Expo 2: Storytelling in Games
Deadline: 11am on Friday 28th April 2017 General Instructions
This is the second of three courseworks where you will need to work in a pair to develop a game prototype (note – NOT a complete game) using the Unity game engine and development tools. You are required to work in a different pair for each coursework.
Your submission will be assessed in 2 parts:
Expo (20%) - In the week of submission there will be a game Expo held in the normal lab slot. You will be presenting your games on the lab machines and have an opportunity to show each other what you have created. During this session assessors will visit each game and you will need to give a short demonstration of the game (3 mins approx.) and then answer some questions on your design choices. These will be taken from the list of questions specified in the Brief.
Let's Play (80%) - Following the Expo the assessors will meet to play your game in more depth and assign a final mark. The assessment will consider the development quality of your submission, and two specific aspects based on the brief. These sessions will be recorded as feedback, and released as a Let's Play video on YouTube. The videos will not include a discussion of marks, these will be released to your team privately via email.
Brief for Expo 2
Develop a game prototype which contains a Story Engine that drives an interactive version of one of the three following stories (all taken from texts on Project Gutenberg]:
Rumpelstiltskin
The Frog Prince
Billy Goats Gruff
Your story could be linear or non-linear, you can take any perspective within the story, and you do not need to cover the entire story in your prototype. Parody, updates, twists, and alternative endings are all acceptable. The key requirement is simply that the story is identifiable as one of the three above.
We have linked to existing text for these stories, which you are free to use, extend, or ignore. If your game contains writing, we will not assess the quality of the prose, but we will be looking at the use of narrative structures, devices, characters, and plotlines. Potential questions for the Expo Interview
How have you managed the narrative paradox in your game, where does it appear, and what techniques have you used to mitigate it?
Describe how your story engine works, and how it interacts with the mechanics of your game, and the player?
What narrative patterns have you employed in your game and why?
In what ways do your games dynamics and aesthetics reinforce your games narrative and vice versa?
Which story arc best describes your story and how have you made use of it within the game?
Describe how your story matches the dramatic pacing graph, and what decisions you have made to manage this?
Describe the narrative tools and techniques (e.g. cutscenes, dialogue, in-medias-res, lepsis, etc.) you have used with your games, their limitations, and how you have used them.
Describe in detail either a protagonist or antagonist from your story, and how you have integrated them with the mechanics and narrative of your game?
Criteria for Let's Play
Your game will be judged on three equally weighted criteria:
Quality
Does the submission fulfil the brief?
Are there any bugs?
Does the game control smoothly?
Do the mechanics work well?
Is the game well presented
Story Engine and Poetics
Does the game make use of a sufficiently powerful story engine (i.e. one that triggers narrative events, and that influences and is influenced by game mechanics)
How well do the narrative and the gameplay work together (i.e are they thematically coherent, do all elements of the game contribute to the narrative, etc.)?
Pacing and Techniques
How sophisticated is the use of game writing methods such as story arcs, character design, and game writing techniques (such as dialogues, in game information, scripted events, cutscences, in media res, lepsis, etc)?
To what extent is agency (and its impact on the narrative) managed effectively within the game?
Note that the sophistication of game artwork/audio and the size of the game will NOT be factored as a part of the assessment. Submission
Please build your game for HTML5 WebGL, and zip up all the required files included assets.
You should also hand in your Unity project, zip the complete project directory.
Submit both zip files using the C-Bass electronic hand-in system (https://handin.ecs.soton.ac.uk/handin/1617/COMP3218/) by 4pm on the due date. When submitting please make the name of your game, and the names of the two people in your pair clear in the comments.