Narrative Project

http://n0220956.deviantart.com/art/Wembley-106035451

The link above shows the finished results of my interactive narrative project. This was created using macromedia flash, and it called Wembley. The basic idea behind the project is to take the user on a journey where they have to make their own personal decisions to achieve certain outcomes. There are two possible outcomes at which the users can achieve, either a win or lose, there are two of each of the win and the lose outcomes in total. The theme of the interactive narrative is of course football, I chose this theme because it is of particular interest to me, I also thought about actually playing the game myself and realised that it is completely based on decisions and actions. These real life decisions and actions determine if a tackle is completed perfectly, or a foul is committed, these reflect on whether the decision is a win or a lose.

The interactive narrative includes images, animation, sound and text. The images I used for my interactive narrative are what I managed to find on Google, these images had to be of the specific player in the same or a similar shirt. As I was half was through completing the project it was pointed out to me the risk of copyright. However I made changes to the shirts and the logos using Photoshop, and I was told that this would not be too much of a problem as the brief did not include publishing the narrative, it was only to present it. I created all the animations myself, all of the animations are very basic and suite each frame perfectly for the theme. The sound I used for the interactive narrative reflect the mood of the outcome, if the player wins the game there are cheers, if the player loses the game boo’s can be heard. There is also the sound effect of a football being kicked, this sound plays whenever a link is clicked on, this adds a more realistic element to the game. The text is the most important part of the narrative as this explains the choices, which determines the user’s decisions. The user interaction is one of the most important elements of the flash narrative, this is because the user has to make the decisions, therefore it is important for the narrative to be simple, and clear to use, I feel that I have managed to achieve this on a reasonable scale.

During planning and creating the interactive flash narrative, I spent most of my time in the computer room with other multimedia students. One of the members of my seminar group asked me if I knew why his links were not working correctly, I noticed that he was not using instance names and therefore his problem was easily revolved. I was also helped by one of my classmates at finding specific sound clips for my narrative, which was very helpful. Although this was not group work many of my group had time to help one another and work together on the project.

Overall I feel that I have created a good flash narrative, I feel that it is entertaining for all types of people even if they are not interested in football. I feel that I could have spent a lot more time on the narrative, if we had of had more time to do it in. We had around a week to plan and complete the project so in some places it is slightly rushed, although overall I am happy with my interactive narrative.