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- Creators: Dove-Viebahn, Aviva
Description
As part of a group project, myself and four teammates created an interactive children's storybook based off of the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age. This electronic book is meant to be read aloud by a caregiver with their child, and is designed for reading over long distances through the use of real-time voice and video calling. While one part of the team focused on building the electronic book itself and writing the program, myself and two others wrote the story and I provided illustrations. Our Primer tells the story of a young princess named Charname (short for character name) who escapes from a tower and goes on a mission to save four companions to help her on her quest. The book is meant for reader-insertion, and teaches children problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking skills by presenting challenges for Princess Charname to solve. The Primer borrows techniques from modern video game design, focusing heavily on interactivity and feelings of agency through offering the child choices of how to proceed, similar to choose-your-own-adventure books. If brought to market, the medium lends itself well to expanded quests and storylines for the child to explore as they learn and grow. Additionally, resources are provided for the narrator to help create an engaging experience for the child, based off of research on parent-child cooperative reading and cooperative gameplay. The final version of the Primer included a website to run the program, a book-like computer to access the program online, and three complete story segments for the child and narrator to read together.
ContributorsLax, Amelia Ann Riedel (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Wetzel, Jon (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper looks at the impact sorority life has on the collegiate women at Arizona State University. Much of the content widely available regarding members of the Greek community is relatively negative and describes these organizations through a critical lens. Finding this content to be contrary to that of my own experience, I sought to analyze the effects the community had, specifically the effects of the sororities and sorority women at Arizona State University. The analysis began with a thorough review of the history of fraternities and sororities, as well as a short overview of the history of feminism. Through the examination of this data, it becomes clear that the foundations of sororities are directly correlated with feminist aims and the feminist movement. After completing a review of their foundation, a trifold analysis of today's sororities was conducted. First, eight studies on the impact of the fraternal and sororal organizations on their members were reviewed, compared, contrasted. Next, a comprehensive survey was sent out to the Arizona State sorority members receiving 273 responses that were analyzed both holistically and from specific angles. Lastly, a brief follow-up interview of 25 of those 273 women was done in order to get more in depth responses and opinions from the women in this community. Combining the knowledge and results garnered from the literature review, survey, and interviews, it can be concluded that contrary to popular media, sorority life, for the most part, does in fact empower the women within it and provide a beneficial impact to both the member and the community at large.
ContributorsGolisch, Allison (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Burke, Alison (Committee member) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Instead of providing the illusion of agency to a reader via a tree or network of prewritten, branching paths, an interactive story should treat the reader as a player who has meaningful influence on the story. An interactive story can accomplish this task by giving the player a large toolset for expression in the plot. LudoNarrare, an engine for interactive storytelling, puts "verbs" in this toolset. Verbs are contextual choices of action given to agents in a story that result in narrative events. This paper begins with an analysis and statement of the problem of creating interactive stories. From here, various attempts to solve this problem, ranging from commercial video games to academic research, are given a brief overview to give context to what paths have already been forged. With the background set, the model of interactive storytelling that the research behind LudoNarrare led to is exposed in detail. The section exploring this model contains explanations on what storyworlds are and how they are structured. It then discusses the way these storyworlds can be brought to life. The exposition on the LudoNarrare model finally wraps up by considering the way storyworlds created around this model can be designed. After the concepts of LudoNarrare are explored in the abstract, the story of the engine's research and development and the specifics of its software implementation are given. With LudoNarrare fully explained, the focus then turns to plans for evaluation of its quality in terms of entertainment value, robustness, and performance. To conclude, possible further paths of investigation for LudoNarrare and its model of interactive storytelling are proposed to inspire those who wish to continue in the spirit of the project.
ContributorsStark, Joshua Matthew (Author) / VanLehn, Kurt (Thesis director) / Wetzel, Jon (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.
ContributorsBateman, Phoebe Jasmine (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Holmes, Jeffrey (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
This analysis aimed to understand how and why certain representations of fraternity and sorority life are consistently used in media texts. Throughout this thesis I analyzed various media including films, a television series, a documentary, and coverage of a news story and found that fraternity and sorority representations reinforce different social issues. Additionally, this thesis discusses how fraternities and sororities are framed in the media texts as institutions which force members to abide by larger societal norms and gender roles. Stigmas and social issues surrounding fraternity and sorority life including hazing, violence, and toxic masculinity, femininity and feminism, diversity and racism, and partying, power and misogyny are the focus of many of the media used in this study. This thesis analyzed how media use these topics to generalize representations of fraternity and sorority life members and to perpetuate normalized gender roles and dominant narratives about race and sexuality.
ContributorsLockhart, Christine (Author) / Himberg, Julia (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05