Explorations

Introduction

The Explorations project basically said, “Ok go learn something.” The final requirements were light, and overall designed to allow a wide range of creativity in what you do. So I was hyped for this project. As it was about researching and learning about something that you want to explore.
I choose to explore the concept of how stories can be effectively told inside of video games. As video games add new layers of interaction that can be used to tell stories in new ways. And this would also teach me more about how to tell a good story.
And I planned for the final product to be a plan for a videogame’s story and gameplay. This videogame will never be made but I will learn how to make a plan for one.

Process

Research

A majority of this project was researching about storytelling in videogames. This involved a lot of googling, reading articles, watching videos, and importantly taking notes. Here you can see a section of my notes which goes pretty in-depth into what I was researching.

But summarizing these notes down into just a few sentences. The thing I was researching actually has a job associated with it in the video game industry called Narrative Designer. Who has the task of making sure the player doesn’t just view the story but experiences the story through the gameplay.

And overall, from my research the connection between story and gameplay in video games can be summarized in this image.

This image shows how gameplay is the base of a video game. But that story is still a necessary part to making a complete experience.
And another important aspect is that story is what gives meaning to the gameplay here. As the player can have thousands of gameplay thoughts and emotions with it having intangibility due to a lack of story.
This can be expressed in the image comparing abstract gameplay, to gameplay with story.

You can see the graphics of there being somebody flowing down a river gives much more meaning to the gameplay.

Creating the final product

Once I was done with my research it was time to turn it into a real plan.
Chat GPT gave me a starting point with the words, “Memory Market.” And I took those words to brainstorm ideas for a story around this Memory Market. Like what even is a Memory Market? It can be a place where people trade memories. It can be a place where a corporation buys memories. And how does the player interact with it? Are they a worker? A customer? An once customer who is not trying to get their memory’s back? How do the mechanics of taking and moving memory’s work? There were just so many ideas to explore.

I spent a lot of time planning out things like the story, rules of the world, and gameplay mechanics.
I also went into more detail. Planning out the sections of the game with what story and gameplay they would have. And how that story and gameplay would enhance each other to make a more effective experience.

Final Product

Here is a PDF of the slide deck I made, showing research and the final product.

https://freestyleacademy.rocks/~JamesK/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Explorations-Presentation.pdf

Reflection

After doing research in Narrative Designing and trying it out myself. I have decided its ok. It’s interesting trying to solve the puzzle of connecting gameplay and story. But I realized I was doing the task wrong. Because stories are precise structures where every piece is there for a reason, while gameplay requires constantly adapting to a player’s ideas and choices. So, in development that gameplay changes a lot, and as a consequence the story changes a lot. It’s like trying to make a bridge on Jello, you need to adapt the shape of the bridge to the Jello, which probably results in the bridge being dysfunctional.
So, because the story I made is never going to be put into a game, I never have to go through the real challenge of changing the story to fit the game.
If I wanted to make this deep, I would say I learned sometimes planning isn’t enough, and you just have to act.

Although I did find that analyzing existing games is actually way more interesting. As it’s fun to figure out what makes a game work or not work. What creates un-fun moments, and what can create amazing moments. You can see this in the final product where I spend most of my time analyzing games to show my research. Rather than showing what I made.

Music Recording Project

This year the new music recording studio at Freestyle was finished. And so, we were tasked with recording something in it.
The group I was in had the idea to record a song, but instruments are the vocals, and the instruments are our vocals. An interesting swap up.
We choose to create a cover of the US national anthem because we couldn’t think of anything else.

This isn’t the highest quality music, but you can’t deny that it is music.

Here is artist statement I made for this project:
This assignment gave us the task of recording vocals and instrumentals in the new Music Recording Studio at Freestyle Academy.
This assignment was put in right at the end of the year and for this reason my main goal was to finish it. As school was almost done I just wanted to get it overwith.
I got into a group in Nadine and Kaylee who had the idea of recording a song where the vocals were instruments, and the instruments were vocals.
This was a goofy idea and had the benefit of meaning even if the song is bad, it will still have an interesting factor to it.
We put this idea onto the US National Anthem, for no reason other than that we had no idea what other song to use.

If your catching my angle, I didnt care about this project much, I just wanted to finish it.
So there isnt a deep message with this one. At least the Music Recording Studio is a cool fancy place to use I guess.

Lyrical Essay

I used to think Essays were boring. But then I learned about Lyrical Essays, which are essays that present their information in more creative ways. Using metaphors, similes, unique text structure, adding images, and anything you can imagine. And Lyrical Essays give so much creative freedom that it’s actually fun.
In class we spent time reading and analyzing Lyrical Essays from writers like Maggie Nelson, Ryan Van Meter, Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Heidi Czerwie. This was to get a range of knowledge on what Lyrical Essays are and can be.

After doing all that prep work. I wrote my Lyrical Essay, which is about the concept of perfection. I was inspired by the experience of trying to write something like an essay but being too scared to write a sentence due to the fear of it being bad.