Reflection on my Learning Outcomes

Reflective Essay

Now that I am at the end of this module, I can look back to the beginning compare my understanding and knowledge of the mobile gaming platform and the different elements that contribute to it to make it a success.

I understand now that mobile phones can actually have an influence on handheld gaming devices which were primarily created to play games. It is evident that the portable gaming device developers are attentive to what other devices have implemented, and whether it is something they can implement on to their own device to make it function better (e.g. iPhone’s influence on the PSP Go and Nintendo DSi).

I have also familiarised myself with the numerous mobile platforms that are available for gaming, each have their own drawbacks as well as their own benefits. It seems many of the developers used to previously target a very specific audience, something Nintendo have always managed to work around by supplying games for a wide range of audiences while keeping their base device either neutral or very colourful.

I think one of the most interesting parts of my research was looking at the historical perspective. By doing this I was able to immediately notice how developers seemed to continually reiterate their base designs while simply tweaking specific elements to make the functionality greater (this is especially evident in the Nintendo Gameboy series).

By working in Flash Lite, I have learnt to appreciate the functionality of Device Central. Due to the number of times I had to simulate my game in order to find out what the problem was, I was quite exhausted from simply running it through Device Central, the only other alternative would be to upload it to my phone and attempt it there. It was obviously a no brainer for me to ensure that which ever machine I was developing this game on had a functioning version of Device Central; doing otherwise would be akin to looking for a needle in a haystack.

During my personal study time, I was also able to put to practice my obtrusive and unobtrusive observational skills while presenting my work to random students. By doing this I understood much more clearly what the drawbacks of my design were and which aspects functioned well. I particularly liked this method as it was one which I had never thought of using, the results I collected were clearer and overall it was more efficient.

Apart from the skills I learnt specifically for mobile gaming, I have learnt other skills which I can easily adapt to use in other sectors. Lo-fi prototyping was a technique I was already familiar with as I use it to help with my compositional drawings, so that technique didn’t really contribute much towards my skill base. I believe the most important skill that I learnt was the observational skill. When creating illustrations for clients that require feedback from the viewers in various forms, I could trial it on the client using these new observational skills without them realising it in order to get a genuine feedback of how it will be received. And when I am half way through a project where I am unsure if my artefact will stir the correct combination of emotions, I could always run the unobtrusive observational test on a subject and read them to see where I went wrong.

I believe overall I uncovered a lot of influences in the mobile gaming sector which I could use for my own development, but due to the heavy restrictions on the aesthetics and game play I will have to only work on similar projects in my spare time. Regardless of this, I now have much more appreciation for mobile gaming devices. I used to believe before that due to it being smaller in size it should be much easier to develop, but due to it being smaller in size the developers will have to work harder in capturing the players’ minds.

My downloadable documents

My final game application - Hen House:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/l69dai


Design Portfolio:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/g9ycby


Presentation:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/zjwkkj


Video clip demonstrating the game features:


(Due to the quality of the recording, there will be some banding)

Here on out

From this point on, I am mainly going to be focusing on my project and checking to make sure all the functions are in order. I will also be working on my reflective essay and the multimedia presentation.