oh by the way

it's probably worth mentioning that i am in the middle of my dissertation now. i've settled on investigating implicit communication in virtual environments (as in GAMES but not really games because apparently that makes my paper not very good). which is interesting because it was actually one of the topics i was looking into last year.

so i'm making a cluedo type of murder mystery game - point and click style (and on the ipad for some reason...). and you play the game and afterwards i ask you to describe what happened, story-wise. secretly however there's also some small stories going on in the background about the characters themselves, nothing to do with the murder (like an affair, or one of the characters has a drinking problem or whatever).

i'm making a tool where you can choose which out of a list of these kinds of stories you want to tell in the background, and how obvious (or how implicit) you want them to be. when it comes to the person playing the murder mystery (which is explicit) i wait for anyone to mention the implicit parts of the story and hopefully along the way prove that having these little implicit parts makes the story richer and gives the user (player) a deeper understanding of that world.

cool right?

also it gives me a great excuse to read a lot of game designer stuff on environmental storytelling. if designers would only get off their asses and write some research papers rather than articles on gamasutra, i'd be having a great time...

ew.

the worst thing about actually kind of liking a game idea about cockroaches is that seeing one in my room prompts the thought, "aw. yeah, you'd be kind of cute in a video game." before gassing the thing to hell. now i feel sorta bad. damnit.

if i ever make that game, it's dedicated to you, cockroach in my room that died approx. 2am on the 3rd of may 2010.

memory loss

it's used a lot in games as a cheap storytelling technique. i can't think of a real reason why this guy is trapped in this room, so let's just say he's lost his memory. done.

but i'm wondering if there would be interesting way to use it in a game. you just got out of a nasty accident and have lost your memory and some of your ability to communicate. you're trying to talk to people who claim they know you. you could make the player paranoid by playing that these people are conspiring against you. they tell the doctors you need more medication when you feel fine? who knows. you could play on drug addiction too.

it'd be interesting. the player not trusting their environment, or the characters around them. everything tainted with paranoia and pain medication addiction. trying to figure out what happened before the game started, and trying to get through the game itself.

i get these random ideas but i couldn't tell you a single thing about gameplay.

also i'm reading duma key by stephen king, where the guy went through this nasty accident and lost a bit of his ability to communicate. coincidence i assure you!

oh dear.

also i hope i don't get dissertation sniped since this is a public blog! my ideas are so good! oh no. :O

zzzz.....

how about a game where you don't have to do exams or write 20 page papers? i would buy it.

post-apocalyptic

you play a cockroach and you have to search for food. and fight off bigger cockroaches. but as you're playing, as a player, you see the world post-apocalypse. as a player you piece together what happened to cause this (a big volcano somewhere in the states went off and a lot of people died and all the flights were cancelled) and you explore the world now devoid of humans. as a cockroach you're just looking for scraps of food among houses, but as a player you crawl over a diary page and read the last entry.

it's an exploration game under the guise of being a hungry cockroach. exciting!

secret agents are so cool.

so i was walking through this mall today and had this awesome idea for a game. imagine if you're some kind of secret agent who has to deliver a message or kill this one guy. you have a picture of him, but you don't know anything about him except that he's in this mall. and you have to FIND HIM using nothing but your sleuthing abilities! maybe there's a GPS tracker in his pocket to help you out a bit, and once you find him you have to create some kind of distraction in order to kill him/deliver the message. oh! but then! he KNOWS you're after him, so he'll go to really crowded places, like where there's an event going on in the mall or something. man, so awesome.

and you can't use weapons or anything, you have to blend in, not look suspicious. you don't have any tools, no interface, just hunt for the guy and make sure he doesn't suspect you. oh man.

or maybe i could just wait for assassin's creed 6, he should be in the 21st century by then.