Where My Final Project Began

Given the success in creating characters that intriguing and contradictory to archetypes, I decided that this same group of characters would be the starting point of my final project. In a way, exploring Archetypes has been a precursor to the whole thing. 

At any rate, I originally considered how and why I would develop these characters, and that's what led to my brainstorming of a bigger picture. How would they fit in? And how exactly would I present these characters, which would not be intended as player characters within a game? 

I've mentioned ergodicity several times throughout my research, and here is where it has come in handy. It is essentially non-trivial cognition, in that the viewer/player/reader (whatever medium) cannot passively just take in what they are given. They must interact in some way and think consciously about the literature with which they are engaged. In games this would apply mostly to narrative-focused ones. (I can't remember If i explained this in an earlier blog post, so I did it again!)

This prompted me to consider that these characters I would develop could be portrayed through the eyes of a fictional character, a 'blank slate' character that would allow my viewers to be able to step into the shoes of someone of that world. Firstly, to explore the nature of depth of character players seem to prefer in a player-avatar, I conducted an experiment with an interactive powerpoint. (It only needed to be simple, and was similar to that of an animatic, albeit an interactive one with choices for the participants to make). 

 

This interactive event had several difficult avenues of choice and ultimately four possible outcomes. These would be minor, something that would drastically affect the endgame but would affect the journey. This tested whether people would make decisions as themselves or as the character. If they made choices in the role of the character, I wanted to know what made them role-play. If they did, I also wanted to know why not. 

By questioning these things, I was able to establish that people felt that it was harder to become the character the less information there was about them. I had deliberately left the 'player-character' ambiguous, even leaving them as a silhouette. As a result I found out that people liked to have some sort of an idea about the character, however too much would make them too convoluted for people to be able to take their role. The solution I came to was to create a character that appears blank, with enough substance to entice players, and has elements surrounding him/her which are suggestive to their personality/character.

This was the prompt for creating the Aura Sage.