During the duration of the course I learned a lot about how effective interactive entertainment can generate money but at the same time make it enjoyable for all kinds of people. I was really looking forward to this course because my dream job would be something in the field of interactive entertainment. Throughout the course I did have trouble building a website for the theme park. I would have rather done it on paper or something but I got through making the site and now I have a greater appreciation for the course.

            When I first did the playground assignment I thought it was pretty weird. I mean you have this 20 year old walking around an elementary school playground it doesn’t seem right. Thank god I brought some little kids with me or I was going to be getting a lot of dirty looks for being there by myself.

            The trip did bring back memories of when I was a little kid playing on the very same equipment. I hated it thou. I always used to crack my head against the wood because the crawl space areas were so low and it was hot as hell back then too. I remember smelling like pine sap because the entire playground was covered with pine trees. There was pine neddles all over the place and I hated it. I have to say hands down pine trees are some of the most worthless trees on earth. They should be banned from every playground in the United States. One thing I did enjoy very much was the pine cone wars we had with the other kids on the playground. We used to go to the very back were nobody else was at and set up forts or bases. Then we would bean the hell out of each other until we were cover in razorblade type wounds. It was such a blast except for the pain part.

            The video game part was very enjoyable. For one I hope to get a job doing game design or becoming part of EA. Anything in the game industry would be cool for me. What I enjoyed about this assignment was watching somebody else play video games. Now for somebody else it may seem boring but if you watch my brother play video games it’s pretty entertaining if you’re drunk or wasted. He can’t control himself when he plays video games against the CPU or someone else. He goes into fits of rage and starts cussing at the game and the players in the game. Every time he plays NCAA football and my little brother and his friend is over it spells disaster. He starts to throw things and call the game names and the little kids just eat it up.

They laugh ever time he does it and it just pisses him off even more. The whole point of me talking about it was I never realized how entertaining watching somebody else play a video game. You naturally just want to play yourself but when people through fits of rage over a football game it is hilarious. It is just a football game and my brother was on the verge of breaking the 40 dollar controller. It is insane but when you get so deeply rooted into the game it becomes your reality and it overcomes you. I learned that if you want to sell video games and lots of them you need to design games that go into that area.

            Theme Park trip was my favorite over all the assignments I did because I went with my friends to Islands of Adventure when they were handing out the free passes. And I got wasted and had the time of my life at the park that night. What suck thou was the long lines, every line in the entire park was an hour and half. You could basically watch a full length movie before you got on the ride and that was insane. We only ended up going on like two rides The Hulk and Dr.Doom Drop which was very crappy. But the Hulk made up for it. When didn’t even wait in line because we preformed the greatest line skip of all time. We were basically outside and some kids inside dared us to climb through the windows to get inside. Now picture seven grown men rushing the windows outside the hulk and climbing through an area barely big enough to fit are shoulders through. It was pandemonium when we did it.

The whole place started going wild because we looked like a bunch a little kids climbing on stuff we shouldn’t have been. But it got even better because right when I climbed through I saw my other buddies a story up ready to get on the ride. I don’t know what got into me but I just started climbing the walls until I got up the second story cat walk and all my friends followed. It was like the building was on fire and we were frantically trying to escape from it doing everything we weren’t supposed to do. I haven’t had that much fun since I was a little kid and I loved it. I would do the same thing again if I the chance because to me it was worth the risk. When grow up its hard to have fun like you did when you were a kid. You have to at times resort back to that juvenile type behavior because it’s a blast as long as nobody gets hurt really bad. I mean I’ll take a sprained foot for the sake of having fun any day.

When I went to the family entertainment center it seemed different to me. I hadn’t been in a place similar to that for at least 10 years. I got a different vibe from the place it didn’t seem the same as when I was a kid. But I did go there with other people which is the only way you can have fun. It is hard and at times impossible to have fun by yourself. Even when playing video games it’s not the same as hanging out and doing whatever comes about with my friends. Were adults and at times we act like kids not because were immature but because it’s fun and a blast.

Ball pits will never go out of style unless kids ruin it by peeing in them. The greatest entertainment center is not complete without one of those pits. I had some many memories of playing in ball pits and burying myself waiting to sneak up on another kid. The best ball pit I have every had the pleasure of being at was the one at Discovery Zone. It had a king of the hill in the middle which was awesome because you could throw kids off of it. One of the greatest feelings is falling of a high platform into a ball pit because any other time you would get hurt. I hope they never get rid of those things it would be a shame.

The experience at the family entertainment center led me to realize how important it was to have other people with you to really enjoy having fun. The museum visit helped me realize that museums are not fun for little kids unless the exhibit are miniature versions of things or that you can play on everything. One or the other but when a museum doesn’t do either it sucks really bad. You have to make these things interactive and the good ones are. But I believe that you can take museums a step further. Ever museum I have been to I loved the exhibits that had wax models and scenes set up in them. The best ones I have ever seen were in Pittsburg. The early caveman sets and dinosaur sets. I wished to just jump the ropes and play in the set. If a museum needed to make itself money it needed to do that. How cool would it be to have a museum that had exhibit you could actually play in. You could climb on dinosaurs or roll around in the fake brush and grass that was artificially put in. The experience would be awesome and I believe it would bring customers coming back especially if you changed the sets ever six months. A playground museum would be one the best inventions for little kids since crayons. Going to that museum helped me to see how many improvements museums needed in order to be fun.

Sports complex was one of my favorites. I love football with a passion and I love the Dallas Cowboys. I am a die hard fan. But I love going to any professional game even if I’m not watching my favorite team. I saw lot of football games and been to lot but when I went to the Dolphins vs. Titans I never had some much interaction with the game. Usually the stadium isn’t so packed but because it was the last game of the season it was packed. It’s always cool to see how people interact with each other at games. At some point during the 3^rd quarter the wave started to form and started a wave that lasted 5 minutes. It was one of the most intense waves I have ever been apart of. Ever time it came around the stadium would literally shake because everybody was stomping there feet. It actually looked like a giant wave of people were coming right toward you and it was so awesome. That was one of the best parts of the game being to interact with it in that way.

You don’t have to be on the field to make an impact on the team you can stand in your seats and make noise. That’s probably not looked at as interaction but it is because it can affect the game drastically. In class we were talking about the divers and sitters how there is different levels of interaction. In a stadium it’s the same thing even though everybody is sitting together. You can choose to be a driver without actually going on the field and playing. You can sit in your section and rattle the seat until the whole place starts to shake literally. That’s helping the team out in a major way and it helps make you apart of the game. I never realized how important fans were at the stadium. I never imagined the effect they really had on a game. That in my opinion is one of the highest forms of interactivity without actually being on the field of play.

Retailtainment when affective is such a great business strategy. It’s a win win situation because no matter what somebody will buy the product if it’s good. I never really bought anything off of playing it at a store. I have been to the EB’s, the Best Buy’s, and the Circuit City’s and never bought something right after playing it. But I did purchase a boxing game after playing it an EB games and I saw then how this system works. No matter who’s playing the game and whose watching you’re almost guaranteed somebody will buy it. If play guitar hero at Best Buy a million times your going to buy it because you develop value toward it. And the people standing next to you are going to buy it too because they see how much fun somebody is having at it and want to check it out themselves. It’s a brilliant strategy that should be put on ever interactive game out there.

If you want to make money create something that people can try out for free but at the same time make sure it’s a product that speaks for itself. The worst thing you can do is put out a crappy product for people to but and it just ends up wasting space. Another thing I notice about bad retailtainment is putting out a good product but wear and tear ruin it. They need to have people check up on these things daily in order for that not to happen. I don’t know if there supposed to do this but I have been to many retailtainment products and ever things been smashed or broken. It may cost a little more to keep maintained on products but it will pay off. If I ever go into a business like that I’ll have learned to keep the product working at top shape at all times.

I really enjoyed going to Scfi City as a class. I’m not really into the role playing games anymore but I thought it was cool going there as a class. It was a lot better than sitting in a building for about three hours talking about a subject. I learned how important role playing games are in the business of video games. Role playing games are the raw form of game in the video game world. The game I played was lunch money and its concept was very original. The little girls beating each other up on the playground with pipes and hammers was an extremely hilarious concept. If somebody were to bring that to XBOX 360 it would sell big units in my opinion. That taught me how important the role playing games are to the video game community. It’s a perfect way to test a good concept you may have for a video game. And on top of that your game design document would be done if you decided to turn it into a game. All you would have to do is just written down on paper. Learning how vital role playing games where brought a different light to the way I view them now.

The whole project experience I have to admit sucked really bad at times. For many reasons but a major one was the website building. I know my degree is Internet and Interactive Systems but I hate making web pages with a passion. I hate using dreamweaver because to me it’s so complicated. I need to find the girl that talked about the templates you can use because that would be the only reason for using it. But I got past that obstacle in the course and the rest of the assignment I enjoyed very much. I did go through a period were I didn’t know what to do about getting pictures. Monster Squad is a badass movie hands down but not a lot of people know about. I do not know why but that lack knowing hindered me in trying to find pictures of certain scenes in the movie.

I got through it thou and found what I thought I need for each subject and rolled with it. The toughest part was trying to figure out the theme park layout. At first I wanted to draw the park out and make it look like the shape of a giant skull but I could never get it right. I didn’t seem the way I wanted it to look like plus it was in black and white. It would have been impossible to get the color right on Photoshop so the only other option was using colored pencils and that wasn’t going to happen.

I suck at coloring and I knew it would have turned out the way I wanted it to. I basically just took the map from Universal Studios and plugged the rides in were I wanted them to be. The maps were another thing I was having trouble with getting. I could not find a map that was big enough to fit on the screen. Everything I would get was always pixilated when I tried to size it up. I finally just went with the Universal one and stuck with it. Another major problem I faced was trying to fit all the pictures on the internet. On tripod you get a certain number of megabytes to work with and I got just a little bit. By the time I got down to the last photos I had to put them in grayscale just to get the file sizes down to a minimum. It worked out in the end though so I didn’t have to worry about buying a website space.

I had the most fun with the presentation. I was able to say what I wanted and even though some of things I said might not have been true according to my project. I didn’t want everyone to look at my project as another presentation. I just wanted to have fun with it and make it an interesting presentation and I think I accomplished that. I am a man full of jokes and jokes so never take anything serious unless it’s a heart attack. Also have Phil there didn’t help much either.

This is the part of the paper were I have to BS half a page to meet the minimum requirements which why I want to make this point to you Professor Smith. This class is really awesome and I enjoyed it very much. It helped me rediscover how much I love to make films and be part of a production team. I hope in the future you will see me in Hollywood some where making millions of dollars doing Oscar award winning films. To tell you the truth I’m not holding my breathe on the idea, in fact I have a greater chance of getting hit by a car or something. With that said I like to aim for the stars even if I don’t make it. I believe the class was very good and I have tips for next semester’s class. First off make the homework essays a minimum of three pages not double spaced. Then make them do a website along with a model of there them park. Make them do it digitally or with clay modeling. They will thank you for this later I promise you. Then finally make them write a twenty page essay and have them not double space that either. You give them the opportunity to have them reflect on their thoughts a little more and it would be good for them to improve on their writing skills.

Actually I’m just joking this ten page things a lot I’m trying to find examples just to fill space. In fact I’m going to convince you to buy monster squad. The movie is an awesome eighties film and you deserve to see it. I know you had to have seen previews for it in the eighties. What I suggest you do is go out and get a VCR if you don’t already have one. Then go to your local blockbuster video and look in the horror section. Make sure it is VHS and not DVD. For some reason Mike Sembello the guy who sang manic in flashdance is not letting them release some songs that are in the movie. If you can’t find it just buy it off line at amazon.com or ebay. It shouldn’t be any higher than ten dollars and I promise you it will be worth it. Your kids will love you for introducing them to such a cool movie. On that note hear are some final closing thoughts about the class.

This class taught me a lot about what needed to make something interactive successful. Some of the things I had already knew but forgot about them and this course reminded me of what I needed to know. I learned a lot of do’s and don’t throughout the semester like do make your museum interactive with something to hold the visitors attention. And don’t just put an exhibit up and except people to stay in there for a decent time. All in all I really enjoyed the class and wish they could make a higher level one that would satisfy some kind of prerequisite.