 Character
& Emotion in Online Games
Title: Team
Leader
Location: Carnegie Mellon University
Team: ETC Applied Research Team [link]
Date: Fall 2003
This research
project came out of a need expressed by game designers
at Electronic
Arts' Redwood Shores and Maxis studios for a better
understanding of character and emotion in the interactive
setting of videogames, particularly in massively multiplayer
online games (MMOGs). My team, under the guidance of
our advisor, Brenda Harger, researched a wide range
of topics bringing together ideas from game design,
improvisational theater, aesthetics, film theory, drama,
and many other disciplines.
From this
research, we developed an idea centered around the similarities
between MMOGs and improvisational acting. The resulting
paper has been accepted to the International
Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) for
publication in September 2004. The team presented some
key ideas from the paper to a group of developers at
Maxis in January of 2004.
Paper
Title:
Emergent Stories in Massively
Multiplayer Online Games:
Using Improvisational Techniques
to Design for Emotional Impact
As
the Team Leader for this project, I...
- ...met
with designers, producers and writers working on games
such as Earth & Beyond, Ultima X: Odyssey, the
Sims Online, and the Sims 2.
- ...developed
practical theories of emotional impact in games.
- ...collaborated
with the 4 other team members to write the paper.
- ...played
games with a critical eye.
- ...researched
games from many perspectives.
- ...scheduled
and led team meetings.
Teammates:
David Jimison, Ben Smith, and Shanna Tellerman
|
