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Juliette: revealing character from choice to world

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Juliette: revealing character from choice to world

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Content JULIETTE REVEALING CHARACTER FROM CHOICE TO WORLD by Peter Alexander Van Dyke ____________________________________________________________________ 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 2010 Copyright 2010 Peter Alexander Van Dyke ii Licensing  COPYRIGHT BY PETER A. VAN DYKE 2010 Some Rights Reserved This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ iii Dedication To my cats, Gorby and Snacks, who kept me warm on all of the long nights I spent awake on this project. iv Acknowledgements The process that led to Juliette in her current form has been long, and it would be unreasonable to list all of the people who supported me and helped it come together. However, that isn't going to stop me from trying. First, to the team that coalesced around Juliette in September of last year. Each of you started as a teammate and became a friend through meeting after meeting. David Mershon, Ryan Watterson, and Mike Sennot, each of you helped to drive forward the project's design process in such a way that now, each of you are, and will forever be, represented not just in Juliette, but in any designs in which I am involved for years to come. And Sam Farmer, for helping me to understand the look and feel of each iteration along the way, without your insight and knowledge Juliette would likely be a mess of visuals with no discernible style. To all of my friends, who are still here after months of my absence. Thank you for understanding and supporting me while I slowly figured this out. To my Mom, who has had to put up with me on the phone twice a week, every week for months. To my Dad, who came down to Los Angeles to see me before he moved because I couldn't fly up to San Francisco. To my brother, who always manages to help inspire a little confidence in me when I really feel like I can’t go on. And to Erina Digby, without whom I couldn’t have either started or finished this project, though her influence manifested very differently during each. v And of course, to my advisors. Thanks to Jamie Antonisse, who was able to immediately understand where I was coming from and my train of thought. Thank you to Peter Brinson - for years you have been a source of inspiration and motivation. And last but not least, Steve Anderson. Thank you for repeatedly pulling me through my conveniently self-imposed obstacles and convincing me that what I wanted to do was both worthwhile and possible. I could not have gotten this far without any of you. vi Table of Contents Licensing ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii Introduction and Problem Space 1 Design and Development Process 6 Discussion : Literary and Interactive Double Narrative in the Context of Player Avatar 11 Significant Influences: Cinema 16 Significant Influences: Interactive 19 User Experience Description 20 Evaluation Scenarios and Methods 24 Conclusion 27 Bibliography 29 vii Abstract Juliette creates a novel experience by changing the way that character and player relate in a game – not through a written narrative, but via space and play. Through choice and experimentation, a character’s development is gradually revealed. In a world progressively derived from player action, every facet of each space represents some aspect of character. This gives us the opportunity to think differently about the ways character may be most compellingly constructed in an interactive environment. 1 Introduction and Problem Space Historians of classic cinema argue that strong character is at the heart of most compelling narratives. In both literature and film, character is the first piece of a narrative that must be understood by an author. Typically, it is a great character that drives forward a story - not the other way around. In interactive media, this is not so well established. The design process is often strongly based in mechanics or story, and designers rarely consider character. In many cases, characters are simply vehicles through which the story is forced to progress – in effect, the story drives the character creation, instead of the character creation driving the development of a story. Juliette is designed around the principle that character can, and should be, a much stronger element of both narrative progression and mechanic design. To better understand the relationship between character, story, and system, Juliette draws motivation from the portrayal of dream states in film. Consider, for example, the role of character in the narrative composition of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. In Mulholland Drive, Lynch portrays the events of a story through the eyes of the main character. Every aspect of the film is stylized and adjusted to ensure that the internal logic of the character is reflected and complete in the world. The psychological emphases during events that take place are tailored, through use of both the camera and narrative elements, to express the perspective of the main character. Because the lens through which we see the film is both Lynch’s lens and the lens of his 2 main character, Mulholland Drive appears to be significantly more dream-like than most cinema: events can be both fleeting and devastating; colors are symbolic and codified; movement and time are both portrayed in an extremely abstract manner. In comparison with users of interactive media, film viewers are essentially passive consumers of the medium. In interactive media, the user engages the world directly by exploring and taking action. The logic of an interactive world is revealed through this action, while in cinema it is revealed linearly. Interactive experiences create a double narrative that grows due to the segregation of the authored narrative and the freedom that the user has to govern their consumption of the media via action. My goal with Juliette is to more closely integrate these two narratives: the player narrative, created by action, and the game narrative, authored by the designers and experienced indirectly through the player character. Actions are imperative in an interactive world - they enable progression through an authored narrative. These actions, by extension, can be used as vehicles for character development: If a world is designed in such a way as to respond to player actions, the way that the world responds can be used to communicate. If a designer were to design a world with these reactions in mind, and the designer ensured that these reactions reflected some aspect of character, it would allow the communication of character through world. This is the lens through which Juliette strives to show the world - that of the character, and not the designer directly. 3 Interactive world design strongly parallels character design in traditional narratives because the world represents the vehicle through which interactive experiences are driven. The first narrative that comes to mind after an interactive experience is that of the user, so a world must exist as a playground for that user – both reflecting decisions and creating new choices. While there is often a traditional narrative complementing the mechanics of a game, it generally exists simply to guide the user to the rails on which they will experience the mechanical progression of the game. If this is the case, and interactive projects are adept at communicating world to a user, why not try to use world to communicate character? In my first attempts to solve this problem, the logical starting point seemed to be an approach that more closely tied together the revelation of the character and world to the user, but this goal quickly evolved into a tightening of the integration of information revelation between the game character and the user – perhaps the character began the game without a memory, so the player and character were learning about the character at the same time. This concept evolved into a system that emphasized a tight integration between player choice and game character progression in an attempt to begin closing the gap between the game narrative and the player narrative. In Juliette, these are the design goals that drive the aesthetic and mechanical choices that define the game. The player’s choices affect both the growth of the game character and the evolution of the world, thereby more closely tying the “narrative” progression of the game to the choices that the player makes during gameplay. The design of Juliette is 4 strongly informed by a desire to blur the lines between the player character and the game character in order to more closely align the game narrative and the player narrative. This is done in several ways: the design of the play space, the objects available in each space, and the level progression. The layout of the space is a single room, visited by the player/character five times over a period of two decades. After the first visit, each return reveals the effects of choices made during previous visits to the room. The effects implicitly mirror the choices made during life, with each choice emphasizing certain interests, actions, and skills. The room grows and changes to match the choices made by players during their time in each level. Each object in the space has a specific as well as a broader meaning. For example, one object present in the first level is a pack of glow-in-the-dark stars. These represent a latent curiosity and also a certain level of ambition – when chosen, they help to shape which objects (skills, interests) will be available to the player in the next level. The player has the option of choosing some, but not all, of the objects in a given level. As the character ages, the number of objects available remains the same but the maximum number of objects that can be chosen in a level decreases. This builds an emphasis on choice that grows through progression, and helps to add gravity to the decision-making process. The level progression is designed to mirror the way that time passes, and a fading mechanic implemented in Juliette reinforces this. The player is limited to a specific 5 amount of time in each level, and the game moves to the next level at the end of the timer, which is represented by a fading of the game character until she is completely transparent. These elements are designed to emulate two things: a sense of inevitability, and an inability to go back. Because the system imposes the same limitations on both the player and the game character, there is a consistency of dramatic and formal elements that very closely ties the actions of the player to the progression of the character. 6 Design and Development Process At its roots, Juliette began as a motivation to draw a game character and a player through the same story to a similar goal. The first iteration of this concept, Nostalgia, strived to achieve this goal by having the character and player discover game character motivations and traits simultaneously. In order to facilitate this goal, the design took place inside the mind of the main character, in a stylized representation of the city in which the main character had lived for many years. Jasper, the main character in Nostalgia, was a man who had been disassociated from his memory, but needed to understand enough about himself in order to regain control of his mind. This was a device that I used in order to artificially close the distance between the player and game character – each action taken by the player reveals pieces of a character who is also discovering his own history and identity. There were also tropes worked into the design that allowed the character to react emotionally to things that were important to him as the player explored the world. For example, a photograph of his wife or kids would cause a certain type of visual response in the interface, such as a blurring of the camera or the camera pulling towards the object of significance. Because the character was without memory, this type of response was noticeably “confusing” to the character and acted as a hint for the player. These hints would be followed by revelations of history, memories, persons, or other relevant character elements – the effects of this knowledge would have an effect on the game character (he was learning about himself), and on the player character. Each piece of information about the character was designed 7 to help shape the logical next steps in the game. The combination of these elements allowed character history and traits to drive both gameplay and additional character development, driving both the arc and the gameplay in Nostalgia. Another element of Nostalgia that was designed specifically to narrow this gap to a degree was the interactive system that pertained to memories. In the design, memories were little vignettes that the player would stumble upon while exploring the fractured city in which the game takes place. Memories are location specific, meaning that they take place in the part of the city (or even building) in which they were first experienced. When the player encounters a memory, the exploration of that memory occurs as a linear progression that the player must ensure can play through in its entirety. The puzzle is presented as a series of obstacles to the play-through of the memory, each of which must be removed by the player character before the memory can play completely. This accomplishes two things. First, it imparts character history directly, in the form of an indirectly playable memory. Second, it allows the player to experience all of the memory, in order - the player must remove obstacles in the order in which they are encountered - closer to the way in which the game character originally experienced the moment. As memories are encountered and "solved," the city begins to become more fleshed out and lived in. Additional color is apparent, and there is more detail throughout the streets, buildings, and parks. In effect, the memories serve the purpose of expanding and filling out the husk of the city as they are discovered and experienced. Each of the memories 8 represents a reverse temporal progression to the event that causes the authored character's memory loss. As the player approaches the end of the game, both the player and the authored character begin to approach an event that explains two things: What the player is working towards, and what the authored character values the most in life. The player and the character are enabled by the same information, but in different ways. Thus, they value the same information, if only for a moment. Juliette originally strove to expand on the "space as character" idea first broached by the city in Nostalgia. The experiment was designed to explore how spaces could be imbued with character traits, memories, and the internal logic embodied by a character. This was represented by a series of rooms, each with a theme derived from a character study. Each room had a logic of its own, with play encompassed by the player moving loose objects from one room to another in order to see how each manifests. Each object represented something very specific - for example, a clock would represent time. If the clock were moved into a different room, it would manifest as something entirely different, but still representative of time (such as a sun dial vs. a grandfather clock). Each object also had an intensity, which determined whether or not it fit in a given room (is the alarm sounding?). These design decisions were reflected in an interactive design that was centered about a rich 3D world in which the player could experiment and explore. As the design process continued forward on Juliette 1, it started to seem as if the design was taking on a mind of its own, and I began to lose interest in the design that resulted. There was very little active gameplay, which was left out in order to satisfy the 9 requirements of character-based story and world. It soon became apparent that the design was no longer reflective of what I originally found interesting about character, and it seemed as though that it had been replaced by the shiny veneer of a colorful 3D world with rooms and objects. I returned to the drawing board with the character in mind, and began to think about what I found fascinating about character early in the design process. Over the next several weeks, a new design took shape. The second iteration of Juliette was characterized by much simpler mechanics and very little imbued story. Each design decision was made with player action in mind. The world became extremely simple, and was limited to one room. The progression of the game became framework-based instead of narrative-based; the player now had a fixed amount of time in each level, as opposed to taking actions to leave and progress to the next level. Objects began to take on a different type of meaning, in this case more reflective of skills and life decisions. Juliette had started to mirror life, and the actions of the player began to take the shape of abstracted life choices. The design solidified rapidly after the allegorical framework of life had been decided upon. Each level would be fixed in temporal length, and the player would fade from the level as time ran out. During each level, the player chooses items they wish to take with them to the next level. Items that are chosen can enable the player to access items which may not otherwise be available in the next level, and the player is therefore drawn to make simple, immediate choices which have progressive ramifications during the remainder of the game. Each choice made by the player is reflected in the world by either 10 obstructing or enabling the game character in the next space. The world space reflects decisions made by the player in both form and function, allowing the player access to certain items and altering certain aesthetic aspects of the game. At the end of each subsequent level, the player is allowed to take fewer items. In many ways, the design mirrors the forward progression we experience in life. Decisions cannot be remade, there is no backtracking, and time is limited during each level. This design achieves much closer parity to my original goal of more closely integrating the player narrative and the character narrative by allowing the character to grow and causing her leverage to change in each space based on the actions of the player in the previous space. All previous decisions are reflected in the game world, and each of the objects taken by the player to the next level has an effect on the restraints placed on the character in that level. This begins to blend the game character with the game character as player avatar. The end of Juliette is colored by a story, created by the player's actions, and acted by the game character. Each of the objects chosen by the player reflects skills or interests that, over a period of levels, begin to paint a picture reflective of the game character's life from ten years old until thirty. Player actions represent the major inspiring plot points in the game character's life, and the actions taken by the player are mirrored in the actions taken by the game character in the larger story of her life. The player narrative, complete with actions and gameplay, is strongly tied to the game narrative. Each guides the other from level to level, and each is reflected at the end of Juliette. 11 Discussion: Literary and Interactive Double Narrative in the Context of Player Avatar In cinema, literature, and more recently, interactive media, there exist two distinct, disparate narratives. The differences between these have been extensively studied in literature, with discourse regarding narrative structures common and well established. These frameworks have seen through the creation of a large number of great works, literary and interactive, and there is an inarguably vast cornucopia of games and other interactive media that exist within these frameworks. A formal discussion of the double narrative that exists between the player and the designer/author of an interactive piece of media requires the exploration of several subjects: double narrative in literature, between an author or narrator and a reader; the association between player and avatar in interactive and social worlds; and the player character as the intersection of author and player in an interactive world. In Narrative Discourse, Gérard Genette provides us with an excellent first step in examining the differences between the reader and the writer of a given story. She highlights for us the temporal differentiation inherent between the creation and the consumption of a written narrative: The temporality of written narrative is to some extent conditional or instrumental; produced in time, like everything else, written narrative exists in space and as space, and the time needed for "consuming" it is the time needed for crossing or 12 traversing it, like a road or field. The narrative text, like every other text, has no other temporality than what it borrows, metonymically, from its own reading. Literary theory highlights two narratives for each story: that of the author, and that the reader. History has seen significant discussion of dichotomic narrative, in many different contexts with many different conclusions. Roland Barthes' discussion of narrative in terms of language and time is particularly relevant here: ...in narrative, these two units, proximate from a mimetic point of view, may well be separated by a long sequel of insertions pertaining to quite different functional spheres. Thus a sort of logical time comes to prevail, bearing little resemblance to real time, the apparent fracturing of units being still closely subordinated to the logic which binds together the nuclei of the sequence. To summarize, while just seconds may pass between two disparate events in a story, the language with which the story is told - the words on the parchment - can expand nearly infinitely to describe any number of things. Thus, the double narrative. A reader experiences the authored narrative of the characters and plot, and also the narrative of the writing itself. These differ temporally, and they exist as separate narratives. Similarly, in an interactive world, the authored narrative imbued by the designers takes place over a set amount of time. World characters do not forget plot events that occur due to player action or in world history, and the time from the first event in the narrative to the last event remains constant regardless of player action throughout the experience. In effect, while each play-through of a given narrative is different materially via player action, the story and plot points experienced by the player are repeated. 13 This phrasing would seem to suggest that a branching narrative would conveniently solve this problem. However, branching narratives suffer from the same constraints as a single linear narrative. Branching narratives each have a given number of stories, based on the number of branching points that exist in a narrative. Because a branching narrative is still authored, and because players progress through it by taking action, temporally the authored and player narratives are separate. This is complicated further when considering the meaning of a player-controlled avatar that exists both in the temporal space of the authored narrative, and in the temporal space of the player narrative. Contemporary research surrounding avatars suggests that, in a given digital world, player avatars reflect players in terms of both psychological state and personality. Actions taken in a world by the player avatar reflect the choices and intentions of the player controlling that avatar. In effect, the digital avatar is an extension of oneself. This is further reinforced by James Paul Gee's theory of the "projective stance," articulated in his article, "Pleasure, Learning, Videogames and Life," which attempts to understand how interactive systems invite a user to occupy two spaces at once – virtual, and physical. Although Gee's emphasis is on interactivity for learning, the notion of projective stance can help to illuminate the power of multiple subject positioning in game experiences. In games, characters experience both actions initiated by the player and actions created by the author/designer of the project. These actions are taken when the player has no control (such as during a cut scene), or, in some cases, control is temporarily rescinded from the player in order to allow the game character to take an action. In addition, there 14 are often situations in which the player is directly addressed by the game character, while the player still controls the character. These authored traits and actions begin to blur the lines between a player avatar and a game character. When the player character acquires a history, character traits, a voice... effectively, when the player character is authored before the player takes control, that character is extremely well connected to the narrative authored by the designers. Historical events, relationships, in some cases even a sense of premonition, are a part of the character - and often, that character will communicate with the player directly. When the player starts the game, the character is relegated to being an avatar for the player, while still existing within the authored narrative of the game. Player characters will sometimes even involuntarily speak to the player regarding events or other elements of the game world, while still under control of the player! Most historical and contemporary interactive pieces fall headlong into this category. The goal of Juliette is to enter the design process well aware of the dichromic nature of narrative in media, and to strive towards closing the temporal gap between the player world and the game world. There are several ways in which our designs attempt this, but first we needed to establish a strong temporal framework for the piece. Juliette takes place over a period of twenty years - obviously, the game does not take twenty years of player time to complete. Instead, each level is time-limited. There are no documented events that occur between levels. Progression to the next level occurs 15 reliably at the end of a timer, both the player and the player avatar are transported simultaneously. The player avatar does not take actions outside of the realm of gameplay. Each action taken by the player is directly representative of a lifestyle or skill choice taken by the game character. Over the course of Juliette the player creates the game character's history, choice by choice. Each action taken represents an action taken by the game character, and so, each action helps to grow that character in a meaningful way. Effectively, Juliette begins to blur the lines between game character and player avatar, and, in effect, begins to blur the lines between player narrative and game narrative. Juliette is a character engine with a player-created narrative. Each action is meaningful in the context of the piece, and in the context of the game narrative. This is just one approach to creating meaningful player-generated narratives through the use of character development and action. The player retains control over the plot but not the context, and in doing so, Juliette stumbles upon a paradigm that potentially allows designers to begin allowing their players' avatars to more closely resemble the authored characters in their stories. 16 Significant Influences: Cinema Because character development in the realm of cinema is so integral to the development of narrative and story, it became one of the main emphases of my research – and also a source of inspiration and motivation. The niches of cinema that have historically kept my interest deal very specifically with character and style, and have greatly affected my artistic growth during the last decade - when considering how I wished to go about developing this creative concept, film seemed like a logical place to start. This project began as an interactive narrative piece, and as iteration after iteration came and went, it became clear that the most valuable piece of the project involved the narrowing of the authored and player narrative. Interactive pieces lend themselves well to this, as these narratives are generally very well delineated in common and mainstream games. While there are a large number of films that are topical to this discussion, I have chosen a gamut that reflects the styles and formal choices that have influenced me the most through the concept and design processes that led me to the current designs of Juliette. Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée uses setting and world to draw in a character and the audience, with the main character beginning to lose his grasp on time and space in his travels. The formal stylistic decisions Marker made during the planning and production of this film – the narration and visual style - both represent an attempt to bring the viewer closer to the perspective of the character. Because we are introduced to his world via a reality that the character himself cannot even fully distinguish from a dream, each frame of the story gives us a very particular view of that moment. Each sums up the visual and 17 emotional core of the moment being described by the spoken narrative. The effect of this abrasively communicates not just the moment, but also the way that the character exists and relates to that moment. Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 film Pi boldly draws the audience into the life of a man who falls in and out of nightmarish dream states caused by migraine headaches, often without realizing it. The lines between the real world and the dream world blend throughout the film, revealing character depth and sharing a strong sense of discomfort and panic with the viewer. While this does not parallel with the double narrative in the interactive space well, melding character and the visual formal elements of film provide an interesting and insightful way to draw the audience closer to the character. Arronofsky allows the character to affect the lens of his directing and visual style to such a degree that it becomes impossible to determine whether the film is composed by the director or by the main character. Many elements of the first design of Juliette attempted to mimic some aspects of this strategy by allowing the world to reveal its logic through player actions, with the information being communicated by the subtle differences between manifestations of actions and objects in spaces instead of the spaces themselves. In a similar way, Writer-Director Charlie Kaufman explores the sense of self very deeply in both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York. In Eternal Sunshine, the conceit is relatively simple: near the middle of the film, we follow the main character, Joel Barish, into his own mind. From that point, the film is ordered referentially, reverse-temporally. Each memory that we see is connected to the previous, 18 and at a certain point Barish even begins to intentionally break the previously established system and travel in and out of memories that are not related at all. The view of the audience is of director Michel Gondry’s interpretation of everyday events and objects through the lens of Joel Barish – because a large portion of this film takes place very literally in his memory, everything from events and objects to lighting and the layout of spaces. Kaufman takes this concept one step further in his 2008 film Synecdoche, New York. Caden Cotard, the lead character, becomes increasingly centered in the film as it progresses. In the beginning, Kaufman focuses on Cotard in a very familiar way. This changes, however, later in the film. Over time, the world begins to transform into a space that is entirely representative of the project on which Cotard is working. At the end of the film, every facet of the world reflects Cotard’s thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. As the audience, we are exposed to a world that both exhibits and is inhabited by the main character in the film. 19 Significant Influences: Interactive Interactive media provides a broad range of inspiration for this project. The works included here represent specific design and narrative elements that have helped to drive my thought process through the last four years leading up to Juliette. Each also embodies a step along the way to understanding exactly what I wanted to achieve with Juliette. Tim Schafer's Grim Fandango represents one of several LucasArts adventure titles that was substantially character-driven, with a narrative strong enough to carry the title through more than a decade of critical acclaim. For me, this piece helped to drive a significant amount of my early thought processes regarding character and narrative in gameplay. The world in which Grim Fandango takes place has an extremely strong internal logic to it, and each character with which we interact adds something to both the story and the world - there are no extraneous plot developments, and the progression through the narrative reveals an extremely tight and well thought-out story. Adam Cadre's 1998 interactive fiction piece Photopia was designed to be a piece of narrative fiction that gives the impression of non-linearity while retaining an authored storyline that could not be changed by player action. The exploration- and navigation- based gameplay in Photopia heavily influenced the first designs of Juliette. Specifically, during the early design stages it was decided that Juliette would not simply use complex puzzle mechanics to draw a user through the story; instead, navigation and exploration would be the primary means of revealing information. 20 Remedy’s Max Payne, when it was released in 2001, represented an incredibly strong step forward in both stylistic design and, during certain portions of the playable experience, represented one of the most forward-thinking approaches to interactive dreamscape to date. Near the middle of the playable narrative, the game character falls into a drug- and stress-induced dream state. This level is characterized by a maze that is littered with sounds referencing the character's lost child, around which the nightmare is centered. The progression through the space represents an extremely strong example of character-as-world - each element of the space is referential to both spaces and events that occurred earlier in the game, thus leading the player through an extremely sentimental experience that is shared with the game character. Released in 2005, Psychonauts was the first from Tim Schafer's DoubleFine Productions. The basis for my interest in Psychonauts is centered around the sub-worlds of gameplay. Many of the main characters are both a character and a level in the game - each level reflects the desires, ideals, and history of each character, warped by the character's psychological state. The player's goal in each mind is to repair the psychological damage. Each mind is a puzzle, the clues to which are found by understanding the character and the logic held by that character. This level-based logic played a significant part in my exploration of the first iterations of Juliette, in which I attempted to create spaces that directly reflected traits, memories, and ideals embodied by the main character. In many ways, Jason Rohrer's Passage, released in 2007, is closest in theoretical execution to the final designs of Juliette. Passage takes the player on the journey of life. 21 There is only one substantial decision in the game, which will either inhibit your movement or enable to you more more freely through the world. This is an example of a simple decision that is similar to the type of choices for which I strive in Juliette - choices that have an effect both on gameplay and on the world. In this case, the choice has an effect on the accessibility of the world. And, while there are significant design decisions to which I object in Passage, on a theoretical level, it should be considered the same genre as Juliette, though significantly more linear and guarded. Rosemary, part of a thesis dissertation from MIT by Clara Fernández-Vara, is a 2009 flash-based project that explores some of the same themes as the original designs of Nostalgia. The player is tasked with solving mysteries by ordering dreams, and the game takes place both the present and in the idealized past of the game character. It was extremely enlightening to see, in practice, the use of space design to communicate emotion and character in such an interesting and effective way. 22 User Experience Description The intended audience for Juliette is light or casual gamers who are interested in experimental or poignant interactive experiences. The story is justifiably simple, largely communicated by the atmosphere of the spaces and by the art. There is intentionally little authored narrative to uncover, which allows player actions to have a more significant effect on the final narrative. Actions that can be taken in Juliette are extremely simple, and are limited to movement and choosing objects. The space in which the piece takes place is similar from level to level, changing only based on the items that are chosen by the player. The player can move throughout the space, and interact with specific objects by either picking them up or avoiding them. Juliette's art style is designed to resemble a sketchbook: all art is black and white line drawings, and the animation used resembles that of a flipbook. This art style is designed to create an atmosphere that is both expressive and seemingly transient, like a pencil drawing or a doodle. With a sketch or a doodle the content may seem flippant, but the motivations behind it can often be very meaningful and significant - sometimes reflective of important, stressful, or even traumatic events. While Juliette strives to capture this poignancy, the game is much more focused on character building than specific negative (but shaping) events in the character's life. Generally, the design attempts to embody a relatively positive tone. 23 The game begins with a short introduction that gives very little information about the character and just enough game information to contextualize the actions and the game world. When finished on this screen, the player is presented with the game character in the first room. The room is styled like a living space, in a soft isometric view. Furniture is drawn in stronger lines while interactive objects appear more dynamic due to animation. In the corner of the room, there is a bookshelf which acts as a repository for items the player has chosen to take with them. The bookshelf retains all items that the player has chosen in all previous levels, and new items chosen in the current level. When progressing through the game, each level heavily resembles the previous. The layout does not change, and the majority of differences are in tone and the interactive objects themselves. This is the only situation in which color will be introduced into the game - objects will be given a hue that is designed to draw the player to those objects, based on the objects chosen in the previous level. If a player chose several artistic objects in the previous level, artistic objects in the current level will be hued, in much the same way that some objects will be inaccessible. As the levels progress, the player is allowed to take fewer and fewer objects, until the last, in which only one object may be taken. This ties a sense of gravity to the choices. 24 Evaluation Scenarios and Methods Juliette, in her first iteration, was designed and built by a team of six, myself included: Four designers, one programmer, and one artist. While the design process proceeded through many minor iterations, the first ninety seconds of play was built and populated in theh 3D game engine Unity. This short build was intended to test the use of certain types of camera angles and movements, combined with the color palette we had chosen, in the creation of a specific atmosphere. The short included a room, a hallway, and a staircase. There were three camera types in the space: one that tracked with the player, one that zoomed to a fixed position, and one that jumped to a fixed position above the stairway. Each was relatively wide, and placed to display its space in an evocative manner. This early build was tested by 13 documented users during the USC Winter Thesis Showcase in December of 2009, and by many others at other times who provided additional feedback. Reactions were positive, with many users describing the project as espousing shades of magical realism. The fixed camera in each space enabled a smooth transition to the next space, and also set the tone for player navigation. After compiling and analyzing the notes from the show, it was apparent that the build succeeded at its original goal of atmosphere creation. However, after beginning to move forward with slight changes to the size of spaces and camera movements, I had a series of meetings with my team and advisors to discuss the notes and next steps. With the 25 proposed changes being designed out, it started to feel like the project was moving in a slightly different direction than I had originally intended. This helped make clear that the process of developing for a 3D project was shrouding the original intent and exerting too much influence on the design process. Specifically, the emphasis of the prototype fell very strongly on communicating character through world design, and as we proved out our ideas this shifted from altering the world for reactions to navigating the world. I felt very strongly that there should be more explicit choice embedded in the game, and that imbuing those choices with meaning was the most important piece of Juliette. I went back to the drawing board with my team, and we began to think about simpler, more straightforward ways to draw our character and our our player together using a framework of meaningful choices. The fruit of our discussions was a significantly simpler framework that drew meaning from actions and reactions, instead of an authored narrative embedded in the world. The end result was a framework that was entirely designed to create meaning through action. There was little room for extraneous story, and after brainstorming the choices at the beginning of the game, a paper prototype was created and underwent limited testing. Communication of the effects of decisions were reinforced in the designs, and the digital prototype is currently being constructed in Flash. 26 The final iterations of Juliette will be tested in the coming month to ensure consistency between the choice design, world response, and art style. A particular emphasis will be placed on user identification of the meaning of objects, reaction to cross-level changes in the world that reflect their choice of object, and the ease with which users connect their actions with those changes. 27 Conclusion In literature, narrative theory is well understood - centuries of discussion surrounding reader and authored narrative have given us a strong structure through which to understand how we consume written media. In interactive media, these structures are not so concrete - there are many different ways to interpret the disparate narratives of the designer, the game character, and the player. In 2010, the vast majority of these interpretations have been discussed but not explored and documented through prototypes and iterative design. This years-long journey of structural exploration and experimentation culminated in Juliette - and for all of the theory and design that went into the project, it represents only a thin slice of the theoretical area by which it was informed. Narrative in interactive media has been a contentious subject for decades, and my work with Juliette does not purport to reconcile any arguments. Instead, Juliette exemplifies just one possible design path - one which strives to bring together the narratives experienced by the player and reflected in the world. Narrative in most interactive pieces follows a similar formula: that of a strong authored narrative, driven by plot points out of the player's direct control. Closing the temporal gap between a player's narrative and the character's narrative is only one way of drawing together the player and the character. If successful, the next logical step would be to begin designing a light authored narrative that could add a more formal structure to the 28 piece. This narrative would need to be informed by the game design in such a way as to allow player actions to more directly correlate with actions that drive the narrative. Similar to any project, there was a number of limitations that needed to be set in order for Juliette to exist in its current form. If it were not for these limitations, the size and scope of the project would have rapidly spiraled from improbable to impossible. It is with high hopes that I relinquish the torch to the next brave soul willing and able to explore the next steps of designing a strong player-driven narrative. 29 Bibliography Barthes, Roland, and Duisit, Lionel. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2, On Narrative and Narratives (Winter, 1975), pp. 237-272 Bryce, J, and Rutter, J. "Spectacle of the Deathmatch: Character and Narrative in First Person Shooters.” ScreenPlay: Cinema/videogames/interfaces, Wallflower Press, 2002, pp.66-80 Cadre, Adam. Photopia. Oct. 1998. <http://www.adamcadre.ac/content/photopia.zip>. Crogen, Patrick. “Blade Runners: Speculation on Narrative and Interactivity.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 101, Number 3, Summer 2002. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Focus Features, 2004. Fernandez-Vara, Carla. Rosemary. Computer Software, 2009. Gee, James Paul. “Pleasure, Learning, Video Games, and Life: the projective stance.” E- Learning, Volume 2, Number 3, 2005. Genette, Gérard. “Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method.” Cornell University Press, 1983. Grim Fandango. Computer Software. LucasArts, 1998. Max Payne. Computer Software. Remedy Entertainment, 2001. Marker, Chris. La Jetée. Film. 1962. Meadows, Mark Stephen. I, Avatar. New Riders Press, 2008. 30 Mulholland Drive. Dir. David Lynch. Universal Pictures, 2001. Pi. Dir. Darren Arronofsky. Artisan Entertainment, 1998. Psychonauts. Computer Software. Double Fine Productions, 2005. Rohrer, Jason. Passage. Computer Software. 2007. Stern, Eddo. “A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games.” Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference. Tampere University Press, 2002 Synecdoche, NY. Dir. Charlie Kaufman. Film. Sony Pictures Classics, 2008.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Juliette creates a novel experience by changing the way that character and player relate in a game – not through a written narrative, but via space and play. Through choice and experimentation, a character’s development is gradually revealed. In a world progressively derived from player action, every facet of each space represents some aspect of character. This gives us the opportunity to think differently about the ways character may be most compellingly constructed in an interactive environment.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Van Dyke, Peter Alexander (author)

Core Title Juliette: revealing character from choice to world

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/17/2010

Defense Date 03/25/2010

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

Tag action,avatar,Character,choice,dichotomic narrative,double narrative,game,game character,interactive,Interactive Media,narrative,narrative theory,OAI-PMH Harvest,player avatar,player character,story

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anderson, Steve (committee chair), Antonisse, Jamie (committee member), Brinson, Peter (committee member)

Creator Email pvandyke@gmail.com,pvandyke@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3064

Unique identifier UC1279997

Identifier etd-Dyke-3614 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-331265 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3064 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Dyke-3614.pdf

Dmrecord 331265

Document Type Thesis

Rights Van Dyke, Peter Alexander

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu