Personal Development Plan
Description of work done
The task I was set was to create a report on one of the topics affecting the games industry at current times. The topic I went with was (The rise of Social Gaming and its impact on the AAA side of the industry) The way I went about starting my report was to look at social gaming at a whole and then to target more specific social games that are having a big influence such as the games by Zanga with Farmville and CtiyVille. I discussed such things like how many users they pull in compared to some of the much higher quality AAA games and that this can be having a negative effect on the games industry by making people accept lower standards for games and that there are what are dubbed "evil mechanics in place" such as the appointment gaming. I then looked at a case study of a designer Brenda Brathwaite who wants to change what is happening with socially games and aim to make high quality ones with design at the core rather than profit. I then went on to discuss a completely different kind of social gaming, seconded life. This game is completely dependant on users creating and shaping the world and does not focus solely on profit so it is a positive example for current times. The final thing I went on to look at was Microsoft and them trying to get in on social gaming using the xbox360 and Xbox live, the case study I used was 1vs100 a completely different type of experience for console gamers, although it was short lived and not given any real reason for its abrupt life.
Reflection of work done
I believe that some of my strengths with this work was, that I had a good knowledge of social games that where available out there and so this gave me a great variety of things to talk about for the report.
However I did not know any real facts or case studies so I had to spend time on the internet researching information that would help me progress with my report. I also believe that my strengths do not include written work so I also struggled with this assignment because of this.
Opportunities with this project could have included been to include more examples of case studies but as I did not use my time as effectively as I could have done I was unable to.
Problems that I felt could have been included with my work could be grammar and spelling mistakes as this is not one of my strengths. However this threat did arise when completing my work so I spent to long spell checking and ended up missing the deadline by less than a minute.
Plan of Action
My plan of action in future would be to make a deadline before the actual deadline so that there is enough time to make any changes such as spell checking without running into any problems such as missing the turn in because of it. The next thing I would also do would to be from now on try and spell check as much as I can while going along rather than leaving it all until the end. Another thing I would like to improve on is trying to use more sources of information rather than just the internet, I would achieve this by using the library more, but this may not work for some projects if there is not any relevant material available on the topics in the library; so sometimes this may not be achievable.
Conclusion
In conclusion I believe that this project went well but could have been handled better with time management and such, and has made me realise for future projects that I need to be allot more efficient when it comes to deadlines and will be something I will work to improve on. Despite that though I do think that I did put allot of effort into my research and the report overall and the only thing I see that I could have improved on would be to have used a wider array of sources for material when compiling report.
