Final Project: Brainstorming

Whilst reading Exploring Character Design, I came across some tips in the chapter about research, inspiration and ideas, and some of the best ways to come up with ideas include brainstorming. Obviously that's a given. Brainstorming is a very efficient way to leak all your thoughts onto paper and to link them together in different ways. Anything and everything you think of can be jotted down onto these diagrams. 

However it was pointed out, and I took note, that sometimes things like that are easy to forget, if you're simply just scribbling things down on paper. Some suggestions were made, like writing on different pieces of paper and treating them like a jigsaw, or maybe pinning ideas to a wall. Basically, something visual that sticks in your mind since a lot of people have good graphic memory.

I know I do. So I took this advice and have been brainstorming across my wardrobe... O_o I can just go back to it, stand it front of it and jog my memory of all my brainchildren, good, bad or otherwise. 

 

This has been hanging on my wardrobe for the best part of 6 weeks now, since I came home for the summer, and I have to say it works really well. I look at it almost every morning I wake, and it's so easy to add other random ideas that might get sparked by something. Sometimes I'll be downstairs and have a sudden revelation. All it takes is to jog up to my room, grab a sticky note and add it to the web of ideas. It means that everything is at hand, regardless of whether all of it makes the cut or not.

The only irritating thing is that I'm heading back to Preston in less than a month, so I'll have to try and move the entire thing. In the meantime, however, it's helping my project to come together nicely.

I'm brainstorming everything, from characters - what kinds of characters would exist, where and why etc - to environments, the physical structure of the world they live in, the kinds of things which co-exist and are coherent with each other... etc etc. Even as I've started designing and gesture drawing, I still get ideas and I still pop them up on my wardrobe web. 

Might be some of the best advice I've taken to do with generating ideas. It's certainly working. 

As for the journal, I even considered the style of it, since I'm trying to go for authenticity in terms of it looking like it has come straight from the world I'm designing. Basically the world I am creating is going to be largely inspired by the High Middle Ages, albeit a fictitious one in the fantasy genre. At this time anyway. It is subject to change of course, should development dictate, as is everything.

Final Project: Breakdown

Right. Before I get too far into things, I need to breakdown what exactly is and has been happening throughout this project. This is for both the reader's convenience and for something for me to refer back to later and to reflect upon. Obviously, throughout development it's likely things will change but thus far the following is what I've established as my brief. 

The Brief

I intend (or am currently doing so) to create a journal, drawn and written from the point of view of an original character, containing documentation of an entire world including a large variety of characters, creatures, environments and other aspects which make up a believable game space. Naturally, everything I design will be a culmination of my research, and to make this easier I established a number of key words. 

• Coherence
• Unification
• Appeal
• Curiosity
• Indirect Control
• Experience

From my research, this is what I have concluded is necessary to create relatable and cohesive characters, and by extension to engage the player in a game world. These key words will be vital to my designs. 

 
For this project I will :

• Create a journal that will be traditional drawn and written.
• Document a cast of characters and more through the eyes of a given character
• Provide clues about this character, deliberately leaving him/her open for the viewer to interpret and create their own experience of this world
• Physically make props - peripherals - that help to establish authenticity
• Design a cast of characters based on conclusions from my research, each of which will intimately feel like they belong to the world
• Create a pitch for a game within which this game space and its characters are both necessary and cohesive

I'm hoping that this will help to demonstrate what I have learned throughout my research, to bring it all together and also to showcase different skills. If I am successful, the journal will contain a believable and engaging, potential game space with characters that are relatable and intrinsic to this space. 

  

Consequences

Consequences are a vital part of role-playing. Without them, the choices we make don't carry a great deal of weight. There are so many games wherein the player is given choices, and neither one has any effect on what then happens. A lot of players feel cheated by this, and don't see why the choice is given in the first place if you can't stop something from happening.

It's a difficult subject. In The Art of Games Design, the concept of multiple endings is discussed, and argued to be particularly fallible because of the unecessary time and effort for features that may not even be seen, and the confusion it can cause. However I don't believe that 'choices' or 'consequences' are obsolute in games. In fact, it's of paramount importance to discover how this idea can work truly successful in games. The player needs to feel like they are in control, and giving them choices aids this.

Of course, it comes down to the discussion of 'indirect control. Perhaps a different approach is needed regarding the consequences in a game. If the consequences are large enough to affect the entire ending of a game, for example, this can cause players to replay the game not for the engagement value, but just to find out what happens. This breaks the illusion that they are within the world they are playing and they cease to role-play anymore. On the other hand, giving them choices which make no difference to the gameworld at all makes players feel cheated.

So how could we possibly go about this?

My theory is that choices and consequences can and should affect the journey, and not the destination. In other words, a decision someone makes might have certain effects on the way someone might interact with you as a character. E.g. Imagine that you had the choice to go and seek out a rare weapon, or to help someone in need. You choose to find that weapon instead of help, and that person resents you for it. That person could have been a boon in your quest, and your task is made more difficult by the fact they refuse to ally with you.

That's just a hypothetical example. It's something that would be caused by your decision, and would force the player into the shoes of their character to decide which is more beneficial, as the character they are playing, therefore encouraging role-playing. If there is no consequence, the player wouldn't feel the need to role-play and would just likely go for the weapon for statistical reasons.

Well, that's my theory at the moment, which I am exploring as I create my final project. I want viewers to be able to form their own interpretation of the character whose point of view my project will revolve, and to make their own minds up about becoming that character or not.

If this doesn't make much sense yet, I'll be explaining it shortly as I summarize the process of my final project.

Summary of Archetype Exploration

This conclusion has been a long time coming, really.

The project itself was actually really fun and quite interesting to see how people percieved my characters. The idea, obviously, was to see how many could be fooled by simply looking at the appearances of these characters, and to identify whether archetypes are necessarily a good thing.

Just as a reminder, these were my characters. Some or all possessed characteristics which were deliberately unexpected for the character's physicalities, to challenge the idea of 'archetyping'. 

I provided participants with a number of statements that could apply to one or some of the characters. The participants were then required to decide who they thought each statement belonged to. 

It provided some interesting results, actually. I'm going to note only some of the more significant ones here.

Only 50% of particpants selected Aaron as a competent craftsman.

Absolutely none of them would have thought that he was an ex-assassin, due to his sheer bulk. This was an intentional design choice and yielded the expected results. Upon feedback, however, this was seen as a good thing given that he wasn't what people were expecting. The surprise led to curiosity - an important aspect of players engaging with characters, as research indicated.

53% recognised Isolde as a dancer, a surprisingly low percentage, personally speaking. I believe that some participants tried to outsmart the concept by choosing the least likely looking dancer since they were aware of what the experiment was looking for.

Not many people considered that more than one of the characters could be blueblood, so most people only thought that Daniel was of any noble background. While this is true, two of the other characters are also of a noble descent. Of course, the physical design of the characters affected this. Trystan looks less than regal, despite his actual background, and events in the character's life are responsible for this. Again, this twist struck a chord with people's curiosity and ultimately they wanted to know more about this character. 

Again, another relation to his size, 40% participants thought that Aaron would be claustrophobic, when in fact it was Amber. 

What I found interesting was some of the comments made about Caleb in particular. Several noted how they would have believed his fighting style to be, which was in fact almost spot on from a handful of them. He was seen as a graceful, fluid combatant. Although a very tall character, he is lean and not the lumbering kind of character, which was spotted by these several. The large majority of participants would have seen him as the leader of this group, however, which was incorrect. Those who did get this correct - Lilith - did so based on colour palette (although that did lead some to think of Aaron as the leader). 

The conclusion that could be drawn from this short exploration is that archetypes are a good foundation for creating recognisable characters, but there needs to be a balance between what the audience can work out and what they can't. If the whole character is transparent enough to work out without needing or wanting to learn anything about that character, then it lacks depth and is in danger of being a 2-dimensional stereotype. While characters shouldn't be too complex that it becomes too convoluted for the audience, the best outcome is to find that balance which engages the player through the unexpected but does not frighten them off. 

In short, the archetype is not gospel, but can indeed provide a good diving board for an intriguing design, as long as you use it to your advantage.

Though an interesting note: I must have designed something right about this particular group of characters, since a number of participants informed me that they definitely wanted to know more about these characters and would follow their story should I choose to develop it further.

Overdue Update

Well, I neglected my reflective journal a bit, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I haven't been ploughing on with my final project.
The decision to carry on rather than sort out extenuating circumstances was wise at the time I felt, since I was very motivated - and still am - and enjoying the progress I am making with my final project. I've got several things in development at the moment, including a book with the written research I have done, an art book showcasing the exploratory projects and artwork I have done throughout the year to justify that research, and obviously my current design work.

It's been a pretty rocky ride, yet again. A while back I updated with all the crap life had been dropping on me, and apparently it wasn't done yet. My poor old little sister took another trip to hospital last wee due to her gastro oesophageal reflux disease, and not long before that my dad's brother passed away unexpectedly, leading to a trip down south for his funeral. Family reunions are nice, but once it a while it would be a damn sight better to gather under more celebratory circumstances ...

Anyway, with things calming down again I've been cracking on with planning and designing for my project. 

I'll break it down properly in a later post, but to summarize, my final project will manifest in the form of a journal, from the point of view of an adventurer that the viewers themselves can interpret according to their own imagination/experience of what they see and read. Within this journal will be documentation of an entire world of encountered characters, environments and more - all a culmination of what I have been exploring throughout the year. In terms of cohesiveness, believability and authenticity, I intend to include physical objects that will enhance the experience of reading this adventurer's journal, to try and put the player in this person's shoes, (figuratively speaking).

I will elaborate on this properly shortly. A side note to myself, however, is that people showed a great deal of interest in the characters I designed for my exploratory archetype project. With that in mind, and whilst brainstorming ideas, I have considered developing these characters further around my final project and/or vice versa. This is due to the solid background work I had already done with them, which left avenues open for developing an entire game around them.

That said, I mentioned in an earlier post that I would update with the actual character profiles of those characters, and I even forgot to summarize the conclusion drawn from that project. My bad! At this point, showing those characters' real profiles is for the enlightment and entertainment of all the people who took part in that experiment.

As of this moment, I'm both working on a short stint of an experiment regarding choices and consequences, to do with the world that my final project will revolve around, but also in the middle of a commission for a client who approached me not too long ago. So I'm currently juggling a number of things. At least it's keeping me busy. No time to really think too heavily on the past few weeks.

In short, that's you up to speed with where I'm at right now. The next few posts will be showcases of my progress with my final project, from brainstorming, to things I've been playing with physically making and to my early sketchwork and design work up until what I'm now doing.

I've even got a handy friend with a 3D printer who could help me out with some things if I ask really, really nicely - if he gets it working properly, apparently, since it's been having a few issues.

Thus far, it feels like it's coming together nicely.