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Designing the Ramayana re-imaginator

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Designing the Ramayana re-imaginator

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DESIGNING THE RAMAYANA RE-IMAGINATOR

by

Kedar Kumar Bathina Reddy

_________________________________________________

A Thesis Paper 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, 2013
ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables iii
Abstract iv
Introduction: Motivations for the Project 1
About the Ramayana 3
Synopsis of the Ramayana 5
Why the Surpanakha Story? 9
About the Game 11
Prior Art 12
Audience 15
Evolution of the Design I 17
Evolution of the Design II 19
Evolution of the Design III 22
Looking Forward 25
Bibliography 26
iii
LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Rulesets
vs. Enumeration of Rules 9

iv
ABSTRACT

I have approached my thesis as an opportunity for me to gain a critical
understanding of Indian culture. The Ramayana Re-Imaginator engages with the
Ramayana tradition to generate new Ramayana stories that counter authoritative and
mainstream tellings of the story.
At the heart of this paper rages a debate over an open-ended system versus a
structured system for players to be able to express the greatest range of perspectives
within. The need to give players creative freedom trumped the need to accommodate
and engage players, and as a result the open-ended experiments prevailed.
Many of the early paper prototypes asked players to write out what characters in
the story would do and say with plot goals that both players worked towards. The
minimal amount of direction and players’ general lack of understanding of the
characters from the Ramayana lead to the generation of many stories that were not
resonant with any of the stories from the Ramayana. To counter the effect I shifted to a
curated word pool that players could pick from to create meaning, and mechanics that
encouraged competition between the players over a restricted number of in-game
resources. The final digital prototype, however, goes back to giving both players
common goals over a three-act structure to put together words, and imagery to
formulate meaning. The final version keeps the Oulipo inspired constraints and other
that story-telling mechanics that were discovered from earlier prototypes.
Discussed in the following pages are ways for tackling narrative and storytelling,
between two players, and about constructing and embedding the same within a two
v
dimensional space. Another vein of enquiry is story and character inspired gameplay
versus meta-level gameplay inspired by the act of storytelling.

1
INTRODUCTION: MOTIVATONS FOR THE PROJECT

My parents and I emigrated to the United States from India when I was eleven
years of age. I have since been busy trying to better understand that place we left. My
thesis project is part of that attempt to get into the psyche of India as a way of getting to
know myself better. I have attempted to do this many times before, almost every time I
have attempted an art project, it’s been about India in some way. It’s a compulsion that
propels my life. As I grow older, I am better able to articulate this compulsion, and ask
more appropriate questions of India and myself.
The arts are increasingly becoming marginalized in India, bearing the brunt of the
rise of fundamentalism, intolerance, and clashing ideologies. Pankaj Mishra calls these
“effects of globalizations”
1
. India has traditionally been a melting pot, of ideas, cultures,
and people. And yet the current pace of globalization is clearly causing a strain on its
adaptability. In many ways, the rise of religious intolerance that’s rearing its head across
the world is also manifesting itself in India. Hindu nationalism is the most worrying of all,
which is mired in issues regarding caste.
2

I think it’s important for a culture to look at itself and reflect. I don’t think there’s
enough of this going on in India. A.K. Ramanujan’s essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas
3

was banned in late 2011 for merely celebrating the diversity of the Ramayana tradition.
M.F. Hussain, arguably India’s most well known painter of the 20th century was forced

1
Pankaj Mishra, ”In India, a Clash of Globalizations Sinks a Litfest.” Bloomberg. Accessed April 1, 2013.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-10/in-india-a-clash-of-globalizations-sinks-a-litfest.html.
2
Patwardhan, Anand. Raam Ke Naam Documentary, N/A.
3
Ramanujan, A. K., “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation,” The
Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Edited by Vinay Dharwadker, 131–160. Oxford University Press,
USA, 2004.
2
into exile for painting Hindu goddesses in the nude. Salman Rushdie keeps hitting
roadblocks for visiting the country for a book that was written decades back. Creative
individuals become soft targets to the diminishing tolerance for affront. People are
arrested for criticizing the government on Facebook.
4

Women have lost their voice in an extremely patriarchal society. For a couple to
marry out of love is still a challenge. The girls to boys ratio is shockingly skewed in
India.
5
Rampant misogyny makes rape, marital rape acceptable, and so many times
goes unpunished. Women cannot travel without harassment. Most women have to wait
for the cover of dark to relieve themselves.
6
A lot of the treatment of women is justified
through reference to Hindu mythological stories like the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata.
7

I want to better understand the issues that face the country and culture that make
up a good part of my identity. More importantly, as a designer I have attempted to come
up with answers to the decline of religious and other tolerance. My thesis game, The
Ramayana Re-Imaginator, stands in support for free speech, and for reimagining the
role of women in India today. Specifically, it hopes to highlight the direction for
Ramayana discourse to take route in the country and the world.

4
“Facebook Arrest Woman ‘Shocked’.” BBC, November 20, 2012, sec. India. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
asia-india-20405457.
5
Rama Lakshmi, “Study: Sex-selective practices may be common in families of Indian.” The Washington Post,
February 13, 2013.
”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/13/study-sex-selective-
practices-may-be-common-in-families-of-indian-doctors/
6
Fozia Yasin, “India: Women face disease and danger using New Delhi slum toilets.” Women News Network,
December 19, 2012. http://womennewsnetwork.net/2012/12/19/india-women-new-delhi-slum-toilets/
7
Rama Lakshmi, “Amid rape fiasco, India’s leaders keep up insensitive remarks.” The Washington Post,
January 14, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/01/04/amid-rape-fiasco-
indias-leaders-keep-up-insensitive-remarks/

3
ABOUT THE RAMAYANA

According to A.K. Ramanujan, “No Indian ever reads the Mahabharata for the
first time.”
8
It’s quite true for the Ramayana as well, at least in my case. I have grown up
with the story of Rama and Sita. The comic books were about them, the movies were
about them, my grandparents spoke of them, people referenced them in everyday
speech, to the extent that the stories very much molded my early sense of morality and
my outlook.
The Ramayana, which happens to be it’s most widely used name for the epic
today, is one of the main stories in Hindu mythology. The story of Rama and Sita is also
told in Buddhist, and Jain traditions all across South Asia, from Indonesia to Pakistan.
The Ramayana, translated as Rama’s journey, is essentially the story of Rama and Sita.
It was passed down through oral traditions, before Valmiki is said to have written down
the story around 200 BC. Since Valmiki’s time, the story has been retold and
refashioned for every generation and culture. The basic tale of the Ramayana is
continually adapted to new contexts, forms, and media. The Ramayana is a force of
culture that wields great influence over social, religious, cultural and political life
especially in India.
If porn takes the frontlines of technology and cultural shifts in the West, it’s
mythology, including the Ramayana in today’s India that seems to first take on new
media and technology. In a culture with conservative sexual mores, the encoded values
of the Ramayana are used to understand novelty.

8
Ramanujan, A. K., “Repetition in the Mahabharata,” The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Edited
by Vinay Dharwadker, 161–183. Oxford University Press, USA, 2004.
4
There’s definitely an infatuation with retelling the same story over and over again
with the Ramayana. For many Indians, stories live and die by the skill of the
author/storyteller.
9
Telling a new story is easy. This has produced quite the diversity in
the tradition.
But, what makes a story a Ramayana story? Is a servant woman’s Ramayana
song more or less credible than Tulsidas’ prose? How is it that we don’t tire of telling the
story again and again? These questions all share an awareness of the shape shifting,
multifaceted nature of the stories of Rama and Sita. This diversity may very well be the
reason that the Ramayana tradition has hung around for as long and inasmuch
relevance as it has. It is uniquely placed to take on each generation and culture’s values
that it permeates.
Valmiki himself has multiple popular myths about his identity. Barring this, there
are actually multiple Valmikis in history to whom different textual Ramayanas are
associated. Valmiki then becomes a concept, mired the uncertainties of history. There’s
also a great tradition of authors since Valmiki who attribute their own additions to
Ramayana to Valmiki in an effort to legitimize their contributions.
10

A.K. Ramanujan in his essay writes that he prefers to call the different
Ramayanas, different tellings instead of calling them versions. This is so he argues,
because “versions” implies that there’s an original, but when in fact they are all equally
important.
I first read A.K. Ramanujan’s paean to the diversity of the Ramayana, his essay
Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation after

9
Spagnoli, 1999
10
Richman, 2008
5
reading about the furor that the essay had created in late 2011. The essay sent me in
search of other critical examinations of the Ramayana, until eventually I made it the
subject of my thesis project. This game/project was born out of a need to champion and
defend the plurality within the Ramayana.
Synopsis of the Ramayana
Below is a brief overview of the Ramayana story according to Paula Richman
from her book, Many Ramayanas.
11
The following section is meant to give you an idea
of the plot of the Ramayana. It follows the Valmiki Ramayana, not as an Ur text, but as
the authoritative and most widely acknowledged Ramayana. It is only meant as a basis
of reference.

As the story opens the ruler of Lanka, the demon Ravana, has gained apparent
invincibility by winning a promise from the gods that he cannot be destroyed by any
divine or demonic creature: he is vulnerable only to human beings, who are too weak to
be of account. Meanwhile in the city of Ayodhya, we learn, King Dasaratha has no male
heir. In order to remedy this problem his ministers urge him to perform a special
sacrifice, which causes his three wives to conceive sons. Firstborn among them is
Rama, son of Queen Kausalya; then come his three half-brothers, Bharata, son of
Queen Kaikeyi, and Laksmana and Satrughna, the twin sons of Queen Sumitra. Rama
begins his career as a warrior while still a youth, when he defends a sage's sacrifice by
killing the demons that threaten its success. Subsequently, Rama wins his bride, Sita,
by stringing an enormous divine bow.

11
Richman, 1991
6
When King Dasaratha decides to retire, he chooses as his successor Rama,
beloved among Ayodhya's citizens for his wisdom and compassion. Soon, however, the
king's youngest queen, Kaikeyi, becomes convinced that if Rama were to become the
sovereign, her fortunes and those of her son, Bharata, would suffer disastrous
consequences. So Kaikeyi calls for the king to redeem two boons that he awarded her
when once she saved his life on the battlefield: she asks first that Rama be banished to
the forest for fourteen years and, second, that her own son, Bharata, be crowned in his
place. Rama willingly accepts his fate, vowing to honor his father's wishes, and sets off
at once for the forest, accompanied by his wife, Sita., and his half-brother Laksmana.
When Bharata returns from a visit to his uncle and hears of the events that have
transpired while he was away, he goes to the forest to persuade Rama to return. Rama,
however, adheres to his vow, whereupon Bharata installs Rama's sandals on the royal
throne, agreeing only to serve as regent until Rama's return from exile.
In the forest the threesome meet ascetic sages, travel through both beautiful and
frightening landscapes, and eventually settle in a little hermitage. One day there
appears a demoness named Surpanakha who falls in love with Rama and boldly offers
herself to him in marriage. When Rama refuses her offer, she deems Sita the obstacle
to her plan and prepares to eat her. In response, Laksmana mutilates Surpanakha,
prompting the demoness to flee to her brother, Ravana. When she complains of the
cruelty of the two princes and tells of the extraordinary beauty of Sita, her words arouse
in Ravana a passionate desire for Sita. By enlisting the aid of another demon, who
takes the form of a golden deer, Ravana lures first Rama and then Laksmana away
7
from their hermitage. Then, posing as a wandering holy man, Ravana gains entrance to
the dwelling and carries Sita off to his island kingdom of Lanka.
In the course of his attempt to determine where Sita has been taken and then to
gather allies for the fight against Ravana, Rama becomes involved in the politics of a
monkey kingdom. There Rama meets Hanuman, who becomes his staunch devotee,
and Sugriva, an exiled prince who, like Rama, has also suffered the loss of wife and
kingdom. Sugriva and Rama make a pact: if Rama will help Sugriva win back his wife
and throne—both currently under the control of his brother, Valin—then Sugriva will aid
Rama in his search for Sita. During a battle between Sugriva and Valin, Rama conceals
himself behind a tree and shoots Valin from this position of hiding, an act that violates
the warrior's code. Some time later Sugriva sends his warriors off in every direction
seeking news of Sita's whereabouts. Finally they learn that Sita has been imprisoned in
Lanka.
Hanuman crosses the ocean to Lanka and locates Sita, dwelling under guard in a
grove near Ravana's palace. After he watches Ravana alternately threaten her life and
attempt to seduce her, he gives her Rama's signet ring, assuring her of imminent rescue.
Then, when he allows himself to be brought to Ravana's court, his tail is set afire.
Escaping his captors, he sets the city on fire and then returns to help Rama's forces
prepare for war, adding the intelligence about the walled city of Lanka that he has
gathered to information provided by Vibhisana, a brother of Ravana who has repudiated
him to join Rama. The monkeys build a bridge to Lanka so that the army can cross. The
ensuing battle sees great losses on both sides. Rama ultimately kills Ravana in one-to-
one combat, whereupon Rama makes Vibhisana the new ruler of Lanka.
8
Rama at first refuses to take Sita back, since she has lived in the household of
another man. After she successfully undergoes a trial by fire, however, he deems her
worthy to take her place by his side. But continuing rumors questioning his wife's
chastity cause Rama to banish Sita—who is now pregnant—from his kingdom.
Banished, she finds refuge with the venerable sage Valmiki, to whom the composition of
the Ramayana is traditionally attributed, and in the shelter of his hermitage gives birth to
twin sons, Lava and Kusa. Eventually, Sita abandons this world to return to the bosom
of the earth, whence she came. Bereft by the loss of his wife, Rama finally ascends to
heaven with members of his retinue.

9
WHY THE SURPANAKHA STORY?

Initially my intention was to tackle the Ramayana in its entirety. Given the
constraints on time I went with my grandfather’s telling, the shortest one I know. He had
recently re-told the epic in Telugu in three words:
Katte Kotte Tecche
Translation: Built(the bridge to Lanka), Beat(Ravana), Brought(Sita back)
For a brief period, I had plans to make an experience that would split the game
into three parts similarly. But, this approach wasn’t going to explicitly tackle any of the
issues I wanted to address about the Ramayana, such as the banishment of Sita
multiple times, the obsession over her purity, etc.
For the next couple of months of working on this project, I gravitated to events in
the Ramayana centering on Sita, such as her test by fire. Popular conceptions of Sita
wield great influence over the average Indian’s outlook of women, and their role in
society. It can seem that for such an important figure in Indian pantheon, Sita is rather
meek. She comes off as passive receiver of her fate, where her own destiny seems to
bound up with the men in her life. I wanted to take a look at Sita and recast her as a
woman with choice, and more resonant with the ideals of womanhood we should and do
hold today.
Instead, I chose to focus on the story of Surpanakha for the game. Most of the
contentious issues in the Ramayana revolve around women and the Rakshasa race,
characteristically the “other” in Indian mythology. Surpanakha is both. She is the freest
woman in the Ramayana, and a vengeful Rakshasi. Surpanakha’s independence and
sexual openness are a favorite of many tellings to correct, and made an example of.
10
There is a great variation on this particular episode in the different authoritative
tellings. Kamban describes Surpanakha as a beautiful woman, while Valmiki describes
her as “displeasing” and “revolting.”
12
Meena Kandasamy’s poem, Traitress
13
about
Surpanakha is very sexual and situates itself as feminist. Kavanasarma’s short story,
Male Rivalry and Women: Shurpanakha's Sorrow imagines the story in today’s India,
where Rama and Lakshmana are every day government employees, and Ravana is an
evil banker.
14
This story is not hesitant in saying that women’s bodies become the
battlefields that men wage their wars on. Other modern stories imagine Surpanakha
outside the context of her interactions/desire for Rama. For example a short story has
Surpanakha and Sita becoming fast friends after Sita is banished to the forests for the
second time.
15

Surpanakha along with Rama, create a nice contrast in character archetypes,
allowing for the right kind of conflicts to arise in the game. Also events around
Surpanakha also give us the chance to look at the violent and sexual aspects that are
quite encoded in many Ramayanas.
The episode with Surpanakha can sometimes be read as the all important event
that lead to the abduction of Sita, and the subsequent war in Lanka. Also, as
Surpanakha is often blamed with starting the conflict between Rama and Ravana, it
made symbolic sense that the prototypes for the game should start with her story.

12
Sarma, 1973.
13
Meena Kandasamy, “Retelling the Ramayana: Poems from Meena Kandasamy,” Sampsonia Way,
February 2, 2102, http://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2012/02/02/retelling-the-ramayana-
poems-from-meena-kandasamy/
14
Richman, 2008
15
Richman, 2008
11

ABOUT THE GAME

Due to the shape shifting, and in-progress nature of this project, game,
interactive experience, instrument, it’s difficult to give it one particular description. So for
now, suffice with this short, generic description. As it stands, the game titled, The
Ramayana Re-Imaginator, is a two player, turn based, story building experience for the
IPad. Two players endeavor to construct stories of their fancy based on prompts and
other contextual help from the game system.
The world of the game resembles a miniature painting that slowly gets filled in as
the players build their stories. It also has text and imagery embedded in the
environment. The game attempts to preserve as many points of view as possible as the
game is played. Copies of the characters are left behind at the end of each player’s turn,
so that it is easier to read the story of the characters in the space.
The story told through the game is captured in the form of an image that is saved
and added to a collection on the website
16
for the game. Currently I am exploring how
existing stories can help guide and create context for players starting on a new story.

16
Kedar Reddy, “Player Generated Stories,” The Argumentative Ramayana. November 25, 2012,
http://www.kedareddy.com/FinalWebsite/index.html
12
PRIOR ART

Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style
17
retells the same mundane short story
in 99 different linguistic styles, including styles that were titled Sonnet, Anagrams, Word
Game, and Passive. Exercises in Style inspired me to propose the ridiculous. I was
going to make 99 interactive retellings of the Ramayana, no not 99 but 300 because A.K.
Ramanujan’s essay had 300 in the title. But Scheherazade told 1001 stories, so
perhaps I should make 1001 Ramayanas games? Well, 1001 became 15 after a
summer of consideration, and scoping.
Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s treatise on
filmmaking, Dogma 95
18
, also inspired me. The concept of introducing artistic
constraints got me excited about creating a set of rules for myself as I go about
authoring these 15 games. I created a set of 7 rules, and hoped to prototype a game
every week over the course of the 15 weeks of the first semester. 15 games became
one game inside the first two weeks of the first semester.
Indie games like Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller
19
and Jason Rohrer’s Sleep is
Death
20
are big inspirations as well, though they inspire different extremes of storytelling.
Storyteller is very much a puzzle, with a very specific system based on spatial
relationships, whereas Sleep is Death is perhaps a story-making tool more than
anything else. I fluctuated between these two extremes the last six months.

17
Queneau, Raymond. Exercises in Style. Translated by Barbara Wright. 2nd ed. New Directions, 1981.
18
“Dogme 95.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, March 31, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dogme_95&oldid=539446140.
19
Daniel Benmergui, “Storyteller”, Daniel Benmergui: I Make Experimental Games,
http://www.ludomancy.com/blog/2008/09/15/storyteller/
20
Jason Rohrer, “Sleep Is Death(Geisterfahrer)”, Sleep Is Death, http://sleepisdeath.net
13
What about Ramayana specific prior art? I haven’t come across any games of
note that have to do with the Ramayana. Most have Hanuman, the monkey warrior/god
from the story as the protagonist. There’s an educational game, Hanuman, Typing
Warrior
21
by PlayPower that had players playing as Hanuman and learning to type.
There the Ramayana was only a medium for the message. A more well know game on
the Play Station Network, Hanuman: Boy Warrior
22
had players play as Hanuman in a
RPG style dungeon crawler. One the whole, there have only been a few Ramayana
games, and most uninspiring.
In non-game mediums, the Ramayana is well represented. Nina Paley’s feature
film Sita Sings The Blues
23
is perhaps the best known to Western audiences. I find the
three-character narration in it inspiring, and very relevant, and referential to the
Ramayana oral and puppet traditions.
The Indian landscape of folk and classical arts through which the Ramayana is
retold are all prior art references, particularly the Miniature painting tradition. The two
dimensional style for the game was inspired by this rich tradition of Indian painting that
condenses time, space, and perspective onto one plane. I have combined the flat visual
style with a collage-like aesthetic so as to make it more inviting to players to
change/play with the story elements and thereby also any and all fundamental
assumptions they may have had about the story.
In my research for the game, I have had the chance to explore a variety of Indian
art forms from Burra Katha performances and Kathak style of dance to Mughal

21
Hanuman, Typing Warrior: A Worked Example from Playpower.org, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEvJdn5hRRU&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
22
Aurona Technologies. 2009. Hanuman: Boy Warrior. PS2. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
23
Sita Sings the Blues, 2009.
14
miniature paintings in an attempt to glean something about the range of story telling
techniques employed. I have especially taken inspiration from collaborative art forms
such as dances or oral storytelling traditions, which contain so much give and take
between the performers or between the musician and the dancer or between the
listener and the storyteller.

15
AUDIENCE

I am the primary audience for this game. Then come everyone else familiar the
Ramayana, and then those without prior knowledge of the Ramayana. I have come to
terms with the fact that different people are going to appreciate this project for different
reasons, just as some people are going to be offended while others will celebrate it.
The question of the audience for this game was crippling at first. Living and
working in Los Angeles where most people haven’t heard of the Ramayana, I felt
compelled to address my colleagues and friends’ particular lack of knowledge of the
story. It was a very valid concern, one that had me consciously design context-providing
features into the game. I also didn’t want to make a game as an introduction to the
Ramayana illiterate.
For a time I considered the other extreme of making it just for the South Asian
diaspora audience. But South Asian versus a more global audience would prove to be a
false binary, as I would prove to be the primary audience, and people like me, who are
interested in reflecting about the Ramayana culture.
Another way of looking at this audience question was that different people are
going to bring their own perspectives to the game, and that this diversity could actually
be an asset. It’s going to be easier for people not familiar with the Ramayana to bring
fresh perspectives to the story. It would be harder for people who have grown up with
the Ramayana...in this case have been thinking of not telling players about the
characters of the game, and letting them play as generic characters.
16
These considerations about players from different cultural backgrounds can be
nicely addressed in playtests. This is probably something that will have to be done after
the school year as it is out of scope for now.

17
EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN I

The design question that I had early on had to do with how to represent the
multitudinous traditions of the Ramayana through the interactive medium. My initial
intention was to create a system based on the Ramayana, a system that with use would
be able to model the evolution of the Ramayana over the ages on a smaller scale. The
system would act as a platform for people to debate 300 different Ramayanas, or an
infinite number of Ramayanas.
This was also the time that questions of authorship came up that would recur
through the next few months. Should I author the content of these experiences or
should I relegate most of the story creation to the players?
My plan was to start with 15 tellings of the Ramayana, and create 15 different
interactive experiences that experiment with the idea of narrative in space. I proposed to
start with the categories that Henry Jenkins had laid out, embedded, emergent, evoked,
and enacted narratives
24
.
In addition, for each of the 15 different experiments, I would draw inspiration from
an oral, folk, or popular story form. The 15 forms of storytelling I was interested in were
riddles, catus, women’s kitchen stories, Brahmin women’s songs of the Ramayana,
Untouchable women’s songs of the Ramayana, stories of women saints from the Bhakti
period, modern day Indian television soaps, folk puranas, folk stories, women’s love
poetry, stories about stories, stories inside stories, Kuchipudi, song-dance sequences
from Indian movies, and BurraKatha. These particular art forms appealed to me as they
are usually not in as high regard as classical, Sanskritized, male dominant arts.

24
Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Publications Henry Jenkins.
http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html
18
To give this massive scale some restrictions I took inspiration from Lars Von Trier.
I formulated a ruleset that would act as creative constraints for developing each of the
15 experiments. The following are three versions of the ruleset:

Table 1: Rulesets vs Enumeration of Rules
Ruleset Version 1 Ruleset Version 2 Ruleset Version 3
1) No cut scenes 1) Intentionally Repetitive

1) Experience must be under
2 minutes
2) Average play time 2 min

2) Self-referential 2) Must be single player

3) Sense of Space

3) The Platform(s) must be
available as part of a whole

3) Must attempt to capture
the entirety of the Ramayana
4) Don't rely too heavily on
special effects. Or Art that's
too representative.

4) May not rely representative
art/visuals. No 3d models or
even 2d sprites.

4) No grandiose visuals. Very
simple, visually.

5) Use of text encouraged.

5) Must contain a frame story

5) Break at least one of these
rules
6) Break at least one of these
rules

6) Break one of these rules

I quickly began to realize that the scope of my plans was much too large. I was
also spending an increasing amount of time reading about the Ramayana. I generally
wanted to spend more than the week for each interactive experience that I had planned.
I started to think about how I can make multitudinous/contradictory experiences within a
single experience. The answer was not through multitude of interactive forms, but from
one experience or game, as I would start calling it that was capable of creating multiple
stories.
19
EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN II

The game shifted to be a two-player experience. It not only provided a cheap
source of intelligence that I was looking for, but it also inherently brought about potential
for conflict that single player experience would not have provided. I also wanted players
to be able to debate issues within the system of the game, and from this process of
argument and compromise create new stories. So in that sense two points of seemed to
be a useful point of departure.
It was around this period that the game also switched from 3D space to 2D space.
A two dimensional world would allow me to experiment more closely with techniques
used in miniature painting and other painting styles from India.
The initial paper prototypes had two players constructing stories with characters
from the Ramayana, and few environmental pieces and props. Players were restricted
from talking with each other during the playtest, so that the storytelling could be carried
out solely through the game pieces. Sometimes players played with a common goal,
and other times competitively with each having a different plot goal.
The first thing I learned from the playtests was that players’ first instinct is to try
to break the rules of the system. This and similar feedback would in fact lead me to take
a series of decisions that I would later backtrack on. At the time I was not sure what I
was play testing for, was it for player enjoyment of the game? Or was it for the game’s
potential to create compelling stories?
Players I tested with craved context, as all were uninitiated in the Ramayana
tradition, and as such had not the slightest ideas how Sita was related to Ram in the
story. One solution that emerged that I would use later was to utilize previous tellings
20
generated by the game in the current game, to give context to players. The first
generation of stories will be based on the pre rendered stories that we create. Then we
can think of second generation and third generation stories. Also, setting up the
background before they players started making their story was general much more
effective than starting with a blank canvas.
Various meta storytelling mechanics were also arrived at in this process, where
the player took the role of storyteller and did not role-play any of the characters in the
story. Here are a few:
--Ability to put a “curse” on the other player, as in “Everything you touch will escape you!”
--Insert a "Frame Story" window to explain or go into detail about a tangent in the story.
--Shrink the current scene in the story so that it only occupies a portion of the canvas,
and start over with the story and take it a different route.
--Asymmetrical design—One player plays the role of the main story maker and the other
player asks prodding questions, and agreeing and disagreeing with the main story teller
as he/she see fit.

Transitioning to the Digital
Owing to the unfavorable feedback from the paper prototypes, regarding lack of
feedback and a system, I began to design and implement a system of controlled
relationships between objects in the world and encoded meaning in sentence structures.
I began to implement algorithms that would be able to tell when goals are achieved
based on spatial relationships between characters and key words in sentences.
Furthermore, I went on to implement feedback mechanisms for player actions in
to the system. Toyed with the idea of words changing objects in the world as words
21
were placed on them. At one point, objects in the environment produced words of a
certain emotion when players tapped on corresponding objects. I began to think of the
gameplay in terms of harvest resources vs. achieving individual player’s goals.
All of these efforts, however, were straying from the primary objective of creating
absolutely new stories that reconsidered the meaning encoded within the Ramayana
tradition in a rigorous manner.

22
EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN III

The tension between open ended gameplay and highly structured gameplay
resolved itself towards a more open ended system with the help of looking at the game
as an instrument for creating stories that entails considerable investment on part of the
players to create meaningful stories.
The shift occurred after my thesis defense where it was proffered that I look at
this game as my own instrument that would require skill, and diligence to generate
meaningful stories. And as such I had to be the master player of this instrument, and
therefore consider myself the primary audience for this instrument.
This feedback was useful as it got me back to the ideals of the original paper
prototypes. Oulipo-like constraints, as well as game mechanics explored from the
structured digital prototypes informed the final prototype.

Tenets of the final prototype:
--Record story events that span time over a two dimensional space.
--Two players are more creative working together.
--Storytelling as also building of landscapes that contain the story events.
--Players should be able to exercise creativity and be clever with words and imagery.
Visual and verbal language must come together to give players superior creative
licenses.
--Creative constraints should help guide and prod players in particular directions.
--Content from previously created stories must be used to provide context for players.
23
So, to sum up the design process, I started from as open-ended a point as I
could, knowing that I could always add rules, and systems to focus and constrain player
agency. I added a lot of rules, and systems, which lead to creative claustrophobia for
the player. From there I pulled away to regard myself as the primary audience, and as a
result I took knowledge of the Ramayana, and dedication to the game on part of the
player for granted and naturally went back to a much more open ended place for the
design.

Recording Story/Gameplay
At the end of each play through of the game, an image of the game space is
captured and archived on the game’s website for public viewing. The captured image
serves as a reward and a memorandum of the players’ efforts, as well as a way of
documenting their points of views.
Recording videos of gameplay sessions would probably add even more value,
especially as the conversation around this game should be very interesting to document.
I have considered allowing players to perform voice-over for their stories after creating
them, and thereby create animated shorts of their stories. It would add a performance
aspect the gameplay, which while interesting was superfluous to the idea of generating
a great diversity of Ramayana stories.
Recorded gameplay will also be fed back in to the game system to serve as
context for players to familiarize themselves with the stories that are possible with the
system. Overlay of previous stories during gameplay, and embedding of visual and
24
textual elements based on spatial relationships of those elements from previous stories
are some of the strategies that are yet to be explored.

25
LOOKING FORWARD

I need to figure out how stories in turn impact the game system. Is code-hinting
an apt metaphor when thinking about the influence of previously created stories? How
will the game system evolve as more and more people make their stories with this
system?
I plan on making a web version of the game where the two players can play with
each other over a network connection. I see this as crucial for creating stories in
collaboration with people I intend to work with, especially those who are spread around
the world.
Also going forward, curating and visualizing the stories created with this game
will be important in order to reflect on their content as a whole. Making the art and even
the code from the project available to the public will be important for it to survive, to be
remade, and re-appropriated. I hope to publish a book of selected stories made with this
game, because as such paper is still one of the most universal modes of communication.

26
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arni, Samhita. Sita’s Ramayana. Groundwood Books, 2011.

Blackburn, Stuart H. Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India. Edited by A. K.
Ramanujan. First Edition. Univ of California Pr, 1986.

Bose, Mandakranta, ed. The R-am-aya.na Revisited. First Edition. Oxford University Press,
USA, 2004.

Dalrymple, William, and Yuthika Sharma, eds. Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-
1857. Yale University Press, 2012.

Goldman, Robert P., and Sally J. Sutherland, eds. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of
Ancient India, Vol. 1: Balakanda. Princeton University Press, 1985.

Gurvich, Martin, and Tryna Lyons. Living Traditions in Indian Art: Collection of the Museum
of Sacred Art, Belgium. 2010th ed. Mapin Publishing Gp Pty Ltd, 2010.

Jain, Jyotindra. Ganga Devi: Traditions and Expressions in Mithila Painting. Antique
Collectors’ Club, 1997.

Kumar, Arvind. A Study in the Ethics of the Banishment of Sita. Sarita Magazine :
distributors, Delhi Book Co., 1975.

Losty, J. P., ed. The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India’s Great Epic. British Library, 2008.

Lutgendorf, Philip. Hanuman’s Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey. Oxford University
Press, USA, 2007.

Masselos, Jim, Reis Flora, Jackie Menzies, and Pratapaditya Pal. Dancing to the Flute:
Music and Dance in Indian Art. Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997.

Mittal, Jagdish. Andhra Paintings of the Ramayana. Andhra Pradesh Lalit Kala Akademi,
1969.

Nardi, Isabella. The Theory of Citrasutras in Indian Painting: A Critical Re-evaluation of Their
Uses and Interpretations. 1st ed. Routledge, 2006.

Pal, Pratapaditya. Indian Painting. First Edition. Harry N Abrams, 1993.

Patel, Sanjay. Ramayana: Divine Loophole. Chronicle Books, 2010.

Ramanujan, A. K. The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Edited by Vinay Dharwadker.
Oxford University Press, USA, 2004.
27
Richman, Paula, ed. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia.
First Edition. University of California Press, 1991.

———. Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition. 1st ed. University of California
Press, 2000.

———. Ramayana Stories in Modern South India: An Anthology. Indiana University Press,
2008.

Sarma, Challa Radhakrishna. The Ramayana in Telugu and Tamil : a Comparative Study.
Lakshminarayana Granthamala : distributors, India Book Exports, 1973.

Seyller, John, and Konrad Seitz. Mughal and Deccani Paintings. Paul Holberton Publishing,
2011.

Smith, H. Daniel. Reading the Ramayana: A Bibliographic Guide for Students and College
Teachers : Indian Variants on the Rama-theme in English Translations. Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 1983.

Spagnoli, Cathy, and Paramasi Samanna. Jasmine and Coconuts: South Indian Tales.
Libraries Unlimited, 1999.

Thapar, Romila. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. Oxford University Press,
USA, 2001.

———. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001.

———. History and Beyond: Interpreting Early India, Time as a Metaphor of History, Cultural
Transaction and Early India and from Lineage to State. Oxford University Press, USA,
2000.

———. Time As a Metaphor of History: Early India. 1st ed. Oxford University Press, USA,
1996.

Verma, Som Prakash. Interpreting Mughal Painting: Essays on Art, Society and Culture.
Oxford University Press, USA, 2009.

Williams, Joanna G. The Two-headed Deer: Illustrations of the Rāmāyaṇa in Orissa.
University of California Press, 1996.

Recreation of Ramayana by Vandana Sehgal-TV9, 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSkllmYm4JM&feature=youtube_gdata_player.

Sita Sings the Blues, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzTg7YXuy34&feature=youtube_gdata_player.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Reddy, Kedar Kumar Bathina (author)

Core Title Designing the Ramayana re-imaginator

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/19/2013

Defense Date 04/18/2013

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

Tag Games,interactive,OAI-PMH Harvest,Ramayana,story-making,Storytelling,Surpanakha

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kratky, Andreas (committee chair), Anderson, Steven F. (committee member), Soni, Varun (committee member)

Creator Email kkuddi89@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-239094

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Legacy Identifier etd-ReddyKedar-1570.pdf

Dmrecord 239094

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Reddy, Kedar Kumar Bathina

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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 a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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