In game industry since 2002 • In 2006 started CBE software with Lukáš Medek • Worked on over 15+ published games outside CBE • Main roles: • Game design • Writing • Programming • Audio design and composition • Running a company
• … and if so, can I structure the design? • How can I avoid “a walking simulator” stigma? • How to present meanings and symbolism? • What are the types of narration I can use? • … and can I measure their impact? • Can I incorporate context into a nonlinear narration flow? • Can narration help me to stand out of the crowd?
me as a creator • Meaning for target audience • Meaning for PC/NPC • Our paradigm is given (nothing to be done for it) • I have to create paradigmatic layer for PC/NPC’s
limitations of skills and technology (developer) - game qualities / issues - player’s paradigmatic layer - Internal motivations - reviews - direct feedback - social media
a meaning • … actually – with all three types of meanings • Designing meanings using the principles of: • Selection • Hierarchization • Restriction • Assigning desired “impact values” to individual meanings • Centrifugal vs centripetal elements
lot of weird random stuff to confuse players. Hopefully they don’t find out it’s random.” • 2) Meaning-driven “Let’s use a lot of weird stuff but pair it with actual meanings so it’s possible to decipher why it’s there.” Common denominator of both approaches? A lot of weird stuff …
walking distance time • Interactions classified as a „time diluters“ • Feedback from focus testing to adjust the dilution values • Good way to maintain interaction variability, too
in an emotional response • In case of PC <-> NPC the response should be bi- directional • Once again I have to count with multiple types of meanings of the emotions (Author, PC, NPC, Player) • Rationally designing desired emotions helps me to finetune when it doesn’t work as expected