THE STUDY ON GAMING EXPERIENCE WITH VISUAL NARRATIVE IN GRIS AS A NON-VERBAL STORY-BASED GAME

• Main Author: P. Anindhitha Ayesha Sandra, N.
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/61130
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The gaming experience built on a video game is a complete understanding of the game and its affection for its players. The gaming experience is built through immersion in players and stimulated through visual elements supported by audio and text elements to build a complete narrative in the game world. In an effort to attract players' attention and sympathy, the visual elements in the game are used as instruments that can evoke the player's curiosity and interest in the issues discussed in the game that are packaged through a visual narrative. Despite having a visual narrative balanced with dialogue and descriptive text to help explain game contents in common video games, GRIS is a story-based video game that uses the power of visual narrative to build immersion and communicate with players without being supported by text elements or dialogue between characters. The power of visual narrative without text is then seen as a medium that can open a discussion space that frees players to be able to interpret the meaning of the GRIS game according to their experience and point of views. This research was conducted because of this phenomenon and aims to understand more deeply about the interpretations and point of views from GRIS players on related issues as a result of playing experiences through visual narratives without text elements. The issues referred to in GRIS are a psychological model called Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's 5 Stages of Grief and a person's experience in going through a traumatic event. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach with phenomenology and virtual v ethnographic methods because it was conducted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic during the research. Data was collected by literature studies on related topics, involved observation, and in-depth interviews with seven respondents who had been selected using purposive sampling. The objects of this study are the visual elements of the GRIS game and various interpretation of players as a result from the gaming experience carried out. The results of this study are (1) a descriptive study on the affect of visual narratives in GRIS which caused variations in player interpretations of its narrative as a result of gaming experience; and (2) the role of GRIS as a story-based game without text as a discussion room that builds an emosional interaction with players and connects the experience of playing GRIS, that has a rich visual narrative within it, with the real experiences experienced by the players or the respondents