Week III - Overview

During Week 3 I continued to gather questionnaires (my findings will be shown next week), as well as writing Source Analysis of C. Crawford's 'Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling' and S. Graner Ray's 'Gender-Inclusive Games Design'. I also wrote an External Research piece, 'Comic-Book Characterisation & Personality Theory' and completed Phase Two of our Design Document.

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 III - Source Analysis III

Dragon Age: Origins [Bioware, 2010]'s Alistair and Morrigan.

During Week 3 I borrowed C. Crawford's 'Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling' from the University library. I completed reading the book over the course of the week, and the source analysis report I wrote as a result can be found here.

"C. Crawford’s 'Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling’ is an intriguing book. On the one hand, it provides deep and detailed information regarding any way that plot and characters can be used in videogames, but on the other hand, is presented in such a confrontational and condescending way it’s hard to take the man seriously. This stems from the fact that while Crawford practically invented his field, other writers were published dealing with it prior to him, and there seems a kind of resentment present. Struggling through this, however, I found the book to be an excellent source for our project, as it presents further development in the ‘Personality Modelling’ I’ve been working on. While the entire book is useful from a narrative perspective, we are only concerned with Chapter 11, which deals with character-driven storytelling and believable NPCs."

Week III - Source Analysis II

Street Fighter II [Capcom, 1991]'s Chun Li battles Blanka on the game's US Box Art.

During Week 2 I borrowed S. Graner Ray's 'Gender-Inclusive Games Design" from the University library. I completed reading the book over the course of the week, and the source analysis report I wrote as a result can be found here.

”S. Graner Ray’s 'Gender-Inclusive Games Design’ is an unlikely source to draw upon for our project, but ultimately it proved at least a little rewarding. The book’s basic premise is that with Games Design being a male-orientated field, more should be done to make games accessible to females- after all, half the planet is female, and that’s a massive untapped market. Appealing directly to our project, however, are elements of chapters two and seven, ‘Evolution Of Female Characters In Computer Games’ and ‘Avatar Selection’ respectively. These were the titles that originally drew me to read the book, and they have proved quite interesting."

Week III - Personal Goals

During week 3 I have set myself a series of goals to achieve.
i. Continue work on our proposed tests and Design Document.
ii. Continue to gather survey data as started in Week 1.
iii. Read and evaluate S. Graner Ray's 'Gender Inclusive Game Design' [2004].
iv. Read and evaluate C. Crawford's 'Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling' [2005].
v. Research into characterisation within Super-Hero stories.

I estimate I will achieve at least half of these goals, as I achieved all of my week 2 goals before the weekend I'd set them was over.