Contextual Studies Presentation
I wont lie, at the end of last week I was still
struggling to finalize my presentation idea/question. I had a few themes and ideas buzzing through my
mind so I had to sit back and let the idea form. Luckily, on Sunday evening, it
hit me. I should do a study instead of a question and incorporate all the areas
which interest me into short, informative studies.
This is when I decided that I wanted to base my
presentation on:
Narrative Theory
Transmedia
Theme
But how, how do I connect these to my presentation?
Well, that is when I devised this beauty:
A Study of Crucial Components Which
Help Create Coherent Worlds.
This meant I could cleverly include the 3 main areas I
had enjoyed the most from our series of contextual studies lectures whilst also
approaching the 10 minute time frame in smaller concentrated chunks. It no
longer felt daunting.
After this I started to gather ideas on what to cover
under each of the 3 sections. That went as follows:
Narrative Theory
Applying Propp's 7 spheres of action upon a video game
world, likely Journey. This is to prove that narrative structure is crucial to
creating coherent characters, so what if I applied it to the game world, could
I conclude that the game world also contains narrative structure and is
therefore coherent even though Journey is an abstract art game? Well yes, yes I
could. This was my first section sorted. 3 minutes roughly.
Transmedia
I decided the next part would cover how the use of
transmedia plays a crucial role in creating coherent worlds and how those
worlds are consistently ported from various medias successfully to ensure that
world is kept coherent. I decided Batman would be the best transmedia franchise
to follow because it spans across so many different medias and yet retains
similar, if not the same, coherent elements across the board. I focussed on how
characters (linked from narrative) have evolved over the years across various
medias and how they eventually lead to the Batman Video games. I can talk about
why they are successful coherent worlds and what helps contribute to making
them this way.
Theme
Finally I would finish on theme. I really enjoyed Kim’s
lecture on theme and I felt it influenced me greatly. I knew I wanted to talk
about how player become immersed in themes of games and that themes are crucial
and must be consistent throughout to ensure the player doesn’t become distanced
from the world leaving them unsatisfied.
It might seem a bit cheeky to do this, considering I had
done extensive research following each of the presentations on my blog so I
already sort of “had” the information (sitting right under my nose!) all the
time. I just needed to find reliable back up sources and quotes to pull the
presentation together.
Other than all the research I have documented throughout
CS, here is a list of websites I visited and links to website versions of books
that I read for the contextual studies presentation as well as links to other
useful information I discovered.
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