. Spinning .

One of those little tidbits that bloom into necessary knowledge handed out at the New Media course was the navigability of a project.  Amazon.com was seen as a well planned out map that is user friendly (as well as sales-friendly for Amazon).

However…in starting my Christmas online shopping I ran across a constant source of aggravation on almost every website I visited.  Now it could be just me, and if you know a better way than I beg you to tell me, but in filling out the address form why, oh why, do we have to take our fingers off the keyboard to click open a menu for the state or country?

Am I just not a good shopper and haven’t discovered the secret of filling in this area yet?

Ah, some rather interesting weird thoughts this morning…

While the television medium has chosen to go big time into the reality of real people (insert: struggling in the jungles to survive; winning a recording contract; stabbing each other’s backs under the guidance of big brother; making fools of themselves to gain Trump’s respect), video gaming and movies for example have gone in the other direction; that of creating virtual people like the Sims, Shrek, etc. and plopping them into near-reality based virtual worlds.

This train of thought started the other day when some students of New Media were discussing their project topics and one mentioned robots–"peoplelike" computers, whereas my project focused on "computerlike" humans. 

Fascinating how the creators–the human minds–can take such varied paths, double back, cross and cross again into the environmental space of infinity.

Somehow I just don’t feel right adding a "Games" category here at Spinning, so I’ll record my journey to Silent Hill under New Media.  After all, it is considered such and especially so to me–a gameplayer not much beyond Freecell and Sliding Tiles.  (I have tried a few, but I’ve told you the story of "Zoo Tycoon" and my failure to feed the animals coupled with forgetting a few fences.  Oy, what a bloody fiasco that was!)

Del is packed and ready to trek to the shop with me today, bursting with secrets and story that I too am anxious to discover.  I shall, however, first make a larger version of the gameplay instructions as I will not have the benefit of Steve’s experience with the game to save me from that creature who attacked at the last Narratives meeting when we were introduced to Silent Hill 2.

Thank goodness for "Pause" keys; I may have to actually put some frame corners together or greet customers in between the action.

Whilst I was bitterly mumbling about working better by myself, I learned the benefits as well as the necessity of this procedure when working with New Media.  Especially in a more professional vein, as opposed to a classroom learning project, the value of teamwork is refined to a pattern perhaps that makes it a standard in the industry of any commercial ventures.  While the artistic nature and ego is usually what prempts the idea of allowing other fingers in the pie, once we enter the realm of serious works, it’s obvious that no one person can manage all the elements of narrative, writing, audio, graphics, acting, voice, direction, etc., etc., etc. and especially, in the area of technological production.

Just in perusing the instructions for Silent Hill 2 (yeah, I thought that might be best before I "kill" my characters) out of curiousity I checked out the credits at the end of the booklet. Video games are a good representation of new media and the credits ran to approximately 172 names.  Now some were duplicated by use of voice as well as other creative areas, but I counted some outside firms as one credit whereas I’m sure that the actual use was of another team from these groups.  Konami, the producer of Silent Hill 2 (found out that there’s sequels 3 and 4 available–oh my!) looks to be a huge group of creative talent, and they’ve designed games for gameboy (think I just bought one of them for the kids’ flight to Spain as a favor to my niece to keep them occupied!)  as well as the arcade industry and others.  (Note on the Konami website:  First time I’ve ever seen "Oceania" displayed on a global map that otherwise labels only America, Europe, Asia and Japan.)

So rush out joyously into the dreams, but don’t plan on going it alone.

Okay, so I’ve just had to add a couple more days to my time estimates for completing work for my customers.

Silent Hill II has just been loaded into the laptop (which of course, goes to work with me now) and in the interest of continuing education, will be studied and evaluated until I reach the goal (solve the puzzle!) in that research.

Ah, I’ve got about five weeks until the new semester starts (looking forward to History of Western Civ II, and especially to Creative Writing: Fiction) with only Christmas framing and some shopping to do, and loads of catching up on reading.

And, of course, my important foray into game-playing as further research into the new media field.

Very interesting point brought up by example today in New Media:  Consider your audience, test your work in progress, work with others; all brought to light by a showing of our group project in slide show format.

There were four narrative paths plus many hyperlinks in the project which I carefully mapped out.  There were plenty of audio .wav files which were readjusted at the last minute to allow for playing off of CD.  There was plenty I learned by the viewing today that showed how a certain blindness develops in the developer. 

One of the paths was never taken because the piece was difficult to navigate in the format of Powerpoint only because of my lack of knowledge in negotiating an easier way.  Whenever I played it through as I worked on it, it was easy and played out properly–because I was familiar with the structure.  Even being away from it for a month made me forget that structure–which means that for the first time I viewed it as a first-time user.  This was an excellent way of discovering the flaws in the flow.  A better way would have been to use a test audience. 

What I also learned was that every little piece of information that was gone over in the class had value–no matter how obvious.  While the project piece is considered finished, I do intend to work on those shortcomings because it will be a learning process towards future projects.  While it is still fresh in my mind, I have listed out the weak points, and their possible solutions.  This process is actually as much fun as the putting it together originally.  I like problem solving; I just needed to be made more aware of the problems.

As I said before, this class was an eye-opening experience in all facets of media, and life.

For any of you few who may have the interest in New Media and have been following my enthusiastic postings on the course, I suppose I could share the final project, which was based upon what we’ve learned and applying it to the possibilities the future of new media and technology holds.  It’s called, "Transitioning" (http://smgct.typepad.com/spinning/files/exercise_final.doc) and don’t feel badly if you’re just not into even bothering to check it out.  (You should know that it’s long–13 pages; that’s because I didn’t want to study stats, and just kept writing the paper instead.  Also why I didn’t do well on the stats final.)  But the course was an exciting discovery of a path that leads to a super highway of fun and opportunity.