We had a group presentation which lasted for around 5 minutes with two guest lectures and Daniel on Week 8. Steven and Nurfarina spoke on behalf of the group to introduce the beginning phase of our project which involves two parties: The Raath and The Resistance. Wei Yun was in charged of the presentation slide preparation. After our presentation, the guest lecturers suggested us that normally there will only be an ending to a puzzle game as our description suggested that we might have more than an ending depending on how the game goes according to different decisions made. Rather than expanding the narrative with different ending, they suggested that it will work better if we focus on an endin with slight difference in the narrative.

After the presentation, our group sat down for a quick meeting to talk about each group member’s roles and focus on the narrative. We could not make up our mind in terms of the narrative as it is the core for the puzzles to develop. We are deciding whether to have a cross puzzle, which is like having the player to learn and play more than one character) or focus on a single character to reach to the end of the game. In the end, we all agreed that having a crozz puzzle might gain more interest and the audiences will turn out to have stronger agency.

I had chosen to be in Steven and Nurfarina’s group to help to develop the idea. Our group consists of 5 people: Wei Yun, Stefan, Nurfarina, Steven and I. We had our first meeting two weeks ago and we talked about the overall image of how the project will go. Basically, our story is about the alien species, the Raath has been secretly trying to conquer the Earth by conducting human’s genetic manipulation though the both parties have reached to an agreement on becoming one. The story will focus on how will the representative of the human race which consists of Isabella the leader, Dr. Hayato Kuronoma, who is also the team advisor, Gray the hacker and Adam “Shadow” Grant the scout stop the Raath from succeeding.

We will develop our story into board game in puzzle form with archive journal as the key to solve the puzzle, audio log as the tailer to sneak peek a little at the story and posters to introduce each of the character with their back stories. At the end of the meeting in week 6, we came to a conclusion that each of us will contribute our ideas in poster design, audio log script for the trailer and character development. After the guest lecture in week 7, we had our second group meeting. We discussed about the narrative as it is the main body of the entire project before we could move on to the character development, puzzles and more. We then decided each of our role in the story developing. Since I confessed that I am really bad in handling technical stuff, I volunteered to create the puzzles (puzzles needed for the character to play as the help of main character to stop the Raath from conducting the experiment).

I did research on creating interactive puzzles but it wad harder than I thought since we are not doing it with digital items. I went to read a lot of short comic books about crime and mystery to get inspired. As I am responsible for Isabella’s puzzle solving, and she is the “brain” of the team, I thought her puzzles should be a little bit more intellectual, perhaps something like numbers and alphabets solving. For example, she could be the main target that the Raath would want to experiment on, so codes solving can involve her birth year, the time that she was captured by the Raath, or words combination that is “unintentionally” revealed through the posters or the journal pages. The puzzle can also be something that requires high observation which the passcode or the answers are all over the board, and in the end match the hints and solve the puzzle. As the player of Isabella, he or she may need to focus on the back story of Isabella, the journal and maybe learn more about the story between Isabella and the other characters (if it was to be a multiplayer role playing game). Each of us have different deadline regarding the difference in responsible area. As for puzzle creating, we do not have a fixed deadline so we are all at the stage of proposing our ideas and waiting for the final decision.

This is designed by Nurfarina as our poster of our project. This is the link to the Audio Log Teaser.

We watched a few web series on Tuesday’s Story Lab class and the one that I like is The Guild created by Felicia Day, who is also the main character in the series, Cyd Sherman (a.k.a. Codex). It is a story about Codex and her online team members staying online for hours to play the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The Game. Codex suggested to her members saying they should actually meet up after getting ‘fired’ by her therapist and she thought she should restrict her online hours from getting too immersed into the game. Zaboo, one of the team members who went offline for a very long time was found standing in front of Codex’s house and started living together with her, and the story expands from there.

It has a great start as I would start thinking what happened to Zaboo and Codex after they start living together, and why is everyone so reluctant to have a meet up when Codex suggested? Another great idea of this web series is that basically the episode will start off with a video blog of Codex, talking about her story. The story flow is at a fast pace and it is not draggy.

Marvel Studios, I’m pretty sure everyone knows about it. Representative works: Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, THOR (my favouriteeee), Guardian of the Galaxy, Ant-Man and The Avengers. I have watched all besides Hulk, Ant-Man and Guardian of the Galaxy. We were told to look up for the films and search for the connections between the films, and I learned something amazing, which I have never noticed when watching the superhero movies.

2008, the year when the first superhero was premiered, Iron Man. He is the start of the Avengers, the first superhero to be in the team among the Avengers. Here comes the connection. Phil Coulson, the agent of S.H.I.E.L.D is first introduced in Iron Man, and he is the main representative for S.H.I.E.L.D in the superhero film series. He is seen in Thor (2008) as he confiscates Jane Foster’s scientific investigation on Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. He is also a big fan of Captain America and presented Steve Rogers a deck of Cap’s cards for signature. Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D is also first introduced in Iron Man, and he was also the one who initiated to form Avengers Initiative. Thor’s brother, Loki plays the villain in Thor, Thor: The Dark World (2013) and The Avengers (2012). Natasha Romanoff plays as the highly trained agent who has long known Tony Stark (Iron Man) and scouts her to be part of the Avengers. Bruce Banner the Hulk and has a past with Tony Stark which is shown in the film The Incredible Hulk. Clint Barton the Hawkeye is also seen in Thor when Thor fails to pick up his Mjolnir. Apparently these superheroes and agents are all connected and therefore, the superhero stories can expand.

Each of us in my class had a one-to-one talk with Daniel to talk about the research essay. I initially wanted to go for the topic ‘Story is dead’ and write an essay either to support or attack the idea. I thought it would be easy since story is alive in my opinion. For example, when the interaction between the characters in the story and the audience occurs, like when I can relate myself to the character, it makes the story feels alive. But it was harder than imagined, trying to find appropriate scholarly articles to oppose the idea or even articles that are related to the topic. Conclusion, I gave up.

Trying to figure out which to write about, music or relevancy of agency to games, I have no idea. I did research on both topics and I couldn’t come up with a conclusion. It’s due on 10 April, but I still haven’t got it started. I am so dead.

I wasn’t feeling well since Monday (last Monday actually) but chose to attend Tuesday class (condition got worse so was absent for Wednesday class). It was worth going as we were asked to read each others short story and think about the further developments of the story, what kind of experimental or unique elements does the story contain, and the strengths or weaknesses of the story, later then post it as a 4-5 sentence of blog comment. I thought I read a really good piece of short story. It did not show what the title was for the short story but I thought it would be a one-word title if there is a title (my opinion). The story was rather unique and it did not need for further developments.
We also watched how does transmedia storytelling work and I thought it was really cool, especially after watching the marketing campaign that went viral for The Dark Knight. This transmedia experiment with millions of people across the countries, whether on the internet, prints, broadcast, or mobile phones. The amount of participants really showed how highly-anticipated the movie was. I personally think that this sort of marketing will only do a very good job if it’s under thriller, crime or mystery genre.