Playing Stories – Fall 2012 – 6424
Cancer Ransom
Countries and activists bid for the rights to the players newly discovered cure to cancer. Will you give in to unimaginable wealth or
The player is the genius that has discovered a stable cure for cancer. Many have tried to find this solution with dire consequences that have taken its toll on humanity. Now having proven your success the world is at your mercy. The countries that remain on
Click on the image to get zip.
Play as the protagonist who is encountering all the pressures that come along with becoming an adult. As you’ll learn, sometimes it’s difficult to choose between being accepted and doing what’s right for you but no matter how many wrong decisions you make, remember there’s always a way out.
This game examines young adults from a very extreme, stereotypical view point.
Still adding features:
I have a few more interactions to add in a couple of rooms
and an “acceptance” counter. But here’s what I have so far.
Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft & Transit
The first compares and contrasts spatial narrative in theme parks to that of MMOGs such as WOW. Although I agreed with the author that Disneyland does not spawn of sense of community because visitations are generally infrequent for any one person, i disagree that it’s more controlled than a video game. The opposite is true. At a theme park you can interact with everything: a person, a cup, garbage, the leaves, a water fountain, the rides, characters, etc. but in a game you’re limited to whatever the author had in mind to code and had time to finish. And even if you could interact with every little aspect in the game, the responses are also limited by the same parameters. This isn’t the case with real life. Disney also works very hard to integrate their guests into their space. Their motto revolves around touching one’s imagination so again to say that Disney makes their visitors feel like “guests” is another statement i disagreed with. The piece did briefly discuss a sense of community and how to achieve it but she didn’t really go into how it contributes to the narrative. I’m interested in whether a strong sense of community helps with the narrative of a story if it matters at all (Does being a “citizen” of a story rather than a spectator make the story better?)
In Transit the author states that speed – moving through an environment too quickly – destroys the space and that 3D games provide a slow enough pace that it restores it. In games most of the story’s plot is mapped to the physical traversal of it so you are forced to make your way around it. This is true for theme parks like Disneyland as well. You are forced to walk around your environment and more ground coverage tells you more about the story. The only difference is that there are more stories to partake in.
2 Endings
Get the music from the device and into your head
Both of my ideas revolve around trying to get a piece of music to play
Idea 1:
You are looking at the inside of an iPod and the goal is to move the signal through it’s different states from the hardrive to the speakers by clicking on the correct component to next move to. I was thinking of doing this in a monochromatic green color.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/ipod-hack1.htm
Idea 2:
There is an image of a man sitting at a desk with three things in front of him : an iPod, a set of speakers, and a pair of headphones. The goal is to allow the character to hear the sound in his head.
Spoiler – turn on iPod, music plays and you see the vibrations from the speakers moving towards his head, guide the sound vibrations through the ear canals, to the eardrums, past the three ear bones, into the coclea and finally through the auditory channel where you’ll see the sound get converted into an electrical signal he can understand (might make this piece into a puzzle as well). You will have to correctly tune the frequencies of the ear bones to allow the sound to pass this state. If you turn the music up too loudly the hair cells in the coclea will die and the man will go deaf. You then have to figure out a way to still allow him to hear the sound in this state. Spoiler 2 – through bone conduction – take apart head phones and put vibrating piece right above ear and follow the same path starting from the ear drum.
Visuals will probably be negative until the user is able to get the sound to play then it’ll move to color.
Source: http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/virtualexhibit/2howdowehearb.html
http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/virtualexhibit/2howdowehear.html
A woman goes in to finalize her annulment with her attorney. Don’t be too pushy and you’ll discover how and why the marriage ended.
Idea 1
turns out clinton is a nymphomaniac. He’s on trial for his impeachment and the focus is strictly on the sexual harassment suit. Play as clinton and convince congress that you did not have sexual relations with those women.
outcomes –
congress believes you and you finish your term
you have to resign
Idea 2
You are in a relationship with a girl who you want to break up with but you want her to say the words. You’re goal is to convince her to break up with you.
outcomes –
you can get her to break up with you
still stuck in the relationship
Face
I loved this article. I hadn’t realized that game designers thought about and implemented these small psychological additions (beyond happy, sad, or angry) nor did i realize how much of an impact it left with the viewer. I was aware that people do mirror the facial expressions of the person they are speaking with either purposefully or subconsciously but I wasn’t aware that doing so affected the emotions of that person. When I’m aware that my facial expressions are mimics that of the person I’m speaking with, I know my state of emotions don’t change, but if it’s subconscious I believe I am more empathetic to the situation. I wonder if this is the same for everyone.
I haven’t played The legend of zelda, windwaker but i have played super monkey ball and in recalling my own emotions while playing the game, i do get incredibly excited and even dance along with my monkey avatar when I win.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
The Dialog in this is great. You don’t need a single visual to visualize who the character is, what background he or she has, or the environment in the character(s) is in. The dialog also seems to be dual purpose, it not only reflects the character but also serves as a narrator of sorts – we know what the world in this story is like because the character mentions the spilling coffee cup, etc.
The story that I loved was B.I. #3 Trenton, NJ because the story consistently stayed with the trend of the story in language (referring to the woman not by name, but as the woman with the great “tits”), and in character: The whole story revolved around how this horrible guy lied and misused the woman who loved him but at the very end, the man who is telling this story speaking about how his heart goes out to her, etc. does a complete 180 and you find out at the end that he misused her two.
CYOA – Christian Swinehart
The author makes a quick comparison between CYOA and dictionaries near the beginning. The difference between the two however, is that in a dictionary you have a specific goal in mind and each step you take directly brings you closer to that goal whereas in CYOA your goal is to generically win and you may or may not take steps that will bring you closer. You have no idea how your actions now will affect you later. I’m curious if it’s possible to make a dictionary style CYOA.
The author also never mentions whether any of the orderings (random, serial, coordinated) have any advantage over the other. Logically it doesn’t seem like one would be better than another but there also has to be a reason why authors choose the pattern they do.
The Garden of Forking Paths
I was surprised that this story didn’t reflect the novel it referred to that is, I was surprised that the outer story about Tsun wasn’t itself a “Garden of Forking Paths.” And where Ts’ui Pen’s novel at least recognizes that bad can happen, in the outer story nothing “bad” really happens. One could argue that the death of Albert and the main character are negative results, but I argue the opposite. With the death of Albert Tsun was able to ease the fear of his commanders off of his race and the secret of the labyrinth no longer stays hidden in Albert’s mansion but will most likely be publicized with a possible publication of Dr. Albert’s restoration of the work.
I’m also curious as to how a book like the Garden of Forking Paths could be written. in order for all outcomes to happen at once, wouldn’t the reader have to be aware of all possibilities at once? but the natural makeup of a book (that is it’s page set up) makes this impossible because any given section of the book would have to pick a single path to follow thus ignoring all other paths .
Laslty, what was the point of mentioning this text at all? It seemed to have little relevance to the story as a whole.
The text seem to structure itself as if we were in the mind of Tsun so some of the action seemed sudden or jumpy. It’s an interesting addition to the story.
