only one is good. Honest Difficulty, Cheap Difficulty, Trick Difficulty and Gross Difficulty. While these are not officially recognized by basically anyone, they are recognized by me and a few people on game Dev forums. Well? What do they mean?

Honest Difficulty: This is the sort of difficulty that comes from the last stage of "Mario Bros" or from all but one level of "Super Meat Boy". This difficulty comes from you needing to master the games mechanics, knowing how the games works and being able to actually play the game. This is the type of difficulty that is based on nothing less than skill and makes you feel super rewarded when you finish it.
Cheap Difficulty: Oh god I hate this but I need to talk about this. This is a type of difficulty that is the kind of difficulty you can get pissed off about. It is the difficulty that stunts you getting forwards by using cheap tricks like a lives system. Other cheap tricks in this difficulty is that of paths that set you back, luck based progression and God Damn CHOICE SYSTEMS THAT IF YOU MAKE A WRONG CHOICE YOU ARE BACK TO THE START AND GOD DAMN IT.
Trick Difficulty: Luck and Remembering. That is this. If you want to know the definition of this and to know how it feels then follow this link. But in short this is the difficulty that forces you to remember every detail of the level and then it be pure luck weather you get through. GOD DAMN.
Gross Difficulty: You must win, but not only that but you must win at a game that has no curve in difficulty, It starts as it means to go on. WITH A BRICK ON THE ACCELERATION, A HOSE ON THE EXHAUST PIPE AND A BOMB FOR AN AIR BAG. You must learn to play a game that kills you for one mistake or that just has bad mechanics or game-play.


Nostalgia Vs Good But Retro

Oh how I uh-ed, oh how I ah-ed over where to put this but this is something I feel justified placing here because it is a large part of why old games are just so loved by so many people. This is also a little look at indie conventions however it is better to talk about nostalgia as a whole compared to just putting it in several segments.
Despite what many may say Nostalgia is not necessarily a bad thing. Nostalgia is just the idea you perceiving childhood memories with rosy retrospection. it isn't a bad emotion but it most defiantly is a very exploitable emotion. Just like 90% of the articles from Cracked.com, the majority of retro-Games are designed around exploiting the innate nostalgia creates by their product.
There are two games here that fit in to either side of the Vs in the title and those games are "Shovel Knight" an amazing game that uses the retro styled graphics to enhance the game and "Kid Icarus: Uprising" a game that's only two unique qualities are It is the only Icarus game yoy can play on a new console and the fact that it physically assaults you, I'm not joking, I have this game and because of the aweful controlls it comes with a little stand that you rest the 3DS on and it flipping hurts.
Shovel knight uses the purposely low res' graphics as a way to make the game more fun and also more accurate.

The Story Of The Game

It will be a retro styled platformer with standard mechanics including:
Running
Jumping
flying
shooting
in built puzzles
subtle mechanics alongside all of it.

But what about the story?
Well in Mario all we know is save the princess and often she is in another castle. In mega-man Willey is a jerk and you must take him and his robots down. In Castlvania you are killing spooky monsters (Maybe due to an experience at a Halloween dance). And in... well okay you get the idea.
Without the whole booklet in a game you have little bloody clue as to what is going on so here is my story:

"You are a blob. Go blob around."

Well while that maybe the story inside the game is a wee bit anemic when you open the booklet (A little booklet that is found in many older games that seems to have disappeared and makes me sad) you get the whole story, and god they are glorious.
Mario, you are an italian american plumber after to save princess toadstool after the great king koopa (Bowser to you and I) kidnapped her and took her away so she can't reverse his black magic to turn all of the mushroom people back in to mushroom people.
Mega-Man, You are mega-man one of the first fully robotic humans ever created by the great Dr light but after Dr Willey gets super jelly he steels the tech and turns the robots that Light created who was originally created to help against the very people they surve.
Castlevania, you are the member of a great line of hunters and it is the curse of your family so that every member of this line must fight and be the one to kill Dracula every time he is reincarnated, battling your way through Knights, Medusa head (Honestly I hate them so much) and eventually Dracula himself.
IT WAS SO GOOD. Okay now that is out of my system lets talk about the hidden plot of my game.

"You are Professor I. Squishe PHD and you are working on a formula to dehydrate everything meaning that food, furniture and maybe even animals can be transported in to space. However you soon discover the plot of Dr. A. Bigglsworth B.A. to take over the company you are in shock but are quickly discovered and forced to drink your imperfect formula and as a result are dehidrated in to a block that is only 1cm by 1cm and thrown in to the freezer.
Years later a drop of water falls on you and you are revived but only now the size of a cigarette box. The evil Dr A. Bigglsworth B.A. has taken over the facility and the world but during the take over the freezer units are damaged leading you in to small vent."

In my game I am purposely avoiding  anything that has to do with Gender, Age, Race, Sexuality and anything that could cause any sort of "Flame War" surrounding the game. I am not representing any individuals by making the character as blank as possible even the characters gender is just an assumption the player makes.
This is something that Nintendo does that Nintend... Sega don't...
Nintendo has this amazing way of making the character you play as blank as possible. Look at the original "legend of zelda" your character says nothing and has no emotions so when you start you could make any assumption, Maybe you are just some normal bloke who stumbles upon it, or you lived your life knowing you were different ,or maybe you where a poor moisture farmer living with your aunt and uncle on some distant planet until you find out your father was Darth Vader... That's the plot to the original trilogy to Star Wars wasn't it? But you get the point, and that is what I want to achieve in my game, complete ambiguity.

Gamers and My Gamers

 My key audience is the indie game crowd from the ages of 17 to 35 and this is for a very specific reason.
The reason for my age range is because of the fact that my game plays off the nostalgia factor that a game that has intentionally pixelated graphics preys upon. and as a 1998 titled "Feelings, Fantasies, and Memories: An Examination of the Emotional Components of Nostalgia" and many others find that when you look at things from your past you tend to see things through the proverbial "rose tinted glasses".

How the Media Portrays My Audience
So there are two forms of media and each views my specific audience differently.
Firstly how they are seen in old media such as the TV or News or something like that. In old media all video gamers are seen as lazy, aggressive and Not getting sex. Also watch this this is funny (Kinda Linked in). This perspective is more perpetuated by White, Corporate run news organisations such as Fox News, The sun and The daily mail. However due the fact that they don't understand the nuances of video games and gamers they have only one stereotype for gamers in general.

New media Is different however as new media is in essence built buy people who are more likely to play videogames. So what is the new media stereo type for Retro gamers... Here I'll use a quote:
"Fat, nerdy, neck beards who cry in to their Japanese love pillows at night." - Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw. So this may not seem to different but... it kinda is.
They are seen as Men in their mid to late 30's, they still live with there parents, they don't have sex, they are still obsessed with anime and manga, and they are super nostalgia blind to anything they loved as a kid, essentially in a state of arrested development.
But that is just the stereo type so what are they? Just like many groups that have a stereo type they are essentially everyone. Statistical more likely to be men, Aged between 12 to 60, and they just love games that take them to an place where they where younger. 


THEM 0.0 

to optimize the number of people who download this game I need to go for as broad an audience within my niche market as possible and to do this i need to go off and do some research of my own with a survey on people within it, so I shall go off and write my survey and post it among forums that cater my key demographic.

And here it is

So here ar ethe important results and one buy one i will talk about what it actually meas for me and my project.
So considering the common way that retro gamers are seen the first one really surprised me as you see that they actually don't mind modern mechanics in a retro game. this maybe due to the fact that many have actually realized that old games had things that new games don't have. I mean if you look at some of the stupid games in the early area of gaming you see they had some not so good ideas, one that both me and many others including Ben "Yahtzee" crowshaw have raged against is the lives system, a mechanic that was designed to take as much money as possible from children at early arcades, but in modern games it is useless.

When you look at number two you get somewhat of an odd reading  as you get a large number of people liking the idea of purposefully retro decisions however they don't wish to keep the frustrating or inaccurate game-play of retro games. This is actually what I thought would happen with the crowd this survey was aimed at is, they are the sort of people who enjoy the nostagia and simpleness of old games however they don't wish to relive the game-play of old games that was often as hard as Eminem claims to be.

Number 3 is something that shocked me but also made my job somewhat easier. Mario topped out easily but that game is just a simple "Jump Man Platformer" so I need to incorporate something from the runner up that is megaman X. This game was thrown in to the questions despite being a SNES game rather than NES like all the others on the list. This game is one of the most innovative games in history as it manages to refresh an old idea in a way that still has yet to be replicated in my opinion.
What I am going to do is build a standard platformer that incorporates the three main bits of megaman X that people love:
1. No handholding
2.Introduce things in an organic way 
3. Interesting platforming.

 The fourth question restores my faith in humanity as it proves not every gamer is obsessed with graphics and actually would rather time spent on building interesting levels meaning that i am going to have to allocate a larger amount of time to coding and less time to art and sprite design. 
This isn't uncommon in gaming. Any game jam you see where there is only one individual building the game in 48 hour. You will see that only about 4 hours or even less is spent on the art so as to build a game that is interesting or fun rather than just pretty.

The fifth one is just so I can get an idea of what they prefer in the story and despite the idea of robot being popular among many games in the past it seems that people like the idea of an experiment in better. 

FA☆☆OT
Yeah... I want to talk about a huge issue in online video games and in all honesty this is the best place to put it, and that is the other F word.
Most see this as being anti-Gay and I can see the reasoning but as it stands it isn't really about being Anti-LGBT... Yet.
I played Call Of Duty For this and this is an honest quote from someone who sounded about 13 over the group chat and i am going to quote it probatum because I was honestly shocked at this I wrote it down at the time and I want you to have a good feel,
"Fuck you, you fucking faggot, I will fucking swat you and they will come over your house and fuck your fucking faggot face up you fag."
I am a pansexual male and in all honesty I have an idea about how this occurs and I call it the School ground Theory.
As a child you would go out with friends and go over there house, chill in the living room or just be at school and during all of these activities you were almost always in ear shot of your parents, or maybe your friend may be the sort that would tell. The only swears you hear is from carefuller parents or the brother of a friend.
Now swap playground with in your room all on your own, swap the friend that may tell with a complete stranger, the adult that may hear you with no one and what do you get? A child who grows up not truly understanding what you should and shouldn't say, learning wrong and right from random adults and teens on the internet, this is why video games have and ESRB ratting to stop children playing on a game ratted 18, or at the very least with supervision.

 

Conventions Of The Games Industry (Wait Are There Any????)

Why? yes there are, and I'm not talking about the habit the AAA industry has of just being crap, and I am not talking about the fact that the indie games industry is falling in to the traps the industry made just before Atari shock.
No I am talking about actual conventions that are within the games industry that are key characteristics of it.
For the sake of my piece I am going to talk about just the Indie industry and occasionally use the AAA industry as a point of reference.
I am going to say this out right but this isn't that easy but here I go.
Innovation
One of the key things that is dominant in the Indie Game scene is that there is so much innovation in game-play. This is because of two reasons.
Number one, because to become popular and to be seen in such a large market you need to have two things on your side, Luck and a damn good game and while fancy graphics may constitute a good game (Call Of Duty Fans Will Tell You) the AAA market has that down and making a game with great graphics is super expensive, and if an indie developers don't have one thing, that is money. So the one thing they have is something new, something great, Innovation.
Number two, is that if you want to make a game with a great idea you have come up with you can do two things, One is that you get your arse laughed out of a big corporate building or two make it yourself and release it as an indie game. Not too difficult a decision, is it?

A Lack Of Franchises
I can only label two games that are indie games that actually has it's own series. "I Wanna Be The Guy" and "Binding Of Issac" and the latter is really only a game series in that there  are two, one being a remake of sorts.
But without cheating I am going to list AAA game series, all from different companies:
Crash Bandicoot - Naughty Dog
Mario - Nintendo
Call Of Duty - Tri-arch
MegaMan - Capcom
Sonic - Sega
Assassins Creed - Ubisoft
Elder Scrolls - Bethesda
World of Warcraft - Blizzard
And that is just of the top of my head without using the same company twice.
Why is this though? Well there is no real answer but I have a theory regarding this.
You have two choices, the first is to release a sequel to a game you have just released. The game can be made quicker, It already has a fan base, and is cheaper in all so more profit. however this will sacrifice the creative ideal of the original game.
Or you can work on a new game. Use your success to spend your profits on your new project. You get to go in any direction you wish as it is a new game full stop however the issue with this is that you cut in to your profit.
Now one group has an honest love of gaming as an art. (indie)
Another group has an obligation to make as much money as possible.(Do I need to say it's AAA)


The Batman Singularity
So yeah this is an odd theory in the gaming industry that in the AAA games industry "every main protagonist is essentially batman" (Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw, 2014) and while yes you can look at this and take that phrase in the humor it is meant to be, but this is actually an interesting quote to look at and analyses.
So what features make batman as a character? Well I have a check list here from years of reading thousands of comics just on that.

• Dark
• Dual Identity
• Emotionless
• Loss in the family
• Hides his Face
• Has a Penis
• Ladies man
• Often Silent (maybe not in the films but as a comic book nerd I can assure you by hero standards he is a very quiet hero in his books.)

So okay this is a short list of what bat man is now I will look at different games protagonists and if they fall in to at least four of these I will put that batman stamp of approval on that character.
So first of is that character Ezio who is the most loved protagonist in the assassins creed games now lets see.
At the start of the game his brother, father and basically everyone in his family is killed. CHECK
He joins an assassins guild for god sake and is merciless in his killing. DARK? CHECK
Hides his face with a large hood. CHECK
And from seeing his sex scenes in the comics he defiantly has a penis and is clearly a ladies man. CHECK and CHECK
So this one is defiantly a yes but what else in popular modern games?

Okay Aiden from "Watch_dogs" yes that underscore is meant to be there and yes it is stupid get over it, I haven't."
He lost his niece in the start and that is his key motivation, so that's a loss in the family. CHECK.
He wears a hood, obscuring is face alongside a bandana. CHECK.
He is a very blank and emotionless character. CHECK.
Aiden is essentially a silent protagonist. CHECK.
He has a penis. CHECK.
and for all of his flaws he is essentially a dark and morally ambiguous character; see also dark. CHECK.

Well one more for the list and this is a classic, Mario "jump man" Mario.
Emotionless? Well okay seeing as he has been on character lock down he very rarley shows any sort of emotions except the odd "wah hoo" of joy. CHECK in my books.
Ladies man? Well his current list of women if Pauline from the original game of DK, Toadstool from most of his games and then Daisy from his adventures in his romp through the GameBoy. CHECK.
Has a penis? Yep and Yep.
Often silent? No, always Silent.
SO Even Mario is pulled towards the batman singularity. I could also check that he is dark but... Well it is controversial because would you count a psychopath as dark? This video talks about it better than I could. HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMSQNVhMqA

So am I batman?
Okay so I often hide my face with a hoodie. Check.
Often Silent? On forums hell yes I am, as well as having a few issues with being at all loud around anyone I don't know. Check.
Dark? Well I mean I don't even own a light in my room (true fact). Check.
Ladies man? I mean like if you ask any guy that who would say no? Check.
Has a penis? Last time I checked, Wait... Check.
Emotionless? I mean I may be the only human who didn't cry at "My Sisters Keeper" and "Titanic". Check.
JESUS CHRIST I'M BATMAN, or maybe this whole concept is flawed however looking at other forms of media like movies you can see that that just isn't the case. So maybe movies are keying themselves to a teenage/young adult audience with dreams of having similarities to one of the greatest cultural icons of the 20th and 21st century.
I feel honestly that the Batman is the perfect character in which you can put at the center of the giant umbrella of game characters for one huge reason and that is because he is the perfect character in which to  relate to a teenage male audience. Every teenage boy who plays games plays them because they want to escape from their normal lives and be someone else, In a similar fashion that batman has a dual Identity all gamers have a dual identity and everything else related to him is just what culture has perceived as cool.
There is a good reason Batman is so well loved over Superman, The Flash or Detective Chimp (Yes He Is A DC character) and that is because by day he is just normal, just like you, me and every gamer out there.


Mario is AAA, Luigi is Indie. Wait, What?
For those unaware in the Mario Universe the two leading characters are Mario and Luigi, Mario being the be all and end all front man to the franchise with Luigi tailing behind him as a secondary character. So what do I mean by that big title? well here I go to explain what I mean, at the same time as explaining the main conventions of each industry in subtle and SUBTLE AS HELLLLLLLLLLL ways.
Okay so I mentioned earlier that Mario is a psychopath. Well he is, Did you not watch the video? well you didn't need to all you need to know is he is. Well this is a perfect analogy to the AAA video games industry. Just quickly some of the traits of a psychopath are the following and a very fast explanation:

• Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking: The AAA games industry doesn't seem to have the whole "Video games are art" thing and instead seem to fixate on the more clinical "Video Games are money" sort of deal and as a result has little in the way for any delusions that they are not there 1000% to make money.
• Unreliability: Oh god this. Pushed back release dates. Horrible sequels to good games. Bad trailer to good games and Amazing trailers to god awful games. I am not going to go on because it makes me sad.
• Untruthfulness and insincerity: So this is a very recent thing that is in the headlines of many a recent games blogs and news sites, the industry does not trust lets players often shutting down lets play videos on peoples YouTube channels. They don't trust reviewers with infamous case of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot getting fired after a bad review of "Kaine and Lynch" as well as the bribing in the industry that is so ingrained in to the culture of game journalism.
• Poor judgement and failure to learn from experience: Did the games industry learn from its biggest failure of all time? You know that little Atari shock thing that actually crashed the games industry? Well do they still spend millions on games that are in the end just bland or awful? I mean of course not, I mean watch_dogs wasn't bland and Kayne and Lynch 2 wasn't at all painful to play and made want to drink bleach. no.

So yeah the AAA games industry in that SUBTLE A HELLLLLLLL way I mentioned. But there is one more way Mario is like the industry and that is the fact that he is just god damn so bland. To quote Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw yet again"He is on character lock down, Nintendo are afraid to show he doesn't like pees in case they alienate the pee loving demographic." and that is true of all of the companies that make the AAA games. You make any and all decisions lightly if just saying offhandedly "I Love Civil rights" could mean the difference of over $2,000,000 worth in stock, very lightly. As a result they are afraid of being anything other than a bland robot made of wet tissue paper in appearance.

ANNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDD Luigi.
Yeah that is all I have on it to be fair. That is the extent that the AAA industry is Mario but yeah lets talk about Luigi.

I always loved Luigi and I know many people who share the same feelings as I do regarding the green clad, mustachioed plumber.
In the start Luigi was just a palette swap of Mario and that is where all of the similarities begin. The first ever "Indie" companies where called so because they were just developers who had become independent from the main industry to make there own games, however other than name they were basically the same thing, with the exception that many preferred the Mario as they perceive the Luigi as a worse character but being the same.
So anything else that you can link Luigi to the Indie Industry. Yes lots. Luigi never had the issue that Mario had in that Luigi isn't in character lock-down and as a result has the ability to show personality (Just like the Indie industry) and while that personality is varied (Like the industry) he is still able to be endearing or a scarredy cat or fatherly or well whatever is needed. I mean look at Scott Cawthon the maker of "five nights at Freddy's" a damn scary game and he is seen as a creepy and some what odd individual that fits his games perfect or maybe the makers of MineCraft "Notch" who is perceived as a free and fun individual who openly spends lots of money on expencive apartments in Hollywood.

Technology: Mine or Theirs

THIS IS SUCH A MASSIVELY DEBATED QUESTION IN GAMER CIRCLES "DOES ADVANCES IN TECH MEAN ADVANCES IN GAMEPLAY?"

The shortest answer I could come up with is "sort off" so let me explain.

So in the start of the Gaming industry all consoles were also computers to put it basically, and those that weren't had a low bit count normally at 8-16 bit. the years later the NES at 16 bit then SNES at 32 Bit and the N64 at 64 bits (what a shocker) and now you see the top consoles and PCs with 128-Bits of possessing.
"art is a response  to limitation if you could make anything you would make a fucking universe and that would be boring." Gabriel From Yatzee19's "Lets play" series.

This quote is a very good show of how people see the gaming industry it is almost as if there is a line chart where as technology and graphics go up ingenuity and level design goes down and when you look at "duke nukem 3D"the old MS.DOS game and its creative level design and graphics built around the limitations given to the developers you can see a huge difference when you look at The latest "duke Nukem" game that hides everything behind 3D graphics that use lighting designed to distract you from the awful game play.

While you would expect an art form to change as the medium changes through technology nothing moves forwards faster and changes as much as Gaming, this is because unlike film, games are tied very tightly to the expansion of the technology as computers are such a new piece of technology.

My Software List 

Photoshop- Photoshop can be a great tool for game development. It can be great for creating backgrounds and tiles within the game, as well as having the ability to create basic animation and render it in a PNG sprite sheet or GIF.

Pickle- This program is designed specifically for low res games, designed for the following, sprinting, animating, tiling and GUI's. This app I use typically to create foreground sprites as it has much better animation facilities when compared to Photoshop as well as being much more streamlined.

GameMaker: Studio- this is what the large bulk of coding and is where everything is coated together and turned in to a game, the script it uses is GM:SS and shares similarities with UDK:S, HTML and C++.

BFXR- this program is specifically designed for SFX within games and shares a large similarity with what game developers would have used during the ages of the NES and SNES. these sounds can be coated and used as notes to create music.

Music Studio 2: This application is the perfect application for creating basic and relaxed music that  is more for ambiance rather than adding to a stressful moment or being the lead title. It is able to export in WAV, MP3 and most other standard audio files rendered on most modern computers.

BeatMaker 2: This is another music creation application that is more used to create music in the genres of R'nB and Rap, however for me personally this app is perfect for creating tunes and jingles as well as music with more emotion to it, this is over all superior to MusicStudio 2 however it is less streamlined.

Audacity- This is a free piece of tech and is used mostly to record audio however it has capabilities to modify the sound and most usefully for me it can modify the resolution of the sounds recorded making it easier to Bit crush it dow to 8-Bit and reduce it to a lower HTz.

Equipment & Specs list
Dual Core I15, 8GB RAM, 1TB windows 8 Hardrive, PC.- when Using something like GM:S you need to have a faster computer working with a minimum of 4GB RAM, this is because of how the software is rendered on the computer, as well as this in GM:S it is best to use 64 Bit processors.

Yeti Microphone by Blu- Simple High quality Mic used in conjunction with Audacity.

Bamboo drawing Tablet- A high quality and cheap piece of hardware that allows one to one pen contact with the screen.

Money
The beauty of developing a game is that if you work 100% in-house then the most expensive part of all of this is the initial purchases which works out at about £1800. Any more expenditure past that is just paying for wages, electricity and finding somewhere to work which is easy for me seeing as I like many other indie devs work from my bedroom.

Games Analysis (I Get to Play Games) and game cover analysis

"Mega Man X"
This is a game that set the tone for the console it was introduced in, the SNES.

the story of this game follows X the PC of the game. It starts with a boss battle that is designed to make you loose and genuinely feel powerless. this links nicely to what Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw talks about in game design when he refers to the "Show don't tell rule" that a game is much more enhanced by you feeling an emotion by experiencing it in gameplay rather than a cutscene or a plain text box telling you how to feel or making your character feel helpless not you as the paler of the game.
It continues on as you are rescued by the character 'Zero'. the plot is then loosely set but you must fight your way through the "Robot Masters" combining in you collecting upgrades and fighting the final boss becoming more powerful than the role model character "Zero".
The gameplay for this game is incredible as it was revolutionary for its time, taking the original format for the original mega man games and pumping in a large amount of creativity and ingenuity. as Arin Hansin of EgoRaptor fame says "it is much better when a game Teaches you through gameplay" and as far as this game is concerned there is nothing that this game throws at you like a text box that intrinsically tells you how to play the game but instead opts to teach everything through gameplay. a great example is one of the mini bosses who spawns slow enemies but at first only one, it is slow enough for you to realise that hitting it in its legs is doing nothing and you are drawn to jump and shoot causing visible damage. this example may seem relatively small but this actually sets up the idea that some enemies have sweet spots where that is the only spot they take damage and this for many enemies is a recurring theme.
Theming in a game is important for its coherence and as you play this game you will see that each area has its own unique personality through visuals, level design and music. This means the game never feels stale or like is is stagnating which for some of the earlier megaman games was an issue. despite each level having its own identity you never feel like this is not a mega man game. the over running theme for the whole game is to become stronger than the boss you lost to at the start and every level has this as its underlying theme even down to the bosses.
In the end of the game before fighting the last boss you have to complete a boss rush, where you fight every boss in succession. this is perfect in its theming as instead of feeling like the developers were padding out for gameplay time you feel like you have grown and become powerful as each boss fall quickly under your massively upgraded self and you as the players more superior skill compered to the beginning.
the level design is intuitive but still holds much challenge. each area is a straight forward level progression that gets eventually more and more difficult as you get closer and closer to the boss. It rewards exploration finding new upgrades not signposted, hidden bosses and even health items or sub tanks. To be able to do this in a platformer requires a fair amount of skill as while some areas are branching paths you never find yourself not knowing where to go. this is done through hidden areas with objects that seem like walls but you can walk through them to a new area. the entire game is full of new ideas (for the time) such as this.
The music is perfectly constructed to fit in with the level and there are even musical cues that means the music changes for different situations. The music is suited for each area. the fast paced levels have a quick tempo melody fitted to it with more bass and a beat to it while the slower more thoughtful areas that require a level of puzzle solving are slower with a much more heavy focus on lead melody over the bass or beat.
For the SNES this game must have been good at one huge thing in regards to coding and that is conservation of space. The SNES cart rages had very little space on them and as a result it was required to code temporary values that self destruct as soon as they are not needed, this level of coding will require a huge amount of competence in coding as well as the patience to scrawl though the hundreds of lines of code to find the one line that is still interacting with the destroyed item of coding.

Overall this game deserves the critical acclaim this game gets whenever the SNES is mentioned as it takes on the life of its predecessors and makes something new.

"MineCraft"

Minecraft is Minecraft and as a result is very hard to explain in simple terms as it does so much different in comparison to basically every game ever.

Firstly it's story or at the least the lack there of. If you were to walk in to any AAA game studio and you were to pitch this game it would sound a bit like this:

"Hello mr. Ideaforagame how can I help you?"

"Well I have an idea for a brand new game called Minecraft."

"Okay so what is the story for this game?"

"There isn't one." 

"Uh okay so how would the player you know play? What would the objective be?"

"Well there really isn't an objective."

"Then how can you call it a game?"

This is unfair to Minecraft as the recent updates have attempted to throw some semblance of an objective in but it is still entirely player driven. There is no plot and no objectives so the fun you have is the fun you take from it. The best description I have ever heard for this game was "a creative builder game with enemy's" and that really is the only way to look at it.

The game play is interesting as you have two main things you can do: destroy and build.

You can build a pickaxe to destroy a huge mountain to build your own castle. As a game that is all there is to it, as it said you get out of this game what ever fun you can find. Some players will crank up the difficulty and fight hords of enemy zombies and exploding shrub monsters while others may turn it on to peaceful to play the game as a creator of there very own home built town, or some may attempt both at the same time.

The music for this game is interesting for two main reasons: number one it hardly exists, number two you can find your own music. 

All the music in this game is incredibly docile and is only played to symbolise the passing of time so you get one peace for the morning and one for as the sun sets so the music in this game is more of a mechanic than it is to add to the experience of the game itself. It is useful as mechanics goes as a lot of the time you are going to be inside vast caves or mines and knowing the difference between wether it is day or night outside is a life savour.

To my second point you can find music with in the game as well. If you find one of the records that are scattered around and only findable with a spoon full of luck you can build your own jukebox and I feel this adds to the game as it incentivises exploration and experimentation, both of which are huge mechanics within Minecraft.

Everything in this game feels perfectly tailored to pushing the player to make there own fun within the game and the graphics are no exemption to this.

The graphics are blocky, as everything is blocks. Everything is made out of the 3D equivalent to a pixel on the NES and this means that everything in the game becomes so much more simple to see and understand, this is a must in a game that try's to get the player to make there own fun.

One thing you find in many AAA titles is sometimes the graphics can make gameplay confusing especially today in the world of perfect particle effects and realism so good becoming emerged is easy, and as a result things need to be sign posted more and more and games become more linear because of this and that is why the very basic graphics of Minecraft are so perfect for that type of game.

This game has more players than the most current call of duty game and as a result this game can easily be considered a commercial success and is loved by so many fans that it is hard to criticise this game for anything as anything negative is there to add to the experience.

My Final Analysis is a video found here:

 Balloon Fight

For the NES this is a very standard cover for a "classic" NES game. The top section is souly for the the art work of the game the part that (similar to magazines) would be seen at an old BlockBuster or any shop that sells or rent games. The top half is exiting and full of all the fun art work for this reason and is meant to catch your eye.

The sight of this format of NES games really helped nintendo create a brand for itself for games either they published or others published and looking to ride on the recognition of the Nintendo logo on the box. the colour scheme as with every game in that era was limited to the 8-Bit processor of the NES and the use of hexadecimal data to actually code everything  leaving them will a full pallet that looked like this...

as a result art work for games also where as a rule relegated to the same colour pallet.

the top ballooner going over the top border for the image is a good design choice as it gives the cover a more layered and ironically 3D feel to it. while this may seem to be the sort of design choice that seems like it goes against the common convention but in fact leaving the border is more common that staying inside the border. this is because this new generation of gaming was aimed towards young kids and this plays to the idea that they are all rebellious figuratively showing going out of the lines by literally going out of the lines, Playing up to the dual Hebdige stereo type of  “youth as fun” and “youth as trouble maker.”

in admittance this style is only stereo typical of the very early era of the NES and for less than 1/2 of the total market but it shows how the games industry was treated at the very start of the gaming rebirth and how they wanted to distance themselves from the elaborate covers of the Atari 2600's games.

Battle Toads

Not going to lie but this may be one of my number one covers of all time because of how insane it is and how indicative of an era this was. while the first cover is very much "early NES" era games wanted to stand out so as a result they did away with the minimalism and just went 100% 90s.
there is a lot going on within the screen and is the definition of contrast. the two main colour of this is the green and yellow of not only the battle toad himself but also the masthead, while at the same time boasting a violet, white and blue background that makes the colours of the toad and the title pop out more.
One of the first things you will notice is that this is different from the first cover as it doesn't use sprites from the game but rather an artists impression of how the games looked and for many the covers embodied how you felt playing the games (Unless you were playing two player on battle toads because Jesus Christ).
there is always little to say about game covers for one reason and that is because even today game covers hold a minimalistic approach to summarizing the game in one image. I mean for god sake this is probably one of the more complex covers and it tells you three things: There are toads, you fight those guys, and this game is awesome, and that is all you get.
one aspect this cover holds as a convention that is followed on by the mainstream game industry and that is having the cover of the main character facing the "Camera" representing the character as if taken from a low angled shot. this is always used for the main character when it is used and coveys the power of the character, creating a feeling of awe, and aspiration while you play the game.

GAMES HISTORY 101

Before anything I wish to delve in to a quick history of gaming:

The first computer game is a controversial topic among gamers and Game historians (A thing) alike however as far as my research can pull up the first computer game was in 1940 at the worlds fair. The game was the traditional game Nim a simple puzzle game whose computer counter part was made by a Mr. Condon.It was not until '47 when the cathode ray tube would be used for computer games creating a very simple form of galager or space shoot.

Through out the 50's the developments in computer technology was expanding which led to innovations such as the first chess playing computer (the mechanical turk was a man in a box). However the thing that punctuated this era was pong a one to two player game of tennis that was created with an oscilloscope in 1958.

However all of this games where made by old white men sat at a computer however dartmouth changed this by creating the first universal coding language allowing university students to code. This lead to the explosion in the creation of games.

The first gaming system for the home system "the odessy" was made in '68 and released in to the public and sold well. this was a huge step in gaming as now it was accessible to everyone with a TV and some disposable income.

Here is a link To AVGN and him talking about the system (Caution swearing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDAKxjG7VaI

In '71 one of the largest PC games was released and it was called the origin trail the first game that emerged you in to the game and trying to make you believe. This was the first game with a narrative.

In 1972 the first ever 'Cabinet' was released. What was it? It was the one and only pong.

The Atari 2600 a pivotal system is released and despite its simplicity is a massive hit however in this time there is no rules for games so in a system where a man character is only 5 pixels high they made a lot, from children's games about an adventure to the infamous Atari "Porn" games. There were no rules as gaming had not been established enough to have what could be described as a norm.





skipping on 10 years we see arguably one of the most recognisable video game mascots in the game Donkey Kong and while donkey kong is very popular as a character the character I am talking about is Jump Man who would latter go on to take to name of Nintendo's warehouse attendant "Mario".

In '84 we see the Russian invented game of Tetris that Nintendo released bundled with the new Gameboy the first handheld console that wasn't considered a failure.

The following year the failing video games market was revived almost completely by the FamiCom or NES for those outside the Japan. This console had revolutionary graphics for its time and utilised the old tech of Cartridge based games and used it to build whole worlds on this seemingly limited console, releasing games like Super Mario Bro's and The Legend Of Zelda and even one of the earliest customisable games Excite Bike.

The release of this console is one of the largest milestones in modern gaming and this single Company Managed to set the standard for games for the next two console generations up to the Super NES.

In 1990 we see Microsoft wade in with the release of Virtual solitaire that becomes bundled with every subsequent copy of the MS OS.

In 91 in comes the Mega Drive from Sega. This started the rivalry between Sega and Nintendo that still today is debated despite the winner being obvious to anyone who looks at it objectively. Nintendo with its own next Gen. Console and then Sega without one.

1993 was a BIG YEAR in gaming. first with the release of the game Mortal Kombat for almost every console of the time. This game not only popularised the genre of fighter but also caused senate hearings in the US as to wether this game should be out lawed in the states. This is what created the US ESRB rating system for games.

 The second half of this year was filled with the FPS (first person shooter) Doom. A game made mostly for PC and ran predominantly on the MS DOS.

Now this is where I stop as far as my game but here are the next few big events.

3D gaming came to the console with the N64 and the Playstation by 1995

Pokemon one of the most successful franchises in gaming came out for the game boy in 1996 and is still running today with the remakes of its 3rd games.

Xbox and the PS2 go head to head with the Nintendo console Game cube which is widely considered intends last non gimmicky console.

The comes the Xbox 360 and the PS3 followed by the Xbox one and the PS4 which takes us up to today.

IN DEPTH LOOK IN TO ATARI SHOCK 

It is difficult to and near impossible to talk about games and the gaming industry without talking about the 1984 North American games crash which is also known as the “Atari Shock” in depth. This was a point in the industry where Atari had the monopoly on the games market with its system the Atari 2600, at the peak of the games of the pre-crash era revenue was peaking at $3.2billion that while today may seem small, was a huge amount of money for an industry based on a new form of entertainment.

While many may blame the ill-fated “E.T.” game (based on the spealburg movie of the same name) as the key fault to the crash, which resulted in a total of 97% decline in revenue for the industry, I honestly feel (as do many others) that this game was just the straw that broke the camels back.

The esteemed game creator Howard Scott Warshaw created the “ET” game and before then he was one of the few voices calling for gameplay innovations on the market. When he was given the task of creating the game he was only given 5 and a half weeks, a task that would take any competent team twice as long. Upon release people were shocked and many copies were returned or unsold; Atari dumped any of the in a landfill in New Mexico.

While this is seen as the worst game of all time at the time the entire market was saturated with awful games and for a reason.

For years large companies such as Atari saw no reason to give the creators any credit and often underpaid them. Many went off and built their own companies with little experience in this infant market.

In terms of what can be learned you could look at this as what is wrong with corporations and how the standard model for a money making machine does not work for more creative forms of industry especially an industry based almost solely on creative people to make, design and market the games.

Another one that is more of a personal point is that you cannot rush the creation of a game. Coding is the most time consuming of any game and rushing this part of it is detrimental to the game creating glitches, game flaws and just bad choices in the GUI or mechanics. Rushing any part is a bad idea but I feel coding is the most overlooked part.

HOMOSEXUALITY IN GAMING
THIS IS NOT TALKED ABOUT AS MUCH AS IT SHOULD BE.
Okay so for the sake of this "rant" I am going to say that the only game series that goes against the generalisations I am going to make is the "persona" games. That is all.
Also one of the main news pieces that drew any attention regarding this was the news that in the new game "Tamadochi Life" it was shown that you could not have same sex pairings, something that embodies this very well is "Yahtzees" quote when impersonating nintendo "Don't gays have there own game, in there own shop in boxes adorned with chest hair."
Games are very homophobic, in fact they have something against the whole LGBT community.
First example of this is in the game "Mario 2" the character of birdo who is an insane pink creature that has a gender crisis and is one of the most well known reassuring villains in the game. Acording to all original Japanese manuals this character is a "Trans-Female", but this was just the first of a long list of LGBT villains in the gaming industry.
My next example is the Magypsys from the game earth bound. they are not technically villains (while not technically good guys) they are not actually human. an in human race from somewhere else. this adds to the "otherness" towards the LGBT community. A similar character to this is merry Maggie from Banjo Kazooi. Both games are for children.
In a more recent example the character "Trevor" from GTA V is shown to be bisexual and is the only one who is in the game who is so. He is seen commonly as a Villain, as A rapist, and without a doubt having some sort of schizophrenia or psychosis. similar to "Alfred Ashford" from the resident evil games who is a homosexual male with some sort of menial illness. all suggesting that homosexual men have something wrong with them.
World héros perfect has the character of "Rasputin" a character who is shown at all points as being overtly stereotypically gay. and for his finisher move he uses an ability that enables you to take the opposing character behind bushed where a heavily implied rape is happening. another example of homosexuals being seen as rapists is the character of "de-santa" from red dead redemption who is not only port raid as being a rapist but also as a pedophile and relating to others he is also seen as mentally ill.
Not even female characters are safe from this prejudice as when you look at the "sisters" from dead rising 2 you can see that they are not only shown as the villains of this game but also it is heavily suggested that they are incestuous as well as being mentally ill.
Looking at the key pieces of evidence you can come up with three main titles that are given to members of the LGBT community "Villains", "Inhuman" and "Mentally Abnormal".
While yes you can look at gamers and how they are seen as being narrow minded the games industry does not help at all turning the LGBT community in to the "Other" and something to be feared or hated. This is the main issue that holds games back compered to other form of media.

While this "rant" for use of better words was well justified I feel that I need to add something to this and talk about a game that was released post rant and does enough thing right that it needs to be talked about in some depth.
the I am talking about is the game "dragon age: Inquisition" a series who has been up and down holding both my number one best as well as my award for "most disappointing game i have ever played" i am serious i was close to tears playing dragon age II and while this is a topic I will cover later I need to get back on hand.
While in "dragon age: origins" you could have homosexual relations even going as far has having sex with the same gender, the now game does one up, actually having characters who are openly homosexual on the side of good. not only that but the character who are homosexual arn't only bisexual as is seen with basically every follower on the previous games there are characters who're just in to people of the same gender, thats it.
there are characters as well who are also seen as transgendered and while it is more of a "read between the lines" sort of deal that is just that, that is who they are and they are not bad guys or token there they are people.
Now while this is honestly just one game series this is showing a more active trend of inclusiveness in the AAA and Indie games industries.