Easter - Elements Of Consideration

"Elements Of Consideration"
being the most marvellous notes
of the renowned scholar Kyle Cherry

1.1 Refinement of our test.
-One of our current problems with the test is that we have not chosen a ‘victory condition’. This problem is easily remedied:
Our test has been successful if the player found the NPC too plausible as a friend to believe they could ever turn upon them. Essentially, that the ‘Nice’ level variant would be ‘canon’ in their eyes. One of the most important questions to include in the questionnaires is which level the player found most believable, because if our NPC is too friendly to be a threat players will tell us that the level where the two leave happily was the most believable. Our test will have been a success.

1.2 Defining sympathy, empathy and chivalry – Emotional Factors of our test.
“The Nature Of Sympathy”
(Max Scheler, 2008 / ISBN-10: 1412806879)
“The Role of Sympathy And Altruistic Personality Traits In Helping: A Reexamination”
(Nancy Eisenberg et al. / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119431381/abstract)
“The Distinction Between Sympathy And Empathy”
(Lauren Wispé, 1986 / Journal of Personality And Social Psychology)
"The Sacred Rights Of The Weak"
(Elizabeth B. Clark, 1995 / http://www.jstor.org/pss/2082183)

2.1 Refinement of personality modelling chart to better suit our NPC.
-Reduce the variables -2/+2, representing the strongest realistic responses.
-Increase list of variables:
Hateful / Loving
Discontent / Content
Disillusioned / Hopeful
Cautious / Trusting
Cowardly / Courageous
Arrogant / Modest
Selfish / Selfless
Indifferent / Caring
Immature / Mature
Dishonorable /Honorable
-Addition of ‘Inert/Driven’ axis which charts the character’s ambition or lack thereof.
-Addition of ‘Independent/Dependent’ axis which charts the character’s need or lack of need for other characters.
-Addition of ‘Introvert/Extrovert’ axis which charts how the character presents themselves to social situations.
-Addition of ‘Chaotic/Ordered’ which charts the character’s attitudes to their clothing, possessions and situation.
We can use these personality modelling charts in our data-collection, asking players to mark the NPC. This is interesting, because with two NPCs to describe, the player will invariably pick the one they found most believable.

3.1 Design of our NPC – Career & Background.
-NPC must be sympathetic; unfulfilling day job? Money issues? NPC must be thoroughly sympathetic; Under-valued?
-Possible careers; IT Consultant, office drone.
When considering the chosen career of our NPC, we must pay attention to whether the setting places any additional restrictions on our character, for example ‘Job Strain’ and other traits.
“Does it matter where you work?"
(E. Jeffrey Hill, 2003 / Journal Of Vocational Behavior)
“A longitudinal test of Karasek's Job Strain model among office workers.”
(Pascale Carayon, 1993 / Work And Stress)
“A Brief Introduction to Job Strain”
(Peter Schnall M.D., 1998 / http://workhealth.org/strain/briefintro.html)
“The World Of The Office Worker”
(Michel Crozier, 1971 / Journal Of Contemporary Ethnography)

3.2 Design of our NPC – Appearance.
“A Measure Of Emotional Empathy”
(Albert Mehrabian, 2006 / http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/lit/Articles/MehrabianA1972a.pdf)
-Our NPC must be ‘average’ to best fit plausibility;
“Why are average faces attractive?”
(Tim Valentine, 2004 / http://www.valentinemoore.co.uk/trv/Attractive.pdf)
“Eyeglasses and gender stereotypes.”
(Roger Terry, 1989 / http://journals.lww.com/optvissci/Abstract/1989/10000/Eyeglasses_and_Gender_Stereotypes.6.aspx)
-This study suggests that women with glasses are considered to be more intelligent, feminine and introverted than otherwise.
"What is the female image projected by smoking?"
(John Beech, 2001 / http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/jrb/PDF2000/Beech&Whittaker01.pdf)
-This study shows how smoking is considered to make a female seem more sexually interested, and glasses more intelligent. Variables such as these can easily be added to our character to make them seem more realistic, and the effects are clear for us to see.

4.1 Design of our Level - Situation.
-An everyday setting plays well to the strengths of the Hammer editor. IE; streets, shops.
-Setting must be fairly normalised so that the player is less concerned with that than with the NPC herself. IE; an alien invasion would have the players looking for aliens instead of interacting with our NPC, and would render our test useless.
“Fear of Crime and Handgun Ownership”
(James DeFronzo, 2006 / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119597174/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)
“Determinants of fear of crime: The effect of cultural setting”
(Richard Bennet, 1994 / http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a718869555&db=all)
-The two above are important to consider if we plan to use many firearms upon our level- how did they get there?
The link below is an interesting proposition to consider if we stick with horror elements in a civilised setting.
“Setting in Horror Fiction"
(Teresa Hopper, 2002 / http://www.fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue9/horror.htm)
Above all, the rule of a normalised setting must be upheld, otherwise we risk spoiling the test with nonsense.

4.2 Design of our Level - Layout.
-The level must incorporate spaces for the player to directly interact with the NPC (through triggers, essentially ‘helpful’ and ‘unhelpful’) so we can better directly monitor the two. This can also play to the idea of using Bioware-esque conversational trees.
“Sick Building Syndrome: A Study Of 4373 Office Workers"
(Sherwood Burge, 1987 / http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/4A/493)
“Non-Specific Symptoms In Office Workers”
(Mark Mendell, 2004 / http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119306861/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

5.1 Further Reading.
“Consistency of personality in interactive characters”
(Katherine Isbister, 2000 / http://www.fineminddesign.com/site/media/Readings/Week%208/Isbister_nass_2000_consistency_of_personality_in_interactive_characters.pdf )
“Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema”
(Murray Smith, 1995 / ISBN-10: 019818347X)
Research on tabletop games- how do they encourage creating and playing believable characters?

Week IV - Research Exercise II

From the start of our project I wanted to hit the ground running with a quick survey to ask what traits were especially pronounced among characters of the recently-released Dragon Age: Origins. I decided the quickest way to do this was to produce a survey asking respondents to rank the game’s eight characters in order of how much the characters appealed to them. I distributed the completed survey to two groups of people; a group of predominantly-female Bioware fans on a Bioware fansite, and a predominantly-male group of games students. The information provided by the characters Morrigan, Alistair, Loghain and Oghren will be the most important, for reasons I will explain upon analysing the data (should my theories hold true.) The survey I performed and its analysis can be found here.

Week IV - Research Exercise

During my analysis of C.Crawford’s ‘Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling’ I discovered the concept of ‘personality mapping’- creating an image of a character through a series of traits that make them up. Comparing this with what I learnt from M. Krawczyk regarding a list of traits to look out for in characters, I had the idea of mapping the positive and negative traits suggested by Krawczyk to a -5 to +5 axis representing the strength. I theorised that with a list of characteristics scored either positive or negative, we would be able to make a character that was plausible for a realistic setting, and could then modify that to easily fit new characters. The test I performed and its analysis can be found here.

Week III - Research

Marvel Comics' The Sentry, the golden guardian of good... and bad?

During Week 3 I researched Personality Theory & Archetypes, and compared what I'd learnt to my existing knowledge of superhero comic-books and films. The report I wrote as a result can be found here.

"When designing characters to engage the player there are a multitude of elements to consider, such as the visual and auditory design of the characters, as well as their personality. These design elements become especially important when creating characters a player will only interact with for a short time, as a lot of the player’s opinion is formed with the first impression."

Week II - Research Survey [cont.]

As I first recieved the survey data from my chosen candidates I began to consider ways to collate it. I decided I would take case studies of the highest-ranked and lowest-ranked character. As of posting, those characters are Alistair Theirin (scoring an average score of 7.5/8.0) and Oghren (1.8/8.0). However, as the common reason for disapproval of Oghren was that he is simply the one-dimensional stereotype of the 'drunken dwarf'. With this in mind, I have decided to write the case study of the next-ranked character; Teryn Loghain Mac Tir (2.6/8.0)- as a character who starts the game as the player's enemy, how did players respond to him in the later stages of the game? Is his writing as a villain responsible for players' disapproval?

Another interesting facet of this stage in the research is the responses I have received are predominantenly-female. Thus, is Alistair's high position a matter of the game mechanic which allows him to be seduced by the player, or simply otherwise engaging writing? This will become clearer with more in-depth reading of the results. The female players also responded in unexpected ways to the female characters, and this was due to their considering the 'Catholic schoolgirl' character Leliana unrealistic compared to the snarky witch Morrigan and the wise mentor figure Wynne.

Week I - Research Survey

After the first team meeting I set myself the task of researching pronounced traits amongst videogame characters- these would be the easiest to utilise or negate when we come to test our own characters. To do this I produced a series of surveys asking candidates to rank the characters from Bioware's Dragon Age [2009] in order of preference and explain elements of the characters that either appealed to them or otherwise. Copies of the surveys are available below.

Research Survey 2 [Dragon Age]

I distributed the survey initially to two different groups of people; a group of predominantely-female Bioware fans on a Bioware fansite and to a predominantely-male group of Games Design students. I am not worried about patterns of character preference throughout the survey, this is merely a way of discovering which traits are most obvious to players and which provoke the most thorough reactions.