CAGD Blog

 Inclusivity in the Gaming Space and How It Has Advanced in Recent Years     As a game design major myself, this is a topic I am extremely familiar with and all around completely fascinated by. For some people, using a controller or a mouse and keyboard with the controls the game designers intended is near or completely impossible. Whether it be issues with the use of fingers for trigger, button, or stick inputs, sometimes disabilities can completely stop a player from being able to play the game as intended. That is why I am amazed and proud of the wide variety of control changes that more modern games can make to adapt to different players' needs, allowing essentially anyone to play games, no matter what issues they have with using common controls.     I actually have a great personal example of this through the experiences of one of my close friends. One of my friends has a deformity in both of his hands, which makes it difficult to use the triggers, sticks, ...

 The Digital Divide      In this day and age, the digital divide can be detrimental to those without access to high-speed internet or any devices. With how necessary the internet is in the modern age for things as important as jobs and school, not having a computer, phone, or access to the internet can make it extremely difficult to maintain a job or do well in school. Putting public WiFi in places like libraries and giving students access to laptops and tablets is helpful, but the problem of not having access to these at home still remains.            I think one of the only ways to close the digital divide, or to at least make it better, is for WiFi and digital devices to become cheaper, which they have been over the years as technologies improve. Now, even the slower speeds of the internet that are on the relatively cheaper side are much faster than the top-of-the-line Wi-Fi in previous years. The only issue with this is that it ...

The Music Industry - The Future of Listening I truly believe that the entirety of music will be switching to streaming. With how quickly streaming has advanced, and how much music is now streamed compared to other sources, I believe that eventually everyone will be transferring to streaming for its ease of access and its improving audio quality. Even now, according to the IFPI Global Music Report, 69 percent of music listeners are using streaming services, which I think will only grow with time. Additionally, I believe that it is possible that at some point in the somewhat near future, cars will remove both AM and FM radio, and will adopt an Apple play style smart screen for all streaming. This is obviously not a guarantee as people have been upset at the removal of AM radio in cars, but with how popular and used music streaming has been, I feel as though Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming software will be built into cars. With how easy to use Apple and Android Car Play are, I f...

APA Sources for Kickstart Gottfried, J., & Park, E. (2025, November 20). Americans' Social Media Use 2025 . Pew Research Center. Retrieved February 20, 2026, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/ This article from Pew Research seems like a very useful collection of information about social media use amongst Americans in 2025. This can be easily used to influence choices from our group, as we can see what forms of media are working, as well as what forms are not working anymore. An immediate example from this article is the fall off of Twitter, now known as X, which is only receiving 21 percent of people who say they use it. Health Benefits of Social Media Use in Adolescents and Young Adults . (2025, August 15). PMC. Retrieved February 20, 2026, from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12356748/ This could be an extremely interesting article to pull from, especially when thinking about the broader effects of social media. For ...

 Kickstart Start - AI I am personally fascinated by artificial intelligence purely because of the speed at which it has been progressing in recent years. It has such a wide array of uses, and is getting so much better at what it does so unbelievably rapidly. This does not by any means mean that I like AI and think it is a great thing; in fact, I think it is out of control at the moment and is already causing and will continue to cause huge issues. Being someone who works in technology, though, it is impossible for me to look away from, and I find myself reading articles and staying up to date on a lot of the advancements of AI, and weighing out the positives and negatives of each breakthrough. I will say that I believe there are good uses for AI as long as it is supported by other sources, such as information gathering with information supported by other articles or websites, basic health diagnosis that can give doctors a basic idea of where to start on an issue, or even recommen...

 Video Games Through History Shown above are a few of the most popular arcade cabinets: Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig-Dug, and Donkey Kong. While not technically a "console," the arcade cabinet was the original way to play video games. The first cabinet, Computer Space , based on Spacewar!,  was released in 1971, but the most commonly known "original cabinet" was PONG , which was released in November 1972. This was everyone's first impression of commercial video games, and this is where the history of video games truly begins. Link to Betson Enterprises' Arcade Cabinet History , a well-known arcade cabinet company. Shown above is the Atari 2600. Though the Magnavox Odyssey was technically the first home console in 1972, and the Atari Home Pong was released in 1975, the Atari 2600 was the first truly popular gaming console. This was the first popular product for at-home gaming, and really started the medium of consoles as we know them today, with interchangeable c...