Introduction
I have completed the preparatory work, and the next step is to enter the paper search stage, mainly reading the literature to provide inspiration and theory for my paper.
Process
At first I wanted to use google scholar to find documents, but it was embarrassing that I couldn’t open this website in China, so I had to use other search websites.
So I opened semantic scholar and searched for “game animation”. What’s even more embarrassing is that game animation is rarely mentioned! Only Jonathan Cooper’s Game Anim Video Game Animation Explained summarizes game animation in detail.
So now I have two paths to go: First, after reading Cooper’s point of view, I have summarized a set of game animation theory. Second, combine the game animation with a certain element to discuss together.
Obviously the former is not feasible. I have not formally entered the game industry, so it is not credible to sort out a professional theory. So what should I choose for the element of the second choice, I haven’t figured it out yet.
So I spent two days reading Cooper’s more than 300 pages of book. I also want to read faster, but my mother tongue is not English, and there are many technical terms and methods in the book that I cannot understand temporarily, so I spent a lot of time to understand them roughly. I have to say that Johnathan Cooper’s book is too professional. It describes all the points I can imagine with specific examples. But this also means that if I write game animation directly, it is impossible to write better than him, and I may even refer to his views a lot to make readers think that this is plagiarism.
Until I read Steve Swink’s Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation! I was thinking, if I can put game animation and game feel together to demonstrate, will it make the paper more worth exploring? In the article, the source of game feel includes real-time control, simulation space and polish. I enumerate them and use actual game animation examples to prove that this is indeed a subject that can be studied!
This is my note:
But this is just a preliminary idea. The game feel can also be similar to how the game attracts players. A divergence of thinking is equivalent to how game animation attracts players. So I continued to read different books and papers until I found the word “immersion”!
This term is mentioned in many places, including Abstract March’s Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story, Henrik Warpefelt’s Analyzing the believability of game character behavior using the Game Agent Matrix, and more importantly, cooper also mentioned immersion! Combining game animation and immersion will definitely have research value!
So my topic is how game animation affects immersion.
Next, I continued to read a lot of books and papers, the main way to look for it was to check the bibliography of new books or papers. I also highlighted key sentences and recorded them on paper. In this way, I can find the argument I want in the paper by looking at the key words of the notes!
Conclusion
I strongly recommend that if you want to learn about game animation, you must read the book Game Anim Video Game Animation Explained. In addition, this is the first time I have read many documents so seriously and found arguments from them. My experience of determining the theme step by step also tells me that a good theme inspiration can only be obtained by reading a lot of materials.