Joost Bos. Valued classmate. Inscrutable designer. Notorious misgiving-haver. Frequent accordion-fondler. Opinion-possessor.  And mime. When I was discussing the sorry state of my project with him yesterday he said something along these lines:

“Basically Raft was a game in which you create a performance with another player. Sort of like puppet theatre.”

Fuck. Although puppet theatre and puppetry in general was somewhere on my list of research priorities, hearing it formulated like this greatly cleared my head on what I am trying to achieve. It is puppetry. ‘Direct embodiment of a role through an avatar’… I should have just called it puppetry. Also, ‘creating a performance with another player’ far better describes the intention than ‘Two players interacting defines the narrative within the specific time frame of play’.

So, from here on out, it’s off to redefine the aims and parameters of the project, greatly aided by the perspicacity of this blonde agitator.