We are Context, a team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. This project came about as we started looking at video games as a storytelling medium. Next to novels, movies and even songs, most games felt like they were unable to evoke any emotion in the player that is a result of an emotional connection with either the characters or their stories.

Toward the end of the Spring 07 semester, we put together a pitch and sold the faculty on the idea of designing a game that explicitly sets out to tell an emotionally engaging story. We were going to focus all of our efforts on creating a perfect solution, but after speaking with our advisors, we decided to take more of a R&D approach to the problem.

Over the course of this Fall semester, we will create five functional prototypes, all with the goal of discovering new techniques to emotionally invest the player. Each prototype will feature a different experimental approach to reaching this goal.

The Team

Tim Metz writer, designer

Patrick Donoghue artist, designer

Chris Crone programmer, designer

Matt Cervantes programmer, designer

Christopher Boette producer, designer

Advisors

Brenda Harger

Jesse Schell

Check out our wiki at http://projectcontext.pbwiki.com
and email the team here.