kinesis916 Environmental Design in Computer Games blog

kinesis916

Ryan joined Dec 20, 2005

I like games. Kind of obvious since I am here. I am currently studying for a Degree in Computer Games Design. I hope to get a job in the games industry in the future, where I hope to move into the field of characters modeling. But at the moment I still have many options open to me. I am working on a character called Gerald the Alien, to be used in my end of year animation which is an advert for the university. There are a few pictures of him in my profile, aswell as some from work I did last year. You will also find a bunch of my animations that I have made in the video section. I have many other interests, though many would say they were rather geeky not that I care. Geeks are the cool thing of the now. Or so I am led to believe from TV.

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Posted by kinesis916 on Mar 10th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

I have just had to write an essay on said topic. And there was so much that I found that was really interesting in the research that I did.

It really amazed me at how much a games environment can affect the player. The colour and the lighting can immensly affect a players state of mind. Like reds can bring on emotions that range from good feelings like warmth and comfort, but also feelings like anger and hostility. Sound aswell has a great affect on the player when used in conjunction with lighitng and colour. Finally it also makes sense that if the colours and sounds affect the player then the geometry of the space that they are in also affects the player.

I think the best example to use would be pretty much any horror game. They all seem to tend to incorporate rather claustraphobic spaces, made all the more small by dark colours from the red end of the spectrum. The loud/sudden sounds work to increase the scare factor on the player, awsell as the errie music that plays quietly. You can just imagine how much less scared you would be if everything was coloured and lighted in whites and colours from the blue end of the light spectrum. And there were no loud or sudden sounds.

I hope to post up my essay if possible, but I need the feedback on how well I did first. But I still thought it was interesting enough to post up a flavour.