For many years, game developers have run into the same problem over and over again: How do we explain our game without boring the player to death? Nobody wants to read a manual on how to play your game and nobody wants to play a 30 minute tutorial. A good game should be able to teach you how to play the game naturally in a fun and engaging way. This idea of how you teach the mechanics of your game is called conveyance and it’s a big part of what separates a mediocre game from a good one!

For many years game developers have been hiding Easter eggs throughout their games. Anything from a small note with the programmer’s name on it, to full on playable mini games could be hidden away within the game. Fans of gaming love Easter eggs. It gives them fun hidden bits of content to look for as well as being a cool little method for developers to leave messages for fans. This concept of hidden messages and secrets has almost always been around, even from the earliest games.

This blog is sadly the last post in my zombie apocalypse experience series because of my recent changes. Unfortunately, I have been infected and now roam around campus, infecting the remaining humans. I put up a heroic fight until the end, but it seems patient zero had his eyes on me and really wanted to infect me.

Welcome back to the Zombie Apocalypse! It’s day two of my experiences surviving this war. You won't believe the things I had to endure toda! 

Here at University of Advancing Technology, we have an exciting event called Humans Vs Zombies, or HVZ for short. HVZ is a week-long event dedicated to experiencing what it would be like to try and survive the zombie apocalypse, just like the video games! Hearing about this event was one of the really cool factors that made me love this school! This event is fun and different from your typical university.

Everyone has a memory that they have held on to. These memories can range from your favorite dog to childhood experiences that meant something to you. These things play a large part in how we make choices, solve problems and interact with people, whether we are aware of it or not. Things like your siblings bothering you about a specific action can sometimes be something that you will notice for your entire life. The real meat of the idea begs the question: Are those memories real? Do they belong to you? How and why do we remember them?

“The only thing a person can ever really do is keep moving forward. Take that big leap forward without hesitation, without once looking back. Simply forget the past and forge toward the future.” – Alyson Noel

It was a day that I will never forget. I had been preparing for a week, having cleared my drawer of all of my clothes and determining what toiletries I would need to pack into my bag. The time had come; it was time for me leave my small childhood home and start my long journey as a college student.

Competitive gaming has been growing massively in recent years. eSports are becoming very popular among the younger generations. With new competitive games coming out every year, the old ones tend to slowly die off. With games that never hit the mainstream eSports scene, that death happens even faster. One game, however, stands out to me. Released nearly 20 years ago, Age of Empires II has earned its status in the gaming community as not only one of the greatest games of all time, but one of the precursors to modern eSports.

Character creation is one of my favorite parts about writing for a TV series. You get to start with the basics of creation: choosing the persona. You can choose anywhere from a dark and mysterious kind of character all the way to a sweet and oblivious one. Personas also blend together with your plot and setting to propel the story. Good character development is what really moves a story along and makes a TV series enjoyable and memorable. If your characters don’t have an interesting persona, then no emotional connection will be made and the viewers will lose interest and eventually stop watching your show.

Designing video games can be a difficult challenge. You may need to plan out exactly what the player will do while figuring out how to challenge them and keep them interested. You’ll need to design puzzles, enemies or other obstacles to keep the game fresh. Some designers spend hours just ensuring that the enemies will behave in the expected way to provide a consistent player experience. All of this time and effort results in a game where every aspect feels very intentionally planned out and meticulously designed, which can be a very good thing. But what if you could just let your game design itself? Rather than design every single thing in your game, let the systems take over and play themselves, making way for emergent gameplay.