Electronic Arts inc.

Electronic Arts

What type of company are they?

Electronic arts are both a publisher and a developer because they help develop a lot of games or create them completely such as more recent games like FIFA, NBA and madden. They also have many partnerships with a lot of different producer company's and help them publish their games or get them to help them develop and improve current games. Such as companies like Dice have partnered with EA because they help create a lot of hype around a new release of the game such as battlefield 1 due to how big of a company EA is.

The history of EA

EA is an american video game company that is situated in Redwood city, California and was first founded on may 28, 1982 by a man called Trip Hawkins. The company was a pioneer of the early computer games industry and was notable for promoting and developing many of the designers and programmers behind the games. The company began developing in house games and first supported by consoles in the early 1990's. EA later then grew through purchases of multiple successful developers. By the early 2000's,EA decided to move towards direct distribution on digital games and services with the acquisition of a very popular gaming website called pogo.com in 2001. EA had grown to become one of the worlds leading third-party publishers. On may 4th, 2011 EA had reported a $3.8 billion in revenues for the year ending march, and then in the following year on January 13th the company had exceeded $1 billion in digital sales. And then in 2011 EA launched Origin. An online service to sell downloadable games directly to users, there is also a "on the house feature" that allows you to download full versions of some EA games for free. This site is also used for multiple big titles games for the function to play online and interact with friends, such as FIFA with the online aspect and battlefield with the battle-log feature. After sega had published the successful title of ESPN NFL 2K5 had grabbed all the attention away from EA's dominant madden games in the early 2004, EA decided to make multiple large sports licensing deals that included an exclusive one with the NFL. EA's success is due to it being one of the first companies to release sports games such as Madden, FIFA, NFL, NBA live and tiger woods.

What games have they produced?

The big games EA have produced would definitely be the sports genre games. The first one would be Madden because this was the first major sports game released and was an instant hit. At the time this was the biggest sport game around. They then published and created a lot of different sport games such as FIFA. FIFA is still a huge hit today and remains as the biggest selling football game outselling its rival pes with the most recent game by 40 times more. They also released NBA which has no rival and sells extremely successful every year due to the amount of people that love NBA and cant play it anywhere else really.

What are they like to work for?

A couple of reviews from previous workers i found online:

The deal is: employees also get a lot out of working for EA. I did, at least. There are lots of very talented people at EA, and (usually) opportunity to ‘craft’ your own career. Working on blockbuster titles, for the latest consoles, is fun stuff. Hardcore engineers (like me) love having access to the equipment – and the opportunity to make significant contributions to a high-profile product. 

EA has the coolest and some of the smartest bunch of employees I've seen at any Silicon Valley/Bay Area company. This is also true for employees at other offices (but I can't speak to how they compare locally). If you're an outgoing, young person, you'll make a lot of great friends that are smart, fun, and hard working. You won't make much money, but that's ok.

How is the company perceived?

EA are perceived very badly because for numerous years in a row they got nominated the worst company in america by Forbes. The review from the actual article is linked here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/#724400d816d2

Who works at the company and whats their role?


Andrew Wilson- CEO
Ken Barker- SVP, Chief accounting officer
Chris Bruzzo- Chief marketing officer
Blake J Jorgensen- CFO
Joel Linzner- Executive vice president
Laura Miele- Executive vice president
Peter Moore- Chief competition officer
Ken Moss- CFO
Samantha Ryan- SVP, Ea mobile, maxis
Jacob Schatz- SVP, General Counsel, Corporate secretary
Patrick Soderlund- Executive Vice president,
Gabrielle Toledano- Executive vice president, Chief talent officer

independent studios

Independent Studios

Braid

Braid was developed by a relatively small company called "Number None Inc". The game was made and designed by a man called Johnathan Blow in 2008.

Fez

Fez was developed by a company called "Polytron Corporation" and published by Trapdoor in 2012,

World Of Goo

World of goo is a puzzle video game that was designed and developed by the same company which is 2D Boy.

Minecraft

Minecraft was originally made by a Swedish programmer called "Markus Persson" but then further developed and published by Mojang.

Flow

Flow is made by multiple developers, the main developers being Super Villian Studios.

File extensions

Level 3 

Unit 78: Digital graphics for computer games

File Extensions

See at the bottom of this page: http://domyorks.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/computer-game-graphics.html

Compression

Data compression is a set of rules for packaging data into a smaller slot. While allowing the original data to be seen again. Compression is a two-way process: a compression algorithm can be used to make a data package not as large, but can also be run the opposite way to decompress the package into its original form. Data compression is useful in computing because it helps save a lot of disk space, or to reduce the bandwidth used when sending data via the internet.

Image Capture

Image capture is the process of getting a digital image from a vision sensor, such as a camera. Usually this entails a hardware interface known as a frame grabber, which captures single frames of a video and converts the analogue values to a digital, and feeds the result into the computer memory.

Optimising

Optimising in imagery is where you reduce the picture file size too as small as possible whilst also making sure it maintains the graphics it needs to serve a certain purpose. Through this method it ultimately reduces the download time and the size making it easier to display on the browser. It also reduces the bandwidth.

Storage of image assets

A storage of image assets is where you would give things name so that you do not get mixed up. You would save the documents as a PSD so that they remain open and able to edit if you are working with other people and send them the files. You would name them something obvious relating to what they are such as if it was a bin you would call it "bin" then save and send it using the PSD file. You also need to make sure that your computer is up too date enough so that you can edit or create the game as well as making sure you have enough storage on your memory stick or hard drive since all of the files would take up a lot of room.

Pixel

Pixel

Picture Resolution 

Picture resolution can be used when you are taking a picture with a camera and trying to convert it into your game. For example if you want to make a photo realism game you would have to have quite a high end camera too be able to take a picture suitable for that purpose.

• How many pixels are shown within our image from top to bottom
• File size of the image
• You find out the number of pixels by multiplying the width and height of the image. 

Image resolution (Quality)

Image resolution could be when you have drawn a picture with a pen or pencil and trying to put it onto your computer without trying to lose any of the quality of the original drawing. You would have to use a scanner and make sure you have quite a lot of dots per inch so that you have the best quality possible with the drawing.

This means the quality of an image

As the resolution increases the image will slowly become clearer

An example of image resolution would be the difference between a very low quality picture such as a 240p image and a 1080p image.

Pixel Values

Describes what the colour will appear as or how bright it is.

to show colour values you must seperate the red, green and blue parts for each individual pixel. 

one bit number showing the background or the foreground.

The most common pixel format used is the byte image where the number would be stored as an 8bit image giving it a huge range value from 0 - 255. Usually 0 is black and 255 is white. The numbers in between the two are what makes up the different shades of grey.

Top Ten Games

Top Ten Games

1)  Pokemon Gold

Pokemon Gold is one of the many successful Pokemon games. This is a simulated game where you can run around controlling a character and catch Pokemon. The main objective of the game is to collect as many different pokemon as possible an create a really good team of your choosing, as well as you have to defeat eight Pokemon gyms in order to progress and control your Pokemon. You also need to do this in order to enter the Pokemon league and fight the elite four. This is an RPG game that is made up of a cel-shaded and pixelated art style because they want to make the game look retro and show the background of the game whilst making you feel like you are playing are back in the 90's which is when the first Pokemon game was released.

2) Fifa 17

Fifa 17 is a football game produced to allow the player to simulate what it is like being a real life football manager or pro. it has several different modes such as ultimate and pro clubs. On ultimate team you can create and buy which players you want on the market but they can cost a lot and coins are hard to get. Where as Pro clubs is a more simpler mode where you can as one character with your friends and play in the same team together. The career is the main story in previous fifa since that is all you really got, you can choose to be a manager of the team where you choose to select any team you want and manage them for as long as you want, but you can get fired if you dont reach the clubs expectations. The pro aspect of it is where you choose the club you play for and create your own pro and play in the position of your choosing. In FIFA 17 the main story line is with the new mode "journey" where you play as a character called Alex Hunter and can play as any team as long as they are in the premier league. The career will run though and you let make choices depending on how you would approach a certain situation making every players journey personal. Fifa uses the artistic style photo realism, this is because they want the graphics and players to look as clear and realistic as they possibly can.

3) Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3

Call of duty Modern Warfare 3 is another one of the call of duty franchise where you can do several things like always. you can play online with friends or special ops with friends, or you can play the campaign where the story continues from previous modern warfare games. In the campaign you play as a solo character fighting against rebels that are trying to cause explosions. In this campaign you see the ending of a thrilling three part series game. Call of duty uses the photo realism style because they want the multiplayer and campaign action to look as realistic as they possibly can, they do this to emulate the gun fights and make you more engaged into the game.

4)  Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 is another amazing game graphical wise and story based wise. In the story you play as another solo soldier with a unit, trying to stop a nuclear explosion from going off and the main bad guy in this campaign is called "Solomon". Solomon has a whole private army to aid him in detonating this nuclear bomb but is ultimately stopped and killed by getting hit over the head several times by a brick at the end of the game. The game also has a really good multiplayer with several amazing maps and features you couldn't get in any other game. Battlefield is another photo realism because they also want you to be more engaged in the game and action, the more recent battlefield games also add mid map action so that something colossal happens whilst your playing multiplayer, such as the biggest building on the map falling down.

5) NBA 2K15

NBA is another simulated sports game developed by EA. This is a basketball based game which again has several different modes, A lot like the new FIFA. In NBA 2K15 you can decide to create you own ultimate team or play with friends in a 3 vs 3  mode. The main storyline in this game is within the career mode where you create your own pro and get drafted to a team. In this career you can choose your own choices which will effect how popular you are on social media and seen by other players. NBA is photo realism because they want the career to feel as if you are the pro player getting your chance at the NBA and also able to tell who the players are.

6) Skyrim

Skyrim is a campaign game with no multiplayer options so of course the campaign is amazing. The campaign is more of a free roam and you choose what missions you do, what guild you join and effectively how your own campaign experience plays out. You create you character and his race at the start of game depending on what you want his/her skill set too be. You also level up whilst in the game and can level up several aspects of your game. Skyrim is a photo realism game because they want the environment to be as realistic as they possibly can and make the monsters or enemies look as scary they can.

7) Last Of Us

The last of us is an excellent campaign based games ever and has been hailed as such by many critics and fans. In this campaign you play as a man called "Joel" and a girl called "ellie" in this game you both have to work together to get through many situations and one character is key for some whilst the other is not. In this game you are fighting and trying to survive an outbreak of mutant Cordyceps fungus ravages the United States, transforming its human hosts into cannibalistic monsters known as infected. Last of us is another photo realism game because it wants you to get attached to the characters and make the game feel as realistic and engaging as they possibly can.

8) Diablo 3

Diable 3 is a RPG game where you can select a character from a choice of 5, the five characters are a barbarian, wizard, demon hunter, with doctor and a monk. each character has different abilities and different ways of fighting, you also can get pick ups especially for that character. The story mode in diablo is where you are fighting against an invasion of monsters practically sent from diablo. there are three acts in this game where you fight a different boss at the end of each one and go to different places. in the first act you fight is The butcher, than belial, then azmodan and finally diablo but if you get the latest version you also have to fight another boss in an added act called malthael. The story in this is that you are trying to protect each city you go to as well as fight evil, also you are trying to find an angel that fell from the sky and help him recover his memories and powers, the only way to do this is by beating the skeleton king who is a side boss in act one. Diablo uses the artistic style exaggerated because they make many weapons and characters look more muscular or bigger than they originally would be.

9) South Park The Stick Of Truth

South park the stick of truth is a RPG game where you play a character within the south park world. In the story you are helping to fight against other humans that have powers in the game such as wizards and elfs who are all ultimately fighting to get hold of the powerful stick of truth. Their fantasy game brings them into many altercations with aliens, Nazi zombies, and gnome that are threatening the entire south park town by trying to destroy it. The game is rated an 18 because of its profanity and how much inappropriate language it would be for children. south park is cel-shaded because they wanted to replicate the cartoon tv series.

10) Warriors

The warriors is a game based off of the very successful film "warriors". The warriors is only a campaign game which turned out to make the game very successful by letting the player feel as if they are part of the exclusive gang "the warriors". In this game you play as a new recruit and have to battle in the first mission to get into the gang as well as learn how to fight and use environmental items to your advantage. Throughout the game you will fight many bosses and it certain instances it replicates the film such as with the roller blade gang in the toilets. The main story is that your gang has been framed with killing the biggest boss lord around "cyrus" because he is in charge of the biggest gang which is called "the gramercy riffs".Which is why every gang in the area is looking for you and you are just trying to go home to coney island. At the end of the game you fight the final boss who framed you for the killing and he is called luther and his the leader of a gang called "The Rogues". The warriors uses a photo realism style because they want to too engage the player into the physical battles and feel part of the gang.






Games That Do Not Have A Storyline

Tetris

Tetris is a simple 2d game where you have a bunch of random blocks that are shaped in a certain way and you try to piece them together and try make as many lines as possible out of them. Also you only have a certain amount of time to find a place for the block to go since it is constantly falling down. You can also speed up how fast the blocks are falling if you feel like you want more of a challenge.
When you complete a full line it will disappear, but if you reach the top of the screen without having any more space to put the most recent block then the game will be over for you. The aim of the game is too get as high of a score as you possibly can.





Pacman

Pacman is another simple 2d game that many people spent hours of playing because it is so addictive and fun to play. The objective of pacman is too see how many levels you can complete and how high of a score you can get. To get through each level you have too collect all of the dots on the map without getting eating or killed by the ghosts. Also you can eat the cherries that make it vice versa so that all of the ghosts run away from you because you can eat them for a certain amount of time, although they will respawn straight after so you would probably want to just try and get more of the dots ate instead of the ghosts. As well as you also have three lives so three chances to complete the level and if you still do not complete it after having those lives the game will be over.





Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Monster hunter freedom unite is a free roam game where you can run around and kill which ever monsters you choose, if you are able to kill them because the difficulty is very high. The main aim of the game is too run around and get better items and upgrade your character so you can take on which ever monsters you choose.




Space Invaders

Space invaders is another simple 2d game without a story line. In this game you are controlling a space ship and shooting at other space ships trying to stop them from getting to you. The further you get the harder the levels become because the rival ships start shooting at you and get more and more health. The aim of the game is to stop the invasion from them and try and get as much score as you possibly can.

Advantages and Disadvantages of different platforms of gaming

Mobile

The mobile games have become extremely popular of the recent years due to the amount of unlimited games you can play, from casino games to animation you can literally now play any kind of game you desire on your phone anywhere you want. The games on mobile devices are usually extremely cheap and do not have too much of a story line because they are either extremely addictive or they have a very short story line too them.

Benefits

You can play them anywhere

A lot of the games are a free to play or very cheap.

They are very easy to download everywhere you go as long as you have WiFi.

there if a huge variation in games due to the low price of every mobile phone games.

regular updates if game is glitch

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Drawbacks

Graphics are not as good as consoles or pc's

you need WiFi to download new updates or the game.

Distract people from working.

Very addictive since they are very easy to play.

Isolates you from conversation or other social activities since your playing on your phone

Creates more eyesight issues due to the amount of time played in the dark.

Need WiFi for a lot of features

Arcade

Arcade machines were became extremely popular during the late 70's and were huge until around the late 90's with all of the console games you could buy for your own house. The arcade machines had huge number one hits such as Pacman and space invaders. All arcade machines are a pay to play machine which means for every go you have on one you would have to 20p and they prices go up to about a £1 depending on which games you play.

Advantages

Can play a lot of classic games

Cost effective to make and will eventually make money back.

Disadvantages

No online support for multiplayer

rarely used anymore

Cannot save games

Basic graphics

Game cannot be changed, one game per machine

Console

Console games became extremely popular in the early 2000's with very successful consoles such as PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. These consoles were so successful due to the amount of games you could buy for them and the array of different genre's. Also they are extremely successful because the discs where a lot faster to download and store memory into the game and the graphics were always increasing compared to arcade games which were once so huge.

Benefits

Very good graphics

Has all of the latest games

Very easy to set up

Can socialise with friends via the online multiplayer aspect

Has a good performance

Can download a lot of games from the online store.

A lot of expansion packs

Can relax anywhere in the room and play where as on PC you cannot due to keyboard and mouse

Drawbacks

Games are very expensive

Need WiFi to access a lot of features

Many games isolate you from the outside world

Game updates take very long to download and install

PC

PC has also became extremely popular alongside the consoles due to the wide array of games you can get and play, but with PC you could buy the games online and didnt need discs in order to play them, they were all downloaded by the internet. The main difference between console and PC is the graphics and connection to online services.

Advantages

Graphics are the best out there.

Can constantly update you PC and make it perform better.

A lot of cheap games. 

Can play any game because do not need discs since can download from the store.

You can play with a controller or keyboard and mouse.

A lot of customisation abilities in game.

Disadvantages

They cost a lot to get the best graphics.

Need regular updates to be able to handle certain games.

A lot of wires and equipment needed.

Cannot play anywhere in the room if you only have keyboard and mouse.

Computer Game Graphics

Unit 78: Digital Graphics For Computer Games

Computer Game Graphics

Pixel

Pixel art is mainly used in games that are 2d and rarely used in games that are 3d based with exceptions of course being minecraft. Usually pixel art is only used in mobile phone games since they are not high demand like consoles or PC's. Pixel art is made up from the use of raster graphics software, where the majority of images are edited on to a pixelated level. All of the old games such as pacman, space invaders and many other classic old games you would play on an arcade machine are made up of Pixel art. You can see the exact definition by going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_art as this is where i got most of my information from.

Concept Art

Concept art is used to make up rough idea's to finally make into a film, game or comic. A lot of people use this so that they can get constructive criticism, so that when the game is finalised they will not have to go through and edit the whole game or be unhappy with the final result. A concept is a rough idea or sketch about what you plan on making the film or game into and where you want the game to end up, because if you only do a weak concept art the artist making it into a 3D or 2D sprite will not know what you except, where as if you do a strong piece of concept art the final result will be just as you expected. Another and more in depth meaning on this can found here  http://www.creativebloq.com/career/what-concept-art-11121155.

Texture Art

Texture art is used to make the feeling of games or films a lot more real or exaggerated. This is used to make the background more realistic, an example of this would be where there is a tree in the background and you are shading it and making it look a lot more real, if the game is designed for mobile devices you could take a picture on your own smartphone and that would sufficient enough for that background where as if you was designing the background of a next gen console you would want to make sure it is as high resolution as possible so it makes the game look that bit more better than it originally would. It would also add a lot more depth to the game making the player more engaged because the surroundings and looks look a lot better. I got a lot of my information from http://arthistory.about.com/cs/glossaries/g/t_texture.htm.



Background Graphics

Background graphics is basically just what is in the back of the game to make it that bit more in depth, this makes the player more involved in the game and more interactive with the graphics and what the game has to offer even if it is a 2D or 3D game. Every game uses this because in every game there is some form of background. The easiest backgrounds to do are usually on 2D games because you can just take a picture and use that as your game background, or you can do a simple design and that would work also. Where as in 3D games you have to add detail and depth to the background by making it more shaded than it would usually be.




In game Interface

The in game interface is basically the heads up display or HUD for short or anything you interact with within the game. The in game interface can range from multiple things such as a button you can press within the game to open a door, or a weapon you can pick up or even something obvious such as your mini map, or experience bar. In game interface can be loads of things in the game, This doesn't matter wether its a third person game or first because everything you can see is classed as in game interface because it is what is visually relayed through the screen from the game to you the player. A more in depth explanation and more example can be found here http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AnthonyStonehouse/20140227/211823/User_interface_design_in_video_games.php.

Print Media Art

Print Media is simply a form of advertising that has used a physically printed media. This can range from many things such as game posters, the front of game cases to even news papers. Its just a form of advertising to reach as many people as possible so that your game or whatever your advertising reaches a wider variety of audience which is why you see big companies post huge billboards of their upcoming game. A lot of games release the announcement for big gaming events such as E3 because there are always tons of people that go their that are interested in gaming, so a huge amount of posters get put around the arena and even outside the last one call of duty had a huge billboard on the front of the event so that people knew when their announcement was and what it was about.

Types Of Digital Graphics

Raster Images

JPG

JPEG also knows as JPG stands for joint photographic experts group. JPEG files are photo's or images that have been compressed into a small-size file to be able to hold tons of information.  The majority of modern day camera's store photo's in a JPEG format because that way it allows you to take more photo's in one camera card than you can with more a less every other format out there. JPEG images are usually the images you find on the internet because they are really small files that are really easy and quick to load, also even though they are compressed and can lose a bit of the detail they still are good enough for most people to look at on the internet. The best uses of using a JPG would be when taking imagine of an object that is still, real world images such as photo's of buildings or yourself, when your doing the shading of light and dark as well as when doing a complex colouring.



GIF

GIF stands for graphical interchange format. GIF like JPG compress the images they store, but unlike a JPG they do not lose any of the detail in doing so but this also makes the file's not as small as a normal JPG one. GIFs also have a very limited colour range making them extremely bad for printing but still use-able for the internet. Because of the lack of colour variation this method is never used for photography or very rarely, and is more commonly used to make funny animated pictures. The best uses of using a GIF would be when you are doing some web graphics with very few colours, with small icons such as a crest or emblem, when doing animations of something online, or with very simple images such as line drawings, single colour borders or even simple cartoons.

TIFF

TIFF also knows as TIF stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF creates very large files unlike GIF and JPG. TIFF images are not compressed which means they contain really good amounts of detail which is what makes the file so big. TIFFs are also very varied in terms of colour and content since they can be layers and image tags. TIFF is most commonly used in photo software such as Photoshop, as well as page layout such as quark and Indesign, this is because of the amount of data the images have within them.

Vector

AI

Adobe illustrator is a file format developed by adobe systems for showing single page vector based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats. The ai. filename is used by adobe illustrator. The ai formart was originally a native format called PGF.

WMF

Windows metafile is an image based format that was originally designed for microsoft windows in the 1990's. Windows metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and can contain both vector and bitmap components. Its acts like the SVG files.

PSD

PSD which stands for photoshop document is the obvious data format that photoshop uses to save data onto. PSD is a proprietary file that allows users to work with the images' individual layers even after the file has been saved.