This documents some of the general notes on my research that have been floating around in my head. Important elements to be discerned later are:

• Define the problem space, “Here is the problem that I have defined”
• Define methodology, resources, approach, “Here are my tools to address the problem”
• Define what results and conclusions have been reached, “Here is the deliverable”

I apologise for the extremely rough nature of these notes, but I want to put them up somewhere rather than having them disappear.

Summarizing research:

* project goal: adapting novels into games.
* focus: Pride and Prejudice

* Narratives, and novels in particular are already simulations
* Focus for adaptation should be WORLD, not plot
* world works according to model (mechanics)
* model is tied to the work, makes the work what it is (functionally)
* interpreting a model from a work is intrinsically creative

* games and simulations about mechanics (rules)
* games can simulate mechanics of a system (adaptation)
* vocabulary of mechanics used commonly in games is a set of tools

* adaptation involves 2 parts: carry-over, adaptation (analogous extension)
* can involve moving tropes/conventions from one medium to another (mystery novel ->

adventure; action film -> action game)
* specific thing to look at is conflict resolution

* need a critical aesthetics for game adaptations
* we do not want fidelity criticism, but there are games that are better and worse
* believe better adaptations will adapt the underlying mechanics well
* what mechanics are necessary and sufficient for the adaptation to work?

* technology is not a barrier for making game adaptations
* technology may enable better representation of characters

* there is barrier in games that disinclines adaptation of other types of fiction
* we must be open, as a culture, to recieving new types of games

* concern is not reproducing emotion exactly as in original
* concern is not reproducing plot of original
* plot is up to player, player has tools to drive own experience

* perspective is integral to perception of a work
* perspective is tied to how we understand systems
* adaptation of systems gives power to expose new perspectives

* many adaptation ideas lead to percpetions of game mechanics that depart from mainstream
* potential for advancement of reception, understanding of games

* meaning in novel comes from understanding novel as social world, reader simulates
* reader understands (or can understand) characters as deep, with inner lives
* novel is a kind of social laboratory (Lukacs)

>>>> more specific to P&P

* world is social; mechanics are social
* mechanics must be built from social rules, hence sociology
* social mechanics and games reveal character

* for simulation, characters must have autonomy
* we depart from conventions of planning in AI (conflicting goals)
* characters act according to situation and according to social context (thus, cannot be

transplanted without addressing context)

* thus, to simulate P&P, necessary to find how to describe social contexts, and how they

function
* development of AI is thus not in character, but in social world itself
* this method can be applied to other texts

* focus should not be to derive supremely general schema for human behavior in any context
* focus is about specific focused contexts, and representing those clearly
* avoid AI complete pitfall