Reflection & Sources: Assignment 2, Communicating with Data
The quality of my sources1,2,3,5,6, though as good as I could manage, isn’t up to a professional standard, although it meets assessment criteria. I commented on the GOTY genres, but finding an index of these to reference was tricky- I ended up using Moby Games4, which worked well enough, but lacked a setting for Uncharted 4, which is obviously contemporary; an administrative error, I assume. The quality of each of the games awards organisations is variable too, some say that a GDCA GOTY means more than a TGA GOTY, but this is just up to opinion, and I sourced this data directly. Metacritic scores7 are an excellent indication of quality and public opinion as it is an aggregate score of a diverse range of reviews.
I think that my infographic does a good job at laying outiv reasons why Baldur’s Gate 3 is an outstanding achievement in the gaming industry and has been awarded accordingly, without forcing the audience to draw this conclusion ham-fistedly; I present the statistics, title it ambiguously but correctly, and let the viewers conclude the point from there- basically, a variant on the list structureii.
In my design, I used a set of four colours; a background colour, two primary colours, and a fourth and final colour to help provide more contrast when neededa; this establishes consistent flow and hierarchy, blue also evokes the ideas of information and objectivity, while orange is complimentary to it. I used a colour palette generating website to do this, and a font pairing generator to find Roboto, Palanquin, and Nobileb, for variety and emphasis. Canva was a useful resource for creating the data visualisation techniques I neededc, I then imported them into Adobe Illustrator to collate the design.
During multiple design phases, I bounced my designs back and forth between myself, my partner, and my dad, to get feedback on issues and fixes. Both collaborators were in my intended audience: gamers, especially those who are aware of relevant games. My partner is a lifelong Zelda fan and Souls-like connoisseur, and my dad has played BG3 tons.
The visualisation techniques I employed were: a line chart to show progressing quality over time, a bar chart to show frequency of game elements, a progress bar to show scores out of maximums, and donut charts to simultaneously show scores out of 100 and which/how many GOTY awards were woni. I believe these are correct and appropriate forms of data visualisation for their purposesiii.
References:
Data:
Game Developers Choice Awards. (n.d). Archive. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://gamechoiceawards.com/archive
The Game Awards. (n.d.). Rewind. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://thegameawards.com/rewind
BAFTA. (n.d.). BAFTA Awards. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from http://awards.bafta.org/explore?year=2024&type=games
Game Browser. (n.d.). MobyGames. Retrieved 22 April 2024, from https://www.mobygames.com/game/
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. (n.d) Main Page Archive. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://www.interactive.org/news/past_news.asp
GamesRadar. (n.d). Search results for Golden Joystick | Search | GamesRadar+. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://www.gamesradar.com/au/search/
Metacritic. (n.d). Video Game Reviews, Articles, Trailers and more. Retrieved 22 April 2024, from https://www.metacritic.com/game/
Academic Resources:
Aiello, G. (2020). Inventorizing, situating, transforming: Social semiotics and data visualization. In M. Engebretsen & H. Kennedy (Eds.), Data Visualization in Society (pp. 49–62). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvzgb8c7.9
Library: Infographics: Examples structures. (2024, January 28). SkillsGuides. https://libguides.hull.ac.uk/c.php?g=696088&p=5129724
Pino, I. (2021, October 15). Why and how to apply semiotics to data visualization. Medium. https://ingridpino.medium.com/why-and-how-to-apply-semiotics-to-data-visualization-84b71c94568f
West, C. (2019, July 26). Infographic Design: Complete Guide for Non-Designers [2022]. https://visme.co/blog/infographic-design-guide/
Design Resources:
Coolors.Co. (n.d.). Coolors.co. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://coolors.co/001524-15616d-ffecd1-ff7d00-78290f
Fontjoy. (n.d.). Fontjoy—Generate font pairings in one click. Retrieved 21 April 2024, from https://fontjoy.com/
Canva. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved 22 April 2024, from https://www.canva.com/
