Easter Break (Research Report Proposal)

Before the Easter Break I planned to write my research report proposal, over the holidays I went home to do my essay proposal, mainly because my drawing software at home is awful. This is my report:

 Games Art and Design Research Report Proposal

Name: Nicholas Thomas...................................................

Type of Research Report:

extended essay / industry / technical / reflective / editorial

Topic Outline:

Give brief details of your proposed topic together with the potential research questions you may wish to investigate.

The topic I plan to address is what makes a good game story, by looking into three subsections of development ideas, character selection/ making your own, and environments and relations to the game story, I plan to see how the player’s interaction with a game helps the story become more effective. Throughout the essay I will be showing how the game stories connect with my three subsection areas I am exploring.  By the end of this essay I hope to know more about what it means to get a good concept idea and turn it into an amazing game with a great narrative and story.

I plan to look into three different areas that would make up a good game story, the first being how the developers come up with the game idea, where they draw their influences for the game from.  Looking at examples of Ludo-narrative dissonance for some of the early concepts of game stories, as well as comparing narrative in the early stages of scripting, to the story that is realised with the game.  The second area is the character design, I will look at why players chose a certain character over another based on what will feel more comfortable for them to play as, with this I also want to look into characters that players create themselves, and look into ways into why they create said character, considering some may play with the design looks into making him/her look insane and unhuman as possible, or others may go for a look that best suits how they think they would look.  As for names of the characters, players have hundreds of ways of coming up with names for their characters they have created.  The third area is the environment and world for the story; this ultimately gives the player an idea of what kind of game it’s going to be about. For example if it was a Bethesda game, it allows you to explore the game world at your own pace and complete missions when you want to (Fallout & Skyrim).

For my conclusion I will be reviewing my topics and showing off their strengths and weaknesses, and what the player will be able to take away after playing the game in terms of experience, using a list of examples of games I believe would be best for this topic, I will create a survey asking people about the games they felt they got the most experience out of.  Did it teach them something? Did they have fun? What could have been better? How did they feel about the game overall? What could I take away from this to help my artwork improve? Thinking of ways in which some of the bad game stories could be improved.

Research Questions:

What makes a good game story?

How does creating our own characters feel better than ones already created for the game?

Do players enjoy games more as groups rather than solo?

Significant images / artefacts / theories / practitioners / companies:

Attach images that have inspired you to research in this area together with details of theories you are interested in and information on artists, designers, practitioners, companies and who will be important for your report.

Theory:

I’m interested in how game stories become great through the players interaction.

I’m interested in what a player thinks of when creating a game avatar, and how that makes the game more enjoyable for the player.

I’m interested to learn how the environment and landscape of the game will affect how the player plays the story’s order.

Ludology

Narratology

Contexts:

Stories and their meaning behind them.

The history of video game stories and how they have evolved.

Objects of study (Developers/ Games):

Walt Williams

Drew Karpyshyn

Jamie Madigan

Bethesda

Extra Credits

Fallout

Skyrim

Uncanney Valley

Pokémon Black &/or White

(Images taken from Google)

Initial research sources:

Provide an initial bibliography of books, articles and weblinks related to your research

Books/Articles:

Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash (1992)

Zimmerman, Eric, Salen, Katie, Rules of Play (2003)

Skolnick, Evan, Video Game Storytelling (2014)

Klug, Chris, Lebowitz, Josiah, Interactive Storytelling for Video Games (2011)

Web Sources:

GamesRadarStaff (2013) The Best Videogame Stories Ever

http://www.gamesradar.com/the-best-videogame-stories-ever/ (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

Robert Kojder (2013) 50 Greatest Ever Stories in Gaming

http://whatculture.com/gaming/50-greatest-ever-stories-gaming.php (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

Terrence Lee (2013) Designing Game Narrative: How to create a great story

http://www.develop-online.net/opinions/designing-game-narrative-how-to-create-a-great-story/0185460 (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

Jamie Madigan (2013) The Psychology of Video Game Avatars

http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2013/11/the-psychology-of-video-game-avatars/ (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

Juul, Jesper (2001) Game Telling Stories? –A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/ (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

Credits, Extra (2012) Bad Writing- Why most games tell bad stories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1ziCvLkJ0 (Last Accessed 30/03/16)

There are a lot more extra credit videos I will look at, but for this example I put one up, when I use others, I will havard reference them in my essay

Next steps:

Give brief details of your research plan including the types of research you will conduct, contacts and visits you intend to make, etc.

First steps:

Primary Research:

Emails to game writers.

Student survey on games with favourite storyline

Playthrough of Fallout 4 and various games which I like for their story (Pokemon Black &/or White).

Secondary Research:

Research Top 5 games with amazing story.

Research into when character creation started appearing in games.

Research environmental story-telling.

Look at Extra Credits videos on story telling.

Research into Story telling based games (Telltale Games).

Summer Plans:

Visit LAGC (London Anime & Gaming Con) and gets opinions on best story based games from staff and members of the public.

Create Survey for essay ideas.

Email companies for information on areas in the essay.

Create a layout structure.

Visit Uni library for research into story based games.

Timeline:

July: Begin field research.

August: continue research into chosen areas.

September: Start to think about writing small sentences to get points across.

October: Bullet point essay and start a rough draft.

November: Continue drafts.

December: Finalise Draft and Submit.

Essay Structure:

Introduction into what I’m addressing in the essay, and what I will be laying out.

Story Ideas: Where the designs begin and how the developers choose to create a story out of the ideas they’ve been given.

Character Design: how people ultimately choose what they do when creating a character.

Environments: How the environments can make a difference on how the story of the game is played.

Conclusion on how people experience the game stories and what they then take away as a result of this experience, as well as say what might become of games yet to play.