The team is still in the progress of finishing the puzzles and journals. Sometime next week the team will be testing out the full game and timing it. Since we have created a narrative game, it is being set as an escape room, a theory from the “Agency” by Janet H. Murray, “Games into Stories” has explained the agency of a game within a story. The puzzles are based on the character the audience wish to follow and reflects the character speciality in the team. Murray, states that “games always involve some kind of activity and are often focused in the mastery of skills” in which we have applied in the puzzles that we have created. The puzzles mostly involving in mental thinking and it is set within the character we have created. Murray also pointed out that “all of this would seem to have nothing to do with stories” and that “narrative satisfaction can be directly opposed to game satisfaction”. I agree with Murray’s statements because the audience will be more focused on the game and how the ending will turn out instead of the narrative. The audience will be more satisfied with being able to solve the puzzles and the ending. However, since we are setting it as an escape room it creates a reduce size of the realm that we created. Instead of just reading the narrative in a digital game the audience will have to piece out the narrative themselves through the audio, video, journals and puzzles. The audience will have to truly imagine themselves in the shoes of a trainee trying to save the world. Imagining being the character in a set up space physically, fulfils the agency of the audience as they can be part of the story.
Besides, creating a narrative game that satisfy the agency of the audience, there are other platforms that satisfy transmedia storytelling. For example, the journals are a platform to the backstory to some of the characters in the puzzles. It also carries hints for the puzzles however, to a certain extent the audience may not need the journal. The journals are just backstory that makes the audience wonder about how these characters came about and linking to the present narrative.
I feel that we have given as much agency to the audience in this short period of time of making this narrative game structure. We have simplified our narrative and game which nicely satisfy the agency of the audience.
References:
Janet H. Murray, (1997), ‘Chapter 5: Agency.’ In Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press.
Max Giovagnoli, (2011), ‘Chapter 2: Plan Transmedia.’ In Transmedia Storytelling: Imagery, shapes and techniques, pp. 34-54. Halifax, Canada: ETC Press.
Finalised floor plan.
