Critical Evaluation

I chose Dramatic Elements for my project and I’m still glad I did , I chose the subject initially as I had a strong interest in the narrative of games, particularly with reference to the story structure. I was interested in how the stories are chosen, how they are interpreted for games and the future of these narrative-centric games. I started thinking was this interest in narrative games a new thing for me, or did I always like them? For instance I listed my favourite modern games…

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Prototype
Wanted
Abe’s Odyssey
Bioshock

I then compared them to games I had played when I was younger such as Batman, Ghostbusters and Airwolf. I realised that although they didn’t have a detailed narrative, they still had a narrative that I could engross myself in. Perhaps at the time this was because I loved imaging myself as the characters. I noticed that asides from most of them being action games, the large majority of them have a strong narrative. Looking back at the games I enjoyed when I was younger, I think it’s more than a coincidence that all the games I enjoyed best are rich with narrative.

What I didn’t realise was how much more there was to Dramatic Elements, it was more than just narrative alone and I also discovered just how in-depth narrative was (or how hotly debated a topic it is).

When I chose dramatic elements, I also chose the topic from the list of alternatives because I had briefly looked into the amount of information there was on the subject and I found that there was a lot of research that I could look into and use in my blog.
Whilst researching for the blog, I found more information than I could ask for on the topic of narrative but surprisingly little in terms of the other areas of dramatic elements such as Emergence and Progression other than in the ‘course bibles’, Games Design Workshop, 2008 by Tracy Fullerton and Eric Zimmerman and Rules of Play, 2004 by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.

One of the things I appreciated while doing research was that many of the people I was researching are still very much active in the subject, Henry Jenkins still writes excellent articles on the dramatic elements of digital games, Eric Zimmerman still updates his blog and his very useful newly-formed website which I came across www.localno12.com. Thankfully dramatic elements in digital games are a continually evolving subject. This continuous evolution in dramatic elements is also true for the technology in digital games as well and I think anyone researching the subject in the next year or so would be able to say a great deal more on the subject as it seems the AI within games (such as I wrote about on the Left 4 Dead games) will be far greater advanced than it is now.

The part of my blog that I enjoyed the most was my research into the narrative debate as even though I knew that they are considered a dead debate and that digital games can be judged on their content of narrative but that it is just one of many aspects in a game, I found myself coming down on a side and taking a standpoint in a debate, rather like I was taking up arms in a long over war. I found the arguments by Zimmerman, Murray et al very interesting and completely agreed with standpoint that narrative could be judged on its narrative in just the same way that a film, play or book can be.

I also enjoyed looking into character in video games as I had read a few interviews before out character creation in digital games and they had been very sparse, almost skirting over the issue. It was as though very little thought had been given to this area and I believed a lot more could be done with it. The research on greatest game characters seemed not to truly show which characters were the most intriguing or complex, rather it showed which ones were the most kitsch or ‘zany’. I was disappointed with these findings as my thoughts were that truly great digital game characters, ones whose persona would stay with the gamer in the same way that a film character like Andy DuFresne from The Shawshank Redemption or Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird would. I believe these game characters are still to come.

The part of the blog that I found most difficult was the research into play as it relates to dramatic elements as I found this would often cross the line into research on formal elements. The line was very hard to draw and most articles and information I read would be on Play as a formal element rather than a dramatic element and I wanted my blog on point as much as possible.

I tried to use as many varied sources as possible, books, online blogs, video-blogs, TV shows and even other graduates articles to make my blog a varied piece containing different opinions and approaches.

In future blogs I will try to incorporate Twitter Blogs from people on the subject, I had planned on incorporating one with this blog but the people who did have current twitter accounts either hadn’t updated them in quite some time (Janet Murray’s Twitter still says she is stuck at LAX from October – I really hope she’s out of there two months later) or they rarely Twitter about the specific subject.

I hope this Blog had something new to say on Dramatic Elements.