Refining Concept Reasearch Question

The research question started as “How can Irish Fairies and Folklore be used to create a complex character driven narrative emphasizing self-improvement?” at the start of the semester.

The goal of this research is to extract lessons we can teach in a narrative game around self-improvement. It will cover the following topics to feed the game narrative and evaluate the success of the research that influences the narrative:

1. Irish Fairies and Folklore
2. Character driven narrative
3. Self-improvement

This is a lot to cover and the core of what I am looking into is not very well defined. To try and refine the question, I did some brainstorming and landed on the following changes:

• Alternative versions:
  1. In what ways can self-improvement evolve a narrative centered around Irish fairies and folklore?
  2. How can the Irish Myths and Folklore improve a narrative that focuses on the lead character’s personal growth?
  3. How can Irish fairy tales and folklore be adapted into a modern narrative that is relevant to the struggles of our every day lives?
• Much Different Ideas:
  1. Can an in-house narrative-focused game engine streamline our game development process?
  2. How can generative AI be used to create a narrative unique to each user’s interests while following a core set of themes?

Alternative version number 3 stood out to myself and my thesis supervisors. It’s closer to the core of what this research aims to accomplish, Which is to extract lessons we can learn from Irish Myths & Legends as narrative elements to educate players, particularly in the areas of personal growth, self-improvement and self-care.

After a bit more tinkering, I landed on “What lessons can we adapt from Irish Folklore into a modern video game narrative about the struggles of everyday life?” which is a bit wordy but more fit for purpose.

As of this date, it’s been simplified to “How can Irish Folklore teach lessons of modern day struggles through narrative gaming?”. Big kudos to a close friend who helped in this endeavor.

My initial pre-conceptions led me to believe we will be discussing lessons on Morality, Karma, Courage and Loyalty.