Quest to Nowhere

Someone asked about this in a comment, so I figured it would be a good post for the blog. As part of my Masters program I’m in I have to complete a capstone, which can either be a thesis or a project. The difference being that a thesis is a paper, which you do a lot of research for, and for a project you make something (specifically they say a “deliverable.”)

Since the summer I was doing some research into a thesis idea I had, I wrote up a proposal for it so I could find some faculty members to support me in my thesis. Unfortunately I had three professors reject my proposal, suggesting I do a project instead (they said I didn’t have enough background in what I wanted to talk about.) It sucked to hear that since I thought it was a really good idea, but after thinking about it over the Christmas/New Year’s break I realized that to do what I wanted to do, and get the background in it that they wanted would have taken longer then I want to spend on it.

Now the thesis idea was to look into the concept of the “Player’s Story,” which is looking at a videogame player’s experience as a narrative. It’s a little tricky to explain since it covers not only the player’s experience in the game, but also their experiences outside the game while playing the game. I’m sure I’ll talk about it more at some point in a post since it’s something I plan on continuing to read up on my own time.

So now I’m left trying to come up with a project idea for my capstone. I’m most likely going to end up making a game, what the game will be I’m still in the process of working out. But it will either be a flash game, or I might try and see if I can make something with mod tools (which would likely be an original Dragon Age: Origins quest with voice acting, and all that fun stuff.) Most likely a flash game.

Anyway I’ll probably post updates to the project as I go along, so look forward to some of those posts soon (hopefully.)