Gold Influence

My practice at card games resulted in a card game I devised. The problem I have with poker is that there is too much luck involved. Thus I’ve made a deceptively complex psychological strategy game that could be described as a kind of betting chess. I’ve called it gold influence as the between the players they form a kind of economy where each card has a perceived value in chips, the amount you bait the other player with, influences the card they play, and thus you must use you influence to control the game.

 

For 2 players which take turns to be the dealer each round

Each player is dealt an entire suit and a joker

The cards values go lowest to highest  Joker, A,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K

Joker beats any of the picture cards King, Queen and Jack.

If two of the same card is played baits are returned.

Both players start with 20 chips each

Each round the dealer chooses a card and plays it face down and a bait to entice the other player to try and win it, this bait must be matched by the other player who plays his own card face up. 

The player can then decide to play the round or fold. Since the dealer knows both the cards, the player should try to work out if he should play or fold based on the dealer’s tells.

If the player folds, the played cards are discarded and put to the side face up and the bets are returned. The player pays a penalty to the dealer of 3 chips which doubles every time that player passes.

If he plays the dealer's card is revealed and the higher value card wins, the cards are discarded and put to the side face up.

You win when you amass all the chips.

BA1b Contextual studies How Life is Strange’s gameplay complement’s its story. - Ludonarrative Dissonance

Life is Strange’s gameplay is extremely simple, so simple that it becomes instinctual, I often found myself knocking things over and rewinding time without realising it like I actually could rewind time and had been practicing it for a while. Adrian Chmielarz a developer at The Astronauts states that in order for a game to foster emotional empathy the game should do these things:

‘a) Having at least two heroes in the story, thus making it clear that it is not about a single protagonist the player might want to immediately identify with;

b) Using a caretaker theme

c) Offering non-3D second person perspective;

d) Minimizing the cognitive load through simple mechanics and UI, and thus freeing up the mental space required for empathy to exist.’

Life is Strange does all of these things, Max and Chloe are the two heroes, A theme going through the game is using your powers to help people notably Kate. The games perspective is between second and third perspective, in a sense we are max, we make her decisions but we also see max. And as I have stated the gameplay is very simple consisting of rewinding time, making choices and exploring max’s world.

Interestingly Life is strange has reverse ludo-narrative dissonance or what I call narrative-ludo dissonance the story weakens the gameplay rather than the gameplay weakening the story. The final ending of the game is to erase all of the choices and gameplay we made, we were told our choices matter through the gameplay, but the story tell us they are not.

BA1b 3D modelling Maya

I started to learn how to model in Maya, Having used Solidworks before it was easy to pick up some Maya, I was tasked to create two lamps one I made during the lesson, I experimented with the features of Maya on it.

On the second I made a design as close to a photograph as I could.

Character Archetypes- Is the Hero's myth really a way of contemplating death?

Character Archetypes - Is the Myth of the Hero Really a Way of Contemplating Death?

The protagonist of most games and stories for that matter can be described as the hero, as long as they are moral and a force for good. The hero is the person who solves problems or a person who performs heroic deeds through a difficult struggle. This concept or trope has a long history dating back even before the earliest hero myth we know of: The Epic of Gilgamesh in 2800BC. This concept seems so integral to a story that it is impossible to write a story without at least a protagonist and an opposing force, even in the intro of a story we expect a hero.

Since this trope appears all over the world in different cultures and even in isolated areas this could be an archetype, something part of the human subconscious (Jung. C). Indeed even before The Epic of Gilgamesh there were many hero myths passed around. The Epic of Gilgamesh is about conquering death. Initially through heroic deeds, then physically by attaining eternal youth which Gilgamesh loses when his elixir of youth is stolen by a snake,

“Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.” - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh has the realisation that he cannot escape his fate and that he can only live to the fullest. The only immortality he can hope for is by how his name will likely be remembered for centuries to come. This human aspect in fiction recurs constantly as the fear of death and the desire for life is innate in everyone even the modern Harry Potter explores the subject intensely. I believe the Hero Myth is a way for people to contemplate death of distracting oneself from death or to overcome death, in the many senses that you can attempt to master it.

 In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell presents the concept of the Monomyth which contends that every hero story has the same pattern of a “hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” I think that the concept of a Monomyth is flawed due to the fact that too few stories actually fit in that pattern which Campbell describes and how the stages are vague like how the statements a fortune-teller might ask are vague so that as many people as possible would agree to them for example your fingerprints are like no other, you have an arm on either side.  

However I think there is something significant in the ordeal stage how the character experiences death. In all of the hero myth stories, the tale has their hero risk their life and overcome a challenge thereby overcoming death temporarily. Many stories explore this further in: Lord of the Rings, Gandalf dies and comes back stronger and even as far back as Norse mythology Odin impales himself on Yggdrasil only to come back with magic. Campbell described the last stage of the Monomyth as “freedom from death”, having overcome the ordeal the hero no longer fears death and is thus free from death. If the hero character is an archetype, this would be a part of the human psyche that the hero character and Monomyth evokes.

Feeding this back into games, since almost every game with a story includes the Myth of the hero, logic would follow that many games are really about escaping death. Typically this is correct as at the ending of most games your character survives, you having guided them through the story therefore overcoming death, an ending that wasn't game over. If this wasn't the purpose we would stop playing on our first defeat screen, but we want to see an end where our character survives. Even in a game where the controllable character is an avatar for the player, we simulate overcoming death. I think there is something in human nature that wants to do this for survival purposes as small children often imagine play fighting and pretend to die like swordsmen practicing sparring.

This makes it interesting when you have games with respawns which make a mockery of death. Games in which deaths happen so frequently and with so few consequences cause death to have less meaning as a concept. There are many games which joke with this concept.

 ‘Thanks for using this Hyperion New-U station! Please die again!’ –Borderlands 2

Eventually players with enough practice and experimenting with fictional death can attain mastery over it in the game and therefore be able to go through the games challenges unharmed. Contrasting this, some games have perma-death where your character dies forever. In Fire Emblem if party member dies, they don’t come back therefore the team can diminish in size if the player is not careful.

Many games experiment with death by using multiple endings, such as games like The Stanley Parable and Zero Escape. Death is as integral to most video games as the characters are. Perhaps we’re just playing them to escape it. 

References

Campbell, J. (1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Gilgamesh., and Sandars, N. (1972). The epic of Gilgamesh. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Hull, J. (2015). Not Everything Is A Hero’s Journey - Narrative First. [online] Narrativefirst.com. Available at: http://narrativefirst.com/articles/not-everything-is-a-heros-journey [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

Jung, C. (1970). The collected works of C. G. Jung. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Tropes, T. (2015). The Hero - TV Tropes. [online] Tvtropes.org. Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHero [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

BA1a Contextual Studies Seven Stories

Seven Basic Plots: why we tell stories by Christopher Booker

Booker asserts that there are 7 basic plots,I've matched 7 games to the plots.


Overcoming evil/the monster - Diablo 3 fits easily into the catagory of the monster  the game after its first boss the game is about defeating Diablo the games namesake. A demon from the depth of hell.

Rags to riches - Patrician III: Rise of the Hanse, the game is a trading simulator your character starts as a lowly shopkeeper who can rise in the ranks to become a patrician or even a powerful alderman ruling the hanseatic league.

The Quest - Skyrim The story is a about the player seeking to defeat Alduin the dragon that will destroy the world, the player complete numerous quests in order to complete the ultimate quest of defeat alduin

Voyage and return - Pokemon The Player sets out on a journey to become Pokemon Champion by defeating 8 gym masters,the elite four and the champion

Comedy (the jester) - Worms is a stupid game about blowing worms with silly weapons like concrete donkeys

Tragedies - Asura's Wrath is a massive tragedy, his wife murdered,his daughter captured and his friends traitors Asura seeks revenge eventually leaving no characters alive apart from his daughter, who has to repair a ruined world alone.

Rebirth - Chrono Trigger halfway through the story Chrono dies and is later resurrected.

BA1a Contextual Studies Significant Characters

Here I will describe significant characters relating to how the industry has changed in from each decade of gaming


1980s - Link (The Legend of Zelda)
Introduced in 1986 Link is one of the most recognisable characters in video gaming, the character was kept silent and simple so that the player could fill his shoes and imagine themselves in his role, simple main characters are common in books and video games. Link could almost be considered one or the first role playing game characters. The character fits the hero archetype: the person who goes out and achieves great deed on behalf of the group, tribe or civilisation like most video game protagonists.

1990s - Big Boss (Metal Gear)
By this time games were big enough that incredibly deep and rich characters could be created, in contrast to Link, Big Boss has a long and emotionally driven story, many games started to make use of the larger file sizes available and made larger games exploring complex issues and immersing players, in the game Hideo Kojima wanted to players to experience 'tactical espionage action' and made of the change from 2D to 3D most of the industry experienced. I feel that some games truly became art at this time.

2000s - Chell (Portal 2)
At this time Video games became cheaper to make and more money was in the industry enabling creators take bigger risks with games enabling a much larger variety of games to be made, portal was one of these games, Chell the game's protagonist was designed silent like link. Some things never change.

2010s - The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)
At this time many games started to become more experimental and art-like, the successful games were the ones doing something new like Minecraft. A character that stands out for me is the Narrator in the Stanley parable who despite being a disembodied voice can be a complex and rich character. The Stanley parable like many games made use of branching storylines that each reveal more about the story, I imagine one day it will be possible to create a game with thousands of branches.

BA4a Contextual Studies Caillois Grid

Roger Caillois, a French sociologist studied play, he categorised games into four types:

-Agon - games of competition like boxing or racing

- Mimicry - games of imitation  like theatre 

-Alea - games of chance like roulette

-Ilinx - games about continuing a pattern or altering perceptions like Acrobatics or hallucinogens

I put a variety of games into a grid to see how they would relate to the four categories