Model Case: Passage:

Jason Rohrer’s Passage is a very simple game. The game is short, it lasts five minutes, but often has an emotional impact on people who play it. The game abstracts a lifetime into a five-minute journey through a landscape. As a player you have very few choices, and the choices you do make have very little effect on the final outcome. Knowing this doesn’t change the emotional response. Reactions on forums was mixed but some had the same emotional response I had, others didn’t. It was described by one poster as “Haunting. Also seemingly one of those things without much discernible meaning beyond what you infer yourself.”1 I was very interested in the emotional responses the game causes in players and I wanted to get a record. I developed a survey to be filled out before and after the game was played.

Several of my questions referred to inferring narrative. I got some interesting feed back but nothing specific. This could have been due to the way I asked the question or the nature of the game. During my own play experience I found myself deriving myriad stories about how a life might unfold. The survey may be found in appendix A.

1.Mewd : http://www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?t=2457

Model Case: Flow in games

http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/

Flow’s creator Jenova Chen aimed to create a game that closely matched the principles of "Flow." A concept described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity (from Wikipedia). This was Jenova Chen's goal in making Flow. Flow is a simple game. The player pilots the fluid movements of a worm, the worm eats other creatures in order to evolve. Levels are stacked vertically and exist as two-dimensional planes. Each level has one red and one blue object, in addition to myriad creatures swimming with you, eating these will bring you to a high or lower level respectively.

A player does not have to meet any particular objective in order to progress through the levels, they merely have to eat the red objects, however in doing this the player would miss the most rewarding aspect of the game. As a player eats other organisms the worm evolves, adding segments decoration and wings. Each time the game is played the worm evolves differently depending on which organisms are eaten when. The game is more about the journey than the destination; in this way it embodies Mihaly's principals of flow.

Enemies are placed at random throughout a level. As mentioned about levels are stacked, the next level can actually be seen ghosted below the players worm giving a glimpse of what is on the level below. Some levels have enemies, some enemies are very large, watching one swim under up on the level below can be ominous.



I am particularly interested in the subtle narratives that arise as the player navigates the levels and evolves their worm. Each time a player may choose to play the game different results are yielded. The fun comes from the game unfolding as it is played. These are aspects I want to embody in my thesis project.

Tutorials I am working with

This is a running list of all the tutorials I have used while making this project.

XML loading of level arrays:
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/05/21/how-to-load-levels-in-a-flash-tile-based-game/
Platformer Tutorial:
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/07/03/creation-of-a-platform-game-with-flash-step-1/

Thesis Assumptions

From: http://hikingthecarolinas.com

A thesis seems to be a huge monolithic endeavor. Like climbing a mountain or digging a deep hole in search of treasure. It is to be a culmination of my interests and skills. It's an intimidating process. I assume baby steps. I assume criticism. I assume I will have a hard time communicating my concepts some of the time. At some point I assume as I climb the ever steepening foothills I'll reach a point where the incline will exponentially increase. I assume at this point I will become frustrated, I'll probably flounder and generally be miserable. I assume that at this point I'll either find an alternate root or I'll find the hand and foot holds needed to climb the flat face. I assume I'll waste time. I'll get much better at what I want to do. I assume I won't get the result that I have in mind right now. I assume that I will gain invaluable insight from instructors and my peers. I don't assume that I will succeed, but I will make sure that I do.