Group work update 15/04/2016

We had a group update with the teachers today, I talked about how i have been looking at sounds for the bug and some other sound effects. I also talked about how Im not going to be able to do much work over the holidays because i will not have my computer with me so i decided i would start drawing up concepts for the title cards even though they are not due till a lot later.

I have gotten a few suggestions off my group for what they want to see, i will be uploading a mood board of that soon.

Week 7 Gaming Blog

Gaming Blog Week 7

Never Alone

 

This week would could chose the game we wanted to play out of all the ones we had been given in week one, I decided to go back to Never Alone because I didn’t write about this game in week 2

 Unpack the first level of your chosen game (including cut scenes) – How does it tell its story, and how is the player involved in the telling (consider all of the narrative elements discussed so far in the course)?

 Never Alone was an interesting game for me to play because of the way in unfolded before you and the cultural aspects it includes inside of the game.
Never Alone is based around the story of Kunuuksaayuka (Unipchaanich imagluktugmiut – Stories of the black river people.)
The story is about Kunuuksaayuka who has to investigate the source of a sudden blizzard that is stopping him from hunting caribou to feed himself and his mother, he discovers a giant man cutting into the tundra and shovelling the loose snow away from his work, the loose snow is then picked up by the wind and becomes the source of the blizzard that is plaguing Kunuuksaayuka.

The quest for Nuna and her fox is practically the same as Kunuuksaayuka’s both searching for a way to stop this sudden blizzard that is stopping them from hunting.

Never Alone tells its story through narration and cut scenes, I think this was a good way for the game to tell its story because in the Inupiaq their stories are not written down in books they are passed down through generations by word of mouth so have the narration lead us through the story makes us feel as if it is being passed down to us in the same way with the visuals of the cut scenes to help aid the words.
Even though through this way of storytelling it does make it feel as if the player does not have an important role in the story, the player contributes by helping Nuna and the fox complete each puzzle they are faced with which in turn unlocks another part of the story line.

Never Alone is a very Linear game which means that the game creator has complete control over the story and the direction it is going in, this is good for Never Alone because by going from gameplay to a cut scene that is following the same path means you do not get lost between different stories.

Another thing about Never Alones story telling is that as you complete a part of the story you are given little factual videos, which tell you more about the culture that Nuna and this story is from which is great because you are given a chance to learn more if you choose too.

Week 6 Game Blog

This week I played Grim Fandango Remastered. Before I answer the question for this week I just want to say that I did not enjoy this game, the story by itself was interesting it was just aspects of gameplay the ruined the experience for me.
On to the question!

As the player, do you interact with a character or an avatar and how does this affect your involvement in the narrative?

In Grim Fandango Remastered you play as a character called Manuel "Manny" Calavera, One of this week’s readings talks about characters, avatars, agents and the differences between the three. After going through this article I have decided that Manny is neither an avatar nor a character but an agent this just means that he is unable to be changed or customized by the player,

“Waggoner proposes it as the central criteria for distinguishing between those video game characters that function as true “avatars,” and those which only serve as controllable “agents” for their user:
Pac-Man cannot be altered in any way by the user. He can only be controlled. His appearance and skills can never change throughout the course of the game. That makes Pac-Man an agent.”

This fact does not make agents less important compared to characters and avatars because they play an important role to be recognizable icons of the franchise they belong to.

But as the player, playing through an agents in a game make it feel like my personal involvement means less and doesn’t affect the narrative, but ultimately the amount of  involvement I have in the narrative for Grim Fandango Remastered does not change just because I was playing through an agent.

 

Jessica Aldred. 17 Dec 2013, Characters from: The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies Routledg