Montgomery County Community College Students Scared Through Horror Game Immersion

By: Aaron Berstein

BLUE BELL, PA--Last week, eight out of twenty Montgomery County Community College (Montco) students are scared of horror survival games. Immersion puts them into the character’s shoes and throws them into a story of constant uneasiness that game designers do to purposely scare the player. “A player fully immersed in a survival horror game is not safe on their own sofa; they are engrossed in the environment. The sights and sounds in an immersive game trigger actual reactions from the player” says Mark Black, a Game Design student at Montco. 

     The only way to immerse the player into the game is by using the story, music and environment. For example, Slender has the right atmosphere to make the player feel uneasy at all times. A misty forested region, a long armed, suited man without a face chases you and ultimately murders you. “I had to close the game my first time I had a jump scare” says Myles, a Computer Science major at Montco. Another example can be found in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where the character is constantly running from monsters and trying to solve a large mystery hidden in his past that he forced himself to forget. “Amnesia was tense. The ‘water monster’ was heart pounding. I’m not sure if it was ‘scary’ because of the invisible monster or because it was hard… or both…” says Matt Murray, a Communications student at Montco.

     Immersion can be as simple as giving paranoia to the player or having scary things jump out and start chasing them. Outlast had a great example of this throughout, with disfigured mentally instable people chasing you, simply to kill you because you’re an outsider. “Dark scene, big mutant creatures started running at me at ungodly speeds. I stopped playing right then” says Jeremy Rossi, an Engineering major at Montco.

Indie Video Games Carry “Made in Pennsylvania” label

By: Aaron Berstein 

BLUE BELL,PA--This past weekend, CipherPrime Studios had their grand re-opening after remodeling their studio. Because of this occasion, a bunch of independent game designers were invited to show their recent creations and were able to share how they developed their ideas into full blown games and how things are done in small companies like these.

Zenas Bellace is one of the programmers over at QuadraTronGames. The game he was displaying is called “Monsters!” It’s available on desura.com for all computer platforms for $4.99. “I wanted to make a game with a simple idea, a cool concept, and make an easy to learn game of it”. The game was originally inspired by the arcade game “Robotron: 2084” where the player has two joysticks, one that controls the player’s movement and the other determines the direction of firing his weapon, where the goal is to rescue the last surviving human family while destroying an infinite amount of waves of robots.

Also, an award winning indie developer, Greg Lobanov of Dumbandfat.com and his game called “Coin Crypt” were being displayed, along with his award winning game “Perfection”. Both games are available on PC and Mac on Steam Early Access for $5 and “Coin Crypt” is still in its development stage. “My friend wondered what a game would be like to have jelly beans be currency and the items and the weapons. I took that idea and changed it to coins, making it ‘Coin Crypt’.”

Ender’s Game: The Cinematic Experience of the Year

By: Aaron Berstein

BLUE BELL, PA--Ender’s Game is a sci-fi fantasy based around the best-selling novel by Orson Scott Card about a young boy named Ender who is the Third of his family and is sent to a space academy to hopefully become the next commander of the International Fleet and save the world from a possible alien invasion. A few notable actors in this movie adaptation are Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin, Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham. If you haven’t read the 1985 novel by now, the bottom line of this review is: go read the book! A lot of the issues viewers are having with this movie adaptation are that it will not be wholly accurate. As much as we would all love to see the space station and battles in high definition and major special effects, just like we imagined them in our heads, the movie had to be summarized to just the right amount in order to obtain those images.

     The most obvious thing is that a lot of plot and character development was cut from the movie. With only two hours to show the entirety of the novel, of course there will be less development and lead up to the events and more of just showing the events, but Ender’s Game was more about the reason behind the actions than the actions themselves. In short, Ender’s Game was stuck between assuming viewers have seen the novel and introducing new viewers to what it’s all about. “I personally find the author to be an asshole; I refuse to hand him my money” says disgruntled Sean Ross, communications student at Montgomery County Community College. If you enjoy sci-fi fantasy with a large amount of big budget special effects and space battles of epic proportions with next to no story development, then this is the movie for you. If you already read the novel, don’t expect to see everything from it in the movie. You will be sorely disappointed.

Valve’s “Greenlight” Program Explodes Indie Game Industry

By: Aaron Berstein

BLUE BELL, PA--Valve, one of the biggest computer game publishers and developers in the business, has recently started a program that goes along with their Early Access and Workshop. Valve’s Greenlight program takes developing games or finished games and puts them on their worldwide Steam community catalog. This has had a huge effect on the independent game design industry by taking their games and publishing them on a worldwide scale for next to nothing in return.

     “Steam’s for games and software as well” says Matt Murray, an interested communications student at Montgomery County Community College. How Greenlight works is a developer submits his or her game or non-game software to Greenlight, then the community on Steam votes on what they would like to see completed, and gives advice and support to the developer. This feedback is one of the most important things a developer can receive during development as it gives them an insight into what the community, their customers, would like to see from them. This allows them to change the game to the community’s preference, which will result in increased sales and general enjoyment. A lot of big titles have started as Greenlighted titles such as Rogue Legacy or, coincidentally, Game Dev Tycoon, and the reason they get big is because Steam manages itself with their own advertising, which means that a brand new game will be shown to several hundred thousand people at once increasing their possibility of sales.

     As a Game Design student, I believe that Valve’s Greenlight program is extremely helpful to new game designers and independent companies. If you can afford the charity donation of $100 that Valve asks for in order to make sure you’re serious about your submissions, then Valve will allow you to publish your games with them, for only about 10% of the profit you make. This gives the developers, like me, an advantage that before was not available to them.

60% of Montco students steal music

By: Aaron Berstein

BLUE BELL, PA--After collecting results from an anonymous survey of a group of 20 students last week, it was found that 12 out of 20 or 60 percent of students obtain music illegally. Out of these 12 students, five knowingly steal music, while the other seven do it without thinking it to be a crime. An anonymous student was quoted to say that “I’m using YouTube and MP3 creators right now, and streaming music online from Soundcloud!” He knows that he is taking music without compensating anyone for it, but he only uses it for personal entertainment, not for monetary gain. Another anonymous student said, “I’ve downloaded music off of YouTube and other sites and made them into CDs for my friends to listen to. I didn’t think that something so seemingly harmless was actually illegal.”

For Montco Students, ‘Rifftrax’ shatters the gender barrier in movies

By: Matt Murray

BLUE BELL, PA-50% of male students surveyed reluctantly admitted that they watched at least one of the Twilight films—the most popular reason being along the lines of being coerced into watching it with their girlfriends. Most of the remaining male students interviewed weren’t jumping at the chance to watch a film in the Twilight series either, but an exception did pop up for a few of them.

“I’ll definitely watch [Twilight] with the Rifftrax!” said another 15% of male students. They were referring to the riffing commentaries available to download on Rifftrax.com. A movie riffing is essentially a commentary made independently from the movie with jokes, made up lines, and puns that are all meant to add a humorous new layer to the film. A Rifftrax commentary usually comes in the form of an .mp3 file, but it can also be streamed via an internet browser or even a smart phone; the tracks are then played—or synced—with a movie. Rifftrax produces a wide variety of humorous commentary voiced by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. The trio is best known from their 90’s television show that riffed old movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000—which is essentially Rifftrax’s spiritual predecessor.

“I loved watching the Harry Potter ones,” said Montco student Saranya Muhunthan. ”I remember watching the first one with some friends—we were dying!” Muhunthan recalled that watching Harry Potter with the Rifftrax was almost an entirely new experience. The commentary seemed to add a whole new level of fun to the movie, but it didn’t take away from the story. She and 80% of the other females surveyed were intrigued by the idea of using something like Rifftrax to make sharing movies like Twilight or Harry Potter with their boyfriends.

Many male students interviewed also expressed interest in sharing predominantly male-biased movies like Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Star Wars with their girlfriends. Despite Examiner.com’s 2009 article that reported 80% of Twilight: New Moon’s audience was female, 100% of male students interviewed said that with a Rifftrax commentary that they were more likely to watch Twilight or other films they previously didn’t care to watch. Rifftrax seems to level the playing field and open doors in demographics that were previously closed.  

Although the larger majority of Montco students seem to be unaware of Rifftrax, all of the students surveyed seem to think it would be an interesting way of watching films that would otherwise only appeal to single sexes, and beyond that it adds a whole new element to films that they’ve already come to know and love.

Montco Students Give Up On Cable

By Matt Murray  

BLUE BELL, PA--Only 8% of students surveyed at Montgomery County Community College said that they still prefer to watch conventional cable on their televisions. Five years ago, 40% of students were watching cable TV and catching their favorite shows as they aired. It seems that students want to pick when and where they watch their favorite shows; they’re no longer locked in to time slots and days of the week. They get what they want when they want.   

     Services like On-Demand, Tivo, and DVRs have allowed viewers to gain control over their cable subscription and watch shows when it’s convenient for them. More recently, internet streaming exploded onto the scene with services like Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Instant Video. 68% of students surveyed at Montco preferred to use services like these to watch TV.  

     The other 24% of students surveyed also like to watch TV, but they don’t necessarily prefer live cable or internet streaming. These students still prefer to illegally download the shows they want to watch. Most of the shows that are being illegally downloaded are shows from premium channels like Dexter and Homeland on Showtime and HBO’s Game of Thrones; these shows are not available on any of the popular internet streaming services.  

     Student Mark Black says, “Keeping six gigs of one show on my hard drive just to watch a series through once is a lot less convenient than streaming on the TV, computer, or tablet.” Many of the students pirating shows already subscribe to services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. If the premium channel shows were easily available on internet streaming services they’d be less likely to pirate these shows purely out of convenience. It’s convenience that Montco students are seeking, and the convenience of the viewer seems to be the future of television.