The second talk of the day that I had a chance to witness was Paul Barnett's talk on his time as a creative director for EA, entitled 'When a Creative Director Attacks! or What I Learned this Year with EA!'. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the talk, it was hugely enjoyable and anyone I spoke to about it agreed as well. It was a little confusing at times being a very fast paced speech, going off on tangents and finishing some explanations minutes after first mentioning them, but it still flowed evenly.

The useful pieces that I plucked from his talk however were that, ideas can still be exciting even if they're mundane tasks, this can be from carrying it out for the first time and being exhilarated from the fact of performing the task, or renewing a forgotten pleasure. It's how creative directors must think, as once a task has been carried out, once it's repeated it won't have the same impact upon a person. An example given of this is when you have someone see an iPhone for the first time and they become fascinated by scrolling back and forth on the menu, where as someone who has owned one for a while would find it idiotic to be so entranced by this. A creative director must make sure to stray away from this at all times, otherwise they will never be able to envision fresh ideas.

A large proportion of the talk was on how you're defined by your culture, I could relate to Paul as I seemed to have the same childhood as he did (just of course more recent than his), being raised with games. He was referring to it as our ‘Golden Age’; some may have theirs at other times with greater influence from other forms of media. After talking about how much these "Golden Ages" mean to us, we were then told to completely ignore them. As being a creative director that allows their history to get in the way will not work well with other employees. It stops workflows, everyone has a different history and will not understand everything that you may talk about. This can then cause arguments and will not help the development of games. His blunt way of putting it was that nobody cares about your history, so don't bring it into your work.

We were then told that every manager/director is either going to be a Captain Kirk, or a Captain Picard when it comes to working. Which is a little of a weird way to put it, but I felt that people may have the chance to be both at times, depending on the decisions being made.

The talk went onto what he feels is disrupting games at the moment, those things being the Nintendo Wii; allowing anyone to get into playing games, which then changes demographics. The market is currently disruptive, by now having free to play games, and the use of micro transactions, there now no longer being just simple buying when it comes to purchasing or playing games. Then of course the internet doesn't help things, from the elements of a disruptive market coming into play along with the use of torrenting.

Even though it was one of the less informative in a way it had to have been my favourite talk from the conference, just from the amount of energy and enthusiasm Paul expressed.

Jenova Chen co-founder of thatgamecompany, best known for Flow and Flower attended Develop and had one of the first talks of the Wednesday. I did actually miss the first five or so minutes of his talk, but from what I walked in on I was entranced straight away. When people discuss entertainment and our opinions we use feelings to express our thoughts. In order to consider games as a form of entertainment people must talk about them in the same way as film. Although when receiving this feedback on a video game it is usually based on technical aspects of the game, feelings don't even usually come into the equation.

Most people will usually think something such as combining genres to make hybrids will make a game innovative, make them stand out above the rest, where as this is not usually the case. Jenova hopes in the future to see a much wider mix of feelings integrated into games, as these types of feelings and emotions haven’t really been addressed as much as they could have. It's hard to find a game that will encourage the player to become emotionally attached to the characters, story or game while having a suitable gameplay experience.

Jenova recommended reading The Visual Story written by Bruce Block, from reading his work he then applied it to games by creating a visual bucket that combines graphics, story, sound and gameplay. Jenova feels in order to have an overall satisfying experience from a game, the levels in the bucket need to be fairly even, and not be missing out too much on some of the factors. As most games will usually focus on one key element such as graphics or gameplay, which will then make a game less attractive.

For example Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Shadow of the Colossus and Bioshock are games that Jenova feels portray a certain quality of life, as many games do not and just exist for a play experience. He does also recommend however playing Passage by Jason Rohrer, which attempts to portray certain feelings.

A lot of what he spoke of in relation to creating Flower can be downloaded off the Playstation Network in the form of a development diary, but there were a few points that I had not heard before, for example before Flower was designed Jenova wished to create a game based around nature, in order to do this he wanted to know what the most popular thoughts were when talking on nature. Through searching on flickr for nature and flowers were the third highest tag at the time, leading him to choose them.

With Flower he wished to create a peaceful harmony inside the game, this is why he had decided against enemies or a chance of death. He feels that NiGHTS was close to creating this experience, but wasn’t quite there. With the flying element it accomplishes this feeling, but from having a small limit on time and enemies that attack you, it destroys this harmony which you gain from flying around. Flower went through many different iterations when deciding on the gameplay, from playing as the Sun and making flowers grow, to throwing seeds in the ground and making them grow up from the soil. There were a lot of silly versions of Flower which they had considered, and I must say I'm very happy they kept with the core concept that Flower can now be seen with.

Currently working on an unannounced title he commented on the fact that, from creating games that work with feelings it means that the game is all about the experience. In order to create the exact experience required, the technology needed will have to be as new as possible as creating feelings for a player is not an easy task, which can then of course make it harder when developing the game using new tools all the time.

Recently on the Women in Games (WiG) blog, Emma Westecott wrote up a post about needing a student blogger for two events, I'd say I jumped at the chance of it, although I had forgotten until last minute before the deadline to actually send my email I had composed. All because I'd been super busy with moving house the same weekend.

So I rushed to McDonalds to use their free Wi-Fi (pretty much the only place in Aldershot with free Wi-Fi), as I'm currently without the internet.

A couple of days later I heard back from Emma telling me I'd been chosen, which I'm ecstatic and completely blown away by, I never would have thought I would be picked for it, but then I don't really know how many people tried to get the little job.

Either way it now means that I get to go to Develop and DiGRA, which I am very happy about, as I originally intended on buying myself a ticket for Develop, and without much money at the moment it may have made living a problem and DiGRA I could have only afforded once I had a job.

So keep an eye on the WiG blog as hopefully there shall be some posts up by me soon.

Huge thanks though to everyone that had to do with me being picked as well.

So it’s finally come to the end of my three years at University and I happily have come out with a nice first like I posted about before. Now my life begins, I’ve moved to Aldershot, Hampshire, as opposed to going back to Chelmsford, Essex, as I felt I would be less productive if I lived at home.

So why Aldershot I hear you ask?

Well it’s not as expensive as Guildford, Surrey (a key place in the games industry, plus close to London and home) but it’s just down the road, and close to London, along with everywhere else that Guildford is close to, just add or subtract around 20-30 minutes on top of travel time when going in certain directions.

I will honestly miss Newport, but there was no real reason to stay in Wales, so I had to leave. Unpacking is almost complete give it another day maybe to get everything nice and neat and tidy. I also need to finish work on Void, send out more CVs and get my business cards designed, coloured and printed all before Develop, which should be interesting.

Well it's finally happened, three years have passed and I have now finished University, (I don't actually get my official degree until September though).

I passed with a first which I am extremely happy about, I guess my hard work paid off in the end, I wish I has pushed myself a little harder at times, but I now know how well I can work thanks to Void.

Void is getting close to completetion which is great, got a couple more games lined up to be doing once Void is out the way. Which will be done alongside applying to games industry jobs.

I shall post up my CV on here soon, and it'll be on my website too.

Other than that congratulations to everyone in my year of Computer Games Design for their grades, and everyone else at Newport, I'm sure I'm really going to miss Newport, made a lot of friends here.

Onwards to Aldershot.