Session description
This presentation presents a disruptive game design framework inspired by traditional art principles. The framework is disruptive because it’s offers a pure art approach to game design—the first framework to do so. Attendees will gain in-depth insights into shape language and composition, tracing the lineage of these long-standing techniques from antiquity to contemporary mainstream culture, where they are translated to the Adaptive Gameplay Aesthetics framework for games. The framework is a high-level game design methodology for heightening physical empathy and the sensory experience of players with a focus on art and narrative-driven games and transmedia. The framework as a whole will permit greater creative control of the development process, and illustrate the impact of traditional art concepts on the entire development team of game and narrative designers, artists, writers, programmers, musicians, game user researchers, etc. Practical exercises throughout the presentation additionally provide design tools for averting ludonarrative dissonance, demonstrate the shortcomings of the "magic circle" metaphor, and common misconceptions regarding Marcel Duchamp's teachings on objects and meaning.
Workshop format
Attendees will work in groups and can develop original ideas, or bring along existing projects to develop in the context of the Adaptive Gameplay Aesthetics framework.
Workshop take-away
Whether you’re a developer of video games, virtual reality, augmented reality or cross reality, a filmmaker, game user researcher, a gamification and transmedia expert, game theorist, psychologist, or simply interested in experiencing resonant and meaningful interactive stories, you’ll find the presentation will awaken a new appreciation for art and craft, and provide attendees with creative tools that can be actioned immediately to influence the user experience.
THE SPEAKER
Chris Solarski is a consummate artist-game designer who has given talks on interactive storytelling and game art at international venues and organisations including Disney Research, the Smithsonian's landmark The Art of Video Games exhibition, SXSW, GDC Europe, and FMX.
He is also the author of two books on gaming which are widely considered essential reading, offering an art and narrative-driven game design framework for adaptive gameplay aesthetics that orchestrate the player's physical and emotional experience in progressive ways.
"The concepts presented in Interactive Stories and Video Game Art remind me of Joseph Campbell's powerful demonstration of a universal storytelling structure. Coming from a technical game design background yet being artistically inclined, I never considered that atomic elements such as shapes, lines of movement and transitions contain a vocabulary strong enough to sculpt our mood, whether consciously or unconsciously. This book creates that wonderful feeling of learning new letters, which soon prove useful to form new sentences for bringing new poetry to the world."
—Stéphane Assadourian, Veteran Game Production Consultant and founding member of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise on Chris Solarski's book - Interactive Stories and Video Game Art
If you are a gaming company and are interested in this workshop, please send us an email with your profile to [email protected] and we will get back to you.