Presentation Planing

Talking Topics:

Player agency -

What gives the player the feeling that they are free to make their own choices and choose their own path regarding the direction of the story/game

Agency is the ability to act in the world and feel control over our options of choices, this capacity can be seen to be governed by a person’s environment whether that’s their social, personal, or physical. Games can often simply be described as the longest possible way to accomplish a task, the personal journey a player takes is not to dissimilar to a maze where one has choice in their actions and where they go but no matter the choices they will always start and end in the same place. The idea of a maze or network to represent the design of a journey is brought up everywhere from myths (greek minotaur trapped in the labyrinth), to movies (inception), to games (pacman) This idea heavily leans into the concept of one’s environment influencing direction in player’s thoughts

Relationship between the player and the designer

This is the beginning and more general introduction opening the presentation up with the topic with decisionmaking and specifically the last of us part 2.

Everything stems off of this introduction, the four points below all relate to agency and how designers think to design the environment to promote self expression

Individuality -

Agency also implies difference in thought and because of that self expression is very individual.

Player types play a huge role in dictating decisions surrounding reactions to the context of play and environment. Ultimately the play experience is player driven

The actions a player chooses to endeavor in are a result of self expression and because of that everyone is bound to go about their experience differently

Agency in a person is a reaction to a summation of experience, this is how personality and interactions are born, through the connection of others and their own personal experiences in life.

This is what designers utilise in their creations, the reactions of their audience from visual stimulus, a perfect example of this is Rene Margritte surreal artist showing that everything in the world can be shown as interpretation of one’s surroundings when it is nothing more than some paint on a canvas

In conjunction to these attitudes each individual player has, a designer is able to utilise factors within their game to guide and prod while the element of agency is still very much present.

These factors come in the form of decision-maker points within the environments and can be represented as anything from the physical spatial structure of the area, to the composition of the environment, or simply the mood of the setting.

This is delving into the introduction more and focusing on why choices are made and based off of the person playing,

Reiterating that decisions don’t just form from the influence of their surroundings but their attitudes/personality (nature vs nurture)

Spatial Structure

Composition

Mood

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