Game prototyping with community-driven narrative: Actor-network theory applied for Massively Multiplayer Online Games development

Abstract

Indie game development and academic game prototyping sometimes require a small team or even a single person to develop an entire system. In either case, the deadline could be a serious problem. Chances are that an indie developer or an academic researcher wants to create a very complex game, like a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. This is maybe the worst-case scenario when the resources are very limited. This paper proposes a community-driven narrative to mitigate one of the biggest problems in the creation process: inventing the game story and background. In order to focus on technical development, a game designer can reach a well-established community, with a well-formed self-universe, and create from there instead of from scratch. To demonstrate this creation process, this work uses the Actor-Network Method to analyze the Skynerd Protocol game development case, a player-driven Massively Multiplayer Online Game born from doctoral research about contextual learning in massively games.