Next Steps: The FabulaRasa Website
The group covered an immense
range of topics in our two brief days. We ended the conference with
the clear understanding that expanding these thoughts further would
require an ongoing conversation.
To that end, the group is creating
a website called FabulaRasa.org that serves as a focal point for our
discussions. The name roughly translates to the "blank story",
an empty vessel for our players to pour their tales into. Our hope is
that experienced game developers and researchers will contribute to
building a rich repository of essays, papers and discussion on creating
mediate experiences in games.
This report captures only a
small fraction of the conversations that took place at this year's Project
Horseshoe. I heartily recommend you visit the website and check out
reports from this year and previous years.
Participants
This paper was the collaborative
effort of all the people listed below.
- Facilitator: Linda
Law, The Fat Man
- Stephane Bura, 10tacle
Studios Belgium
- Daniel Cook, Microsoft
- David Fox, iWin
- Tracy Fullerton,
USC Interactive Media
- Victor Jimenez,
Northrop Grumman
- Ron Meiners, Multiverse
- Mirjam Palosaari
Eladhari, Gotland University
- Patricia Pizer,
Disney Interactive Studios
- Mike Sellers, Online
Alchemy
- Mike Steele, Emergent
Game Technologies
Appendixes
Appendix I: Papers and references
The following were items that
influenced or where mentioned during the discussion.
- Project Horseshoe,
George "The Fatman" Sanger and crew
http://www.projecthorseshoe.com/
- Constructing
Artificial Emotions, Daniel Cook http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1992/constructing_artificial_emotions_.php
- Chemistry of
Game Design, Daniel Cook, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1524/the_chemistry_of_game_design.php?print=1
- Stanford Prison
Experiment, http://www.prisonexp.org
- Understanding
rituals through the work of Claude Levi-Strauss: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss
- Why we play games:
Four keys to more emotion without story, Nicole Lazzaro
http://www.xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf
- What are we missing,
Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/12/06/gdc-prime-2007-what-we-are-missing/
- Story Construction
and Expressive Agents in Virtual Game Worlds, Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari http://intranet.tii.se/components/results/files/eladhari_lindley.pdf
- The soundtrack
of your mind: mind music - adaptive audio for game characters, Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari http://mirjame.googlepages.com/Eladhari_Friedenfalk_Niewdorp_ace_20.pdf
- The Daedalus
Project, Nick Yee
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/
Appendix II: Traditional Mediating Techniques
The following is a laundry
list of traditional techniques that games have been using for decades.
Think of these as mediation 101.
- Basic plots: Common
plots such as the '39 Plots' that have known effects on the audience.
- Hero points: Resource
that bends plots to the user's needs (or Villain points). Used as a
storytelling resource. Alternatively, Whimsy Cards
- Storytelling Patterns:
Such as Pattern language by Christopher Alexander
- Reversals that are
heuristically created
- Modularity
- Hierarchical
- Character Development
of both NPCs and the player character.
- Customization of
various elements of the game.
- Emotion Management
- Music
- Ambient effects
- Environments with
emotional connotations (such as a haunted mansion)
- Exposition including
cinematics
- Relationships ties
chars together through game play mechanics, different roles, access,
organization
- Novelty
- Mechanics of player
progression
- Manipulation of
Game Economics
- Voice/Style
- Manipulating Time
(compressing/style)
- Manipulation of
Player's Perception
- Switching POV
- Treating the group
as a character
- Collaborative puzzles
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