Dark Souls- Too much noise (A less formal blog post)

I recently purchased a game called Dark Souls made by japanese developer From Software, it is the spiritual successor to a famously/infamously difficult game called Demon's Souls. Having played Demon's Souls I knew what sort of epically frustrating quest I was getting myself into, with the developer saying on numerous occasions that this game would be as/ more difficult as its predecessor. I didn't quite realise how difficult this would be. That's the thing though, I really enjoyed Demon's Soul's, the feeling of progression and utter brutality seemed even, as though it's my fault when I'm killed in one hit by some iron colossus. But Dark Souls... I didnt quite anticipate how far they would take this difficulty, some people love this sort of thing... sadists... Nihlists... those types of people, but even for a toughened, veteran gamer this is just brutal. But for some reason I cant stop playing... I suppose what I was going to link this to was the idea that - when implenting this game into the Shannon and Weaver model - you might see that the difficulty in this game has gone to the level where it is just noise, hindering the experience that the developer wanted you to have. But, with that said the developer did make the game, and who am I to question its creator... well I suppose that was somewhat pointless...

Well... Shannon, meet Weaver.

Our first lecture introduced the idea of semiotics and the Shannon and Weaver model of communication. The lecture as a whole was quite interesting, but the I found the formula that Shannon and weaver had devised for a general rule of communication - although perhaps slightly simplified - fairly exact. It gave me ideas on how films, games and any other form of on screen narratives are created. The media is the transmitter, the story and/ or gameplay is the message, I receive the information and the way I respond to whatever it is that is being portrayed is the feedback, and so the cycle repeats itself. Anything that disrupts the signal, whether is is poor design choices or a dull story is noise that brings me out of the experience. I know this may seem like a quick and shallow response to the model but it I think it's adequate to quickly summarise how what I learnt relates to what I am studying and not just saying that I didnt care and that it was a complete waste of time. We were also taught about entropy and redndancy, and how changing the levels of what we expect to what we we don't can quite drastically alter the pacing of a story and how the audience reacts to what we see, too much redundancy and the audience becomes bored, too much entropy and we becomed numbed to the constant flow of suprises. It's important to have a mix. Anyway, done now, bed time.

First Post- Blog aims

This is the first post in a blog that shall hopefully attribute to me writing an essay for the media histories module in my 3d games art degree. Each week I will will need to make at least one entry onto this blog summarising what the lecture taught me and how i may apply it to what I do as an artist.