Artists Statement- Collaborative Narrative

For this project, I chose to write an unwitting collaborative based off the internet game Town of Salem. This game was inspired by the classic pub/table game Mafia and both of them have an extremely strong focus on communication, and it is safe to say that if you understand how a game of mafia works, you will probably be able to figure this game out as well. Below, you can find a video of me playing the game (use this link if the video does not work). This round is what I based my narrative off of. Please click on this link, as it will direct you to a page with vital information about playing this game. In this game, I am named John Dough, so if you need to watch the video, you will know who I am. If you do watch this video, please click this link too. It contains vital information about the terms we use in this game.

My intention for this project was to take one of my rounds and turn it into a short story, which I feel like I did relatively well with. There were a few problems I encountered while filming. First of all, people generally tend to choose names that are nonsensical, so when I was turning it into a short story, I wrote one draft with the nicknames everyone had chosen, and because some might stand out or confuse players, I changed the nicknames in the story so that it would be easier to follow along (The video was not edited, I only changed nicknames for the story. My apologies for any inconsistencies.), and also as a measure to protect the identity of the players. I also chose to not reveal that I was recording this for a school project, as that type of information often tends to get people killed in the game (or otherwise reported, since making videos of games opens up a window for cheating).

The first part of making this project was capturing a video that I could write off of. The gameplay was fully uploaded on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, I paralleled the video as a short story. Rather than format the story as a short novelization, I chose to put it in a journal format. This way, I could summarize the progress in a clean and easy-to-follow manner.

This project embodies the idea of a collaborative as it involves other players/characters in an unwitting manner. They had no idea that I was recording the game, and as mentioned above, I changed most of the names to protect the identities of the players. Most of the participation was made in the background, though I did write this project in a way that during each time phase, it would appear that I was writing the story to swap focus among the other characters. All of the participants were collaborating in the way that the way they play can change the course of the game drastically. This project also intertwines with media. as the primary way of collecting footage as a basis for this project was playing a game and capturing it on video.

It is also worth noting that the game I was playing is strongly focused around collaboration. The players all contribute their style of play, and must form partnerships (Town members must find other town members). Even though the collaboration is in the background, remember that the game is still very focused on the concept that teamwork is extremely valuable.

You may find the finished project here

-Jacob Bacci