Assignment 5: Game Story

The fifth assignment is to write a story for a game. The educational goal is that you understand and can apply the twelve elements of the monomyth and the three act structure and that you can identify and apply the various archetypes that appear in stories.

Description

In this assignment you must write a story with a maximum of 1500 words that can form the basis for a computer game. You will not be judged on your creative writing talents but it is recommended to include one or more of the emotioneering elements that are described in the course. The focus lies on understanding and applying the twelve steps of the monomyth or hero story and on the relation between the story and the game.

In your story all twelve steps must occur. You must precisely indicate which part of the story corresponds to which step. Also you must indicate the three acts in your story.

The story should include at least five archetypes. You need to provide a separate short (max 500 words) description of the archetypes you use in the game. You should also indicate in the story itself (for example using footnotes) who/which are the archetypes in the story.

Finally, you must give some global indications how the story can be used as the basis for a game. You don't need to describe the complete game play but you must indicate the game genre, the role of the story in the game, which character(s) is played by the player(s), and how the different ingredients of the story translate into game elements. This description should consist of maximum 1000 words.

Procedure

First do some creative thinking to come up with a theme (try to use the concept as a basis) and a global story line. Define the main characters (archetypes) in the story. Next write down the twelve steps with a brief description of what happens in each step. Then write the actual story. You might want to give it to some people to read and adapt it based on their comments. Then write the description of the archetypes used. And finally write the description of how the story can be transformed into a game.

Please try to fit this storyline into the concept and topic you already used in the previous assignments.

Handing in the assignment

Your finished story should consist of the following elements:

The actual story, structured as indicated above, including the indications of the steps of the story as well as the archetypes (max 1500 words).
A description of the different archetypes used (max 500 words).
A description of how the story can form the basis of a game (max 1000 words).

Please make sure that the documents look very nice. Handing in a simple text file (ascii) is not permitted.

The documents you hand in should be in the PDF file format.

You can write it either in Dutch or in English.

If there are any questions or problem regarding the submission please contact Arno Kamphuis (arnok@cs.uu.nl).

The three documents that are required should all be in a separate PDF file. They should be submitted before the deadline using the Submit system.

Judging

The mark for your story will primarily be based on the following elements:

Monomyth (50 points). How well you followed (and understood) the twelve steps in the monomyth and the three-act structure.
Archetypes (15 points). How well the characters match the archetypes and whether you correctly described them.
Game Design (25 points). Whether the story is indeed suitable for a game and how well the game is described.
Emotioneering elements (10 points). Whether you correctly applied some emotioneering elements. This can give bonus points.
Originality (10 points). You can get bonus points for a really nice story that can is very suitable for a game.

We will not judge documents which

have more than the stated number of words for each element
are handed in after the deadline
contain more than 2 spelling/grammar errors per 500 words
are in plain text
are not in the PDF file format

Questions

For questions about the assignment, please contact Arno Kamphuis (arnok@cs.uu.nl)