text: Creating Characters: YouTube video from GDC14 – Classroom Powerups
  Creating Characters: YouTube video from GDC14
  Date: March 16, 2018Author: APowley 0 Comments
  It has been a hectic week or two. I am finishing my Cold War unit, opening a new night class for the local college, and getting ready for my paternity leave which will start soon. Through in my sons' baseball practices and a suddenly fussy baby and that is my short excuse for the lack of blog posts recently.
  I am also starting to think about my class for next year already. The storyline that I have been using – an Orwellian dystopian future with a totalitarian dictator that spreads disinformation to manipulate a public with a poor sense of history – has become… well… I need a change. I am thinking of a superhero type narrative based on the Hero's Journey and as I think of this I keep bumping into interesting bits on narrative and world design. I want to share an interesting Keynote Speech from the Game Developers Conference in 2014 by freelance writer Jeremy Bernstein.
  In this keynote he questions how to create a character rather than just an avatar and the opening 5 minutes or had so many connections to the classroom. I kept replacing the word game with class and it was like catching lightning in a bottle. Creating characters allows immersion and roleplay which are key elements in some player types in most player type models. In Nick Yee's motivation studies immersion and roleplay are important to most RPG players.
  Anyways, this is just a quick post and I'd love to hear and discuss your reactions to the keynote in the comments!