Narrative architecture and Transmedia Storytelling

Last Wednesday us seniors had another Capstone workshop this time it was about narrative architecture and transmedia storytelling.
There was a big duscussion about these two trends so i am going to start with narrative architecture. We discussed two types of narrative: linear vs. spatial exploration.

Linear narrative is where the player travels through the world with a pre conceived story line, tis is the more traditional approach to narrative. Player starts at point A and goes through the game until he reaches point B at the end of the game.

spatial exploration refers to the fact that even though there might be a pre conceived story line player stills has a choice and can create their own story by navigating through the environment . A great example of this is Bethesda's Elder scrolls saga, i will use their latest iteration Skyrim as an example. In skyrim the player gets to start out by making their character in any way they want, they also get to choose what their play style will be. To this end the player may choose to stray away from the main storyline and explore caves, join guilds, and collect items thus creating their own narrative through "spatial exploration"

I believe that games nowadays are straying away from the more linear paths and they are giving the player more choices than ever before. Games such as Deus Ex were revolutionary for the amount of player choice involved, with each different choice leading down different paths that for better or for worse ended up defining the main character by the end of the game.
The thing is that this is not a new definition of narrative at all, a narrative is essentially the construction of a world to be explored and just like in real life no one has a pre conceived path that they must follow. This idea is great to be experienced in a game because it allows the player to be anything and everyone, the player  can make both moral and immoral choices which they would never make in real life. The key is in the amount of options, nobody likes to feel constrained to follow one path and this is where games are shining in this later generations.

The next topic we talked about was transmedia storytelling. This refers to an expansive multi-platform, narrative experience- a story world. We have seen examples of this in the Halo, Mass Effect, and Star Wars universes. Where they start out as a game or movie and get expanded in the form of books, comic books, other games, movies, or events.
This is all part of a cultural shift in the way people use media, they call it "media convergence".
I took some notes from the presentation, one passage that stuck to me in particular was this "Cross media storytelling doesn't provide an expansion of the created realm but an adaptation of the same story across several different kinds of media." A good example of this was the walking dead series. If anybody has seen the show or read the comments they will instantly recognize most of the characters however the show and the comic don't transpire at the same rate or in the same path thus not "providing an expansion" but using the story as a base and providing an adaptation of it for the masses. This is genius because people that are not into comics can still experience the world of the walking dead through TV albeit not the same story the world is still very much the same and both types of media do a great job of immersing the viewer into it.

In conclusion transmedia storytelling is " a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience." Even tough the games end the worlds live on in the form of different media which adds credibility and richness to this world which hold so much and can be explored in so many different ways.

Nearing the end

The semester is coming to an end and even though Full Metal Tactics didn't make it through to next semester i am very proud of the progress that we made this semester. We started out with a bunch of ideas and learned a lot about our game, the way we work together as a group and ultimately about the kind of people we are as individuals and team members.  

So i realized that i have been bumming a little since we found out that FMT wasn't going forward which is why i haven't really looked at my blog, for those of you who follow it (if anyone does at all lol) that i have neglected you but here i am once again and i wanted to show off the final progress that i made the weeks before FMT got cut.

Lets start with the main character because i finally came up with it. I wanted the Mechs to feel like mechs in terms of  scope and grandeur but also the challenge was to make these mechs look organic. I started out looking at plants and animals for reference, i was going to go in the direction of plants however i wasn't convinced and i don't think the rest of the team was convinced with the direction that professor Crispel and Pile were proposing. Instead i went back and looked at the human body, i wanted to give the mechs a fleshlike feeling but keep it mechanical at the same time. First thing that came to mind were the Geth from the Mass Effect universe. In the lore the Geth are biomechanical robots created by an alien race that eventually evolved their AI into a consciousness. Art wise they have mechanical parts but the arms and legs are much more organic. This got me thinking and i ended up looking at the anatomy of the human muscles, i thought to myself "why not make this mechs have musculature encased in metallic parts?" So i got to work i looked at references from games such as Crysis, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex human revolution because they all dealt with organic looking suits, robots, and augmentations.

What i came up with was this: 

The idea was to make the shoulder pieces part of the shoulder weapon. Each the shoulder weapon would be connected to different armor pieces thus emphasizing customization more and give the player a more distinctive mech.

I also re designed the first batch of weapons i had made to make them look more dangerous and out of control here is a picture of the final weapons, sadly i never got to unveil them to the team or the class as we found out that FMT wasn't going to make it through right after i finished them.

It would have been awesome to see the mechs and different weapons in action and to see what the players would have chosen for their mechs in terms of looks and abilities. Perhaps we will take another look at FMT in the near future...... we can only hope.  Regardless it is time to turn the page to Crisis of the Super Verse the new project i got assigned to, this is going to be a great experience we are now a 10 person group and Ryan Hill got assigned to it to this is going to be a blast. More to come on that so keep reading later installments of the Cuadra Blog!!!!