About Me:

For most of my life i have always been deeply interested in most forms of media, I always loved anything with superheros from movies, television, comics, and especially video games. I always thought that the ability to be your hero provided an experience that was even more involving than other text. I started with RPG's (.hack devil may cry) and Fighters(Marvel vs Capcom and SuperSmashBros.), then moved to MMOs and MOBAs, I honestly have a strong hatred for Turn Based Strategy games so Final Fantasy VII was a struggle because of how slow they play. I've now moved greatly into designing my own games although i'm stuck between whether i want to focus on making co op fighters or MMOs and my hopes for this class our to get more practice in combining and incorporating different forms of media text into my work.

Essential Narratives:

Summoner's Insight: Summoning Insight is a talk show narrated by MonteCristo and Thorin where they give you background information on whats going on in league of legends, talking about story lines to upcoming games and giving you background information on people.

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Mario:Mario is on of the first and most classic narratives in the video game world and its universe is constantly expanding allowing new games and new forms of participation.

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League of Legends:League of Legends isn't a narrative as much in its game play as much as in its lore. They create entire worlds with different people whose stories intertwine and clash, this is used to create additional content in game that rarely effects play but adds new fun objectives.

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.hack:.hack is probably my favorite digital narrative ever. It has multiple seasons and games revolving around a fictional game that has implications on the players in game and in the real world.

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Mega Man:Mega Man is a video game and TV series that revolve around the lives of young kids and their AI carried in devices called PET who try to save the world from the evil organization WWW.

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After listening to Thunder Road I thought a good way to add to the song would be to have a picture slide go along with the song apply transitions that appropriately join the pace of the song.

First start with black

then hard transition to screen door photo

dissolve to man alone

cut to an older good looking women

fade to rose in the rain

and end with slow cross fade to long country road

GIF

Author Statement

The clips i used to create this GIF are from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon during a lip sync battle between himself, Will Ferrell, and Kevin Hart and specifically while Kevin Hart was preforming John Legends song All of Me. I remembered this great moment when Will Ferrell was making expressions in reaction to Kevin and the song, but when Will goes in for a kiss Kevin shuts him down and maybe not quiet as literally but we have all been really caught up in a moment with someone only to find out that the feelings aren't reciprocated and i feel that these ideas a brought out by their strong facial expression.

Five Shorts:

How we stopped puddin from digging up kitties litter box.

Emmie gets into fight with boyfriend.

How riot lied to the media and the media not knowing its being lied to.

The greatest student film ever created gets its cast solidified.

The great Beer famine of Sherman 2015.

Proposal

For my project I would like to combine the elements of classic 2D gaming and  interactive fiction to create a fan fiction game of the Mario universe from a Goomba's perspective. The audience I'm trying to reach is basically just the adult Mario fan community. The Mario series themselves are driven by simple game mechanics and creative use of their flexible story world elements, so the only major difference would be this game is significantly more narrative driven then Mario games prior. The two forms of media I will being using for this is choice script for my interactive fiction and Unity Engine for my 2D elements. I will be drawing on the general universal narrative features from each Mario franchise. I will also be using art work or images the existed in Mario.

DNNProject:

"Days of a Goomba"=GamePublish.html

Author Statement:

For my project "Days of a Goomba" my goal was to create a counter story to Mario. In which Mario is the drug abusive villain and Goombas are just regular Joes trying to do their jobs and make a living. During production my project did change from using both Choice Script and Unity to using only unity. I did this do to limitation with the Choice Script program but I believe this change added an important element to my content making it much more interactive if the user found a great enough interest in the world of "Days of a Goomba. What I had planned was that all the story be conveyed in Choice Script with a link to the game at the end. I now have it where all story portions come in text and email but scenes. So why is this a good change? I believe this to be a good change because if I were to upload the package of objects and script I wrote in unity for free download on the unity market anyone could create a Goomba Day. All the cut scenes are built so that anyone could change the text with a simple step and the the same goes for any game objects providing users with the chance to get involved and create their own content which could be added to the current content or be a separate entity of its own. My hopes as to what people would get out of this project was an enjoyable and comedic experience with a popular game universe that has been remixed to have ultra realistic game play mechanics and have a real story that people could relate to and identify with as well as contribute to(even if that is a by product of the affordances). 

The People's Mario: This video was really the inspiration to my game. It is a video in which Mario is portrayed as communist. The author created this video in response to rumors that Mario was in fact communist. This happens somewhat often in the Mario universe. Another instance is the rumors that Peach is mother to all of Bowsers children. Its from that rumor which i decided to make Bowser and Peach the president and first lady in my Goomba world.

DayZ: Dayz is a hyper real zombie apocalypse mod. The authors created this to appeal to the hardcore zombie game fans. In a single life of the game you can only die once, after that you must start the game over from scratch. This forces the user to become more focused and engaged with the text which is what I was hoping to do with my game.

Skyrim MODS: Mods are an important part to the game community, they are constantly being added by different authors constantly to create more editable content for players to create new an unique experiences with, this was one of the main goal of my project. Even though it is not to the same extent of editing, people can create their owns Goomba Day to add to the large amount of Mario content that exist and expand the stories that people think are possible.

Murray-MY project also draws heavily on the two affordances of procedural game play and especially participatory, because not only can people participate by playing, but they can activiely participate in the story by creating their own days.

Jenkins- My creation takes from the idea of spreadable mentioned in Jenkins 8 articles. It is easy to access and takes from a very popular universe making to an ideal piece of media to be handed around

Interactive Fiction

Secret Girlfriend IF

Play-tester 1:Noah

To pursue one of these women.

It's like a survey.

Not knowing what is gonna happen at different spots. it makes you want to try all the combos.

I couldn't remember who each of the main characters were

I wish there was a reminder for who each person was.

Play-tester 2:Ashley

To have your ideal bachelor night.

you answer a series of question by clicking on answer choices.

Brings him her back to Myspace days when I would answer bulletin posts. A feeling of nostalgia.

If I know how to use it a monkey could figure it out.

Put the main story next to the first story question.

Play-tester 3: Austin

To get laid by a fine lady

To make choices about your night

Its got funny plots, keeping you interested and making you want the best outcome.

Had trouble remembering who is who.

If it had a more in depth explanation of who is who.

Statement: I had two main goals when I was creating this IF. The first was to create a believable number of timelines from after the last episode of Secret Girlfriend where people could play out the scenario that best fit their perspective of the show. The second was to make this playable and enjoyable by anyone who would play it, whether they were a fan of the show prior to or not. Another point I made sure of was to give rewards for people who had seen the show prior by giving small references to other episodes. The mood of each story is supposed to mirror the personalities of your choice making the each outcome have diverse endings so that each play-through has a different mood. The Jessica Story is about relationships, the Mandy Story is about infidelity and insanity, and the Martina Story is meant to be odd surprises. This is where I feel the affordances really played in my favor, as you get deeper into each sub story the mood deepens equally but you can only get to those sequences with the proper stats, if your stats are not compatible with the experience the game doesn't let you pursue that outcome. One important issue that came up with most my play testers was not being able to put the names with the characters, even with my player who watched the six episodes just prior to playing. In order to try and alleviate this issue without having to put something that was a constant reminder, I placed a cheat sheet with the five main characters in the stats sheet. I chose to only put the five main characters on the cheat sheet because I wanted to leave the other characters as a reward for fans of the show prior to playing as well as create a desire for people to watch the show and expand its fan base.

Digital Story KiwiPie

Statement: My digital story Kiwipie is meant to be a story of inspiration as well as entertain in the comedic sense. The story itself is about not giving up on dreams even when things go wrong and you want to give up. The photos I used are of two pro video game players from interview videos of them together. I was inspired to use them for this because they often talked about how when playing together you needed to be harmonized like when dancing. I also thought they would make the perfect characters for my story because they are just two goofy looking people with goofy names which adds to the idea that it is such a long shot for them to become professional dancers. I matched the images up with what I was talking about and left pauses in places where I wanted the viewer to consider the last things said as crucial. I use the tone of my voice to convey that the message is serious, but use the images to build the characters so it seems like such a miracle when they reach their goal of being the greatest duet ever.

Five Photo Story

Statement: The arching themes of my five photo story are that the simplest way isn't always the right way and that some of man's creations aren't meant for nature. It starts with you in the forest and its getting dark. You try to start a fire with sticks which is a completely natural way of starting fires, but if you've ever tried this you know it is incredibly difficult. So you try to use Flint and steel, a combination of human tools and natural resource, instead with no luck. So you decide to throw caution to the wind and use kerosene a man made chemical that is extremely flammable and shouldn’t be used for starting campfires in a forest and because of this decision you start a forest fire.

Simple Isn't Always Better

Fail Badge

For my fail badge I am going to discuss the error I made in trying to create my portfolio IF and my project cutscenes. In addition I will discuss how my reaction to this issue made a small failure a much larger failure. So for some background I was trying to use an interactive fiction program called choice script to create my days of goomba scenes as well as my IF. I first finished my IF which I uploaded to dropbox and shared to gain feedback. I left it in there and got a feedback. Then it came time to create my project cutscenes for my first three days which I had planned to release ahead of time. About 2 weeks out from our project due date I find out that you can only have one choicescript game on your pc. So what had done at this point was delete half of a finished project and start half of another.Not knowing the affordances of my platform was my first mistake. This left me extremely demoralized which led to me not seeking help and putting both projects on pause. This was the second and greater of my failures and set me back weeks. I did eventually create a solution to my failure and I do think this turn of events did add an important dimension to my project that would have been absent from the original plan. However, it has left me very short on time to try and earn the necessary points for my portfolio project. The most important thing I learned from this failure is just because you hit a large bump it's no reason to shutdown because your only hurting yourself more in the long run. The most important thing is to keep coming up with creative solutions, we are working in a very experimental and manipulatable field where most things you can think of can be done if you keep taking new approaches to your problems.

DNN Critical Review: DayZ

For my critical review assignment I will be review the  massively multiplayer online open world zombie apocalypse game DayZ. DayZ takes place in a post Soviet state where a virus has turned most of the population into zombies. While playing you must search the world for supplies you need for survival, as well as killing or avoiding zombies and killing or working with other players to survive this zombie apocalypse. The game also has voice communication, text communication, and physical moves, like surrendering or waving, to promote communication between players. The game uses very realistic mechanics to make this world feel real, including things like bleeding out, losing all your possessions when dying,choosing not to include fast travel, forcing you to find friend on foot depending on whatever location you happen to start from in this life.

This game could appeal to anyone who is a fan of the zombie genre. With shows like Walking Dead becoming so popular it gives you an idea at the possible group size this community provides. This game especially appeals to the middle school to young adults because it is provided on a platform that is already popular with that age group. But really anyone who wants to have a realistic and customizable zombie apocalypse experience would find this game to be an exception form of DNN media for this.

DayZ was such a successful game with this audience because it provides an accurate portrayal of how you feel a zombie apocalypse would be and allows players to play a way that reflects their personal ideas of zombie apocalypse. A lot of this accuracy comes from the built in affordances and game mechanics provided. They make resources difficult to obtain so you feel rewarded when you find them. They also allow you to customize your character so that it feels special to you. It also allows people to explore their ideal role that they would want to take on in a zombie apocalypse. For example you can just play alone kill zombies and avoid people all day playing the game as a player vs AI. You can also hunt other people making the game player vs player. These ideas only expand as you begin to cooperate with others to shape your playing experience. I think the most important part to this game is that it has a very loose guide as to how you participate allowing players to explore different avenues making the number of possible personal narratives endless.