Getting information out to people is quite complicated. How it is distributed can be how well you do. Anything that requires human interaction requires communication, from small projects to major corporations trying to make tier business work. Since it's so important to transmit information, there are many ways to do so. One of these ways are one of the oldest ways to do so, other than telling somebody, and that is to have a big block of text that details everything you need to know. It's so old, that all major forms of business is done to standardize it, and make everyone understand the universal language of long boring paragraphs.
But, with modern times, many people have been more accustomed to an Infographic. An infographic is a document, but instead of being a legally formatted, hard-copy to study and mull over, it's an image that shows and doesn't tell what the oh so important information is. This premise has been around very recently, with the rise of bigger corporations in the mid 20th Century, people had to make ways to show information in one singular, all encompassing image. This image has taken many forms, with graphs, pie charts, stat lines, and bar graphs being examples. An image can easily compare, count, and organize what information a person needs to know with color, percentages, and shapes to tell what they want to communicate. This became common business practice, and a staple among the boardroom discussions and meetings. But, it was used more of a summary page for previous points, and usually accompanied someone's droning voice reading out paragraphs of text. This is when the infographic started being developed more, as time grew on we have found more creative ways to make not a summary, but a whole point with images. As there are now more emphasis on images, with shapes all over the page to help organize, colors to draw attention, and words not being the base, but now the add on to images. This makes it much more engaging to people reading, as infographics don't all look the same anymore, and now take less time either, one read over summarizes whatever point is being made. This is becoming more and more popular, as our modern society 2010s develops more ways to use the bare minimum of communication, people have now essentially made information intake faster and shorter, improving work and understanding for all. Which is How Infographics Draw Attention.
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the latest installment in the Fire Emblem Series, taking the top down strategy elements the series is known for, and putting a different spin on out of combat game play.
In the game, taking place after thousands of years, you play as your own character Byleth, by default. the not too characteristic main character you play as, who has to teach and educate young warriors at Garreg Mach Academy. You pick from one of three houses to teach, which does affect how you witness the story. This sets it apart from other games, as it makes the emotional attachment to these characters much more deeper than just warriors you meet, but more platonic and relatable compared to romance options in previous games. The rest of the game, small battles to bigger war scenarios, is quite standard for Fire Emblem games, but specific twists (which are spoilers) affect all of the characters in their own ways, especially each house's leader. Events like a person having to fight their own house, the not as utilized talk feature on the battlefield, or specific grudges one of your units have against an enemy, none of which is new in Fire Emblem, is made to be much more personal and relevant. The game play is quite similar to the other games, with tile based game play along with different units trying to rout each other or kill the leader. But, there are major changes to the game from tomes being learned spells and not bought, and the weapon triangle not being relevant (although Valentia didn't have them either). This makes it more reliant on character building, with stats not being too situational in the triangle, and spells feeling more deserved when they are learned to specific characters, since they are built into levels for magic stats. These elements of character customization is a nice touch for the new "mechanic" for Three Houses, since it takes a non-linear approach to character design (i.e no skills or abilities are locked). Since you teach your characters, which are your units, you can decide what you want each unit to be, which is determined by their class, which is assigned through tests which require skill checks (require a C in axes, or a C+ in magic, etc), which you teach to your students (affected by your own stats), making character builds that do really well into the later game. It's a lot to take in at first, and you aren't expected to fine tune each character into a rigorous fighting machine, so each character has their own beginning stats and traits, setting up a build that uses those base stats, and each character even requests specific goals on what they want to study and become better in. The best part is that each character's personality is reflected in their stats. There are many other elements that affect characters, Support Levels, Crests, Equipment, Skills(the melee character's equivalent to spells), and Battalions. This still sounds like an absolute unit of information to remember, so the best way is to make an example build: So, you choose the Black Eagles, you see this one girl with a hat, you're like "Hey, that's a J̶o̶j̶o̶ ̶R̶e̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ." One of the first things you know about her is that she sings, you also find out her name is Dorothea, and she has nice magic stats. "Ok, I'll make her a black magician since it's cool," you say, "Her adjacent healing skill also makes it viable to be white magician, along with a budding talent in it" you think at the same time. You see her goals aren't geared for white magic, and teaching her (via weekly instruction) the skills won't result in great or perfect, so you decide to stick to black magic. Later, after you made her a mage, she asks for a change to swords too. "Wait, doesn't that slow down Black Magic progression, what would she do with sword skills when she got magic, lol" you're smug little face says. Later, you see the (spoilers) dance/singing competition, it results in the unique dancer class, skilled in both magic and swords. "Wow, Dorothea is pretty suited for this class (she outright admits she wants to be in the competition and she also has a wicked charisma stat so...)." After she's that class, you quickly find a Levin Sword, a sword with magic requirements (and a three range attack when forged), and you say "Wow, her sword skills can rise along with her magic skills." The thing is, all of these proposed builds are viable, White Magic, Black Magic are mostly leaned towards, but if you want to make a Pegasus Knight for whatever reason, go ahead, but magic is what you get the most out of. The perfect symphony of these characters, heavy units, ranged units, and even flying units too, makes the true claim to fame for this title, since the other games focus on each character's class, the school setting complements this amazingly, with tests, learning objectives, and friends(yay), making this a pretty good game that I enjoyed, three times. So, how does Fire Emblem: Three Houses combine it's fun and elements?
Obligatory Score: Post Time Skip Dimitri/10 Fun is a very roundabout way to describe, well, anything in games. From why you play them, to why you even write about them. How can we manipulate what we get out of a game to actually feel like we got something out of said game?
Fun is described as a challenge with surprises, a balance between being easy to grasp, yet demanding, is a hard balance to strike. In comes categories which describe how to mange these two basics. The categories all have their merit individually, and can become their own games by one type of these types of fun. Collection-a-thon style games, story based games, and even slot machines count, these fun are expressed separately. But, games can use multiple types of these categories, with genres providing different types of combinations of these categories. RPGs have Collection (equipment), Obstacles(enemies), and Expectations(stat building, quests, etc.), and many genres like puzzles, shooters, and any other hybrid are offered to different types of people that play games. This leads to how these different categories of fun also define what a game is, and what types of people it can attract. Not everyone is into direct Collection games, sometimes it's a different type of collection, not just collectibles. All of these elements play into a game, how it appeals to players, and what defines it. For any individually made blog post, they tend to be made a day or two apart. This is done as they are graded as requirements on the portfolio checks, and since it's a far off grade, making the consistent posts for throughout the quarter is easily missed. But, what makes this class so different, is how we need a week apart for each of the two blog posts. The last minute personal reflections are now void and can't be done right before the due date, the Friday after this post's date.
So, this change was not done to torment our forsaken souls, it has a much more purposeful use. If previous personal reflections, written a day or two before they are checked, are read aloud. Then, they sound a little silly, and are about topics I wouldn't typically talk about. While that system does encourage variety, it is pretty cheap and lazy. The new system now makes it so we still have the experiences throughout the year to take from. This makes it resemble more of the "snapshot," Mr. B wants from us. It also makes it much less harrowing during the process of making blog posts. As I'm making this, I am currently thinking of the lack of real work on my portfolio update, the other blog post I have to do (good thing Mr.B let us get away with not seeing the new requirements), and how I have to do the assignments that are already in class. This is alleviated by making it sooner, and forcing me to organize. This is probably the "expectation" and "responsibility" that I already have been doing, we had two beginning units all about professionalism and they are now coming more and more into play, not just this one particular change in the portfolio check. Or, maybe I'm talking about this because I can't think of much else, if it were, it would only prove the point more. For our first unit in Game Arts Design, we learned about board games and their profound effect on games today. Particularly, how many of them started out as ways to simulate war scenarios, games like Shatranj, but have branched out to be based primarily in strategy, with games like Weiqi or playing cards have shown. This is the reason why so many great civilizations, like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia, were where these games were developed. Even today, the biggest cites and countries for game development, and the biggest game industries, are in North America, England, and Japan, most of which are the leading countries in technology. Does this trend communicate across all civilizations? We can see this through the eyes of a roman soldier, Rome was the biggest empire of it's time, lasting over a thousand years, with innovations like roads, unified currency, and defensive army tactics to rule over it's vast network of smaller states. Roman soldiers did many strategies that benefited their army, while most of them were borrowed from the Greek or Spartan armies, they refined and truly brought them to the battlefield. But, strategy was usually reserved to the generals, due to the hierarchy of the Roman army. Outside of military duty, Roman soldiers have a lot of free time to do leisurely activities. This included theater going, bathing, and board games. Board Games in Rome are similar to modern past time games played now, Many of these games, like Ludus Latrunculorum, Duodecim Scripta, and Tria are similar, or be considered ancestors, to competitive strategy games like chess or backgammon. Since not only soldiers played these games, children, common citizens, and even foreigners played these games among each other in the public. Leading to how Rome's culture has shaped it's empirical rule to dominate and compete, similar to the Olympics in ancient Rome, before their ban. Board Games being played in countries is a sign of human development. If people have settled down enough not just just survive, but live, then they develop ways to simulate this with games, like Rome, or today's countries. What did We Learn This Unit?
“Roman Board Game.” History Games, www.historygames.it/en/roman-board-game/ “3 Important Roman Military Tactics.” History Hit, www.historyhit.com/roman-military-tactics/ An Image of Ludus Latrunculorum, An Ancestor To Chess
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JamesHe aspires to be a game designer, let's just hope he gets there. He also happens to goes to DSA. Categories
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