Individual Projects & Research
"More than Human: Player Sexuality and the Pursuit of Non-Human Romances in Dragon Age and other Western RPGs"
(June 2024 - August 2024)
A follow-up to my Master's Thesis, "Parsing the Paramour", this study (n=491) investigates the influence of player attraction to non-human characters on the previously discovered variable, FSI (Frequency of Sexuality Influence). It also considers whether players reach conclusions on the representation of diverse sexualities based on pre-release marketing materials.
Master's Thesis: "Parsing the Paramour: How Players' Sexuality, Motivation, and UDO influence their Romantic decisions in Western RPGs."
(July 2023 - April 2024)
Graduate-level quantitative and qualitative research into genre-specific player communities (n=1001) under the direction of Dr Elizabeth Stringer. This thesis incorporates the theory of compulsory heterosexuality, "charmed circle" analysis, and "second self" gaming identities. The supporting human research survey also considers player motivation metrics posed by Nick Yee and the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (M-GUDS).
"MathWalks" Production Graduate Research Assistant
(Apr 2023 - Mar 2024)
Production duties on developing the "MathWalks" educational, AR tablet game. Largely responsible for Builds and AR teams scrums and product backlog (Trello). Funded by NSF Grant Search Award #2115393. (Read a local Dallas news feature about the project here).
"Get to the Car!" - A Half Life 2 Level
(Oct 2022 - Dec 2022)
“Get to the Car!” is a single player level built in Hammer for Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The player assumes the role of Dr. Gordon Freeman, who is escaping from City 17 at the end of Episode One to reunite with Rebel Leaders following his confrontation in the Citadel. Armed with only a gravity gun and magnum revolver, the player must make their way through a Civil Protection Staging Barracks to reach Gordon’s getaway car up on a cliff. The central design piece is destructible environments the player can use to wipe out multiple enemies and create cover.
The research goal of this project was to determine individual best practices for time estimation and internal goal setting. This level was developed over the course of five milestones and 84.5 individual man-hours, as outlined in the following tables and burndown charts.