Just before our second year ended, we were given a short talk regarding our dissertation/research projects that we would be completing in our final year. The most important part of all this was the recommendation that we begin working on it ASAP, i.e. over the summer, and given the daunting nature of the project I couldn't agree more!
Other important notes:
- The module deadline is in February of next year.
- Our research projects should state something new.
So with that clarified I immediately set into panic mode and spent all of an evening thinking about it before becoming overwhelmed and deciding to save my sanity by playing some video games. Since then I haven't ignored it completely, I have had a few idea's that I've listed below. These are all still very ambiguous at present; my intention is to take them and use the Word Circle technique to help refine and focus them into something I can really pursue.
Animation
Also mentioned to us was that our projects should be informed by our chosen practise. Given that I have been moving towards animation of late I decided to see what I could explore on this front. This proved very difficult as (at least off the top of my head) there seemed to be no interesting avenues i could explore that directly related to the practice of Animation.
I will be updating the section with any ideas I feel are really worth pursuing but in the meantime all i have are a couple of very small, vague ideas:
- Hand made vs. mo-cap animation. - not informed enough to pursue?
- Animation improvements and the ability to convey emotion in video games
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During my musings and general traversal of the internet I stumbled into a couple of areas that I might at a stretch be able to relate to animation (if I must) but were otherwise more closely related to my work over the previous year on immersion in video games.
Responsiveness
Watching this video pushed my thoughts into the realm of artificial intelligence or more specifically, 'responsiveness' in video games. This idea is quite closely related to immersion as the feeling that a game isn't responding to the players actions in a way they believe it should can destroy their feeling of immersion. For example, this video (3:22-3:30) show's a player catching fire in the middle of a crowd and being completely ignored by everyone despite his very visible predicament. It's the "Why?" and the "What if?" that I would like to explore in this area. Why don't developers factor in responses to events like those seen in the Far Cry 3 video? What if someone made a game that truly responded to all of a players actions?
Realism
My time spent thinking on how many games appear to lack high levels of 'responsiveness', and how this lends to an argument for games not being realistic led me onto the subject of 'realism', and the general thought that 'realism', like the term 'immersion' seems to enjoy very vague and subjective use.
Realism is a term that can be applied to things like visuals, artificial intelligence, physics, gameplay, and sound, or if you will, pretty much any area of a game and how it appears to the player.
The simple fact is that true realism is boring. Or too hard. I believe that one of the strongest examples of this is stealth games. I've considered that if enemies in a stealth game were truly 'realistic' they wouldn't wander set paths repeatedly, they wouldn't lose interest when they spot you sneaking about where you shouldn't be, or at least, it would take a very long time for them to stop being alert. Video games have to include these 'unrealistic' quirks to give their player an enjoyable experience. And besides, isn't that what games are about? having fun? not being realistic? So why does it seem to be such a high priority for a lot of people?
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Another idea that popped into my head that isn't related to either animation or immersion:
Gameplay
Gameplay is an interesting subject when you consider a 'game' like thechineseroom's "Dear Esther". Dear Esther has no traditional gameplay mechanics at all, the only interactivity is that of the player walking the land above and, for a time, below a small island in the Hebrides. All while an unknown narrator reads in a wistful voice from fragments of letters to a woman named Esther. It is at times a fairly cinematic experience, but should its complete lack of traditional gameplay elements eliminate it from being called a game? Should similar games (assuming they exist) also get such treatment? I could even take it more broadly and ask "What exactly is a game?" It's a topic that has I'm sure been covered in the past but one that I would be interested in exploring.
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