Philly Game Mechanics (PGM), formerly known as Philly Dev Nights, is a charitable organization that supports game development and indie game enthusiasts in Philadelphia by holding events that allows game developers of all kinds to come together in a supportive environment to showcase their creations and receive feedback.

PGM, which was created by a group of people that included Shawn Pierre and William Stallwood, provides resources and networking opportunities for creative people of all skill levels. Every week, developers, designers, artists, musicians and more come together to hangout, share and create games. While attending one of the Game Jams, I sat down with Shawn and he spoke a little bit on the purpose of the events Philly Game Mechanics hosts.

“Our goal is to is to help the local game development scene and help people make games, provide a space where they can showcase their work and provide opportunities where people can become better at their craft,” Shawn Pierre said.

“What they try to get people to do is to practice making games on a monthly basis by holding what’s called a Game Jam. Game Jams are opportunities where you have a limited amount of time and a theme, and you make a game based around those kind of rules,” Nick Madonna, the founder of a local game studio named PHL Collective, said in an interview speaking on Philly Game Mechanics.

The next upcoming event is the Game Jam Kickoff, which is taking place on June 6th, 7:00 pm. At the event , you are challenged to make a game in two weeks. Afterwards, everyone comes together to display the games that they have created at Indie Hall, located at 399 Market St, 3rd Fl.

Philly Game Mechanics welcomes all people to come and join them at their events. You don’t even have to know a single thing about games, come as you are and you’ll learn along the way.

When studying the history of the world, war is one of the most impactful things on societies and cultures. War still continues to go on today in the world, but do we go to war for the same reasons as we used to? Do we even view war the same as we did a few hundred years ago? One of the main things that change the way that we view war is the entertainment industry. From video games to movies, the seriousness about war has changed into something enjoyable to play or to watch.

One example the ways images of war are packages of entertainment is the games in the  Call of Duty series which allows you to play online with others. When playing the game, the things that are visible on the screen is a gun in your hand, a scoreboard of how many kills each team has on the right-hand side, and a timer, and the environment. There are different game modes in the game, but I will be talking about Team Deathmatch. The name alone shows how we see death as entertainment. The goal of the game mode is for one of the teams to reach a certain kill score, usually 75 kills, before the other team does within the time limit. The first team that reaches that score wins the game. Everyone's objective in the game is to get as many kills as possible, while also dying as little as possible. After each game, your character gains xp, which is experience points, from the match and more game currency, which allows them to rank up in the game and buy gear. The higher your rank, the more and better weapons and gear you can obtain with the game currency. Colors and designs on guns and armor also become unlocked with rank or the number of kills or headshots you have obtained. There is a Ted Talk by Peter Mantello which speaks on a similar topic, in which he said, “So the more you kill, the richer you become. The richer you become, the more weapons you can buy. The more weapons you can buy, the more powerful you can become.” There is no point in time where the game makes you question the killing of other people. The objective is very clear, kill. In order to stay alive, kill. In order to look and be cooler, kill more. Another game that is like this is Fortnite, which is currently still one of the biggest games out there right now. It is a battle royale game where you can play with a team or by yourself in order to kill everyone and be the last man standing. The more you level up in the game, the more things you unlock. What’s interesting about this is that when I use to play Fortnite, I questioned the whole idea of the game, which is having people skydive from hot air balloon school bus and search for weapons scattered in the world in order to kill each other. But interestingly enough, I continued to play the game. Even after looking at the game from the outside for a short period of time, I continued playing it. What I liked about the game was the costumes, the dances, the objects. The way you were able to play the game with your friends and compete against people online, and I liked it just because it was popular and I wanted to have fun just like everyone else. That’s what kept me hooked.

What people don’t realize is that the concept of these games may have a deeper meaning than simply playing with your friends and having a good time. I don’t want to bash the games completely, because I’m sure that the creators didn’t have any bad intentions when making these games (I hope), but when you think about a simulation where you put a group of humans in an environment just to slay and kill each other, that’s kind of brutal and downright savage. Is that really something we want our youth playing? For the people that are going to defend video games like this, I understand that a lot of people have the common sense not to do anything of these horrific things in real life, but what about the people that don’t? At a young age, children absorb and mimic a lot of things they see and hear. Knowing this trait of children, there is a good possibility that video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty can be the kickstart for violence in their future. Parents need to make sure that their child understands that they should never do any of the things they do in the video game in real life, or just not allowed their kid to play the game at all.

Video games were made for entertainment, and games like Call of Duty and Fortnite can be fun. But people need to be aware of the hidden symbols and meaning in video games that involves war. We cannot allow ourselves to be negatively influenced by these games and allow them to change the seriousness of war.

The score was 19 to 19. We were on a 15 game win streak. The tension was thick and I never took my eyes off of the tv. The ball was inbounded to me, so I ran up the court with it. I had an open lane to the hoop because my defender was guarding someone else. I held the square button and held my breath as my player flew into the air and was immediately surrounded by the other players. It was a trap. My player came crashing down, dunking on everyone that was under the basket. I leaped up and screamed in joy as I had ended the game that was so contested.

Video games were always apart of my life even at a young age. My family was always playing the video games and I couldn’t help but to want to play too. They would play games like Final Fantasy 7, Grand Theft Auto, Crash Bandicoot, Kingdom Hearts and more when they wanted to play some one player games. Those games were fun, but I would usually play the multiplayer games with my cousins and dad. We played all sorts of multiplayer games like basketball, Sonic 2 and 3, Fight Night, Madden, Tekken, Soulcalibur, Mortal Kombat and much more.

Playing these games made my childhood pretty competitive when it came to gaming. Now, I wasn’t the best, but the point would be to just have fun even if you win or not. When I received my first game system, which was a VTech V smile, I was overwhelmed with joy since I didn’t have to beg to play the game anymore. After receiving a V Smile, I wanted to get even more games. When I got older, my parents bought me a PS3, and that’s where it all changed right there. My desire to play the game went from being a hobby into a habit. All day, every day, I would be on the game until my mom would yell at me to get off the game.

I play video games because they entertain me when I’m bored or help me calm down if I’m upset. Video games bring a massive amount of fun to me but that fun does not come alone. Every video gamer knows the experience of the gamer rage, whether they have raged only once or if they rage every day. If you play video games a lot, you’re bound to get angry, especially if it’s a competitive video game. The rage is unlike any other type of rage because you’re not mad at the world or anyone around you, you’re mad at how difficult is it to succeed a goal in that game. But that urge to succeed is what keeps you playing the game, and that’s what I like about video games. They gave me the determination that I have today.

I remember one time when I was playing NBA 2K17 with my friends and we were playing against some people online in MyPark. We kept it a contested game until the other team started destroying us off of screens and fast dribbling. My friends and I were mad, especially me because I absolutely hate screens on 2K. When the other team hit the winning shot, anger filled up inside of me. I was trying my hardest to control it, but it was overwhelming me. The people who won were talking their trash talk on the game chat yelling in everyone’s ears. I got up and yelled back at them and kicked the office chair I was sitting on. Right before their mics cut out, I heard “Run it back then, come back around!” from the people who beat me. I was furious when I heard that. My mom yelled at me to get off the game but I refused. I wanted to go around and beat those guys because I lost. So that’s exactly what I did, and by doing that my team and I won and they left the park. Playing video games showed to me that if you try hard enough, you can achieve your goals. Even though sometimes I don’t try my hardest in school, I do try my hardest when I want to do something I’m passionate about, specifically video games. I feel forced to go to school and I don’t mean to say that in an offensive way, I just do. However, when I play video games that feeling is not there. It’s enjoyable while providing a challenge for me. For some games, I have to carefully strategize how to complete a challenge. Others games can be easy and does not require much thinking. Either way, I enjoy playing video games and they have influenced me in an important way.

My element is Neon. The atomic number of this is 10. Neon was first discovered through the study of liquefied air. The name comes from the word “neos” which means new in Greek. The main use of Neon is advertisements and lights. I got the idea for the imagery I chose is because Nyan the Cat is also called the Neon Cat. Since neon was in this cat’s name and it’s the name of my element, I decided to make this my image so people could infer what my element is. To start off this print, I had to sketch down three ideas. After that, I then decided to go with the Nyan the Neon Cat idea. Then I sketched my print reversed on a 4x6 trace paper. Next, I carved the reversed image on a styrofoam tray in order for it to be ready to be printed. Then I coated the tray with ink and the parts of the tray that were carved did not take in that much ink. I placed a paper on top of the inked tray and applied pressure everywhere in order to get the print on the paper. I did the inking process a couple of times and all of the prints came out the original way I drew the image. What I would do differently is how much red ink I put on my paper and also make the carves on the tray deeper to get a better image. My favorite part of this project was inking the print and printing it onto the paper. I liked rolling the ink onto my tray because it just felt to smooth, and I also liked when I printed the images on the paper because they came out looking good in my opinion.

Lamar Reed

Yo soy muy guapo

Tengo un gato

Vivo con mi mama

Y tengo un hermano

Vivo en Filadelfia
Tengo catorce años

Y soy muy muy extraño

En la casa veo mama

Oigo un gato

Toco videojuegos

Y saboreo muchos pollos

Juego videojuegos

Para ganar los sellos

Juego con mi gato

En la cama yo duermo

Comemos muchos pollos

Pescado no tenemos

Somos Americano

Nosotros es loco

Printmaking is the art of making pictures and printing them from prepared plates or blocks. There are many types of printmaking and most of them tends to differ a lot. Without printmaking, digital printing would not exist today. Printmaking also also makes it easier for the general public to access art since it is more inexpensive than other forms of art. It allows artist to be able to show their work on a much larger scale and even make copies.

Printmaking is revolutionary because not only did it inspire the thought digital printing, it also allowed artist to do more things. Instead of having to draw or carve the same thing over and over again, they could just make a copies so time can be saved. This also allows artist to become more creative with their work as new opportunities are opened.

An example of printmaking is the woodcut method. Woodcut is a relief printing technique that is done by carving out an image in a block of wood and then inking the negative space around the carved image. I find this type of printmaking interesting because I notice that it seems pretty easy to do compared to the other types of printmaking and the outcome of the image comes out very detailed and clean. I wonder how long it takes to do this type of printing and how easy it is to carve into the wood. What if you need a certain type of wood in order to do this type of print?

Reflection:
I learned that the rule of thirds really has a big impact on how something looks to the eye. When I had made my slide, it looked weird because of where everything was. The changes I made to my slide was getting rid of the picture of myself, moving the words over, and changing the font color of the word “draw.” I also changed the font of “fire spitting” and my name “Lamar Reed”. I removed the picture and moved the words over because the way they were placed made my slide look weird to the eye, so when I changed it up,the slide became more comfortable and easy to look at. I changed the color of the word “draw” so it can pop out more and font the font so it can a more cooler effect to how people see the slide. I also purposely kept “fire spitting” red so it can have a fire type color to it. Researching before a project is so important because if you do enough research, you can be prepared and know what to do instead of guessing and trying to improvise when you don’t have an understanding of the project and it’s requirements.

Would look at this slide, so beautiful to the eye. This slide right here, describes me. The intensity of the ember background shows the fiery burning desire to improve on everything I can. Whether it be my school life or personal life. This background also shows the fire that I spit forth into the world, making dragons look like a joke. I also included an excellent picture that captures me in a car perfectly. It shows exactly what it looks like when I try to make the light skin face. The smooth texture of my skin, the lines of the wrinkles on my forehead, the excellent biting of the bottom lip, the shape of my eyes when I squint them, the black and white color clothing theme that I was wearing that day. The form of this light skin face is flawless. The value of my face and clothes make me pop out to the eye and since I am in the middle of the picture I create a neutral space around me. Also, there’s one more thing that you can also use to describe me. That one thing is the earbuds. These earbuds shows that I like to listen to music when I’m traveling, since I’m in a car. Thank you for reading/listening to this and I hope you have a good day!