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Reversal: tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using text and dialogue

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Reversal: tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using text and dialogue

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Content REVERSAL
Tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using text and dialogue
Copyright 2022
by
Zian Zhang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2022
Zian Zhang
Dedication
This paper is dedicated to my parents and Siyao. who supported and believed
inme.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my three thesis advisors. To Scott Easley, my thesis
chair, for all the constructive feedback on the game and project management. To
Richard Lemarchand, for his enthusiastic encouragement and calm and unbiased
advice. To Zhan Shifu, for being so generous with sharing his knowledge and
experience in game development and industry.
I would also like to thank my teammates. To Yang Cao, my thesis partner, for
being a professional and respectful teammate, a delightful friend. To Joseph
Setiawan Djafar, our composer, and Chaoran Huang, our sound designer, for filling
our game world with beautiful music and rich sounds.
Lastly, I want to thank my cohort of three years and my thesis professors
Laird Ma lamed and Martzi Campos for being so supportive of this project.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Abstract
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Game Overview
1.2 Thesis Statement
1.3 Joint Thesis and Team Composition
Chapter 2. Inspirations
2.1 How It Was Inspired
2.2 Prior Art
2.1.a Inside
2.1.b Gorogoa
2.1.c Machinarium
Chapter 3. Story Development
3.1 A brief introduction to the story
3.2 How the story evolved
Chapter 4. Storytelling Methods
4.1 The Constraint And Why
4.2 Storytelling Methods And Principles
4.2.a Environmental storytelling
4.2.b Cutscene And Animation
Chapter 5. Art Challenge
5.1 Art Bible
5.2 Unity 2D Animation Pipeline
5.3 Fake Depth In 2D Space
Chapter 6. Player Feedback
6.1 How To Get Feedback From Players
6.2 Player Feedback And Impact On The Story
Chapter 7. Conclusion
Bibliography
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List of Figures
1.1. Gameplay screenshot from Reversal
2.1. Gameplay screenshot from lnside(Playdead, 2016)
2.2. Gameplay screenshot from Gorogoa(Annapurna Interactive, 2017)
2.3. Gameplay screenshot from Machinarium(Amanita Design, 2009)
3.1. Reversal overview of the tower
3.2. Level design Macro of Reversal
3.3 Storyboard of Reversal
4.1 .. LV5 Cutscene of Reversal
4.2. Storyboard of Reversal
5.1. Art references and early design
5.2. Motion capture pipeline
5.3. Screenshot of the rigged door
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Abstract
Reversal is a 2D puzzle game about social hierarchy and inequality. In this
game. I try to tell a story about this topic without using any text and dialogue.
In this paper. I will first describe why I wanted to tell a story about this topic.
how the story developed. and why the story could be better conveyed without
using text and dialogue. I will then describe the specific storytelling techniques I
used that were appropriate for this project. As the artist on the team. I will also
describe the artistic challenges encountered in the project's development and how
they were resolved. In the end. I will summarize from player experience and
feedback whether our storytelling techniques were effective and whether the story
theme was conveyed well.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Game Overview
Reversal is a 2D puzzle game. The player controls a robot boy. Rev. as he
ventures through a giant pyramid in the game. In the process. Rev gains three
magical powers and relies on them to solve various puzzles while gradually
uncovering the truth about the world. Reversal is a joint thesis project. The other
lead creator is my classmate and friend Yang Cao.
The primary target audience is puzzle game lovers. regardless of age. gender.
and ethnicity. The secondary target audience is people who appreciate the 2D
hand-drawn art style.
Fig. 1.1. Gameplay screenshot from Reversal, February 2022
1.2 Thesis Statement
1
Tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using any text and
dialogue.
1.3 :Joint Thesis and Team Composition
We have a relatively small team with only four members. Our team consists of
me, Yang Cao, Joseph Setiawan Djafar (composer). and Chaoran Huang (sound
designer).
I focused on storytelling, character and environmental art. and animations
and cutscenes, while Yang covered the design of mechanics, puzzle design, and
programming. We took turns to be in charge of playtesting, scheduling, and team
management. When one of us was not so busy, he/she would be mainly responsible
for these aspects.
2
Chapter 2: Inspirations
2.1 How It Was Inspired
When I first came to Los Angeles. I saw the opulent Beverly Hills as well as the
homeless people who were suffering to survive on the streets of Skid Row. The
class society that divides the rich and the poor has never been so deep and
concrete in front of me. The theme of this game comes from seeing that actual
social reality.
When we look back at the history of humanity, the pyramid-like social
structure has lasted for thousands of years. A small number of people possess vast
amounts of wealth and resources. while the majority of people struggle painfully at
the bottom of the pyramid. With The Industrial Revolution and a globalization
explosion. such a pyramid structure extended to the whole world. A few developed
countries can colonize the world while third-world countries suffer in wars and
famines and are exploited for their resources and labor.
I spent almost my entire graduate school career in the shadow of a global
pandemic, and not surprisingly, such a global crisis exacerbates such a divide
between rich and poor. What could be more meaningful than making a game on the
topic of social class and inequality at a time like this?
2.2 Prior Art
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Once the game's theme was determined, choosing what type of game to tell
such a story became the most important question. Yang and I quickly agreed that a
puzzle game was the direction we wanted to explore. as we are both avid lovers of
this genre. Most puzzle games carry an innate air of mystery, which is exactly the
atmosphere we want for our games. In developing Reversal. these puzzle games
profoundly influenced us.
2.1.a Inside
Inside {2016), developed by Playdead, is one of my favorite games. Through
well-designed puzzles and creative mechanics. the player gains a sense of
intellectual accomplishment in the process of solving puzzles and slowly unravels
the mysteries of the world. The deep and dark atmosphere shaped by the whole
game significantly influenced our game. There is nothing unnecessary in the
opening scene of the game. and the protagonist falls directly into the world from
the left side of the screen. In the opening scene of Reversal. our protagonist Rev
also falls into the garbage dump in the same way. This similar design is our tribute
to Inside's ubiquitous influence on our game.
4
Fig. 2.1. Gameplay screenshot from /nside(Playdead, 2016)
2.1.b Gorogoa
Gorogoa (Annapurna Interactive, 2017) is a puzzle game developed by Jason
Roberts. Undoubtedly the most appealing aspects of the game are the beautiful
hand-drawn art and its unique mechanics of manipulating images placed in a
two-by-two grid to solve puzzles. Nevertheless, the narrative of the whole game is
also a great highlight. Gorogoa's story is fragmented, and as the images are pieced
together to solve the puzzle. the player is also piecing together the entire story. I
have to admit that even after playing the whole game, the story was still in a fog for
me. However, that is not a bad thing because my imagination filled in the missing
puzzle pieces of the story. Not surprisingly, different players will have a version of
their own story, but they do not stray from the story's theme - war and memories
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-very far. The process of imagining the story in their heads becomes part of the
puzzle. One of the reasons the creator can give players such an experience was the
amount of detail he hid in the game, details that ensured the direction of the theme
and gave players the raw material for their imagination.
When we were designing Reversal's story and levels, we also tried to maintain
a certain amount of ambiguity and enough details so that the player's
self-completion of the story would be an essential narrative aspect. I will discuss
this section further in later chapters.
Fig. 2.2. Gameplay screenshot from Gorogoa(Annapurna Interactive, 2017)
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2.1.c Machinarium
Fig. 2.3. Gameplay screenshot from Machinarium(Amanita Design, 2009)
Machinarium (2009). developed by Amanita Design. had a great influence on
me when it comes to determining Reversal's overall art style and character design.
two areas I lead as the artist on the team. A chaotic robot world. similar to
Machinarium. was perfect for our story and mechanics. On the one hand. it would
reflect the connotation of people being alienated into machines in an unequal
society. On the other hand. because Yang and I were only two people leading
Reversal's small team. and portraying a world necessarily involves creating many
characters and animations. choosing robots as our characters would significantly
reduce the workload. For robots. rigid and unpolished body movements are
appropriate characteristics and robots do not require additional expression
animations. Of course. the industrialized robot world, full of gears and mechanical
elements. also fits the theme of our story. In addition. I also absorbed a lot of
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specific art design tips from Machinarium. such as hand-drawn and color
manipulation techniques.
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Chapter 3: Story Development
3.1 A brief introduction to the story
The entire game takes place in the world of a giant pyramid structure. On the
first floor of the pyramid are the painfully struggling working class, who laboriously
dig for a mysterious purple ore to provide energy for the entire building. Due to the
radioactive contamination brought about by the mining, the inhabitants of this floor
are in a very unhealthy state. The second floor is the ordinary town residents or the
middle class. However, the dull and monotonous life of the city makes them
alienated into different forms, such as floor sweepers and printer robots. They live
more like tools than real people. The third floor is the wealthy ruling class living
extravagant and wasteful lives, enjoying the sustenance from the lower classes.
Players will control our protagonist Rev and experience adventures from the
first floor to the highest floor. In the process, players will gain special powers to
solve puzzles and eventually realize that Rev comes from the ruling class. At the
end of the story, the player will make a choice to decide the fate of such a tragic
hierarchical world.
3.2 How the story evolved
The choice of the pyramid as the overall level design is almost subconscious.
The Pharaoh's tomb, the massive stone building itself, which took thousands of
enslaved people to build, is the best symbol of an unfair class society. The
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subsequent design of putting different classes of people on different floors is also
natural.
Tower Overview
Tower top Finale (1 level)
Palace (4 levels)
Floor
City (6 levels)
Fig. 3.1. Reversal overview of the tower. May 2021
With these basic designs in place. the next step was to find specific stories
and characters to fill them in. We decided to divide each floor into individual rooms
as a puzzle game. A fixed camera would include everything in that room. and the
player would need to solve the puzzle in the current room before moving on to the
next one. The question that arises is: what kind of story should be filled into each
room to ensure that it is individually engaging and interconnected as a whole?
At the early stage of the story design. we did not want to include many
specific plots but instead stay focused on describing the theme and content of
each room. For example. the first level of the first floor is a trash dump, where the
residents of other floors discard their trash and where Rev's journey begins. The
next level is a deserted graveyard. Here Rev will pay his respects to the pioneer who
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once devoted himself to changing the world - though already forgotten - and gain
his first superpower. Along these lines. we then designed hospitals. mines.
factories. slums. and other levels that represent the miserable lives of the robots at
the bottom.
I
Location/
Time of Day/
Brief Description Player D esign Emotional
Wt-at her/ Player Mechanic.s
Sequence Name
Mood
of Events Goal Goal Beat
USC SCA Logo • Thorton School
Opening Credit of Music logo+Y&Z Studio logo -
animation
Title Screen Game Title, Start, Settings, Exit Melancholy
Options Menu
Resume, Restart, Controls,
Audio, Quit
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FLOOR 1
1 J'-tJtP.A Rev/Alr:c;,,,il'Ji;i:;\U~l!l fmt!!?.!}.)li!l~OOl!l"
satisfa
Detail:
Rev moves a low box to jump
to enter the Shift=interaction with ction
over the tall fence
graveyard box + use the box to
jump higher
...... _, ... ,_ ~ ........... ,., ... .....
Fig. 3.2. Level design Macro of Reversal, May 2021
At this stage. the representation of the worldview and story is mainly
through environmental art and background animation. However. we found that
such a narrative alone is not enough during playtesting. Since players' core goal is
to solve the puzzles at each level. they tend to focus on logical thinking and
controlling while ignoring the animations and story happening in the background.
At the same time. there is feedback from players that Rev's existence seems to be
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cut off from the whole world, lacking communication and interaction with others
while solving puzzles.
Based on such feedback, we redesigned the game's entire story, using many
new narrative techniques. which helped us solve many problems. but this also
caused more issues. The first was the increase in workload due to the complexity of
the narrative. The second was how to get feedback on our new story from other
people quickly. Since the whole game does not have any text or dialogue, getting
people to imagine the exact outcome of the story as just written as a script is
inevitably difficult. So I drew many storyboards to represent the story and shared
them with our playtesters. In this way, we efficiently conveyed what the game's
story would eventually look like and got a lot of concrete and valuable feedback. We
realized that the more visual the form of the story, the easier it is to understand for
most people.
Fig. 3.3. Storyboard of Reversal, September 2021
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Chapter 4: Storytelling Methods
4.1 The Constraint And Why
As mentioned before. telling a story about social hierarchy and inequality
'without using any text and dialogue· is the narrative technique I wanted to explore
for my thesis. Why is it so important to our game. or how would such a narrative
approach help communicate its story?
1. It can greatly increase immersion. The backstory and worldview are set up
entirely through mechanics. puzzles. and art. and the player does not need to
read an additional text to get the information. It is like a movie that removes
the narrator and renders the story purely through the actors' performances. I
tend to find that this brings me into the story more quickly.
2. It facilitates the ambiguity of the story. As I wrote previously. I think it's an
excellent experience in a puzzle game for the player to piece together their
own version of the story. It is the equivalent of introducing the experience of
puzzle-solving into the narrative. Achieving this goal requires multiple
efforts. such as disrupting the narrative sequence or deliberately misleading
the player. The goal of ambiguity can also be achieved without using specific
textual information. A character's performance usually has more possibilities
for interpretation than a dialogue.
3. To keep a good game flow for a puzzle game. We had to interrupt the player's
puzzle-solving process by inserting animations to advance the story. In order
to minimize this break in the game flow experience. the inserted animations
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have to meet specific requirements (which will be further described in the
following sections). Furthermore. from my previous experience designing
puzzle games. it is even more disruptive or more jarring to interrupt the game
flow with large sections of text and dialogue. In many playtesting sessions. I
noticed that players moved from the logical thinking mode of solving puzzles
to the sensual thinking mode of reading text when large sections of dialogue
appeared. In subsequent questionnaires. many players reported that the
experience of reading the inserted text dialogue in a puzzle game was much
worse than watching the animation.
4.2 Storytelling Methods And Principles
Achieving our narrative goals with this constraint is difficult but not
impossible. Next. I will describe the main storytelling methods and their principles.
4.2.a Environmental storytelling
1. Items with symbolic and historical meaning: The art assets are full of hints
and metaphors. These metaphors often correspond to real history-for
example. a vital element of the game: the mysterious purple crystal. The
workers received health damage in mining it. but it is also the energy source
of the entire pyramid. This item is clearly a metaphor for coal during the first
Industrial Revolution. Coal miners paid the price of their health to supply the
world with energy for industrialization. The robot baby with disabilities at
birth was inspired by Minamata disease in Japan in the subsequent level.
These symbolic items suggest that in industrialization. there are not only
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countries and some people who become rich. but also groups who receive
great harm. And the latter is often at the bottom and silenced.
2. Background art filled with details. When drawing the background assets, I
tried to use as few duplicate assets as possible. ensuring each level was a
unique hand-drawn painting. So all the background art is not a random
patchwork but has its own story and message. At the same time. in order not
to make the background look too busy. I carefully arrange the sparse and
dense items so that players have visual comfort.
3. Clarity of lighting and color scheme. Different floors should have different
atmospheres. The workers on the bottom floor have a painful and miserable
life. so the lighting should be gloomy, and the color value should be
desaturated. with the grayish blue symbolizing metal as its primary color:
while the third floor. which produces a sharp contrast. is dominated by the
bright warm yellow symbolizing gold. By creating these distinctive
atmospheres. players can experience different emotions.
4.2.b Cutscene And Animation
1. Principle For Cutscene And Why
The first rule of cutscenes is that they should be as short as possible.
We tried to keep each animation clip under 10s. And if they were too long. we
introduced some interactions so that the player could stay engaged. This is
because we did not want the animations that deliver the story to be too
disconnected from the main puzzle part of the game. Usually. these short
animations were scattered throughout the different levels and are only
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triggered each time the player made progress in solving the puzzle. In this
sense. the animated sequences become rewards. and the player must earn
them.
Another rule is to keep players focused on a few characters.
Otherwise. the player will not have time to register what is happening. There
are at most five different characters performing on the screen, which
actually has too much information. Therefore. to better control the player's
attention, I only let a few of the characters perform the most important
performances. Take the animation of level 5 as an example: first. the
performance is focused on the three sick workers on the right. The other
characters perform a walking animation without much information. Once this
part is completed, and the other workers start to block the doctor from taking
away the sick worker. the more important performances are shifted to the
other characters. By doing this, we ensured that the player's attention would
only be focused on 2-3 characters at a time. (In the image below. the red
boxes mark how the primary animations shift to different characters)
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Fig. 4.1.LV5 Cutscene of Reversal, February 2022
2. Using Cutscenes To Better Connect With NPCs
We wanted more interaction between the player and the NPCs to
better immerse in the world during the puzzle-solving. However. this would
have undoubtedly increased our workload, and it would have been too
expensive to rebuild an Al module just to make the NPCs react interestingly.
Our solution was to make some of the puzzles part of the story using
cutscenes. For example, in level 5, the player needs to open the door to the
next level. and this process will also help one of the worker NPC escape the
evil doctors and go to the next level to reunite with his child. In level 15. the
player solves the puzzle by getting a key item that another NPC will use to
save his alienated lover.
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Fig. 4.2. Storyboard of Reversal, September 2021
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Chapter 5: Art Challenge
I have limited 2D artist skills. My previous experience has been mainly in the
field of 3D art. So it was both a challenge and a learning process for me to do all the
2D art for a project like this on my own.
5.1 Art Bible
Jason Roberts. the creator of Gorogoa, states the game took much longer to
develop than he anticipated, in part because as his drawing skills grew, he kept
going back to redraw earlier scenes. In making Reversal. I also found that my
drawing abilities were improving. So how to maintain a unified art style was one of
the most important things. We set out to define an art bible early to guide all the art
direction.
First. we collected many references, including historical photos and the
works of our favorite artists. In this process, we identified the art style we wanted:
hand-drawn, full of intricate and detailed lines. and messy and rough surface
textures. Our biggest influences were Amanita Design's series of games' art style
and the artwork of comic artists such as Mobius and Otomo Katsuhiro. Then in the
bible, we specified the brush types, line thickness, color scheme, contrast range,
post-processing LUT, noise density, etc. By following these guidelines, we were able
to ensure consistent drawing quality.
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Fig. 5.1. Art references and early design, May 2021
5.2 Unity 2D Animation Pipeline
We choose to use a 2D rigging pipeline for convenience in animation. Most
games with 2D rigged characters use well-developed software like Spine for
character binding and animation, but we chose to use Unity's native 2D rigging
system. The advantage is that we did not need to migrate between different
software packages and pay an expensive fee. The downside was that Unity's native
2D rigging system is often less efficient to use due to its immaturity. Using the
animation editor inside Unity to do character animation was also huge frustration. It
is safe to say that Unity's animation module is still far from professional animation
software. I often had to use very primitive methods to adjust keyframes manually.
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I came up with using motion capture technology to speed up the whole
character animation process. Machine learning-based video recognition gave us
great help. Just record the reference video, and the machine learning algorithm can
recognize the motion and map it to a custom 20 rig. Of course, the final result is not
entirely usable and needs further polishing, but the mocap process still saves much
time for the project.
Fig. 5.2. Motion capture pipeline, February 2022
5.3 Fake Depth In 2D Space
Our game is not orthogonal like many 20 platformers. We have a fake depth.
So it is another challenge to create a world with depth through a flat 2d art asset.
The problems to be solved include a sorting layer, an asset mask, a light mask, a
perspective change, etc. This is a complex topic with many technical details. So I
will just focus on one example to illustrate it.
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In the game. many items that move will encounter the problem of
perspective change. The gate that appears in every level is an example. The angle
of tilt of the lower edge of the door is different when open and closed. Our solution
is to make a separate set of bones for the door. When the door moves. the skeleton
drives the door's shape to change to conform to the rules of perspective. Such a
technique is used extensively throughout the game.
Figure 5.3. Screenshot of the rigged door, February 2022
The production of 2D hand-drawn art was a new challenge for me. I
encountered some difficulties. but most of them were solved in the end. Obviously,
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many of the areas mentioned above are very subtle in the art. but much effort had
to be put into it. It is worth making sure the players do not notice any artistic flaws.
Chapter 6: Player Feedback
6.1 How To Get Feedback From Players
It is essential to collect players' feedback throughout the game development
process. But until all the art is ready, it's hard to get an authentic emotional
experience from the players. In the relatively early stages, I used storyboards to
introduce our story. The guideline for using storyboards to introduce the plot is to
try not to give extra information. In all cases, I described what was happening on
the storyboard without adding more subjective descriptions. This guideline aligns
with our game's primary method of storytelling: most of the story is conveyed
visually. If the story's leading content and emotional experience are not available to
the player through the picture, we need to optimize the method of storytelling.
As art content increases, we can use more polished levels with cutscenes to
participate in playtesting. I still use storyboards for subsequent unfinished levels to
introduce the rest of the story to players. We have questionnaires to ask specific
questions about game difficulty, level design, puzzle design, music experience.
However, understanding the story and the change of emotions are more subjective,
and we do not want players to write too much content in the questionnaire. So I
usually have a conversation with the players about the story and their feelings after
the playtesting.
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6.2 Player Feedback And Impact On The Story
The players' understanding of the art complete levels was in line with my
expectations. They all understood the plot and the identity of the different
characters that the animation was trying to convey. Most players claimed that they
quickly realized in the first four levels that the story was about the social class and
the painful living conditions of the working class. They also had questions during
the process. but these ambiguities were either answered later (such as the
protagonist's identity) or were deliberately created by me. I hope that the players
will fill these plots with their imagination while playing the whole game. The
emotional changes of the players are also of great concern to me. Most of our
players described their emotional curves as consistent with my design. A few
thought our music and story were still a bit disconnected. so we paid more
attention to the music in the development process afterward.
The most significant impact of player feedback in terms of story and
emotional experience is on the story's ending. In the beginning. there was only one
ending to the story. which was that players would control the protagonist Rev to
use all the powers he had acquired to sacrifice himself and smash through the
entire pyramid to bring the light of hope to the people at the bottom. However.
since many players already had a strong empathy with Rev at the end. they wanted
to be able to choose a more open ending. in which Rev did not die. but instead
made it to the top of the tower. perhaps having another. more positive impact on
the world in the future. Such feedback ultimately inspired us to create two endings
to the story. and players could make a meaningful choice for themselves at the end.
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Chapter 7: Conclusion
It is spring 2022 now. and Reversal is nearing the end of its development as a
thesis project. The whole world is still under the shadow of the pandemic. but
fortunately. we are slowly recovering. One day this catastrophe will end. but social
inequality will not go away quickly. Going up against the injustice of class society is
perhaps a more difficult thing to do than fighting the pandemic. After all. the former
has been around for thousands of years. Perhaps we will never reach absolute
equality. but we all agree that human society will only be better off if we move
toward greater equality. And Reversal is trying to contribute to the journey to such
a future. If the player is curious about the robot world after playing the game and
realizes the unfairness of the real world it represents. thus becoming concerned
about the topic of inequality, I will feel incredibly satisfied as the creator of the
game.
Reversal grew from a tiny idea. As the project developed. the game's story
became more affluent. and with it came a more significant workload. I must admit
that a small team with just two lead creators can be stressful from time to time.
However. I never felt bored or alone in the process. My teammate Yang and I had a
reasonable distribution of work. and our communication was open and smooth. The
tremendous collaborative experience is one of the most satisfying outputs of the
project. Our game will continue to be developed. and regardless of the outcome. I
can confidently say that I enjoyed the process and learned a lot. It has been an
adventure with no regrets.
25
Bibliography
Bycer. J. (2019) 'What is Environmental Storytelling?', Medium.10 May, Available at:
https://medium.com/@GWBycer/what-is-environmental-storytelling-7f76813d9876
Block. Bruce A (2008). The Visual Story. Taylor & Francis.
Jones. Simon K.(2018) ·3 Approaches to Storytelling in Games·. Medium. 23 July,
Available at:
https://simonkjones.medium.com/3-approaches-to-storytelling-in-games-4e62de
86ef30
Game Maker's Toolkit (2020) How Level Design Can Tell a Story. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwlnCn2EB9o
'What is Environmental Storytelling & why it's important for you· (2018) ffiStranger.
15 June. Available at:
https://aestranger.com/environmental-storytelling-its-important-for-you/
Gnomon (2017) The Art of Environment Storytelling for Video Games - Part One.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUL-5wfjOU (Accessed: 18
January 2022)
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Come with Me: a cooperative game focusing on player emotion

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The Toymaker’s Bequest: a defense of narrative‐centric game design

Asset Metadata

Creator Zhang, Zian (author)

Core Title Reversal: tell a story about social hierarchy and inequality without using text and dialogue

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/15/2022

Defense Date 04/14/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 2D puzzle game,Game storytelling,OAI-PMH Harvest,Robots,Social class,video game

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Fullerton, Tracy (committee chair), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member), Nealen, Andrew (committee member)

Creator Email zhangzian123@gmail.com,zianzhan@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110964814

Unique identifier UC110964814

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Zhang, Zian

Type texts

Source 20220415-usctheses-batch-925 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu