DMSTWynne

As with all important pieces of knowledge, dissemination is very important. For a graduate student, this is doubly true. As I have expressed before, my primary goal with this thesis project is to further the discussion of videogames as an artistic medium. In order to have the maximum effect on the academic community and the world at large, I must achieve as much exposure of my ideas as possible. However, there are a variety of other advantages to achieving large-scale deployment of my work and information pertaining to it. These benefits would include the establishment of a presence in the academic and online communities, creating a foundation for further bodies of work, and increasing the overall health and breadth of my academic and professional career. How I will go about disseminating my work is a somewhat more complex matter. I am significantly more comfortable with the medium of print (online or otherwise) and will thusly be focusing on applying to journals and hopefully writing other related articles for them. Networking will also be a very important part of disseminating my research and furthering my professional career. Disseminating my own information in the field of videogames may prove more or less difficult than it would in others, but that is simply a challenge I’ll have to face.

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My plan while exploring the impact of nontraditional user interfaces in videogames will be to create several games that have different approaches to the same subject. Perhaps one will deal with loss, another with attachment, or perhaps all of them will attempt to immerse the player through different immersive tactics. Obviously, I won’t have the time to create a game on the same level as a triple-A industry title, but I will attempt to generate the same amount of emotional impact with a much smaller concept. Originally I would have said this is impossible, but after seeing some of the independent games that have been produced, specifically games like Rohrer’s Passage and Giant Tank (A work by a prior graduate student), I believe that this is not only possible, but also quite doable. In order to accomplish this, I will need three types of materials: firstly, I will need to research the aforementioned videogames as well as the ways in which they convey their message or messages. Secondly, I will need to create the actual game, which will require some programming as well as a game engine. Lastly, I will need the actual nontraditional user interface devices that I mention.

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