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nrik v He d a apa l sk Ma INDEXICAL STORYTELLING A story without words Bachelor Degree Project in Media Arts, Aesthetics and Narration 30 ECTS Spring term 2021 Jesper Karlsson Simon Sääf Malm Supervisor: Stefan Ekman Examiner Johan Almer Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate how indexical storytelling in a 3D scene could affect the players understanding of narrative and how they navigate the scene. The background of the study presents what indexical storytelling is and goes briefly into color interpretation. To answer how indexical storytelling affects players a 3D scene was made, containing indexical objects which the 10 participants could go through and explore in semi-structured qualitative interviews. This was to see if the participants understood the narrative of the scene and the similarities or dissimilarities between people with experience in different game genres. The result showed a possible tendency in the participants understanding the narrative of the scene. But additional studies and participants are required to be able to come to any larger scale conclusion or generalizations. Keywords: Environmental Storytelling, Indices, color psychology Index 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 2 Background ........................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Environmental Storytelling ........................................................................................... 2 2.2 Indexical Storytelling .................................................................................................... 4 2.3 Color psychology ......................................................................................................... 5 3 Problem .................................................................................................................. 7 3.1 Method ........................................................................................................................ 7 3.1.1 Problematization of the method ............................................................................................. 9 4 Implementation .................................................................................................... 10 4.1 Color-coding .............................................................................................................. 10 4.2 Practical Execution .................................................................................................... 11 4.2.1 Blending materials ................................................................................................................ 12 4.2.2 Examples of Indexical Storytelling Moments in the Scene .................................................. 13 4.2.3 Pilot survey ........................................................................................................................... 15 5 Evaluation ............................................................................................................ 16 5.1 The Study .................................................................................................................. 16 5.2 Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 18 5.2.1 Demographics ...................................................................................................................... 19 5.2.2 Indexical storytelling ............................................................................................................ 23 5.2.3 Color psychology .................................................................................................................. 28 5.2.4 Supernatural elements ......................................................................................................... 31 5.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 34 6 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................... 36 6.1 Summarize ................................................................................................................ 36 6.2 Discussion ................................................................................................................. 37 6.3 Future Work ............................................................................................................... 39 1 Introduction Indexical storytelling is a way to tell a narrative through the environment of a game. By using traces of narrative in the environment to form a clue for what has previously happened or what is about to happen in an area. These clues can be subtle in the form of small puddles of blood or clear as an arrow pointing to where the player should go. The purpose of this paper is first to understand if indexical storytelling has any tangible effect on people when they are playing games. Does it enhance the experience? Does it make navigation easier? How does it help players interpret both the environment they are in and the narrative of the scene or the overarching narrative? This is mostly based on research by Fernandez Vara (2011) term indexical storytelling which is the interpretation of the narrative through remnants/relics that the player can interpret and Jenkins. H (2002) concept of embedded narratives, stories that can be found/solved by the player to help them form a narrative. It secondly focuses on color psychology or color association in Kaya, N., & Epps, H. H. (2004). research about relationship between color and emotion and Ou, L., Luo, M., Woodcock, A. and Wright, A., (2004) research about color association in different cultures. As color psychology has a big impact on players' understanding of the narrative and their navigation of an environment. This is investigated in a semi-qualitative survey. Where the participants get to play a realistic 3D scene set during world war1 in a hypothetical game. The scene was made with Fernandez- Vara’s principle that the scenes narrative was only told through indices placed around the scene where none of the narrative came from written or talked text. The scene was then studied through 10 semi-structured qualitative interviews. Where the participants could walk around and then answer questions about the narrative in the scene, if there were any attention-grabbing objects and if they understood the environment, they were in. The test leaders also used footage of the participants to see if there were any patterns in what the participants looked at and if there were any specific objects they wanted to interact with. 1 2 Background Unlike narrative mediums such as books or movies, where the person reading or watching acts as a spectator. Games give the person playing has some form of control over movements, camera and interactions with other characters or objects in the game. If this is as big and broad as a Sandbox game like Kenshin (2013) where the player can almost go or see wherever on the map, they can make up their own stories with the many different characters existing in the game or make their own character. Where the player has control over the game’s narrative and the overarching narrative of the world is hidden in books, dialogue with NPC’s, ruins scattered around the map or up to the player to interpret based on their surroundings. Or the player has minimalistic control over the game such as in Tetris (1984), where the player only controls how to rotate and where to put the block they are given by the game. No matter what game it is, the player must interact with the game to get a narrative. There are indexical storytelling objects in all games whether it is a stylistic style such as Super Mario 64 (1996) or realistic style such as Hunt showdown (2018). This paper focuses on how indexical storytelling works in games and how different indices may lead, warn or provide the player with certain information, which they later can use to determine what they should do. It can also be there to tell a narrative about specific objects or it can be connected to the overarching story. 2.1 Environmental Storytelling Almost twenty years after the debate on ludology and narratology in the early 2000’s, digital games have developed a unique identity as a narrative media. From this ludology and narratology debate, terms such as Environmental storytelling has been brought forth as a type of bridge between narratology and ludology that can be applied to games. Environmental storytelling is a rather broad term used to explain many different smaller tools for telling a narrative in a game. The focus of this article is Fernandez- Vara’s term indexical storytelling (2011). To further refine how the narrative and a games world are integrated with each other, Fernandez-Vara explains what she calls indexical storytelling and indices. Fernandez-Vara refers to Charles Pierce’s philosophy of language (Peirce 1998 see Fernandez-Vara 2011). There, according to Pierce, a sign is a mediation, a representation that conveys to a mind an idea of a thing. In Pierce’s philosophy of language there are three different types of signs: Icon/likeness: Is signs that convey ideas through imitation e.g., photograph, a drawing, gesture or a sound mimicry (Boom, crack or similar). Indices/indications: Is where the idea is physically connected to the sign. For example, smoke indicating a fire or the

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