1 MORE BUILD PLANNED, MISSING FINAL MUSIC
Emotion Commotion
This is where I'll be storing files for my comprehensive project at Allegheny College. I'll at least begin storing the files now.
Characters
There are 8 playable characters planned, at this moment. Every character is based on an emotion, and is colored to match that emotion in some way. Each character also has a unique skill or passive ability.
Character List and Powers
| Character | Nickname | Emotion | Ability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risio | Ris | Happiness | Can run more quickly than other characters |
| Furia | Fury | Rage | Has a longer attack reach than other characters |
| Tristitia | Tristi | Sadness | Can slide on her tears to dash |
| Dormio | Mio | Exhaustion | Loses less gemotes when attacked |
| Dilectio | Dil | Love | Gains gemotes while near others, loses it while far from them |
| Verecundia | Veri | Anxiety | Gains gemotes while far from others, loses it while near them |
| Invidia | Vidi | Jealousy | Knocks more gemotes from other players |
| Mercuria | Merc | Luck | Has a chance to dodge an attack |
Enemies and Functions
| Enemy | Emotion? | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Nullus | Apathy | Small wandering enemy scattered around the map. |
| Crudelis | Emotionlessness | Massive boss enemy with lots of health. Only one on the map. |
Planned Research Idea
My goal is to research how people interact while playing different styles of games through local multiplayer. I'm specifically looking to study how people interact in competitive and cooperative play. To do this, I'm building a game that can be played either competitively, or cooperatively, and giving instructions that give differing ideas of what to do in the game.
Differing instructions
Competitive
In the competitive group, I plan to suggest competitive play by saying that players will be playing "against" each other to get as high of a score as possible. I'll also further suggest competitive play by putting two gemote containing dummies that look like player characters into the spawns of competitive players.
Cooperative
In the cooperative group, I plan to suggest cooperative play by saying that players will be playing "with" each other to get as high of a score as possible. I'll also further suggest cooperative play by putting two gemote containing dummies that look like non-player characters into the spawns of cooperative players.
Control
In the control group, I plan to suggest neither cooperative nor competitive play by simply saying that players will be playing a multiplayer game. I'll also further hold the control by removing the gemote containing dummies from the spawns of control players.
Data Recording and Analysis
To record the data, I plan to use a screen recording software of some sort (most likely OBS) as well as using a camera to record the interactions between players during their play session.
I will then analyze this footage to gain an idea of what players did to communicate, the ways people played and the characters they chose based on the instructions given prior, and the strategies they employed in the game.
Goal
My goal in this project is to both gain further understanding of human communication while playing local multiplayer games, and to build an engaging local multiplayer gaming experience. I've always valued local multiplayer above online multiplayer, and I think this would be an area in which I could spend countless hours on research, design, and personal time.
Further Reading
1 - Cheung, Victor, Y-L. Betty Chang, and Stacey D. Scott. "Communication channels and awareness cues in collocated collaborative time-critical gaming." Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. ACM, 2012.
Discusses communication while playing local multiplayer titles.
2 - Tse, Edward, et al. "Multimodal multiplayer tabletop gaming." Computers in Entertainment (CIE) 5.2 (2007): 12.
Discusses the concept of all players sharing a viewpoint, and making games more tabletop-like.
3 - Breuer, Johannes, Michael Scharkow, and Thorsten Quandt. "Sore losers? A reexamination of the frustration–aggression hypothesis for colocated video game play." Psychology of Popular Media Culture 4.2 (2015): 126.
Discusses the social impacts of local multiplayer games.