I feel like so little has been accomplished since I submitted my rough game concept last week. Well, nothing immediately noticeable, anyway. This week has been kinda like painting a room and so far I’ve just been sanding and cutting in paint along the doorways, windows and mouldings. It really isn’t until I’m using the roller and slathering paint on the walls that I feel a sense of accomplishment. However, it doesn’t mean something hasn’t been taking shape.
The past week, I’ve been mainly reading and researching the ideas and topics I will be using in my game. So far, I’ve read a book on Carl Jung which covers many topics, specifically dreams and archetypes. Right now, I'm reading a book called “Reading People” by Jo-Ellan Dimitrius. She’s one of the top jury consultants in America and has some really intriguing and somewhat complex methods for understanding and predicting people through their patterns, not their individual (and often conflicting) traits. I’m also in the middle of reading “Parkers’ Complete Book of Dreams,” which isn’t too hokey and has been giving me great ideas for my game. On top of that, I have several other books on dreams and Jung, but I’ll probably just skim them. You can imagine what I looked like going to the library and checking out this cornucopia of self help/new agey books. Not to worry though, I gave my selection a bit of flavour by also borrowing a National Geographic documentary on the deadly dozen animals of India and Africa. ;)
I have also been working on framing my game better in my mind and for my audience. I want to create something that has solid and meaningful story and gameplay, but I want to avoid excess, player confusion, pretension and inaccuracy of my understanding of the game’s themes and characters. I’ve started writing the big questions of my game and general game/narrative development. I’m not going to make this a huge blog post (who, me?) by providing the answers I’ve come up with so far. Hopefully, the answers will become clear when I start providing more concrete details about my game and sample gameplay on Neverwinter Nights.
1) What is your story arc and its possible deviations? Do I make my 5-10 minute mod the whole story or just a section from my game concept?
2) What is your map of the areas? How much can the player explore deviating paths?
3) Who are your characters? Who is necessary?
4) What are the possible character deviations of your protagonist and what are the repercussions for each? How do you deliver these repercussions?
5) What are your objectives? Why does the player and/or protagonist want to achieve them?
6) What does your character fear and what did he repress? How does the dream world represent this?
7) What are the rewards of the Golden Path?
8) What are your feasible and innovative game hooks?
9) What does the protagonist hope to gain, considering there are character trait deviations?
10) How do I make this game a tool for self-examination for the player and/or protagonist?
11) How do I make this game enjoyable and avoid something annoyingly abstract and pretentious?
12) How do I quickly establish the objectives and story without being too on the nose?
13) How are dreams like games? How does this compare to waking life and traditional narrative media?
14) What is the player's meaningful choice? How can the player influence the world?
If you guys have any other questions that are still irking you from my last post, feel free to share them. And if you have questions arising from this blog post, leave them too.
ALSO, I just found out about an hour ago that I will be getting a mentor from Radical Entertainment!!! I can't tell you how excited this makes me and it pisses me off a bit that I have to go to work now because the news has given me a further adrenaline rush to work on my game right now. Alas, I must report to work to watch the news for 9 hours. I still don't know who I'll get as a mentor, but I should find out shortly and I'll be sure to share that detail with you guys later.
Comments
06:40 Fri Jun 13th, 2008
First, Amanda, do you know Foley? Second, who on earth pays you to watch the news for nine hours? I mean, come on. Six or seven I could see. But nine? Third, question six is representative of a number of questions I have about your game (congrats on your Radical mentor, too). If I were to play it, am I playing it as myself, or am I playing it as Character X? When I think of role playing games (and again, this is from a non player) I imagine I would be stepping into the shoes of whatever character I am playing. To me this is quite different from playing a game as myself. Maybe I'm wrong about all this, but to me it is a key question in how your game will work. Keep us posted as to how the paint is being applied!
15:26 Fri Jun 13th, 2008
Hi Tenzil, 1) Err, who's Foley? Wait, he's one of the people on Z2H. Nope, I don't actually know him. 2) I work for a media monitoring company. I'm basically paid to sit and watch and/or listen to news from coast to coast and occasionally write summaries of some of the news stories. It's a pretty easy, yet unchallenging, job. 3) You actually touched on something I mentioned in my last blog post. We were told at bootcamp that we could use toolsets like Aurora (NWN) to create a game that's not necessarily made to be an RPG, especially if the game companies you're interested in getting an internship from specialize in other game genres. My game is actually intended to be an adventure game where the character is already chosen for you, but you can act however you want with him. The question I asked last week was should I proceed making my game like this and just ask my audience, mentor and participating game companies to suspend their disbelief that the player, in fact, doesn't get their choice of character at the first? It seems within the rules of the mod project. If my character could change every game, the main concept, hooks and character development of my game would be moot. Moot I tell you!
01:06 Tue Jun 17th, 2008
Wow, your idea has blown my frickin mind. Makes my idea look like a pile of puke. That being said, our ideas are clearly in different realms. I breezed through your comments, and just had a few questions, so if they've already been covered (quietly bows) I apologize. 1) What kind of game do you want this to be? NWN not with standing, do you see this as a 3rd person game, or as a traditional RPG, or like a 7th Guest kind of game, where it's from a fixed perspective? I just want to know what kind of a game I'm getting into, since that actually has a lot of bearing on what kind of game I will play. 2) Is the idea that he goes between these two worlds (like, reality and his head)? Again, I apologized if I glazed over at this part, but I'm just wondering what kind of game play mechanic this is. Is it different levels, or a "Silent Hill walls start melting and your in the dark world" kind of thing. 3) Is it exclusively dreams, or psyche as well? Are you going to be dealing with the id, ego, and super id kind of jazz? Because if you do, you should cross promote this game at universities as a prerequisite for taking any psychology course. Right now, it's totally messing with my head. Additional comment: your a movie buff, but have you seen the movie "Possible Worlds"? It's a canadian flick that isn't but is dealing with some of the stuff your talking about here (NOTE: I realize this last sentence made little sense; still going to post it). ALSO: Shoulder = good. Messed up my rotator cuff before I got to Vancouver, but I really noticed when I got back home. It's all good now, though. Alright, you keep writing and I'll keep reading. Good jorb.
17:45 Tue Jun 17th, 2008
Thanks, Caley! 1) NWN toolset not withstanding, my game isn't meant to be an RPG. I think of it as more of an adventure game with a fixed protagonist, although the player can make him act however they want. Like NWN, it will unavoidably be a bird's eye perspective, but ideally it would definitely work better from a first or third person perspective. I would think first person would psychologically work best if one of the objectives is to try to fully merge yourself with the character in order to understand him. I also think the first person perspective would give more focus to the weird environments and characters surrounding you. However, it may also be beneficial to see your character, so in that case, the third person could also work well. 2)I didn't plan on having the character go in and out of reality. Although recently, I've been thinking it would be interesting if this game was kinda like GTA's gameplay where you can choose either the dreamspace/sandbox and explore, battle, interact and optionally learn more about yourself, or to wake up back in reality and perform missions and how well you do in those missions/life affects the atmosphere when you return to dream. You could trigger entry back into reality by activating an object in your dream that makes a high pitched sound that proves to be your alarm clock in reality. Anyway, that's just an idea I'm starting to mull, but I think it's a pretty exciting concept. However, I'll just be doing a sample of the dreamspace world, characters, etc in my mod. But I can pitch the rest in my bible. 3) I think the psyche will be represented in his dreams and there will be archetypes that will express the extremes of id, ego and superego. I was also thinking of somehow using psychological tests in this game, perhaps in the real world (if I use that idea) because actual tests seem a bit structured for the dreamworld unless it's something a bit more abstract and speedy like a Rorschach inkblot test. Susan also seems to think it's a good idea. 'Canadian flick that isn't' = UK/Canada hybrid, right? I think I gotcha. It's unfortunate that those often seem to be the better Canadian movies, BUT not always. But if Bill C-10 passes, it may be the only way to get a good Canadian movie made. Anyway, I won't go on a Bill C-10 rant. I will most definitely add 'Possible Worlds' to my list of movies to see, along with 'The Visitor.' Thanks, The Cheat. ;)
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Crackwalker
00:10 Fri Jun 13th, 2008
Carl Jung is excellent - read his books, and let them settle on you mind. Also buy a deck of Tarot Cards and mess around with them. They are great raw ingredients for a deeply meaningful story. Now, about one of your questions: 10) How do I make this game a tool for self-examination for the player and/or protagonist? Syd Field says "Action reveals character"; to me that's the essence of good storytelling. It's not the amount of action that makes a story stay in your memory, it's the feeling that the action was meaningful. To me, this holds true for all storytelling media; books, comics, movies, video games. The level of interactivity is irrelevant to my point. I'm talking about creating storytelling moments that have personal impact on your audience. That's why character trumps plot every time. People respond to characters, they connect with them on an emotional level. How do you capture that in your story? Action reveals character. Make the actions matter by attaching them to plot points that are vital to your characters. Vital, as in, the character's central dramatic need.