Master Journal Threaded Research Reflection GDS

In recent years an increasing number of gamers have become more and more disenfranchised with the video game industry. This is due in large part to decisions made during game development that were driven more by profit rather than game play. While money and profit is indeed important, but it should not be the primary factor. When it is made the primary factor, the quality of games produces suffer, as well as the company’s reputation and by consequence sales and profits. the If this continues I believe the game industry will be heading toward another crash, maybe not as bad as the one seen in 1983 as video games have become firmly planted in our culture, but it will take a hit. To prevent this, I purpose reprioritizing toward a more game play first design philosophy. The first step to learning how to do this is to understand why people are attracted to video games, this can be done by studying resources such as Maslow’sA Theory of Human Motivations, Yee’s Motivations of Play in MMORPGs, as well as learning about the power of exclusivity.

For this month I furthered my research into my chosen topic, looking deeper on why humans are motivated to play video games and how I can use said knowledge to create better more engaging games. For future research I want to look into how to make a game that equally fun as it is educational, I want players to learn something from my games, especially if they don’t even realize that they were learning.

My research topic connects to my capstone, because my capstone makes larger scale games, which is my preferred type of game and I would like to incorporate such psychological motivation factors into the games we create.

My greatest desire in my career is to be able to work on large scale RPG and MMORPG games and hopefully one day be able to make my own. To make the best possible game I feel its necessary to incorporate what I learned from researching my topic and implementing them into the games I help bring to life.