Areas of Practical Exploration

Having finished a draft for my literature review, I feel pretty informed about areas I can explore in terms of practical research.

My area of research has been pretty broad for a while, and I've been whittling it down, breaking in into different parts, obviously, as I've reflected upon regarding different aspects of culture affecting games and character design.

So, at last, having spent many hours of effort gaining a solid base of knowledge about culture within games, I have come up with several avenues of exploration:

• Stereotypes - of course, I've mentioned this one before. I think it will be interesting as a mini-project to see how stereotypes are received against non-stereotypical characters. 

• Redesigning existing characters - A while ago I touched upon this, pondering how the likes of Mario would look if they had come from a different culture. I want to explore this more to see the response/impact. 

• Non-human characters - It was mentioned in more than one book that it is possible non-human characters are received better across more cultures. I want to investigate this. 

• Fantasy characters -A lot of fantasy games/characters feature fictional cultures. I will concept some fantasy characters whose backstory/culture is fictional but inspired by real culture. 

• Style - this one is a given, regarding my fascination with the likes of Okami. I sort of touched on this last year in my games proposal, applying an Art Nouveau - big movement in Slavic countries inspired style to a game based around Slavic culture.

• Adapting to audiences - I will design a character who I will then adapt into different cultures based on my interpretations having researched these cultures. 

All of these mini-projects that I intend to explore will involve getting feedback from various others in order to determine how they might or might not relate or engage well with the outcomes I produce through them.

I will not spend long on each of them, perhaps a week at most, using them as quick experiments to gain an insight through practical research. This should help me to determine a solid project at the end of it. I aim to have tried and tested each avenue by mid-January. As for whether I'll stick to that time-frame or whether I will change direction heavily, only time and research will tell!

Of course I will look at some case studies, one being Okami. Another good case, in terms of a game that transferred well across cultures, is Fire Emblem.

And that's that. Job jobbed. Plan planned. Woo.