My New Year's Resolution aka How I Plan to Move Forward in My Video Game Career

As you can probably guess, that me sitting in my makeshift studio office.

With the latest Christmas festivities behind and the first day of the new year upon us, most people would treat it like any other day by either going about their daily lives or just lazing around. Others would take the opportunity to reflect on the past year and set up new goals and resolutions as to what to do for the new year until the beginning of the next one. I myself am part of the latter, the resolution being to have a career in video game development and design. For 4 long years, I've been making these resolutions only to have some of my goals partially met and others having not been met at all. A majority of my attempts to meet my goals have been met with stagnation, procrastination, distractions, mental blocks, oversleeping, and numerous incidents of needless pacing, overflowing anxiety, and passive clicking on the Internet. The overall result of these setbacks has been the lack of progress and not much materials to add to my portfolio. Rather than wasting more of my time pounding a square peg into a round hole, I've spent a considerable amount of 2019 reminding myself of these setbacks, reflecting on what I've been doing wrong, collecting and absorbing new sources of inspiration for my video game ideas, keeping on top of what's going on in the video game industry via the Internet, planning new approaches to productivity, and thinking up ways I could discipline myself.

Announcement: Upcoming Changes to Cyberjack

Due to various circumstances, changes are going to be made as to what posts will be written on Cyberjack. As I continue to prepare for a career in game development in addition to other things, my commitment to blogging has diminished over the years. Recently, I have started writing posts for IndieWatch.net, a website that seeks to connect independent (aka indie) game developers and gamers by gaming culture. As of this writing, I currently have two articles posted on the site: one that covers how possessing a college degree would not necessarily lead to a job in the video game industry and one that discusses ways in which to manage the stress of a college senior game project. Given that my writing tends to be one of my greatest strengths, I have been recently making plans to write more posts related to game development for the site as well as sponsored posts as a means of generating income. As part of those developing plans, I had thoughts about taking Cyberjack in a new direction without abandoning its roots, which is my passion for video games. But rather than merely sharing that passion by posting about random video game related topics as I had done in the past, I'm considering using Cyberjack as a way to connect with the gaming community at large and also to bridge gaps between that community and the society outside of it. To that end, the following key points illustrate the new direction I have in mind for Cyberjack:

Paying to Win, Progress, and Level Up: The Road to Industry Suicide?

From top left to bottom right: Candy Crush Saga, Farmville, Dungeon Keeper Mobile, Call of Duty: WWII, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and NBA 2K18. These games contain in-game currency that allows players to purchase extra lives, faster progression, and increased chances of getting desired items via randomized loot boxes.

In an age long since past, video games were an avenue of pure adventurous escapism in the eyes of those sitting on the floor or couch across from the TV in their living rooms or bedrooms with a controller in hand, being close to their computers with their fingers flying across the keyboard, or hanging around with friends at a local arcade. The moment we ran our PCs and consoles or insert our quarters into the arcade machines, gamers of my generation, myself included, were transported into various worlds uncovering treasures, slaying monsters, uncovering secrets, going through stories rivaling those of other media, feeling like badasses, and experiencing the thrill of getting a high score to show off our skills. These times were what we would call the Golden and Silver Ages of gaming. But since the latter half of the 7th generation video game era, we have entered what a lot of us would probably call the Dark Ages.

When A Video Game Reboot Goes Wrong

Ever since Pong arrived on the scene around four decades ago, there have been titles that stood out like a few golden needles in a massive stack of bland hay. This was possible by possessing unique, and sometimes original, features for such games, whether they involve gameplay, art style, or story. But as the years went by, such unique titles have been set aside as the video game industry moved on in technology and popularity; they are still remembered fondly by long-time gamers, sold in specialty stores, and sometimes re-released on anthology disks and in digital stores. Yet companies, often publishers, still search for ways to continue making money off of those titles. One fairly common way of doing so is by rebooting those titles. Reboots of this sort tend to be done by making considerable changes to gameplay mechanics, level design, graphics, art style, and storytelling while maintaining the core concepts of what made the original games special in the first place, reinvigorating them for both old fans and newcomers. While there have been success stories, there have also been many cases in which video game reboots went wrong, tarnishing the reputation of the franchises and, in the worst cases, destroyed the companies responsible for making them. As a more detailed description of this scenario, the following list contains of some the most infamous reboots in video game history, a good number of which have been mentioned in most top five or ten lists of the worst video game reboots around the Internet. It should also be noted that this list is not set in any particular order.

A Connecticut Town’s Plan on Collecting and Destroying Video Games: A Sign of Moral Panic

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on January 4, 2013)

Last night, I read a Gamespot article that briefly describes how community leaders at Southington, Connecticut are planning to have volunteers give away violent video games, CDs, and DVDs for destruction in exchange for “a gift certificate to a local restaurant, the Lake Compounce amusement park, or a bowling alley.” This is in the wake of last month’s shooting at the neighboring town of Newport that left 20 children and 6 adults dead. While they are not directly linking the games to the tragic incident, the organizers said that this is “suitable time for parents to engage their children in discussions about whether or not playing violent games is appropriate” when “there’s evidence that [they] cause increases in aggressiveness, fear, anxiety and desensitization about actions of violence.”

Scapegoating Video Games in the Wake of the Connecticut Shooting

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on December 21, 2012)

Yesterday, I read a Gamespot article about Senator Jay Rockefeller introducing a bill that would call the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study the violent effects of video games on children, an area in which numerous studies have been done in the past that are either poorly designed or show no correlation between violent video games and aggression. This came in the wake of the recent shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which raises some serious questions. What does children’s exposure to video games, violent and otherwise, have to do with the actions done by the mentally unstable man responsible? Professional studies and works like Grand Theft Childhood by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson have consistently found no link to playing video games and psychological instability. Yet, there are still a few politicians pressing for more studies to find a link between the two, which I consider to be a waste of time and money.

Kung Fu Superstar: One of the Most Interesting Video Game Ideas of This Generation

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on July 5, 2012)

Tonight, I have read a Gamespot article interviewing Kostas Zarifis, a former employee of game company Lionhead Studios (known for its Fable franchise of role-playing games or RPGs), about Kung Fu Superstar, a motion-controlled video game being made for the Xbox 360 and its Kinect motion-controlled peripheral by his recently established independent company, Kinesthetic Games. The game would place players in the role of Danny Chang, a practicing martial artist who dreams of becoming a star in his own martial arts movies. Using the Kinect, players would increase Chang’s skills as well as learn real martial arts moves and skills in what Zarifis called ‘the ultimate RPG.’ Since I play video games and am currently studying karate, I would have to say that Kung Fu Superstar is one of the most interesting video game ideas of this generation. That’s not to say it will replace martial arts schools when it comes to studying martial arts .At the moment, there are no details as to how the Kinect motion-controls will function in the game and when it will be released. I will have to keep an eye out for new information on Kung Fu Superstar as news of the game develops.