We spent yesterday's morning session on narratology, the study of narrative structures, something very applicable to game design, especially when creating story-driven experiences. We looked into various Jungian ideas such as; the mask, the shadow, archetypes, the conscious and unconscious mind, and learned how these can help us create compelling characters and narratives. We also learned about the archetypal hero's journey, as explained in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" , and how this tried and tested structure can be used to inform our own writing.
In the afternoon we revisited Unity and its visual scripting system. We were shown a prototype and then the visual script used to create it was thoroughly demonstrated to us. This gave a greater understanding of how the system can be used and provided many useful tips for achieving certain effects in our own prototypes using the visual system.
Finally, we were given a presentation by Nina Alvir, who graduated recently from this very course and has been working as a game designer at Rare since the beginning of the year. Nina's explanation of her work at Rare gave great insight into how a game designer operates at a professional level and further inspired me to pursue my goal of becoming one. Nina also gave us lots of great information on how best to tackle each of our modules, our CVs and our portfolios in order to maximise our chances of success, all of which I found to be very helpful.
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