Contextual Studies: Coherent Worlds

What exactly is a coherent world? Was the first thing which popped into my mind after choosing the title! While it may sound worrying, it is important to fully consider what a coherent world is and what effect they have in relation to Skyrim.

To start I decided to look up the definition of coherent and world, it seems a good place to start!

Coherent

adjective

1. logically connected; consistent: a coherent argument.

2. cohering;  sticking together: a coherent mass of sticky candies.

3. having a natural or due agreement of parts; harmonious: a coherent design.

 

World 

noun

1. The earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features.

2. All of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth.

While possibly seeming slightly illiterate and ignorant I felt it made sense to explore the meanings behind both words as best I could. Both seem to be relating to an object, environment or society, being all encompassing and logically connected.

Making sense of the world around you is something humans generally find important. The reason science and religions exist is partly due to people seeking answers to the mysteries of the environment they live in. To make sense of things they often are required to be coherent, otherwise we cannot really understand them. Although both views are constantly changing and are often contradicting, they strive to explain the unexplained and aim to make people happier.

Surely that is what any game developer would strive to achieve. It would make no sense to create a disjointed world with no logical reason why. Even something at first seemingly incoherent such as a series of events which the player is yet to understand will later make sense. 

Often the search the coherency can drive gameplay, for example The Portal series. The player is given limited information about their surrounding as well as why they are in a cell. After competing puzzles they are given hints through cutscenes with audio and visual clues to show what the world around them is like. Portal is even within the game world of the Half Life series, which reveals what happened outside of the testing laboratories, but only if you have played them. In some sense the player is rewarded for playing both series by having a greater understanding of the world they are playing in.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/620/

Contextual Studies: Narrative

Narrative plays an important part of all game experience, even simple games such as Tetris. Why is this? It is explained very well within Rules of Play.

"... we use narratives to make sense of our lives, to process information, and to tell stories about a game we have played. Therefore, no genre or cultural form (including games) falls outside the idea of narrative." (1. Salen & Zimmerman, 379)

The point of the argument is that humans love to create narrative out of almost anything, helping them make sense of an otherwise chaotic series of events. For example legends surrounding natural formations such as the Giant's Causeway, or The Giant Chocolate Hills in the Philippines. Both have legends of giants attached to them. When a player first enter a game world so much is unknown to them, and will often be keen to seek out more about their game environment in order to give themselves a greater meaning for being there.

Next comes Marc LeBlanc's talk in the 1999 Games Developers Conference. He posed the idea that there are two distinct types of narrative, "embedded" and "emergent".

"Embedded narrative is pre-generated narrative content that exists prior to a player's interaction with the game. Designed to provide motivation for the events and actions of the game, players experience embedded narrative as the story context." (2. Salen & Zimmerman, 383)

"It is experienced through player interaction but exists formally apart from it. It is the embedded narrative that gives Jak a reason for collecting Precursor Orbs and Power Cells; without the pre-generated storyline the game would feel like an abstract fetch-the-next-item quest. The embedded narrative also provides the major story arc for the game, structuring a player's interaction and movement through the game world in a meaningful way." (3. Salen & Zimmerman, 383)

Emergent narrative "... arises from the set of rules governing interaction with the game system. Unlike embedded narrative, emergent narrative elements arise during play from the complex system of the game, often in unexpected ways. Most moment-to-moment narrative play in a game is emergent, as player choice leads to unpredictable narrative experiences. ... The exact narrative experience of a particular game, whether it is Jak easily dispatching the Lurkers, or whether it is a series of defeats that leads to an eventual victory, depends on player interaction." (4. Salen & Zimmerman, 383)

"Emergent narrative approaches emphasize the ways that players interact with a game system to produce a narrative experience unique to each player." (5. Salen & Zimmerman, 384)

While narrative may be easily recognisable within most games some at first seem to lack flow and coherency. One of the best examples for this I found was WarioWare. It involves a short series of incoherent games, with the previous game being totally unrelated to the next. Even with a seemingly chaotic series of events there is some narrative. If the player fails the task they lose a life, and if all lives are lost they lose the game. Tasks get fast and faster as the player progresses, with a number showing what task they are on. At the end is a boss battle, the final showdown between game and player. The game is full of emergent narrative, the player is constantly tested to see what their outcome may be.

 

Skyrim on the other hand contains both embedded and emergent narrative. At the start of the game the player is told where they are and why they are being executed, narrative embedded into the game. As well as the dragon coming down to cause chaos and let the player escape. Reacting to the dragon is something emergent, you could either chose to stand there admiring its beauty while it breaths fire at you, or run away to try escape its rage.

Bibliography.

1. Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge,Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 379.

2. Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge,Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 383.

3. Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge,Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 383.

4. Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge,Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 383. 

5. Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman (2004). Rules of Play. Cambridge,Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 384. 

Contextual Studies: Research Articles

Next I decided to check and back up the view that lore is important to Bethesda, due to a lot of the presentation being based on this fact! Fortunately with the release of the online version of the series there were many articles on such matters.

 http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2012/10/18/reading-the-future-of-the-past-in-the-elder-scrolls

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/game-guide/story

http://www.tgdaily.com/entertainment/67411-video-exploring-the-elder-scrolls-online

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/66015-why-japanese-gamers-are-angry-about-halo-4

Contextual Studies Research: Skyrim books

To start researching the presentation I decided to begin by looking at the entire list of all books and notes within Skyrim. This was still quite daunting to fit into a ten minute time slot!

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Books_%28Skyrim%29

These provide a huge amount of narrative regarding both historical and present events and locations within the Skyrim game world, as well as the Elder Scrolls series in general. They often provide useful links between all areas of the game's world; Tamriel. It is through books that the player is provided with information which can aid them in their travels and future battles.

A good example of this is in "Biography of the Wolf Queen", in which an evil queen tries to take power over the kingdom, eventually using undead to do her bidding. This culminates in her death after a month long siege, although her spirit is rumoured to haunt the castle as shown here. "It is also said that her madness so infused Castle Solitude that it infected the next king to rule there." "Skyrim" (2011).

The book first appeared in Morrowind (2002), then Oblivion (2005) and finally Skyrim (2011). The book first appeared 9 years before the release of the area in question, being a far off land with little known about its history. However when in Skyrim the lore becomes much more relevant to the player and results in a quest to defeat the Wolf Queen. I personally had experience with this, previously knowing of the Queen and being fascinated by the events told by the book. When the time came to meet her all of the feelings and emotions from the book were recalled, resulting in a much more meaningful experience than if I previously knew nothing of her.

Bibliography.

Bethesda Softworks. (2011). Skyrim. [DISC]. PC. ZeniMax Europe Ltd.

Contextual Studies: Presentation Idea

Considering the lectures presented to us, I thought about what games contain strong narrative in order to use for the final presentation. I decided to choose the game I researched in a previous presentation, Skyrim. Currently my title for the lecture is:

Why is a coherent world so important within Skyrim, and how does Bethesda use narrative to achieve this?

Contextual Studies: Spheres of influence

Spheres of influence were proposed by Vladimir Propp. He looked at Russian folk tales, analysing them to reveal their most basic attributes. He concluded that each of the characters could be fit into one or more of seven character types. (Possible to separate princess and her father into two categories, creating a potential of eight.)

1. Hero: The main character in which the story often focuses on. Saves people and recieves rewards for doing so.
2. Villain:  Fights with the hero, trying to hinder their journey in some way.
3. The Dispatcher: Sets the hero off on their journey. Can be anything from an event to a person.
4. Princess and Father: The reward for the hero. Note this can be anything from treasure to the princess herself. The father is included as he is the one who gives the rewards.
5. The False Hero: This is someone who appears to be doing good in the world, possibly helping the hero. However in reality they are evil, trying to hinder the hero.
6. The Helper: This is someone or something which helps the hero in any way. Possible guide or companion.
7. The Donor: Someone who gives the hero something to help complete their quest. Note this requires the act of giving.

We were then told to pick two games and see if it was possible to relate these categories to a game world instead of characters. This was to be presented in a ten minute pitch. We chose Skyrim and Jurassic Park: Operation Genius as our games.

Here is a video to further demonstrate the use of traps to kill either hostile or non hostile NPCs. While designed to try to kill the player they also have a duel purpose to be used for good.

Contextual Studies: Puzzle games!

In this session we were shown a TED talk, JJ Abrams: The Mystery Box.We were told to look at the good aspects of how he presented the talk.

Humour: The talk was littered by jokes and funny experiences to keep the audience engaged with what he had to say. Humour is a good way of keeping audience interest up.

Personal Experiences: Talking about his family helped the audience relate to both the topic of mystery as well as anything else he had to say.

Using Props: The box was a perfect example of what can be used to represent mystery in a physical form, almost everybody wanted to know exactly what was in it. Yet it is never shown, leading to JJ Abrams explaining that sometimes some things are better left unknown.

http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

List of Puzzle Games

Our group was given the genre of puzzle games, and had to list as many as we could think of. After seeming like one of the easiest genres I soon started to run out of ideas, as although there are many puzzle games out there I could not remember many!

Another problem was the number of games which had puzzle elements in them, in fact most games do! I included as many of these as I could think of at the time, adding a few in a later date.

Myst series
Angry Birds
Cut the rope
Forty Winks
Museum Madness
Knowledge Munchers
Zoombinis
Portal Series
Transformice
Minesweeper
World of Goo
Tetris
Bejeweled
Pipe Mania
Putt Putt

Games with Puzzle elements:
Skyrim
Dino Defender
Skylanders
Abes Odyssey
Batman Arkham Asylum

Questions Task

Zoombinis

Narrative/Structure
1. How is the game structured - does it have levels?

The game contains twelve puzzles, each with four levels of difficulty. The difficulty setting changes some of the visual aspects of the level, sometimes with more solution combinations, or a lower number of chances to complete the level.

Easy mode on the Hotel level.

The hardest mode of the Hotel level.

2. Do you have to follow a set path to complete the game?, How much freedom do you have to explore the game world?

The game is almost completely linear, with only  one section where the path splits. The camera is static with limited freedom to explore the game environment. A notable feature is the ability to interact with the landscape within the checkpoint level.
Visual Style

3. What does the game look like - its image and style?

The game has simple cartoon style graphics. Almost pixel art.
The characters encountered are stylized and memorable.

4. How do the visuals affect the player?

This gives the game a friendly welcoming feel, suitable for young children. Helping them engage with the puzzles and make them not seem too boring.

Here is a video showing the style and reinforcing the childlike theme which the visuals portray.