Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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A Beginner’s Guide to Puzzle Design: Creating an applied guide for effective puzzle design in videogames
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Prinz, Erik; Flusk, Timothy; Reid, Kieran
While a vast collection of information exploring effective puzzle design exists, it is riddled with conflicting opinions and inconsistent formats, making it arduous to engage with. This research aims to curate this collection, organizing its knowledge into an applied guide for puzzle design in videogames. This will be accomplished through an amalgamation of design principles offered by selected works of oundational literature, and the insights contained within the design philosophies of three industry professionals (Jonathan Blow, Kim Swift, and Arvi ‘Hempuli’ Teikari). The synthesis of these two families of information will be aided by the simultaneous development of a puzzle platforming videogame. Through a process of iteration and playtesting, this game will be used to assess the value and accuracy of the developing guide. With careful consideration of useful structures present in the foundational literature, the plethora of existing information can be reformatted to be user-friendly and appliable by novel puzzle designers.
A Happier Life Through Sad Mode - Designing Automated Players for Single Player Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Chola, Saili; Reid, Kieran; Du Preez, Kirsten
Solo games are a keystone of tabletop board gaming for players and designers alike. While they are numerous and enjoyed by many members of the community, there is a noticeable lack of clarity and exploration of what principles make these games uniquely interactive and enjoyable experiences for players. This project responds to this inadequacy through the development of a playable game and a research report. The game demonstrates and tests the virtues of solo game play mechanics while the report expands and discusses the interpretable results and qualities of said solo game mechanics.
Stumbling on Hybridity’s Playground: Exploring Design-Centric Thinking, Media Boundaries and Limitation in A Hybrid Text Space.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Goldberg, Peta Nicole; Reid, Kieran
This research posits an experimental thesis statement; “creative hybridity is a boundary-making event”. The dissertation takes place through an active narrative of experimentation playing with the ideas of how creativity engenders itself through hybridity and identity of medium. Using a design-centric outlook as well as a practice rooted, and at times spatio-visual thinking, the research posits that creative production (that is hybrid) bounds itself to patterns and structure to be recognized. The dissertation uses the case study ‘S.’ by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst (2013), a multimodal literature case study to explore hybridity, more specifically design production, through the lens of the thesis statement.
Techno-Orientalism in Science Fiction: A Resistant Reading of Ex Machina
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Schoeman, Samantha; Duncan, Catherine
Techno-Orientalism is a prominent issue in science fiction media. It perpetuates and propagates negative stereotypes about Asians across a broad audience, tangibly affecting and shaping society’s perceptions. This research focuses on challenging and resisting the dominant portrayal of Asians in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015). I interrogate Ex Machina in a way that centres the female Asian character, Kyoko, using methods of resistant readings and implementing the ‘oppositional gaze’ strategy put forth by bell hooks. My analysis shows how the cinematic apparatus of the film constructs the problematic techno-Orientalist stereotypes, and how viewers can use an oppositional gaze, cyborg theory, and feminist film theory in a resistant reading. In reading the film against the grain, I found that the spectatorial experience changes, allowing for the emergence of different pleasures and compensations not offered through traditional looking relations between film and viewer. I argue that these strategies empower the marginalised characters, affording spectators of the film to glean different and more defiant impressions without detaching from the film’s canon. I further suggest that resistant readings and employment of the oppositional gaze offer an opportunity for more diverse voices and opinions to document and share their critiques and experiences with problematic media representation. This opens the door for further discourse challenging harmful, stereotypical characterisations, thereby growing the field of film studies.
The Influence of Fandom on the Creative Producers
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Moodley, Seyurie; Whitcher, Raymond
What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, this is the world of fandom. Looking at the ways in which fandoms have had an influence on storytelling; do stories really belong to the original content producer once they have developed a big enough fandom or, are they trying to fulfil the needs of the consumers? Once a fandom has become large enough there is a possibility of malcontent within audience members that can eventually lead to the rise of toxic fandom. The aim of this research is to look at the ways in which creators have tailored and filtered their own original ideas to please audiences, specifically toxic fans and how they have potentially compromised authenticity so that they could franchise a certain story and its respective universe. This paper will investigate the following televisual/ filmic icons of popular culture: Harry Potter (2001-2011), Game of Thrones (2011-2019) and finally Rick and Morty (2013-present). They will be analysed to determine the ways in which fandoms possibly become toxic and lose the ownership of the creative producers/authors/show runners/directors. By analysing these three case studies and their respective fandoms the research will attempt to verify whether a story still belongs to the creative producers or whether they have been appropriated by fans, by forcibly adapting the core story to fit the consumers’ needs. All three fandoms will be looked at by taking different approaches, as they could be said to have very different fanbases and therefore it will give this research a better understanding as to how these fandoms work and the ways in which they adapt a story to make it popular or in turn change the story to create shock value. This research will approach a six-phase framework of fan appropriation which will attempt to prove the thesis statement. These phases were created in order to look at and therefore demonstrate how once a story has a big enough fandom, they no longer belong to the original producer but are rather made in the form of participatory culture, as theorised by Henry Jenkins.
The Intersection of Systemic Racism and Technology and the Consequences for Video Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Flusk, Timothy; Reid, Kieran
The paper documents and reviews the process by which consequences of systemic racism is found in video games through the medium of technology. The principal idea of technology is used broadly to accommodate all media produced by society as tools for wielding and enforcing capitalist ideology. This is used as a means of revealing and mapping the cultural epistemic domain that dominates the West and its former colonies. The principal methodology is drawn from D. Fox Harrel’s Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation and Expression. The process focuses on using the idea of the phantasmal generation within media, by individuals within systems. As such the process of these phantasm expressing or revealing themselves in various media is tracked and studied from both sides of the process: where they come from and how they are expressed. The principal approach situates the discussion of developing video games within the West, specifically the United States of America. The case studies used to illustrate and apply the methodology include Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NBA2K17. These are placed in context along side their appropriate phantasmal sibling and representation. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is interrogated through the lens of capitalism and the representation of Black criminals in media. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is placed in context of fantasy genre and colonialism. NBA2k17 is placed in context of traditional racist perspectives of Black, athleticism and sport. All case studies utilise the principal twin approach of separating phantasms into hegemonic teleological expectation and ontological racist assertions. This allows the encapsulation of ludic systems as well narrative and character representation within the games.
The Steel Fig Leaf: Exploring the Grotesque Ambivalence of the Male Body and Its Masculinities through Sculpture, Performance Art, and Theatre
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Genovese, Nicola; Doherty, Christo
The practice-based research described in this thesis sought to develop imagery in visual and performative artworks capable of engendering and embodying new perspectives on the male body and performed masculinities. The project involved three phases: pure sculpture, sculpture activation using the male body in performance, and theatre performance, the latter focusing on northern Italian masculinities. The key concepts to emerge from the investigation were ambivalence, parody, and the aesthetic category of the grotesque. During the research, I developed a sculptural practice characterised by a craft approach and deploying heterogeneous materials – including textiles, a medium historically associated with the fabric art movement and feminism. As far as performative practice is concerned, my first approach was to challenge the rules of the white cube by attempting to transform spectators into an audience. My next approach was to engage with the specificities of the theatre as a performance context and the challenges for a fine artist working on a stage. The development of my practice was supported by theoretical reflection resulting from a critical engagement with feminism, queer discourse and masculinities studies, culminating in a partial affirmation of the direction taken by the new materialist strand of feminism. This research approaches the male body and its grotesque features through the figure of the flaccid penis as the starting point for questioning the dominant theoretical paradigm of the male body, the phallus, and violence. The materiality of my sculptures and performances addresses the entanglement of biology and culture, challenging the hegemony of the social constructivist approach in contemporary art. By exposing and highlighting the varieties of Italian masculinities, this research critiques the tendency in current academic discourse to depict straight white men as a monolithic category of oppressors. The imagery I develop through my sculptures and performance exposes behavioural, aesthetic, and bodily nuances that gesture towards the complexity occluded by contemporary understandings of masculinity.

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