Current Project
Past Project
Thesis
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Current Project
Coming soon…
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Past Project
Storytelling EduGame on Norse Mythology
As part of ARTS 304 (Designing Computer Simulations and Games for Learning) at the University of Waterloo, I was tasked with completing a game design project. The goal my team chose for our project was to prototype a game that teaches Norse mythology. Specifically, Nordic runes and the magic they were believed to possess. The game avoids simply having the player encounter runes during the story and instead has the player learn them through play. To accomplish this, our main puzzle solving mechanics revolve around accurately drawing Nordic runes using mouse gestures.
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Thesis
Honors Undergraduate Thesis on Storytelling in Video Games
Download the PDF: How Games Tell Stories
Firstly, do games tell stories? They can contain text, dialog or cut-scenes that convey their story to players, but none of these are constituent parts of the game itself. They are added on. Can a game, in and of itself, convey story?
Secondly, if the answer to this question is yes—and my research shows that, yes, games do convey story—then how can game creators purposefully and deliberately manipulate a game’s units and rules to tell a story beyond text, dialog and cut-scenes? How can game creators engineer their game to convey a dynamic plot?
These are important questions to answer as the gaming industry moves towards story based gameplay. Nearly all AAA titles have a story, and moreover, use the story as a major selling point. When there is a disconnect between the game and its story, it resonates negatively in the player, causing a persistent friction that lowers the player’s enjoyment. What’s needed is a better understanding of what it takes to ensure that a game is not only telling its story with text, dialog and cut-scenes, but also coherently telling it during the very act of play.
Games do tell stories, and if this is true, then it is also true that it is possible for game creators to tell stories better, to create games that avoid conflicted messages or meanings, that more deeply immerse, engage, persuade or move the player, and that ultimately bring us closer to a new age in digital storytelling.
