Muhammad Amirul Fikri bin Abdul Hafiz

About Me.

My name is Muhammad Amirul Fikri bin Abdul Hafiz. You can just call me Amirul or by my internet handle, "Alma" both works for me. I'm a computer science student studying for Artifical Intelligence. I took Game Design and subsequently Game Studies because I wanted to learn how to make a game and the process behind making one. I'm always at awe what game creators can do, so I want to experience it first hand. Fortunately, I was able to be the Game Designer and Story Writer for this assignment.

Reflections on the given exercise

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Exercise 1 – Personal Gaming History

For the first exercise we were tasked to present our personal gaming history. To be honest, I was incredibly excited about the prospect of presenting mine because I’ve started playing games ever since I was very young. When I was 5 – 9, my parents gifted me a PSP and then a PS2, one of the first few games I started with was GTA believe it or not. My parents let me play it for some reason, but I had loads of fun with it, the titles were Vice City, Liberty City and San Andreas in that order.

Then, one day my uncle came to my house with his big PC when I was 10, I witnessed him playing a game, at the time I didn’t know what the name of the game was, but he let me play it a bit. A year later, I got my first laptop, which was a hand-me-down, I was so excited but what I was more excited about was to try that game I played a year ago. Surprisingly, with my rudimentary description of the game, my uncle instantly understood which game I was talking about. The game is called Team Fortress 2, a Class Based FPS shooter where you get put into either two teams: RED or BLU. I instantly got hooked, I could be playing up to 16 hours a day on that game. Not to mention that it’s also how I got introduced to Steam, a game publisher and launcher that I still use till today to play games on.

I spent 5000+ hours in total on TF2, in the span of maybe…5 years I would say from when I was 11 – 15. Into my TF2 life, I found a server that I would frequent, I became quite close to the community, and I enjoyed spending my time with these people I met, they were very nice and despite me being quite a young age, I like to feel proud that I was one of the most skilled players on there. To this day I’m still very proud of it. Anyways, TF2 was very integral to who I came to be especially during my secondary days during Form 1 – 3. Since, on the internet I meet a lot of different people, I also meet people who are mean spirited, people who would put you down, call you names or whatever. During Form 1 – 3, I would be verbally bullied but thanks to my time online, their insults meant nothing to me as I’ve already faced worse, so I think I would be in a different position in life if it wasn’t for this game. I don’t play it anymore, but I still reminisce about the good times I had with it and my old friends that I do not keep in touch with anymore, part of me wants to experience that again as no game has ever made me feel that way ever again. It was a truly special and once in a lifetime experience that I don’t think I would ever get anymore and I’m grateful for that.

Alright, that’s enough about TF2, time to move on to present day, after quitting TF2 I moved to Overwatch as my friends was playing it, but I never got into it like I did with TF2. As such, I had low hours on overwatch, but I did enjoy my time playing it. I still play Overwatch with one of my friends nowadays for the fun of it.

This was also the time where I started branching out to play more games, before I only played TF2, now I broadened my horizons to different things, whether it was because I wanted to find a game that could make me feel what I felt in TF2 or they looked fun to play, it could be either one, I don’t remember anymore. I started playing World of Warships and GTAV on my PC, at this point in time, I got myself a desktop. Forgot to mention that, from when I was 11 – 13, I was actually playing on a MAC, which was terrible.

Unknowingly, at this time I got into a gacha game called Honkai Impact 3rd. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I had fun with it. Then a year later, one of the most important events of my gaming life and maybe life in general. A friend introduced me to a game called Azur Lane, a Gacha game. It was at this moment I formally learned what a Gacha game was as such despite playing HI3 first, I will always state that Azur Lane was my first gacha game.

Age 15 – 18, I started expanding even more, I played a game called Fate Extella/Link as I was interested in the Fate Series because I got into anime when I was 12, so by this time, I was completely engrossed in anime. I played Visual Novels like Date a Live Rio-Reincarnation, Grisaia no Kajitsu, Monster Girl Quest. I played JRPG, namely the one I mainly played, the Neptunia Series: HyperDimension Neptunia: Rebirth 1 to 3 and Megadimension Neptunia VII. Hack and Slash games like the aforementioned Fate/Extella Link and Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal. Turn based Strategy like Civilization VI. Open world, like GTAV:O, Satisfactory and Just Cause 3. Rhythm Games, like Osu and Muse Dash. FPS games like COD Zombies and Valorant. Most importantly my gacha games, in order of playing: Honkai Impact 3rd, Azur Lane, Fate/Grand Order, Arknights, Princess Connect Re:Dive, Genshin Impact and Blue Archive.

That was a long list of games but unfortunately none of them made me feel what I had felt when I played TF2. I have so many games yet, when I play them, I’m only excited from the time I play it and finish it then it’s over. Unlike my younger self, who can play 16 hours a day, I slowed down, I can only play probably around 5 hours a day now and that’s it. The sheer joy and excitement from playing games were dumb down but I still enjoy them and there are games I do enjoy playing just wouldn’t reach 5000+ hours like I did with TF2. My younger self knew how to have fun, had the adrenaline rush playing games that we all enjoyed. I still get that but not as much.

I will say though that, what my younger self lacked was the appreciation of games themselves, the art of games. What I love to do now is dive deep into the lore of games I play; I like to understand it. I love to understand why I feel how I feel when playing games. The atmosphere, soundtrack, gameplay, mechanics. I have learned to gain a fond sense of appreciation for how games were designed to be entertaining and that is something that I have grown to appreciate as I grow older.

That is all for my personal game history, it is something dear to my heart and means a lot to my life and has been one of the defining factors on how I came to be the person I am today. I will forever cherish the memories I hold and the feelings I felt when playing games, learning about them, having fun with them.

Link to my Personal Gaming History Slides:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jTdwvOmPN-uPxo6LRsPwIepz95a40stzexH6_bmM86k/edit#slide=id.p

Exercise 2 – Cultural Influences on Games

For my part I chose Genshin Impact’s Official Soundtracks. The reasoning behind it is simple, each region in Genshin Impact, which are currently Mondstadt, which took influence from Europe and mainly Germany having references to Oktoberfest and featuring a lot of alcohol. Liyue, which took influence from China. Inazuma, which took influence from Japan and the shogunate era. Sumeru, which took influence from India and the Middle East.

Each region within Genshin Impact always has a distinct soundtrack and leitmotif that you can pinpoint which region they belong to. Behind Mondstadt’s BGM, you can hear a lot of wind instruments the melodies taken inspiration from ancient Europe, it is the first region and where you meet the God of Anemo(Wind Element), Barbatos and explore Mondstadt which is their culture emphasizes heavily on freedom. As a result even the soundtracks feel free when you explore the region of Mondstadt while also in your ears you can feel where it got the culture from.

Next Region is Liyue, it is very noticeable that is took heavy influence from China especially its BGM as they use a kind of Chinese Violin, called an Erhu, the sound is very distinct, and it is one of the instruments most players pick up immediately. To me, it has become Liyue’s identity because it is one of the main instruments when it comes to Liyue, it is used a lot and whenever you hear it, it has that sweet feeling in your ears. Music is subjective and whenever I hear it, the first thing that pops into my mind is that “This is China”.

Then, the next region we go to is Inazuma, a nation influenced heavily by Japan’s Shogunate Era. The Soundtrack reflects that a lot, it has a sense of tranquility towards it but also a sense of duty like how the Shogunate era was run, very strict but also very elegant. Here in Inazuma, you can hear Japanese traditional instruments everywhere to name a few: Shakuhachi, Koto, Shamisen and Taiko Drums. Very distinctive instruments, very different from what people are used to nowadays, so it is easily recognizable, it’s not foreign because whenever you hear it, you can hear the essence of Japan within its soundtracks.

Finally, for now at least, we have Sumeru, a nation of two races, the Sumeru people which were based off India and the Desert people, which were based off the Middle East. It’s a bustling nation, full of people that want to gain wisdom and people who work hard. The soundtracks can range from mystical to hard working. I personally think that they pulled out all the stops for this region’s soundtrack because they used a whole fleet of traditional instruments from both India and the Middle East, so to name a few, they are: The Sitar, Oud, Tablas and Riqq.

So why does this matter? It’s simple in my eyes, it introduces players to different cultures using auditory simulation, a good soundtrack will always be remembered regardless of the state of the game. A person can enjoy soundtracks at any time without even needing to play the game, that’s the beauty of it. Once you hear it, you want more, to find similar. This can lead to players finding music from other cultures and becoming interested in them. At the time same for players whose cultures were integrated into the game, into the soundtrack, they would feel a sense of pride that there is now part of something, something people can discover and explore because this game is free, anyone can play it and it’s popular, so it exposes different cultures to many people and soundtrack is simple one of them that I’d like to highlight due to my appreciation on how the Hoyo-Mix team handled it. It is definitely handled with care to preserve the culture that the soundtrack is supposed to be based off and that does not sound easy to do. It is always a blast to listen to their soundtracks as it has been modernized but also keep its traditional flair towards it, making it more appealing to younger generations.

Exercise 3 – Games that were converted digitally (Among Us)

For this exercise, we decided to choose Among Us, when it comes to games that has been converted digitally with success is not my forte. As such, I’m a bit lost when it comes to feeling and analyzing this exercise. It’s quite a bit of a stretch to compare Among Us to Werewolf but I can see the similarities and how it would actually originate from Werewolf. Among Us is a fairly simple game, where you play either a crewmate or imposter, where the imposter must kill everyone, or the crewmates must figure out who is the Imposter. In that it deviates from Werewolf as werewolf has many classes you can play like detective, doctor, villager and such. It’s quite hard to say whether Among Us was a success or not but judging by its popularity, I guess we can say it was a success but like all games, eventually it died out of relevancy, though people still make memes about it to this day. There’s also an Among Us VR Game, that’s pretty exciting as well if you have a VR Headset.

The only reason why Among Us even blew up in the first place is because of certain popular streamers playing it one day and the people just loved that content seeing them argue or gaslight each other to win the game. It also got strengthened due to lockdowns around the world, making Among Us a good game to pass time with your friends and family as it is fairly simple to understand the mechanics behind the game as it is mostly a social game. However, after a year or two, the hype around it died down and that’s normal, no game stays at the top forever. There are content creators that still make the content of the game but it’s not as much as last time when it was at its peak.

It is alive, that’s for sure:

But it didn’t retain such a high number of players as it did during its peak.

In Conclusion, whether it was a success or not, depends on how you look at it, but I would say Among Us is a success when it comes to games being converted digitally.

Exercise 4 – Minecraft’s Transformation

Here are my details on this topic that was used for the video:

Minecraft was created by a swedish video game designer, Markus Persson, or as many have come to know him as “Notch”. Notch was inspired by the games Infiniminer, a sandbox game where you are given tools to build anything you want and Dwarf Fortress, a game where you control a colony of dwarfs to gather resources, build buildings and defend their colony from Monsters, which was the inspiration for Minecraft’s Survival mode.

Before Minecraft was even called Minecaft, it was simply called Cave Game, where the goal was that you would walk around collecting gems all while fighting off monsters. The monsters that we had back then were Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers, Slimes and Endermen, mobs that are still around till this day. The name was changed to minecraft just two months before its public release as they wanted it to reflect on the game’s main focus: Mining and Crafting.

At First Minecraft was not popular, in fact, it would not become popular until late 2012, where a well-known YouTuber, named Yogcast would post a video titled: “How to survive your first night” Introducing how to play Minecraft. YouTubers like Pewdiepie who started uploading Minecraft videos from 2010 also accelerated the growth of Minecraft. The popularity of minecraft would further skyrocket when the YouTube Algorithm would eventually start recommending Minecraft YouTube videos to almost everyone on the site.

Today Minecraft has grown to be one of the most loved games today and it still is. Despite being a game that is more than 10 years old, it still fits in the modern era unlike other games and still receiving constant updates. The Simplicity of Minecraft helped in many players still playing the game today as the sandbox aspect means that you can basically do anything.

The dialogue ends there.

Now onto the nitty gritty, my personal feelings, we picked Minecraft out of a list of games that had undergone transformation to name a few: Grand Theft Auto Series, Civilization series and Minecraft. We decided on Minecraft as it was the most well-known among our group members and it was the easiest to do. The essay above was written solely by me and all the research done was also done by me alone. As for my sources, it was through a lot of forums and YouTube videos on the backstory of Minecraft and how it came to be that allowed me to write a lot about it.

The whole Yogscast being one of the YouTubers that accelerated the popularity of Minecraft was a well-known fact. In fact, YouTube at the time was recommending Minecraft videos to more often than not due to how its algorithm ran back then since it mainly focused on quantity rather than quality and Minecraft YouTubers easily made 1 video per day, causing Minecraft to be the sort of “Meta” during those times. Minecraft’s relaxing gameplay, sandbox style or whatever you call it, allowed content creators to create a wide variety of content such as streamers streaming Hardcore mode, surviving for as long as possible, YouTubers like Pewdiepie and Yogscast doing normal survival mode or content like modded Minecraft, one of the popular YouTubers at the time doing such content was SkyDoesMinecraft.

The reason I know so much about this was that I was within the Minecraft sphere back when it was booming, back when it was at its peak like when I was 12 or something. I played with my friends Minecraft Hunger Games, Survival games or parkour run, whatever it was. Minecraft was “The Thing” back then, it was the cool thing, back when Herobrine was popular, random seeds claiming to contain Herobrine or some sort of ghastly entity. It’s these things that cause Minecraft go through such transformations.

Minecraft owing to its long history, has gone through a lot, not only from its development standpoint but also its community and all the drama circulating within it. Drama such as Notch (Markus Perrson) stepping down from Mojang, to Mojang selling Minecraft to Microsoft. Fun fact: This was actually one of the reasons why Minecraft started dying down, but it was not the biggest reason. Like all games, eventually the hype around it will die down. Minecraft YouTubers got into big dramas and stopped making content, they were tired of doing Minecraft Videos. YouTube itself fixing the algorithm to recommend more variety content that isn’t just Minecraft. These factors caused Minecraft to die down after 2013 – 2018 or somewhere around there, I’m spit balling.

Minecraft did not die, in fact it got “revived” during May of 2019, the simple reason was that Minecraft was holding its tenth anniversary and that was a feat that many people can appreciate and celebrate. After all, Minecraft came at a time when many were young, so it brought a sense of nostalgia and that helped when the popular YouTuber, Pewdiepie started a Minecraft survival series in honour of Minecraft’s tenth anniversary and to celebrate his own anniversary as one of his first videos were of Minecraft. That caused Minecraft to boom again, and many YouTubers started rising and making Minecraft content once again.

Honestly, it was a blast to talk about Minecraft as I really like it when games have history like this, it’s so interesting. You know you’re not alone, there are other people who feel the same way about something that you may or may not like. It makes the game feel alive and I think that’s one of the best transformations a game could go through. When your game and your community grow together, whether it be good or bad, it still gives it a sense of identity. That’s all I have for Exercise 4.

Exercise 5 – Superhot and VR Support

Finally, Exercise 5, the final one, about games that have VR support and are they here to stay. I know MR is included but I’m going to focus more on VR. Now, we picked Superhot simply because I insisted on it and that I owned it already, though I do not own SuperHot VR due to not having a VR Headset. I have played Superhot in VR though using my friend’s oculus, so I have experienced it before.

After experiencing VR headsets, I can say that they are an experience on their own, it feels so much more engaging and real except when you smack something in your room or in my case, my friend’s room, which is not fun, and it hurts. You get to move your entire body, sure you can’t run around like in Ready Player One or anything but it’s still a fun experience, especially for games like SuperHot where Time only moves when you move, dodging the bullets and enemies with your own body and punching them with your own hand instead of the usual mouse and keyboard is so much more entertaining and engaging. It really makes you feel immersed since you have more control than you would ever have with Mouse and Keyboard, though you can’t do like jumps and run around because you’re limited to the Space you’re in.

With that said however, I can conclude that VR and MR is definitely here to stay and when technology is constantly improving, that means VR headsets would be more optimised for things like playing games and eventually I feel like they could even combat the limited space people sometimes have. Developers will get better at making games that fit VR and would be more entertaining that could bring out the VR Headset’s full potential to immerse the player and bring them to a world where they can explore using their body instead of traditional methods.

Superhot team receives another $250K in funding.gif

Assignment's Reflection

We first start off with the initial idea, which was we wanted to make a horror survival game. The first engine proposed was using Krunker.io, which was proposed by one of my group members. I’m going to be honest here, when I first saw it, I cringed a little and I didn’t like the idea of making a game on it, it looked bland and inflexible, especially with what I had in mind.

When it came to thinking about making a simple game, RPGmaker games popped into my mind. I played a lot of RPGmaker games, small ones, made for fun and some that are a bit more on the serious side. I liked the idea of making a story-focused game using the RPGmaker MV engine. Luckily it seems like the stars were aligned that day as the engine was on a very heavy discount when I looked it up on steam for 75% out and it was only RM30, which I did not find issue with as I have always wanted to make a simple game using it, I just never had time. I also ran the free trial to make sure this was the engine I wanted to use, and I really liked it. It had the RPG style; it was easy to learn, and it was flexible like I wanted.

Next, is the game story, we were kind of caught up on what to do, at first, we tried to propose a game where you spend the last 7 days trying to survive with a limited amount of budget and keeping your sanity stable, so that you can complete your final semester with flying colours, all the while your long-time best friend has been trying to sabotage you.

We scrapped that idea however, because it sounded very stupid for a game and Dr. Charles actually gave us a better idea, a more story-based game that involved the MC and Best friend reconciling with each other at the end. I love writing stories in my head, so I took it upon myself to come up with a simple storyline that we can then implement into the game. Though I would say that I’m no J.R.R Tolkien, I’m just someone who comes with stories in my head to try and test it out, to feel how it is to create a comprehensive storyline and such, especially one that needs to be integrated into a game.

I tried my best, I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece but however, the story turned out to be, it’s still my creation, and I put a lot of thought into it. This has been a learning experience; I’ve wanted to write a story and make a game based off it and now I’ve been given the opportunity to do so. That’s something I’m grateful for, that I am allowed the freedom to create a story which I wrote and put it into a game. The characters in the story are mine, though not perfect, I did try to come up with characters with realistic-ish personalities. Though I did put in some dialogue here and there which are… “unsanitary” to say the least, I did want to have some fun to mess with the dialogue and the engine.

The Main Characters were custom made using the Engine’s built-in customizer, but the NPCs were already pre-built, and I just had to choose one. Some NPCs I purposely put them in certain situations like an old looking war veteran into a classroom just for the laughs. Honestly, making the game was so much fun for me, regardless of how the game turned out to be, it’s my first game anyways, I might as well have fun with it and fun I did have. Maybe this might sound unprofessional, and I would agree if anyone were to tell me that but what’s the point of making a game, you’re not having fun with developing. That’s my personal take on this, some people may disagree, and I understand.

At the end of the day that’s my true feelings, I did have fun making this game with my group members, I couldn’t have done it without their help. I’m not good at using the Map Editor of RPGMaker MV but one of my group members helped me with that and I would say for a first time, the maps look beautifully done. Another two helped by making art for the enemies and I have to say, working with design students are a blessing for a team making a game. I could never have drawn my own enemies or draw anything for that matter, so I’m happy they stepped in and offered to draw them. I really am grateful for this opportunity and this is an experience I probably won’t forget for a long time.