The Frustrating Nature of Gaming in Social Media

Edited for Blogger

Before we begin: I am not a supporter of Anita or Zoe Quinn's opinions or works. Please do not label me under any groups of which I'm not actually associated with.

When somebody steps up to the plate and brings with them heavy ideas, they don't do so easily. Many of the personalities that we know, be they developers like Phil Fish or Bungie, reviewers/critics like TotalBiscuit, InternetAristocrat or Anita Sarkeesian or those who are projected into the spotlight in the middle of drama are not at the centre of attention just because they solely want attention. Each of them has something they want to offer. Game developers want to make games. Critics want to share their opinion and discuss any relevant problems. Let's Players wants to share their experiences and build a community with similarly minded individuals. Even though they feel a big like these giant pedestals, at the end of the day, they're still human.

Everyone has ideas, and everybody has opinions, all of which are different. This is part of being human. It is unavoidable. We will all have biases, and we will all have sensitive issues. I think that this is okay. If people didn't have conflicting opinions, then nobody would be able to identify the problems in society, and we'd never be as advanced as we are. Hell, video games probably wouldn't exist without conflict. This conflict that spawned video games, specifically its predecessor games (such as sports, board games, card games and the like) were mainly about war as well as having political and religious significance. Quite a lot of times, these games would end with bloodshed, but in these primitive societies, that was acceptable.

The majority of people who read this will likely come from the USA, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. These are first world societies. We are at the pinnacle of current technological evolution for our species, and we have moved away from the primitive behaviours of our ancestors in order for us all to cooperate and reach a greater level of scientific understanding, and a better class of life for our citizens. Clearly, with issues such as Ferguson, it is not perfect, but when you considering the Ebola epidemic, the potential invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the various battles taking place in the Middle East, we live in a majority of peace. Even thought people still murder, still steal and still commit other crimes, the majority of us can sleep peacefully and not have to worry about if we will survive the night.

Video Games are a first world invention. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the world does not have access to the technology that enables them to play video games. Therefore, we can argue that we are all somewhat privileged that we have the opportunity to partake in what may just well become the most revolutionary form of media the world has seen to date. The implications of games are staggering; it's not just a simple past time, but can be used a tool for education, rehabilitation, communication of social issues and so on, so forth. The video game is doing what school education has for the most part failed; giving children the ability to train up their skills and to become better members of a productive society. Even simplistic First Person Shooters offer simple lessons that can be valuable, such as reflexes, accuracy and hand-eye coordination. Some will argue that these are not as important in this day and age, but I believe that it is very dependant on what the specific individual wishes to do with their life. Regardless of which, despite their overwhelming nature, the most important things about games are that they, just like books and movies, are a past time, and cannot compensate or replace the real world that we live in. Games may enhance our experience of life, but if we allow them to control it, the effects on our health and society in general are telling.

So why is it, in a world where we can afford to sleep well, have clean water packaged in bottles and be readily available for purchase and be able to hold the entirely collective of human knowledge in the palm of our hands, ready at any point of the day, that we so easily and brutally resort to a more passive form of primitive violence over these devices of pleasure? Why, when the greatest thinkers of our time and before were able to peacefully and respectfully discuss and question life, that our potential great thinkers shot down brutally, treated as human landfill and celebrated once they are "removed"? It has taken me a great deal of time to think about this, and I'm not quite what I believe in any more, but hopefully I can come to some sort of conclusion.

You may dislike Anita Sarkeesian. You may feel that Zoe Quinn's actions are reprehensible. You may believe that Phil Fish's level of popularity is undeserved. You may disagree entirely with their opinions. That, in and of itself, is okay. As I said before, it is okay to have conflicting opinions. My first consideration, however, is that conflicting opinions need to exist, and need to challenge the status quo, if we as a society want to progress. As I said before, we wouldn't be here without conflict, and while previous civilisations may have relied on the spilling of blood, we as a more advanced form of human should rely on our power of words. Many of us do through the power of the Internet and social media. It is important that we are telling each other what we think is wrong and right, so we can work together to make informed judgements, and hopefully come to a peaceful conclusion that will successfully move us and our technology forward. Many of the most important revolutions, including that all important American revolution, were built on the conflicting ideologies of the people at the time, and regardless of whether they were the prevailing opinions, people rationalised and came to the conclusion they agreed with. Because of this, we shouldn't silence anybody who wants to challenge how our media works at the moment, but rather give them an open mic so that they can show us a perspective we may have never seen before, and consider if it can improve our society and the way we live.

All too many people believe that a conflicting opinion is dangerous. It plays into our human psychology; the flight or fight response. We are used to dangerous situations challenging us for our own survival. Unfortunately, many people in the heat of an argument cannot grasp the very different nature of fighting a sabre-tooth tiger and talking over the Internet. When people see a conflicting opinion, it is far too easy to think back over the negative things that have happened due to the opinions of people. In short, people are mostly afraid of change, This is how our brain works. Change defies our internal patterns. It means we must continue to update. We cannot rely on our grokked ideals which have kept us alive, but instead we must devote effort to practising and changing. That's hard, though, and our brains would rather avoid it. That's what many people are fighting against; they're worried that change will in some way affect the daily routine of their life that they have made optimal for themselves.

Unfortunately (moving back onto conflicting opinions), with so many conflicting opinions, it is only a matter of time before an individual feels as though they need to speak louder in order to be heard. It is not long before those who speak up begin to use more aggressive tactics, either to dissuade their perceived "enemy", or to rally support (Pathos, playing on the emotions of the people). The escalation continues, either as both sides remain in a standstill while building up more anger for each other, or more people join either side. It is not long before individuals will rely on personal attacks, a cheap tactic in any verbal argument. Whether it be questioning one's status in life, telling them bluntly to perform some ridiculous action ("kill yourself" etc) or just straight out threatening an individual, it is not long before further escalation occurs, and we see hacking, "swatting", and other criminal offences come into play. Why is this? Why do people allow themselves to become so build up over what is essentially a counter-opinion? More importantly, why doesn't this happen as often in the real world?

The one thing that the inventors of the computer never really learnt to program was empathy. It's very hard, too. Some people, such as psychopaths, don't feel it all or feel it in limited amounts (sociopaths). More importantly, though, it requires many elements. A personal connection, the ability to understand and have felt emotions, and usually the ability to see one's facial and body motions. These are all subtle cues, and in real life, these cues play into our subconscious, allowing us to reach out and act in some form of humbleness towards our peers. On the Internet, however, we are all psychopaths.

On the Internet, we have anonymity. We have an instant connection to the entire world. We have a blinking cursor prompting for input. We have no empathy. We have no understanding of what potential societal effects there will be for our actions. It is these elements, and more, that we label as "GIFT" (Greater Internet f****wad Theory). On the Internet, everything is aligned in such a way that you will not act as yourself. This is why and how many people can bring themselves to call upon death threats on individuals they've never met. This is why it's so psychologically easy to rationalise performing a hack on a major website database. On the Internet, you can't feel truly human.

So, is this the end? Must we just accept that people are going to be assholes, and move on with our lives?

You can't.

Despite those posting the messages not really caring, acting within the moment under the assumption their entire world is being threatened because you dared to bring an alternate opinion to the table, it can be nearly impossible to deal with the crushing impact of it all. If you read the conversations at the top, you now have a slight snippet of what certain individuals have had to deal with very recently for their opinions. The effects are far more reaching and devastating than just a few wasted bytes. TotalBiscuit has suffered many health issues due to the community. Anita Sarkeesian was forced to relocate. Phil Fish had to quit Video Games entirely. It doesn't matter what opinions they had; nobody deserves to suffer in the way they do, regardless of whether they are in the first world or in developing countries. It's even worse when you consider how much work can go into certain creations. I've yet to see anybody from the player or reviewer side successfully scratch the surface of how much effort it takes to build a game from scratch, as well as fit the superfluous credentials that "gamers" believe are necessary.

What should be obvious is that it's not the majority who have done this damage. It is a rather small, but very vocal proportion of people who engage in these arguments, and the unfortunate part is that they may well never understand or care about the impact of what their comments do, regardless of how perfect or generous they may be in real life. These people, as I discussed earlier, are convinced that if anything changes, only bad things can happen, and that they are somehow responsible for "saving video games".

I shall keep this ending rather brief, because by this point, most of you would have stopped reading and caring. If you love playing games, keep playing them, and vote with your wallet and time. Be respectful online, especially when voicing your opinions. Don't be a part of the loud, ignorant and disgusting force that believe they are entitled to control the future of video games, but also remember to let developers and critics know when you feel you disagree. Make sure you support your arguments with proper evidence and don't rely on any form of personal attacks. And at the end of the day, remember there's an entire world outside of games and the Internet to explore. You can make your own world just as good as the virtual worlds you've explored. Sometimes, it might be as hard as Dark Souls, but that's part of the fun.

Game Development & The Gamer Attitudes

Before we start: I'm not here to be an advocate of going outside and socialising, or doing research or blah blah blah. You do what you will with your own spare time. I can't force you into doing something you don't want to do.

I hate being informed. I hate seeing things in such a brilliant way. The reason I hate this knowledge so much is that nothing good has come of it yet; it makes me even more jealous of the people around me, and super critical of many others. It's not healthy, and it reflects poorly on myself. I'm not sure if there's anyway to right this.

I have no motivation to make some practice games because I lack the skills I need to make the games, which is the reason I lack the motivation in the first place. That's why I so easily slip into my imagination. I can see trailers for my game, interviews, concepts, art, stories...I can envision this entire massive thing, and yet I'm taking no steps forward to achieve it.

I know that down the track I'll straighten up, find the patience and motivation and make some semi-decent or better games, but right now I'm in this rut of simply distracting myself because it's too easy to just imagine fame and glory over try and achieve something greater; educate even a few people in some kind of meaningful way through video games. That said, even though I can't do it through video games at this very moment, maybe I can change somebody's opinion for the better right now.

---

There's been a conflict brewing in the background for sometime now. I'm not going to mention names, but it's basically regarding game design. There's these two opposing forces between design and programming. One side wants to make something more realistic and personal, the other side wants to make something massive, distant and related to LEGO.

Let's disregard skill. Let's disregard money, copyright, people, time and everything else, and let's focus on the key problem here. It's a problem that far too many developers have coming into the industry, and it's something that upsets me a lot.

As a player, we don't really see the game as a game. We know we're playing a game, but once we're inside, we start to blend into the experience. Even when the thing becomes a buggy piece of trash, we're never really thinking about all the hundreds of systems, the thousands of assets or the people that went into putting that experience in front of you. Instead, you take notice of specific sounds, of the graphics, of the story, of summary gameplay (not an intensive look into how gameplay works, just understanding what actions you need to perform to succeed in a certain challenge). Just as you don't need to be a chef to eat a meal, you don't need to be a designer to play a game.

That's not a problem. The problem starts when long-time gamers, those brought up in and through games, feel they are so confident with what makes the games they enjoy work, that they can pull off the same.

They won't.

The problem isn't the scope. It's not the lack of training. It's the fact that instead of trying to build an understanding of why they like the games they like and why they're successful, they simply start ripping elements from these games and sticking them together. See, a human mind is made up of the various connections of patterns it learns through life. The problem with gamers is that they spend so much time in these virtual worlds, that they ultimately end up with the same patterns as everybody else because there's little variety. They changes they make in order to claim their game is "new" are minimal at best, because they themselves don't understand how or why you can/should change the game in a meaningful way.

So many gamers will say "Oh, my story is unique!" or "Oh, X feature has never been done before!", not realising that these are just surface level modifications, that only serve to create the background noise that allow original titles to stand up in front of.

I like to think all of the best designers daydream. It's said that lazy people are the smartest, since because they don't do much, they don't take in many new patterns, which means they spend a lot of time connecting patterns in new and obscure ways. It's a very healthy, important process to imagine. Unfortunately, sometimes we become too attached.

See, it's not just that these gamers essentially reuse the same ideas passed onto us by their limited libraries. The more they think about something and start to see it shape, the more they feel it's possible, regardless of all the "minor" details. They can see the finished product. How hard is it to achieve, right? They obsess over these ideas, and to them they there can be now flaws because it works inside their head. And because our head is a safe playground to experiment, the ideas become more bloated and infeasible. But you can't tell them that, because the idea is perfect.

"An empty mind is a Devil's workshop."

---

To me, the lack of skill, a team, money, time, scope or other feasibility problems are no longer the true issue plaguing places like Kickstarter. A gamers' worst enemy is him/herself. So wrapped in experiences, many forget that what they set-out to achieve is essentially what they're playing, minus their name in the credits.

I know exactly what it's like to be that stubborn. Because of it, I can tell a good story from a bad story in a heartbeat, and the exact same can be said for a game design. Real game designers aren't just players making "cool s***" to impress a lot of people and make fat stacks of cash. They're making games because those games mean something to them. They're making games because they want to try and bring people an experience they've never had before, least of all the person creating it.

The true beauty of game design is in the fact that it itself is a game. Why bother playing a game you already know the answer to, aside from to get some shallow feeling of achievement?

Video Games Are...

Edited for Blogger 

Before we start this, I want to both apologise in advance (in case I get any information wrong) and credit Raph Koster. The discussion of patterns was based on his research presented in the book A Theory of Fun.

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Before we can discuss what a game is, we must learn about some basic human psychology.



What do you see here?

The likely answer is either a face or an electrical socket, depending on where you live (we'll hopefully discuss schemas and links in a moment). I find it quite intriguing that mind can convert 3 tiny lines on a computer monitor, and make it look as though they represent something else.

The simplest explanation of this is a single word. "Patterns".

Human life LOVES patterns. One could say our entire existence is based around patterns. Our ancient ancestors developed our pattern-seeking brains as a defence mechanism for a number of reasons; one such reason might be survivability through adaptation. Let's imagine there was a trap lying about that killed many of the other people around us, but somehow we learnt how to detect this trap by learning what components made up the trap and storing them in our memory. Suddenly, we could avoid said trap in the future so long as we look for those components we already know about. That's quite ingenious.

Alas, trap-evasion isn't the only reason why we developed pattern-recognition.

Humans are lazy. And I don't mean the whole "not getting out of bed in the morning" lazy. Our brain hates doing work. We call this the pleasure principle, one of the driving theories of Freudian psychology. Basically speaking, the pleasure principle states that:

Human life continues to seek pleasure while avoiding pain in order to satisfy the biological and psychological needs of the Id. Maturity occurs once the brain is willing to endure pain when reality requires it (known as the "reality principle", controlled by the Superego).

And essentially, doing work is a type of pain. See, pain isn't all physical. Physical pain is just nerves responding to stimuli and reacting as a kind of "alert" to the brain that something is probably going wrong. Mental pain doesn't have the same response system. Instead, we have something called "boredom".

You ever been bored during a maths class or while doing some chore? How about hearing someone saying they're ready for a "sea-change"? Boredom is another defence mechanism. See, the brain hates it whenever you're doing unnecessary activity, as I said above (I added the "unnecessary" keyword for reasons we'll see soon). Boredom occurs whenever our brain feels we're performing some action and one of the following conditions is true:

• The brain feels it has completely learned everything it needs to about the above activity, and that the activity can offer no possible benefit, so therefore you're just wasting time (A pattern is too easy to grasp)
• The brain feels it has no possible chance of ever grasping the current activity, so it just quits out of sheer frustration (A pattern is too hard to grasp)

Notice how I mentioned patterns? Because patterns play very heavily into this.

Patterns are how we avoid excess work. For the brain, a pattern is essentially just a string of knowledge associated with something. Facial recognition, passwords, locations, playing video games...these are all comprised of patterns. The brain wants to try and conquer these patterns...so that it doesn't ever have to learn them again.

I'm quite serious. I do recognise the irony. The brain is doing extra work to avoid work.

The brain will try to devour just about any pattern you try throw at it. Provided the brain hasn't already learned a pattern before and grokked it (we're getting there) or it decided the pattern is too hard to learn, the brain will get to work. If it involves physical labour, it refines and enhances your body's movements to better perform the actions. It learns the connotations and links associated with patterns. This is where your history and personal understanding of the world becomes important. The brain is constantly storing information for these patterns, and it's constantly linking information together. How you interpret an object is entirely based off everything you've learnt before. This is both good, because it saves you time relearning information, it can be disastrous if you've learnt something "wrong", since every judgement that relies on that information suddenly becomes wrong as well.

The brain keeps learning. It keeps storing. It gets better and better at this information. You study for your maths tests. You keep retrying every time you die in a video game. You keep missing the bus over and over again until you memorise the timetable. You keep pushing yourself to play the correct notes on the guitar. You get the idea. The brain becomes obsessed with a pattern as it strives to learn everything about it. Once it has, then it enters a process called "grokking". This is when it finally has learnt just about everything with a pattern, and stores it in a permanent memory bank. You are now a professional. At this point, you'll continue to use a pattern until the brain feels you're gaining no benefit from using the pattern, at which point you will enter boredom.

There's a slight situation here, however. How exactly is the brain going to get us to learn what it thinks is useful and stay away from what it thinks is "boring"? Well, the brain has a little reward/punishment scheme it has set up. Whenever you finally start to understand a pattern, the brain decides to reward you for the hard work it takes. It gives us a little boost of endorphins, which cause the feeling of "happiness". Happiness really is the optimal state of pleasure, and so we continually seek it out. The punishment for boring activities? It's nothing significantly disastrous, but the brain will begin to wonder and find other things to do. It will start to worry about other problems, such as things you need to deal with in the future. Did you forget to check your Facebook notifications?

This is why meditation is so successful and so important. It increases the range of patterns we can learn through building our focus. People like me who are very jumpy and distracted are "highly optimised"; finding most patterns useless since we've found an "optimal pleasure state" that's easy to achieve, and as such our brain finds problems for us to solve that may cause pain to us down the road.

The last thing to make note of is that the brain only has a limited space for which to store information, as unfortunate as it is. Therefore, it can't keep all patterns or information without removing something else that's less relevant. That's why we feel as though we have to relearn things after spending a lot time not doing them. Our brain removes "obsolete" patterns in order to make room for more relevant ones.


TL;DR Edition: "A game is an engaging experience of the human condition in an abstract state that involves and develops any interacting parties."

Let's break this bad boy down.

A Game is...

As I've said in another topic, the objective and subjective properties of any game are as follows:

Objective:

• Goal/Objectives
• Challenges to overcome
• Rules
• Boundaries
• Engagement

Subjective:

• Visual
• Audio
• Player Input
• World Output

We'll see many of these come up shortly. For now, just assume that every game requires the objective, and may or may not provide the subjective.

...an engaging experience...

You might be wondering why I bothered with that massive patterns lesson up above. There's a reason.

We discussed boredom. Boredom is when you are actively disinterested in a subject. It's also possible to be passively disinterested in a subject. You might be watching a movie, but not paying attention to the plot or the characters, just instead kind of listening to the sounds and seeing colours on the screen. You're sort of there, but at the same time sort of not.

Engagement is when you're physically, emotionally and mentally connected to an activity. You've devoted almost your entire focus to this activity and nothing else is taking up your attention. Engagement is a state in which you are learning and perfecting digestible patterns. So long as you are constantly engaged, you are engaging in cognitive flow. Flow is the state of uninterrupted engagement. You're playing a game which is giving you patterns that you enjoy solving and discovering. Engagement means you're having fun.

This fun only happens because you are playing with patterns. If those patterns didn't exist, you would become bored, and disengage with the game, and therefore the game would have no point existing because nobody would want to play it.

One thing to remember is that there needs to be some form of motivation. This is discussed in my game lesson topic elsewhere on the site, but essentially, we need to give a reason for our brain to care, which causes it to be engaged. Goals are one form of motivation, but there can be many others.

...of the human condition in an abstract state...

Games can't be representative of something completely foreign to us. I can't even provide example because I simply don't know what I've never known before. That's kind of the point, though. We won't learn a pattern if we don't have some connection to it. There needs to be some ground level for us to start at that we can build from there. That's why we don't teach 2 year olds rocket physics.

Games always deal with some kind of element of human nature, and that's important. We need to have a personal connection with our character (or however we interact with the game) in order for us to be both motivated enough to try play the game in the first place (refer to Experience Loops in my game lesson topic) and to assist with pattern learning. Seeing human nature in games like CoD and Mass Effect are easy, because you're dealing with human characters who are trying to survive (survival is a very big part of the human condition, although less now than it was hundreds of years ago). In games like Tetris and Pong, we're still dealing with human properties; stacking is an important activity we learn while we're young and use regularly, and Pong is all about speed and accuracy.

You might be wondering about the "abstract state" bit, however. Here's the thing about games; the consequences in games don't have any significant impact in our lives, outside of the lessons we learn and the health impacts if you sit and play for too long, ignoring your human self. If we present gamers with a hyper-realistic environment we are presented with a number of problems, such as gamers losing sensitivity with real world problems, but we also begin to sacrifice attempting to make fun patterns for gamers to grasp over realism.

We need to make our games fun and engaging before they can apply to real principles, which is why some of the best games in the world (Minecraft, Bioshock, Bastion, Halo, Dark Souls) all look and feel very different. The best way is to make the visual, audio and story styles unique, with just enough connection to the real world so that players will be tempted to delve deeper and discover these patterns.

... that involves and develops any interacting parties.

Here's the key thing that games need to do, which we've already discussed over and over again.

Games need to teach. They teach through patterns. As we learn and practice these patterns, we get better and better, and we are able to overcome the challenges that the game presents.

Here's something I want you to consider, however; challenges aren't always "physical". It's not always some enemy you need to click, some blocks you need to remove or a door you need to open. A challenge can be anything. Interpreting the visual world around you. Understanding the story and discovering the motivations of a character. Learning when to click the "Skip" button in buggy game with cutscenes in order to make some weird glitch happen. Completing a campaign level faster than any player on earth. Challenges can be player motivated, implied and/or instructed.

A good game provides players with appropriate challenge that allows for personal interpretation. If you give your player a single answer to a puzzle, you're not giving them the room for them to test out their patterns and try solve it in a way they see fit. This could lead to them becoming bored, as they can't find solutions which match the patterns stored in their head. Moreover, it's disrespectful to assume that the game is property solely of the designer, and that the end player should not be allowed to have fun within something they purchase for the purpose of having fun. The best way to teach players is to provide them with methods for which they can find their own answers, not the other way around.

Another consideration to be made is the idea of "develop". Development within a game can be massive or minute. It can be as small as being able to make more accurate movements of thumb when aiming a sniper rifle, or it could be as big as suddenly understanding Objectivism and all its inherit flaws. The important thing about games is that they teach.

The reason? How do you think kids learn? They explore their world through play. Kids learn how to walk, talk, and interact with objects. They continually attempt to push boundaries to see how objects function, but also what they can and can't get away with. This is the exact same mindset that players bring when the try out a game. Door won't open? Bash it open with a wrench. Play and Games go hand-in-hand, and since play is all about teaching children about the world, games should be the exact same for more mature audiences.

How would I fix The LEGO Movie Videogame?

As a studying game developer, this kind of challenge is important, and I'm glad somebody asked me to do it. Being able to identify weak areas and have solutions to try resolve the issues is important. Therefore, let me make a few suggestions that I think would improve the game, and maybe even turn it into a classic.

• Completely overhaul the gameplay and make it unique: What separates the old school classics from the TT Games? Why do we find more enjoyment in the older titles? Because the gameplay wasn't completely focused on the well-trodden, bland and boring combat mechanics. In LEGOLAND, what do you do? Place buildings, manage resources and swear at the inspector. What do you in the TT Games? Smash bricks and...smash other bricks. There's minor variations, but ultimately it all comes down to destruction. What the game needs is a complete rehash to focus on the construction and exploration mechanics. I mean, YOU'RE PLAYING WITH LEGO! I would definitely focus a lot of development time on nailing some brand new, fun and interesting mechanics that are a lot more emergent and encourage players to experiment and be who they want to be, not who the game designers want them to be.
• Make the only links to the movie as the locations: If I had my crazy ways, I would be doing what Jamesster suggested, which is to explore the various areas present in the movie. What I wouldn't do is make you stick with the already established characters. You're in a whole interactive LEGO world! You should be able to be yourself, and project the character you want to be onto the characters in front of you. Which leads me to...
• Build an entirely new story that supports the movie, not copies and ruins it: The story should change so that this is a LEGO world in another boy/girl's basement, with similarly controlling parents, but focusing on different aspects of what it means to be "special". There has to be an alternative conflict to order/chaos that applies to LEGO than can be explored, and if not, the same conflict can be interpreted in different ways. What if this story was about two kids who kept ruining each others sets because they both felt they were playing "the right way"?
• Make the gameplay challenges teach the player, not hints: The gameplay should naturally teach the player what to do, not character dialogue or tooltips. The player should progressively learn new skills by simply interacting with the world, finding interesting combinations and applying those combinations of logic to other areas. It's okay if the game gives subtle hints, such as limited coin paths and glowing objects, but if it's too obvious, players won't learn for themselves, and they'll get bored easy.
• Remove as much screen clutter as possible: One big problem both origamiguy and I both had is that, at almost every point in the game, the screen is WAY too busy. By that, there's just so much activity, it can be highly distracting. it's a natural problem with LEGO due to the bright colours, and TT attempted to adjust this by making specific colour palettes for different levels, but they ruined this by throwing in a huge amount of objects, studs, particle effects and all other manner of distractions. You don't need to have a full screen to have fun.
• Make 5 amazing open world levels, as opposed to 15 terrible linear levels: Less is more. The quality of your product suffers when you focus on quantity. Based on the reviews of LEGO City Undercover, it's clear they can do open-world fairly okay, and so I feel as thought this would be a better path to travel.
• QA Test the hell out of the game: This is pretty self-explanatory. The gameplay is extremely buggy, and the graphics are also ruined by a significant amount of visual bugs. Obviously, they didn't care much about their QA team who probably worked extremely hard to try and convince the devs to bring the game upto playable state.

I'm sure there's more, but these are the main areas I'd address. As for budget and time constraints? Unfortunately, probably not feasible. What I'd be asking for is an insane amount of work.

My Character Flaws

Edited for Blogger

I've been really thinking about some of the other problems I've been facing within myself...and potential solutions.

So, I decided to put down some of my problems and potential solutions. This is kind of like rubberducking my own problems. I'm just here to jot down some thoughts, but feel free to do this for yourself. You might find really interesting and creative solutions to some of your core problems.

Problem: My ability to read and comprehend what I've read...has gone far downhill. To a point where I have a lot of trouble even reading summaries. I can no longer read books without getting lost on the first page. Sometimes I can't even decipher stuff I wrote.
Potential Cause: Increased use of social mediums which encourage faster response time, decrease in reading complex and thick material, lack of focus and attention, and lack of study in Advanced English.
Potential Solution: Start reading more books, and limit my social media usage. Whenever I read a book, keep a big thick notepad nearby, and stop every once in a while. Draw down characters, dialogue, diagrams of information, and start highlighting/noting parts of the book for further analysis.

Problem: My ability to draw has never existed, and despite gaining a little skill with it during Production Design, I've yet to really start taking any real form or order in my abilities. Even worse is how crucial it is to the creative industry in general, regardless of position.
Potential Cause: Never practising drawing in the first place.
Potential Solution: Start attending drawing classes, if possible. Spend more time a day doing very simple sketches, and observing the form, perspective and colour/shading of various objects in the world. Try communicate to people for an hour per day using only pictures I draw.

Problem: I never challenge myself in video games; it's either easy or nothing, and I'm unwilling to play games I feel are too hard without trying.
Potential Cause: Been given the choice of difficulty in Ratchet: Deadlocked/Gladiator, and from that point forward never really being bothered to try something potentially rewarding for my effort.
Potential Solution: Don't be a pussy. Play more games, and try more games on a minimum of "Medium" difficulty. Stop playing RPGs with cheats. Start to learn to use special techniques, such as stunning.

Problem: I cannot watch, listen or read an argument/theory by somebody who is correct and successful, and will actively go out of my way to avoid said argument/theory and even try to present it as wrong without giving any solid evidence whatsoever.
Potential Cause: High amounts of egotism (present in all game developers), fear of other people using the same ideas I had to lead them to success first, and a general unwillingness to be open about certain issues.
Potential Solution: Don't be an asshole. If it's breaks I need to take every 10 minutes, do so. Just do my best to listen to entire arguments/theories I may dislike, taking notes and constructively thinking of any praise and criticism I have at the end of it. Stop having assumptions.

Problem: Allowing specific individuals on Tumblr or other websites to make me angry for a variety of reasons, complaining about them but never taking steps of action to stop the anger happening.
Potential Cause: I love to act and play a character. Angry is a single character. Being given a motivation is one thing, actually finding one personally is another. It feels good to occasionally let the hate out, even though it's at the expense of others.
Potential Solution: Simply block the users or ignore them, and find other places to play the hater. There's more constructive and useful ways to profit on anger, especially since it's a powerful motivation that can be used to deal with...

Problem: Laziness.
Potential Cause: In Year 6, I started to drop my grades and lose interest in schooling. I picked right back up to A student in Year 7, but Year 8/9 somehow caused me to start to slip, and since then I've never been able to properly motivate myself to do anything, except at the very last minute, or if it's something I have interest in which is not relevant to what's actually important.
Potential Solution: ???

There's probably more, but for now, these are enough problems to work on.