In retrospective of the posts that have gone by during my time on this course, I have found that not everything I began my work looking into is relevant any longer. I began with a very clear and narrow goal, to research what exactly mid-core was for a company, however the more I looked into it the less I seemed to discover about the 'mid-core' genre of gaming. I also took a dive into a great personal interest of mine, the classification and analysis of storytelling and as an extension of that how interactive mediums effect the process. After initially identifying the '7 basic plots' which helped me to see what a story 'needed' to be desirable, I began to examine popular examples of computer games that attempted to tell a story from different points of view, comparing avatars (1st person storytelling) to characters (3rd person storytelling). What I found from all of this research was that stories usually fell into 7 basic archetypes which although break them down into their basic components do not limit them from being infinitely creative, I also found that people play games for different reasons, 1st person storytelling is about having a world to explore and telling the story of your character yourself, while 3rd person is more about watching a character's story and subtly influencing it. While 1st person can be very immersible at times it is not really as emotionally tied to anything, people seem to find it more difficult to create a deep narrative and prefer to have one given to them and edit it slightly.
I also looked into the games industry at present in the form of the Dice presentations, the situation at CCP games at present and a few other internet sites. What I discovered from examining these things is that at present the industry has identified 'mid-core' as a new market to sell games to, however this seems short sighted and shallow as a classification. It appears to be a brilliant step forward for the games industry if this market is explored, because it will allow big companies to finally step out of their own pre-built 'boxes' which limited what a game could and couldn't be, create something new and exciting with a little less attention paid to a single demographic and take a risk. However the way the industry is currently talking about it it seems to have become another demographic, and while aiming a game at 30-50 yr olds might allow for a little more diversity it is kind of missing the point of what this system could actually mean, that games are better when they are new and inventive, not when they are built on market data and demographics.
What I now want to look into is:
- A final classification for the mid-core genre.
- Indie games a systems,
- Storytelling systems for all they are worth
- Where does my interest really lie?
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