“It’s the adventures they weren’t expecting to have that make a game memorable.” – Jayanth (126)
For class on Tuesday we had to read a chapter from The Creative Writer’s Guide to Narrative Video Game Design by Julialicia Case, Eric Freeze, and Salvatore Pane. This reading was very beneficial to my thinking about a project we are working on now called the Interactive Nonfiction. The Interactive Nonfiction calls for our group to create a game based on a real-life subject that has to do with digital culture. I have never created a game before, so I have never even thought about what it takes to make a game effectively. This reading had a few key points that helped me start thinking about how to create a game that would be fun and that feels complete. The key discussions were about the different player types, avatars and perspectives, structures, and ways to make choice meaningful. If you wanted to wrap the first three topics into one big umbrella it would be the umbrella of audience. Think about your audience and what you want them to feel. Consider the different potential audiences that could be out there and the different things that they want to experience while playing your game. Then, try to work those different experiences into the game. The three ways you do that are through understanding the main player experiences, choosing the right perspective to deliver, and then mapping the right structures to guide the player through that experience.
The fourth topic that was discussed was player choices and the importance of those. Permanence is the way you do that. Essentially, permanence is making a player choice have lasting consequences. You need to make the player aware that they are making an important decision and the decision they make must influence the rest of the game. Doing that makes the game interesting, different, and meaningful.
Mapping. The final topic is mapping, creating a map of the different ways you want your game to evolve and designing rooms and a route based off of that. Creating a map of how the game will progress and visualizing what that looks like will make the creating of the game go much smoother. In your map, you can put where you want the important conversations to happen and draw different progressions for how those different decisions will affect your game. Once you start developing your game you will know what is going to happen next. This will prevent you from putting a bunch of work into something that turns out to not add to your game. Mapping will save you time and headache in the long run.
I really enjoyed seeing what other people did for this project. Adrienne and Bailey were my group members for the workshop and both their websites looked great. I was impressed to see the CSS and the differences in our approaches. It was really neat and I am looking forward to see what everybody does for their final draft.