Project info
- Developer Niko Thomson
- Showcase year 2025
- Programme Game Design and Production
Synopsis
An exploration of emergent narrative – where a game’s story is not premade and instead created through player interaction in a procedurally generated world. Inspired by kaiju media of the 60s and 70s such as Godzilla and Ultraman, I am designing a proof-of-concept for a game system that would facilitate stories like this. For this, I will design and create the various systems that would enable this. Alongside the documentation for that, I will present multiple narrative scenarios that could be possible within this game and explain how they work and interact with the systems created.
What has been a highlight of your time at Abertay?
The highlight of being at Abertay for me was the big group project in the second semester of 3rd year. I really enjoyed working in a more professional environment and I feel like it pushed my personal and teamwork skills a lot.
What motivated you to develop/create this project?
The idea started with me wanting to create something story-focused that included giant monsters, as I had a big fixation on 70s Kaiju series like Godzilla and Ultraman. With this, I wanted to make something very player-driven that could facilitate storytelling unique to video games. A lot of video game stories take inspiration from film and are often linear, which I feel isn't taking full advantage of the medium. From there, the idea of a "kaiju sitcom" developed, which instantly became an appealing idea to me. The combination of taking inspiration from existing stories I was invested in and delving into an aspect of game narrative that hasn't been explored as much is what really motivated me to fully develop this project.
What are your hopes and future ambitions for after graduation?
My future ambitions for after graduation are to work on game narrative in some way, be that in my own company or as part of a larger company. However, I don't want to tie myself down to games and would be interested in exploring narrative across many mediums, like film or comics.
