Games are nothing without players, a sentiment that rings particularly true regarding Roblox. As an interactive experience based on community development, the company knew from the very beginning that it wanted players to be able to express themselves through shared collaborative experiences.

But to foster real collaboration, Roblox knew that respect among community members was crucial. Within the company, there’s a constant conversation taking place to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to build something special. With this goal in mind, Roblox Studio was designed to use LUA, one of the most user-friendly coding languages available. Roblox seeks to give kids the tools to create; to see players become developers.

When looking at the top games on Roblox, you’re likely to see concepts that, if they were to be pitched in a traditional green light fashion, they would probably never happen. But thanks to the supportive community the company’s built, gamers don’t have to worry about that green light process. Any kid can come on to the platform and, thanks to its ease of use, they can create a game. It really allows them to express themselves without adults getting in the way with rules and regulations. Kids know what kids like.

Whether it’s a seasoned player who’s been active in the world for years or a brand-new developer coming to the community for the first time, Roblox provides everyone with amazing opportunities to be creative in a way that encourages others to add to the story…making the world of the game so much cooler in the process.

How do problematic social issues manifest within the gaming community? According to Maria Hwang, some game characters play off of racist and sexist stereotypes. She also points out issues in the way gamers and fans interact with each other. “There’s a cyberbullying aspect in online communities, and that includes game communities,” she notes.

Hwang highlights the novelty of humanity’s relationship with immersive digital technology as a possible contributing factor. “We’re still in a transition period where we don’t truly understand the distinction between our online and offline lives,” she continues. “As we define what that means and whether our online alter egos are distinct or just continuations of who we are, things will change. For now, though, the idea of embodying new characters and exploring virtual worlds is still a relatively new concept. Cyberbullying may be prevalent because people think that these experiences aren’t real, even though virtual reality is as close to real as entertainment media can get.”

These misconceptions find parallels in the disconnect between people’s actions and their outcomes – Some gamers conclude they can do whatever they want without ramifications. “There are consequences,” cautions Hwang, “but they’re often harder to observe or less tangible than what one might experience in real life.”

Hwang also says that profit motives play a role. “Some people want to capitalize on troublesome things, such as heavily accentuated, hypersexualized portrayals of female characters similar to those found in lingerie commercials and modeling.”

Despite such negatives, Hwang points to a hopeful future. “As we move forward, we constantly reconsider the fluidity between our online and real-life identities. This makes us better equipped to address cyberbullying, stereotyping, and other problems. I believe the gaming and online communities will follow suit, but things are definitely not ideal at the moment.”

Game developers are more frequently using stress testing on their games prior to finalization to ensure their game and servers will handle the demand of their player community.
The video game industry is moving to more digital copies of games. When a game launches, everyone downloads it and jumps online at the same time. Without stress testing, it can be hard for game developers to predict if their servers are going to hold up when everybody hops on the game at the same time. This is especially true for more popular titles that have a lot of player demand.
Think of when a new show comes out on Netflix and everybody jumps on to watch it at the same time. Netflix doesn’t run as smooth because of the service demand. The same thing applies to video games.
Companies in the video game industry will hold a public beta. They’ll give access to the game before the final version is officially released so players can play it and test the game out. As a player, you get to demo the game and decide if you’d like to buy the final game or not.
For the developer, these public betas give them a stress test of your game. They get to test out their servers and say “Ok this many people are on. Our servers can handle this many people. Let’s take this information and project how many people are going to buy our game. And multiply this many people so when it does come out and everybody jumps on at the same time, we’re not having server issues.”
Stress testing is an effective method that game developers use to make sure their game is running on day one. Use stress tests to your advantage to determine your community’s anticipation for the game so you can deliver a better launch day experience for them.

 “So much of marketing around esports is done very differently than it is around traditional consumer experiences or traditional consumer products,” Explains Wim Stocks. “Using influencers and building influencer involvement with a particular campaign is a special set of understandings. That’s a really important role.”

“For us, it’s analytics. A huge part of our business from how we improve our events to how we improve our player experiences are all derived from the analytics around an event, a player’s participation in the event, what our stream looked like, how we’ve engaged an audience for our streams. Those are all very analytics driven, and those are huge opportunities in the esports space.”

“How does one incorporate data and what is the importance of data and knowing it and knowing the importance of it, etc. within our business landscape?” Jonathan Sumers asks. “It’s extremely important because in the digital world one of the benefits of digital and social media in general when we speak to partners and potential partners is the measurability the fact that you can track it. You can target it. You can measure it.”

“It provides all that information. I tell people all the time that the analytics debate in traditional sports is funny. It’s been happening over the most recent years, where people feel as if you either are an analytics person 100% or you’re an old-school iTest person.”

“Obviously, the answer is somewhere in between, right? Numbers and data are information. Information is power. The more information you have, the more leverage you have, the better position you’re going to be in in any circumstance, personal or professional,” Says Sumers.

“If we can gather as much data, whether it be performance of our social post for our partners or nonbranded posts or how many viewers we have per stream or how long they watch per stream or how many unique viewers, etc. that’s all crucial to the story we’re telling as we go into these partnership meetings and other meetings because they tell the story of our brand.”

“If you’re going to hold a traditional sporting event, and your venue holds 20,000 people, you can’t hold the game and not tell people afterwards how many fans showed up. You scroll to the bottom of that box where it tells you the attendance of every game. Numbers, data, and information are crucial across the board and even more so in esports because it is a digital-first property.”

Competition has always been at the core of gaming, and esports is a great example of the evolution of gaming over the last 50 years. Esports really began in the 1980s with Walter Day who, via his organization Twin Galaxies, hosted competitions to determine the best players for arcade games like Donkey Kong and Tetris based on high scores that spectators could watch. Today, esports are more in line with traditional sports, with leagues in such varied communities as NBA 2K, Call of Duty, and Overwatch.

The next esports milestone looks to be in game development itself for both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, but particularly PS5 due to its storage architecture. Because of the way the hardware is built now with the SSD structure, as well as the elimination of hard drives, the jump in game development is akin to comparing an old record player to an iPhone.

These developments seem to signal a major milestone in overall entertainment in the gaming space, helping the form continue its transition from being an activity that only a few players can enjoy at a given time to something more like sports that thousands, even millions, can enjoy worldwide, whether you’re a gamer or not. NBA 2K League has even been featured on ESPN alongside “real” sports.

In the future, the acceptance of esports by major outlets will continue to make such an event the norm rather than the exception, especially as more games are created to work in this kind of sports format.

From its humble beginnings in the arcade, esports have become one of the greatest examples of how gaming has evolved to become the juggernaut of entertainment it is today.

This last year for Christmas, we helped raise $1,200 for the VFW to give 20 families a Christmas. We even got everything on their list. One of those things that I was passionate about — I threw my funds in on top of it to make sure I got it done — was the PS4 for a young kid from a veteran family with a missing father.

People come to me sometimes and they’re like, “I got a cause” — like the VFW. One of them messaged me privately, and I vetted him. I got his information; I got his 401C, and I got his bank account information so that I knew they were legitimate.

That is the primary goal: If you are going to do any kind of fundraising, you don’t deal with the cash yourself. Also, make sure you vet the people you’re giving the money to.

Besides that, we also do things like suicide-prevention strain streams. The last one we did was 35 minutes in from my end. I put seven streamers together — two of which were veterans because that’s our most at-risk community for suicide prevention.

Right behind them were us — gamers and streamers because a lot of us are alone or introverts and we struggle to communicate outside of ourselves. However, gaming allows us to open up.

So, when doing suicide prevention awareness, we’re not asking for donations; we’re just asking people to be aware, to reach out to people, and to let them know they’re not alone.

There are many opportunities to do things without money or without asking for money, since, sometimes, that’s a turnoff.

In summary, vet who you’re going to work with. Then, make sure that you’re going to represent them while you’re doing what you’re doing. That way you don’t reflect poorly on their cause because you’re their face at the moment.

A few things have changed.
One is that esports has become more accessible to a wider range of people. So, the affordability of gaming consoles, gaming moving towards mobile, and free gaming, have all grown exponentially over the past few years. Consequently, it’s been easier to get gaming in front of more people.
The second thing that has changed is what I call the mainstreaming of esports, where you see esports information on sports networks such as ESPN and others. You turn on your TV, in some instances, and watch esports competitions live.
That is only going to increase because esports is ultimately a global sport. We believe that there are three global sports at the end of the day: soccer, basketball, and esports. Those are the three sports that anyone can, theoretically, play at any moment of the day.
So, that’s why you see the growth of esports all around the world; because it is a universal language in that regard. It’ll only grow as technology, communication, and connectivity keep growing.
In terms of breaking into the industry — for anyone who’s interested in pursuing a career within the esports landscape, I would make a few recommendations.
One would be to familiarize yourself, as intimately as possible, with the landscape. What are the top games right now? What are the next games coming out? When and where are the big tournaments? Actually, you should attend a big tournament.
Besides, are you reading the trades of esports? Are you following esports journalists on social media? Are you watching the events online? You need to immerse yourself in the space if you’re not from it. If you’re not a native, you can’t be an outsider looking to just break in; there are so many on the inside that already want these positions. So, you have to learn as much as you can in the gaming space.

The second thing I would suggest is to look for organizations that are interested in becoming part of the gaming space. As you see more non-esports traditional entities and sports organizations get involved, — whether through investment in esports organizations or owning and operating esports organizations (such as the Cleveland Cavaliers owning and operating a team in a professional esports league) — there are more and more non-esports endemics who are tasked with leading this shift.
Therefore, if you can get to people like me first before others (people who know the space and have the connections and the knowledge), you’re going to prove your worth and help yourself potentially solidify a position. Because people like me need people who know the space.
There are going to be more endemics and organizations getting involved in esports. So, knowledge of the esports landscape, performance, and connections is a gold rush.
We’re still so early in the gaming space. It feels like esports has gotten really big over the past few years. Think 10 years from now; we’ll be looking back at around this time and realize that only a handful of games were franchised and had leagues. Theoretically, a decade from now, that could be the norm. So much could change.
So, I would say this: Learn as much as you can and make contact with as many organizations and people looking to be in the gaming space.

Animation for film, TV, and linear storytelling is you controlling the character, creating keyframes for the posing, and carefully planning it out.

Animation in gaming is about creating a character or an object that has certain behaviors assigned to it so that it will behave a certain way when you control it.

Animation in the gaming industry takes a cold, dead environment and breathes life into it. Animation is not just how your player moves through the world; it’s also the world interacting back with the player.

People tend to think about the obvious, walking around or dancing, but animation is so much more powerful than that.

For instance, you’ve got an ax that you’re swinging. If you go up to a tree and swing the ax and nothing happens, you’re probably going to think that you can’t knock the tree down. If, instead, the tree wiggles and shakes a little bit, you’re going to swing that ax again.

You feel like you’re engaging with the environment, and the environment starts feeling real. You’re also cluing players into the game mechanics and which actions they can take.

You swing the ax again. This time the tree shakes harder – you’re going to swing it again. You have positive reinforcement that swinging the ax does something, and you should keep doing it until the payoff.

There’s a huge team that works on all these projects within the esports industry. And at every level of gaming education and planning, they have to consider the gaming experience.

A character designer and a modeler work together to create the characters, make them look appealing, scary, or whatever the game requires.

Next, the rigger puts in a rig, a skeleton that goes inside the mesh, the skin of the character, and creates movement. Then, the character receives its texture. Textures give the feel of leather, skin, or cloth, and they create the mood, the sense of danger, or lightness, of comedy.

Animation in gaming is different from animation in television and feature films. Each step in the process must take into account the materials of the objects or characters.

For example, as online gaming education teaches, characters made of metal will move a certain way based upon the characteristics of the metal. A program (coding) will determine how a metal character will interact with its environment.

The environment must be specified as well. Is it metal, wood, or ground? Gravity is also critical; it’s the most important part of physics regarding how a character moves.

If you’re on Jupiter, you’re going to move very slowly. If you’re on Earth, you’re going to move like we’re used to seeing people move. If you’re on the moon, you’re going to move lightly.

All of these details get programmed into the game. Whether it’s an esports, 2D, or 3D game, these things give the character the performance that makes the game exciting.

[Please embed: https://pixabay.com/images/id-5091194/ ]

Game development has become a very welcoming environment. The game engine is the hub that runs the entire game and makes your game assets work. Anybody can develop a game as there are many different types of game engines and environments available.
If you are an aspiring game developer just starting out, you may want to check out Unreal Engine. This is a popular engine that is good for starters in that it is a bit more user-friendly. Unreal Engine involves less technical aspects to it as compared to other engines.
Another popular game engine that quite a few people know about is Unity. This game engine has a platform that allows you to create game characters. You can also add physics to the game assets using Rigidbody dynamics, and you can make your characters do different things by adding some code to your program.
If you don’t want to install a hefty software application on your computer, there are a whole host of game development engines that are web-based. You would simply go onto an internet browser, type in the URL, and then start coding. Once you’ve created your app or game, you simply download your file.
MIT App Inventory is a form of Scratch, which uses a block-based programming language for you to create apps and games. You drag and drop various blocks to build the code needed to run your creation.
Flowlab is another web-based application. Using Flowlab you can create game characters, add different movements for those characters, and create a full-fledged game. You can also access this application on your phone.
If you start working for first-party studios in the gaming industry, such as PlayStation, Naughty Dog, or Rockstar, you may work with proprietary game engines that these studios have created themselves.

“Some game engines are better for creating great, giant worlds,” says Genevieve Johnson. Unreal was initially known for that, whereas Unity’s metier was smaller, boutique 2D games that could render smoothly on a tablet.
“But what we’re seeing today is that Unity’s excellent for creating large, 3D games. And Unreal can create wonderful games for your phone,” continues Johnson, “It then becomes a question of, how strong are you in coding?”
One thing that Johnson particularly likes about Unreal is its visual scripter.
”I tend towards using Unity as my game engine because I find it to be programmer-friendly. Whenever I have a unique mechanism that I want to work on, I can effortlessly write the code from scratch. That may be more difficult for some people. But to me, it’s very freeing,” says Dan Shimmyo. Unity enables him to try lots of things in a flash.
Malik Forte’s advice to anybody trying to decide between Unreal and Unity is that if you’re looking for accessibility and don’t want to get too deep into learning a code language, then Unreal is the way to go. It’s a lot more accessible and easier to use.
“Unity is for more veteran developers who understand coding language and are further along with working with game engines,” he says.
So, for someone who is just getting started and wants to get an idea of how a video game engine works, according to Forte, Unreal is the way to go to get the hang of things.
“If you want to move on to something bigger like Unity, you can do that later,” says Forte.