9 September 2024

I am in the early phases of a new game design project! As of this writing, it is still untitled, however I have been using the codename Conclusion/Clarity. Based on my historical research, it will be a ghost game where the player controls a detective character. I hope to blend historical research with supernatural elements to create a unique and informative game.

This research talk, which was part of my department’s DM Talk series, outlines the research that I have completed and some of the early design and development work that I have been working on. I plan for this to be a long-term, iterative project, so it is nebulous at this point in development but I plan to start full-scale work on the project shortly.

In terms of next steps, I plan to start creating formal design documents which I can use to help better define the project.

16 May 2023

In this video I take a brief look at how Koei Tecmo defines “Japanese-styled” in their horror game series Fatal Frame. This was inspired by a quote from the series producer who referred to the most recent release in the series, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, as, “This extremely Japanese-styled title” when the game was being marketed in 2022. I trace Koei Tecmo’s definition of Japanese-ness through an analysis of other yūrei media and the narrative structures of the series. This research is in its early stages but I argue that Koei Tecmo connects to both historical and contemporary yūrei media in the Fatal Frame series and pose some questions about the significance of how Koei Tecmo defines Japanese-ness through Fatal Frame.

I decided to do something a little different for the International Conference on Games and Narrative 2023. While I did give a virtual talk at the conference, I also made a shorter video version of my presentation for my YouTube channel. Ideally, I would like to continue to do this for conference talks that I give that are either in-person or given “live” in a virtual conference format. I will continue to share video versions of my presentations from conferences and public talks that require video versions as well.

On the lighter side, I just wanted to note that I have really been enjoying the Fatal Frame games lately and I was very happy to get the chance to write about them for the first time. I am still mulling how exactly I want to approach my next large project, but I hope that I get to include some more analysis of the Fatal Frame games.