Abstract:

The production component of the MFA thesis will be a massively-multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG) called Hour: 720 . Designed for up to 1000 players to engage with simultaneously, Hour: 720 is a complex software project that can be installed on any system meeting the basic system requirements. Users do not have to run the software to engage with it; rather, players will engage with the game via any contemporary web browser. The software, including complete source code, required to run Hour: 720 will be delivered to the University on compact disc.

Hour: 720 takes place on an island that has suffered a strange kind of natural disaster: The dead have risen. Zombies are crawling out of the ground, and players find themselves playing survivors who desperately must try to either escape, hide out in hopes of rescue, or otherwise make their way in a world full of the walking dead.

The written component of the MFA thesis will contextualize and explain the design decisions made in the creation of Hour: 720 . The thesis will discuss some of the interesting social interactions prompted by Hour: 720 , and inform the reader of the conventions in game design which Hour: 720 is directly confronting and either rejecting or reworking. Finally, the thesis will address the role of the player in generating narrative components and the relationship between game-generated elements and player-created or player-edited elements. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)