Banca de DEFESA: MATHEUS ALVES VILAR DE SANT'ANNA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : MATHEUS ALVES VILAR DE SANT'ANNA
DATE: 12/04/2024
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: https://meet.google.com/gud-fcnp-uro
TITLE:

Order, Chaos and the Nemesis System: Criteria for the evaluation and application of emergent gameplay in video games.

KEY WORDS:

Game design; emergence; emergent gameplay; emergent narratives; complex systems.

PAGES: 189
BIG AREA: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
AREA: Desenho Industrial
SUMMARY:

Emergence is a concept that describes systemic interactions giving origin to new occurrences, characteristics or behaviors - often in an unpredictable manner. Due to their procedural, participative and encyclopedic nature, video games as a medium exhibit great potential for the creation of emergent experiences, surprising their users
by reacting to the interactive process, and generating and adapting its content during that very interaction. However, designing for unpredictability requires a degree of detachment from the designers, for it is always necessary to achieve a proper balance between the freedom brought by emergence and the control related to linear structures focused on progression and planned content - a balance that can prove difficult to find due to its inherent subjectivity, which, therefore, creates a larger, more dynamic discussion, requiring more in-depth studies. To contribute to its field, this research conducted a literature review and identified four categories (origin, scale, distinctions and level) - each with its own different criteria - to distinguish and understand the nature of different emergent gameplay dynamics found in video games. This analytical model was broadly applied to exemplify emergent patterns on Path of Exile, Hades, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Grand Theft Auto 5, Dishonored 1 and 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of The Kingdom, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Dwarf Fortress; and then thoroughly applied to the study of the Nemesis System, found in the Middle-earth games franchise, with the goal of identifying which tools and strategies were used in Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War to create emergent experiences based on the procedural generation of enemies who are capable of reacting to the players’ actions. Emergence was seen to work best when it is truly embraced by the production process as a major design goal, and not just as a minor feature, requiring proper approaches to truly shine; and, no matter how much freedom and unpredictability is involved in its dynamics, every game system will still need a human component to plan, test, finetune and regulate its interactions by implementing the required restrictions and parameters.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interno - 1203420 - ANDRE MENEZES MARQUES DAS NEVES
Externo ao Programa - 1715146 - NATAL ANACLETO CHICCA JUNIOR - nullPresidente - 2155038 - PEDRO MARTINS ALESSIO