Oliver\u27s Rumination: A Short Video Game About Failure

Studying and working in a creative field requires designers and artists to produce consistently high-level, novel work. In some cases, taking risks to pursue new concepts, methods, or products is highly valued. At the same time, not all companies, students, or individual artists have the resources to risk should their exploration fail. What remains is a crossroad: creative professionals and students are rewarded for taking risks, but are often unable to do so because the possibility of failure carries too much weight. Changing the way creators see failure could revolutionize the way they work. By accepting and incorporating failure into the beginning stages of a creative project, designers and artists can free themselves to think beyond the expected and create stronger work. They stand to lose less time, money, and quality than if that failure happens in the later design or production stages. For some designers, even this early failure is still daunting, because the way some creators view failure is purely negative. In order to avoid negative feedback and pain, failure is avoided altogether by pursuing weaker concepts, simpler methods of execution, or it can result in a project being abandoned altogether. What remains is a situation where many artists and designers would benefit greatly from a change in the way they view their own personal creative failures, in order to improve their working process and overall performance. Currently, the video game industry is expanding to include more experimental titles which allow for contemplative gameplay and emergent gameplay. These new games often tackle complicated themes, and can offer players a space in which to experience trauma, struggle, or moral dilemmas without real-world consequences. In doing so, these games introduce coping mechanisms to players in a low-stress way, and there is research which suggests this experience can translate to real-world skill development. This thesis project aims to combine visual design principles and simple gameplay into an interactive experience which provides players an environment to experience failure without real-world consequences. The goal of this experience is to provide a cathartic experience for the player, with the game acting as a reminder that failure and iteration are common, and that they can be used strategically for creating stronger end results

Connecting Narrative Worlds

Report on the 6th International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling: “Connecting Narrative Worlds”, Bahçeşehir University Istanbul, November 6-9, 201

Rationality as the Rule of Reason

The demands of rationality are linked both to our subjective normative perspective (given that rationality is a person-level concept) and to objective reasons or favoring relations (given that rationality is non-contingently authoritative for us). In this paper, I propose a new way of reconciling the tension between these two aspects: roughly, what rationality requires of us is having the attitudes that correspond to our take on reasons in the light of our evidence, but only if it is competent. I show how this view can account for structural rationality on the assumption that intentions and beliefs as such involve competent perceptions of downstream reasons, and explore various implications of the account

Restless Dreams and Shattered Memories : Psychoanalysis and Silent Hill

This paper applies psychoanalytic frameworks to the survival horror franchise Silent Hill, a series which is itself informed by psychoanalytic themes. Concerns include the construction of game space as maternal womb, cinematic sequences as primal fantasies, and the representation of memory across the games within a psychoanalytic context. The horror genres' preoccupation with monstrous mother figures is evident in boss battle adversaries, the depiction of gamespaces as bloody «maternal caves», and in narratives concerning characters' searching for their parental origins Distinguishing between videogames' playable sequences and cinematics as conscious and sub-conscious aspects, cut-scenes are analysed as reproducing primal fantasies, serving to explain protagonists' backstory and situating play within narrative contexts. Such moments intrude into the game, marking transformations between the ordinary world and the abject Otherworld, or heralding the emergence of psychoanalytically-resonant monstrous creatures which the protagonist must destroy. Finally, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is examined as a game which, even more than others, foregrounds the series' explicit reference to psychoanalytic preoccupations, engaging with contemporary understandings concerning the relationship between memory, media and fantasy.En el presente artículo se aplica el marco de estudio psicoanalítico a la serie de survival horror Silent Hill, ella misma basada en temas psicoanalíticos. Entre los asuntos tratados cabe mencionar la construcción del espacio del juego como un vientre materno, las secuencias cinemáticas como fantasías originarias (Urphantasien), así como la representación de la memoria durante las partidas en un contexto psicoanalítico. El interés del género de terror por las figuras maternas monstruosas es evidente en los adversarios que combate el jefe, en la descripción de los espacios del juego como sangrientas «cuevas maternales» y en los relatos sobre la búsqueda que emprenden los personajes para hallar su ascendencia. Distinguiendo entre secuencias jugables de videojuegos y secuencias cinemáticas como aspectos conscientes e inconscientes, las cinemáticas son analizadas como reproducciones de fantasías originarias que sirven para explicar el pasado de los protagonistas y emplazar el juego en contextos narrativos. Tales elementos irrumpen en la partida, señalando el paso del mundo ordinario al abyecto Más Allá (y viceversa) o anunciando la aparición de monstruosas criaturas de resonancias psicoanalíticas que el protagonista debe destruir. Finalmente, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories es estudiado como un juego que, incluso más que otros, pone en primer plano las referencias explícitas de la serie a cuestiones psicoanalíticas, entroncando con las interpretaciones contemporáneas acerca de la relación entre la memoria, los medios y la fantasía

Aesthetic Possibilities of Cinematic Improvisation

Contrary to the skepticism of some authors about the artistic potential or even the possibility of films being improvised artworks, I argue that not only is it conceptually possible for many elements of the filmmaking process to be performed in an improvisatory manner, but that a number of existing films and filmmaking practices provide examples of the realization of such possibilities. Further, I argue that these examples show that improvisation by filmmakers can enhance the aesthetic or artistic value of a film. As well as its artistic potential, I consider some social and ethical implications of improvisatory approaches to filmmaking, and by extension to art in general

Political fragmentation, decentralization and development cooperation: Ecuador in the Latin American context

"Decentralization reforms have been among the most important aspects of state modernization in developing countries. From a normative perspective, such reforms are expected to promote economic development and democratization. Unfortunately, however, the course of real decentralization processes has often been incoherent and defective. In this context, this study analyses the challenges for successful decentralization in fragmented polities focusing on Latin America and the special case of Ecuador. Based on a political economy perspective on decentralization, we attempt to show, how political fragmentation has affected decentralization. From there, we develop criteria on how development assistance can at least partly counter the negative effects of political fragmentation. Finally, we analyse to which extend donor agencies have been pursuing such strategies in Ecuador. This study is the result of a research project, which has been carried out at the German Development Institute (DIE) in 2004 and 2005 as part of the DIE Post-Graduate Training Course for young professionals. Field research was conducted from February to April 2004. The research project was carried out in close cooperation with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito Ecuador, which supported the project from its early stages. Among many FLACSO members, who gave advice and valuable comments on different part of the study's content, the authors especially thank Santiago Ortiz, who has intellectually and logistically supported the project from its beginning. Many thanks also go to the GTZ program on decentralization in Ecuador. Janos Zimmermann and his team provided us with many valuable insights about the decentralization process in Ecuador and development cooperation’s attempts to foster subsidiarity oriented state structures. We also profited much from different presentations of the study’s preliminary results at FLACSO in Quito and at the Interamerican Development Bank and the World Bank in Washington, where the respective staff members constructively commented our findings. In Bonn, our colleagues at the DIE also offered useful comments and constructive criticism. Special thanks go to Matthias Krause, Tilman Altenburg and Oliver Schlumberger. Finally, we would like to thank Gisela Kuhlmann, without whose skills and patience, the technical process of editing this study would never have come to an end." [author's abstract

Introduction: Popularizing Instability (Chapter 1), Introducing Narrative Instability (Chapter 2)

The following text is an excerpt from the book Narrative Instability: Destabilizing Identities, Realities, and Textualities in Contemporary American Popular Culture, which was originally published in 2019 with Universitätsverlag Winter as part of the series American Studies – A Monograph Series. The book introduces the concept of ‘narrative instability’ in order to make visible a new trend in contemporary US popular culture, to analyze this trend’s poetics, and to scrutinize its textual politics. It identifies those texts as narratively unstable that consciously frustrate and obfuscate the process of narrative understanding and comprehension, challenging their audiences to reconstruct what happened in a text’s plot, who its characters are, which of its diegetic worlds are real, or how narrative information is communicated in the first place. Despite—or rather, exactly because of—their confusing and destabilizing tendencies, such texts have attained mainstream commercial popularity in recent years across a variety of media, most prominently in films, video games, and television series. Focusing on three clusters of instability that form around identities, realities, and textualities, the book argues that narratively unstable texts encourage their audiences to engage with the narrative constructedness of their universes, that narrative instability embodies a new facet of popular culture, that it takes place and can only be understood transmedially, and that its textual politics particularly speak to white male middle-class Americans

One Team Where Worlds Collide: The Development of Transcoherence for Tackling Wicked Problems

This thesis is concerned with teams. In particular, multidisciplinary teams that are exploring complex public policy development in relation to problems identified as wicked; in that they resist existing solutions. The mix of expertise in these teams frequently leads to collisions of conceptual worlds among the team members. In addition, these conflicts may also occur along social faultlines that reflect an individual's membership in other collectives outside the team. The result can be an increase in discordance between team members and a fragmentation of effort, leading to poor team performance. This has been recognised in the literature as a major cause of project failure when addressing wicked problems. I address this phenomenon through the study of the lived experience of a specific heterogeneous team that were working on the wicked problem of reconceptualising access to justice for all Australians. I combined this data with theoretical frameworks from multiple disciplines. The findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the following ways: Increased understanding of a multidimensional problem My exploration of the rich and entangled nature of the lived experience in heterogeneous teams found a larger mix of conflicts than is usually described in any of the individual streams of literature. In addition, there seemed to be no single term in the literature that adequately described the complexity of the collisions that I observed. In response, I propose an umbrella term, incoherence, to incorporate the multiple terms used to describe the reaction to and result of these collisions. Whereas the disciplinary literature tends to identify social groupings that align with a discipline's academic history, data from my field work uncovers multiple groupings that should all be included as the basis for social faultlines. I therefore propose an umbrella term and concept which can incorporate any of the underlying social groups found in heterogeneous teams: collective coherence. Understanding of a potential desired future state There is agreement in the literature that team conflict should be resolved, but not on how this should be achieved. Instead, proposed solutions are fragmented and often contradictory. My thesis aligns these fragments through the introduction of a third umbrella term, transcoherence, defined in this study as: an individual's ability to consciously straddle different intellectual worlds, and a multidisciplinary group's capacity to reduce social faultlines and develop synergies. Understanding the changes required for heterogeneous teams to move from the current fragmentation to a coherent future state For a team to build a transcoherence capability requires a means of dealing with the sense of incoherence that comes from collisions of worlds. Incorporating learning theory from multiple disciplines, I developed a version of a triple loop learning model as a heuristic to demonstrate the multiple ways in which people respond to and manage incoherence. Each loop of steps starts from and returns to 'coherence in equilibrium', the state of rest in the system. The use of action research I designed the research to be interactive, multilayered, iterative, qualitative, and transdisciplinary. I chose an overarching bricolage methodology, combining multiple methods of data collection, both formal and informal. This was possible as I was embedded in the team for a year as the person tasked with the role of facilitating collaboration. This gave me an opportunity to assess the opportunities and limits of catalytic facilitation in participatory action research. By this I mean that processes in the project were not controlled solely by the head of the project, nor did they function spontaneously. Rather, I was asked to join the team as facilitator of the collaborative process, to act as a catalyst, increasing the potential of the interactions of the various experts connected to the research

Fiction and video games:towards a ludonarrative model

Abstract. This thesis presents an evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) step towards a more holistic understanding of narrative meaningfulness in the medium commonly known as video games, based on the intrinsic semiotics of interactivity. The aim of the thesis is to highlight the narrative meaningfulness of not just the written or scripted content of a work, but also the emergent qualities, which may offer the player a serious tool for self-expression and co-authoring the experience. The concepts of coherence and cohesion are also discussed as they pertain to interactive mixed-media experiences. These concepts form the basis for a ludonarrative model that is intended for the examination, analysis and critique of narrative video games. The model is then further explicated by applying it to the examination of the commercially successful The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.Tiivistelmä. Tämä tutkielma esittelee pienehkön kehitysaskeleen kohti tarinallisuuden kokonaisvaltaisempaa ymmärtämistä videopeleiksi kutsumassamme mediaformaatissa. Sen pohjana toimii videopeleille luontainen, vuorovaikutuspohjainen semiotiikan teoria. Tutkielman tarkoitus on korostaa pelien tarinallista merkittävyyttä kirjoitettujen ja käsikirjoitettujen sisältöjen lisäksi myös emergenteissä eli pelaamalla syntyvissä kokemuksissa, jotka voivat mahdollistaa laajankin itseilmaisun ja kanssakirjoittamisen muodon pelaajalle. Tutkielmassa käsitellään myös koheesiota ja koherenssia, sikäli kun ne koskettavat mediaa, joka yhdistelee erilaisia ilmaisun muotoja. Nämä konseptit muodostavat pohjan ludonarratiiviselle mallille, jonka tarkoituksena on mahdollistaa tarinallisten videopelien tarkastelu, analysointi ja kritisointi. Lopuksi mallia avataan soveltamalla sitä kaupallisestikin menestyneen The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -videopelin tarkasteluun