Thursday 15 October 2009

The Link Between Time and Waste!

Well, here it comes, the first angry rant of my blog!

Within the MA course the first semester is made up of two parts, the "Game Design" part and what i am now calling the "Complete B*ll***s" section. I know the name of the second part may sound harsh but i will now explain why i will not be changing my view on this section.

At the start of the semester we were all given a group project based around the design aspects of Preston city. At first i thought this was going to be a bit of a Mickey Mouse organised project, but after being given the assignment for this section i was actually seeing the point of it.

We were put into design teams, a mixture of people from other MA courses across the design school, and given a brief. Once in our groups we were given the task of forming a small hierarchy to make the groups more efficient.

So my group decided that it would be a good idea to go out and get some research together in a chosen area of the brief. This task started to grow on me after i started to become quite interested in the history of Preston.

Now this is where my choose title for this module will become clear. . .

After already being told we were given the project late so we had less time than we thought on this project, we all have to rush to get up to a point where we were comfortable about the deadline. And then after a week of doing the project at high pace we were told, by someone who didn't really seem to understand himself why the decision was made, that the project would now be worth 0%. . . .

All i can say is many people, including myself were p**sed off!

We all had questions, why? who's idea was it? and what do we do now?

Answers -

Why? - Errrr, well, ermmm, *silence*, *nervous look*, you can still do it for fun?

Who? - We decided (who the hell is we anyway!) to. . .

What now? - Well you can still do the group project as a bit of fun. . .

My reply to what now - why the hell should we? If we want to interact and have fun we should use the time on the Friday morning to go have a drink. I no its quite early in the day, but who cares?

I have to say its an absolute joke. First we were given a project late, then we had to work faster than usually to get up to the same deadlines, and then we were told the work would be worth nothing. If you can't understand my anger imagine this;

You have a worked for 5 days for a company expecting to be paid. Then on the last day, when you are about to leave for home your boss tells you they have decided not to pay you, with no reasonable explanation for it.

Anyway, we now have a project which still makes little sense and when we asked question about it the person who gave us the project didn't seem to understand it themselves. . . Personally i think its being filmed for some form of comedy sketch show where the creators sit and laugh behind blacked out windows, and as i don't seem any windows, i think its just a joke!

Needless to say i, and many others, aren't very happy with how that part of the course is being run and presented.

On a brighter note;

Games Design Section Happiness Level 100% - So nothing really to say about that section.

1 comment:

  1. I had a similar one of these posts, but in the end I didn't put it up. I do however share your dissapointment and borderline rage at the complete ass up that is being made of the contexual side of the MA. I have a whole list of problems with how it is being handled, not least this group project fiasco, and not least the fact it will apparently be 2-3 weeks before they bother giving us a lecture about the reflective diary and learning agreement.

    Where do they get off spending an hour on the Ning, an hour on fashion/phenemology and a half hour on the library and then chucking out reports worth 60% without an iota of further explanation? What kind of sporadically ingenius retard is confused by a library and unaware how to sign into a web site but instantly capable of decrypting the BS jargon of the briefs?

    Piss poor. I got angrier the more I wrote in this comment. lol

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