This presentation was delivered on October 20, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Description:
The main research topic of this paper is “Murder Mystery Game” (MMG), which is very popular among the Chinese highly educated group (In Chinese language it was called “Jubensha”), and introduces the development history and game process of Murder Mystery Game. Firstly in this paper, we combed through the history and lineage of the development of Murder Mystery Game, in our opinion, the Murder Mystery Game is the child of live action role-playing game and detective novels. Although it was born in western, Murder Mystery Game has exploded in China and formed a massive industry with many young Chinese，especially the highly educated would like to play the “Jubensha”. After the epidemic of Covid-19 , more and more Chinese youth rely on murder mystery game for socializing. Secondly, we introduce the basic Chinese “Jubensha” game process by following steps: Preparation stage, Reading stage, Evidence search stage, Analysis stage, Voting stage and Review stage. Finally, considering murder mystery game is similar as Multiple User Domain game (MUD), this research based on a Ludology method– Bartle Taxonomy to describe and analyze murder mystery game, then according to Bartle Taxonomy’s idea, we establish a new independent model with three directions,in which all murder mystery game players can be divided into eight categories in a 3D quadrant– achievement, conquering, social, performance, reasoning, vanity, expressive, exploratory. For each category of players, they have their special game inventions, and scenario tendentiousness, based on the research conclusion, the murder mystery game author could design a better MMG scenario. If a MMG script has all sophisticated murder techniques and logical puzzles, rich story lines and tasks, deeply drawn characters and interpersonal relationships, meaningful motives and clues for committing crimes, smooth narrative expression, sufficient space for debate and interaction, and a certain degree of difficulty but with a relatively fair game competition environment at the same time, the script is bound to be a success.
Bios:
Dr. Xiong Shuo is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Information Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received the Ph.D. and Master of Information Science in Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Dr. Xiong research area focuses on game informatics, game theory and AI, Serious game and game design, etc. Recently, he wrote several papers about Chinese Murder Mystery Game (Jubensha), and translate a academic book “Computer Game Worlds”(written by Claus Pias) in Chinese version.
Mr. Ruoyu Wen is a Master’s student at Uppsala University, Department of Game design. He got his bachelor’s degree in Communication(B.A) and Information Science(B.S.T) from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2021. He is very interested in pervasive games, focusing on ARG and Jubensha. He developed the first Campus-Based ARG in China named I Know Ghost . And he is cooperating with Prof. Shuo Xiong from HUST to conduct a series of studies in Jubensha. The Player Category Research of Murder Mystery Game briefly introduces Jubensha and applies the Battelle player classification theory and GNS Theory to classify the players of Jubensha in China.
Mrs. Huijuan Zheng is a Master student of School of Journalism and Information communication, HUST.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
***
This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
Click here to see the complete program.
Click here to learn more about Transformative Play at Uppsala and join the TPI mailing list.
Click here to learn more about the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design.
Click here to Like the Transformative Play Initiative on Facebook.
Click here to Like the Games and Society Lab on Facebook.
Click here to Subscribe to the Transformative Play Initiative on YouTube.
Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin. Video edited by Rezmo (Mohammad Mohammad Rezaie).