Date of Award

Spring 5-20-2023

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Christine Chaney, PhD

First Advisor/Committee Member

Rachell Sumpter, MFA

Keywords

concept art, worldbuilding, avatar projection, presence, beauty, perception

Abstract

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a screen, through the integration of the various methods mentioned, these video games can create qualitative experiences akin to those of reality, especially well-designed video game worlds. When designing Project Contrast's game world, I world-built with concept art to create an immersive and thought-provoking setting that contextualizes the game, rooting the player in the world. I then brought that world to life with animation and art and used heuristic storytelling and coding to complete the game through the introduction portion titled The Labyrinth. As an artist, my work centers around qualitative experience, so I sought to create something that explored the phenomenon in a medium I loved and could share with others: a video game.

Comments

Video game devlog here: https://www.ekpap.com/blog

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Scholars Honors Program.

Copyright Status

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

Additional Rights Information

Copyright held by author.

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