Name: Visual Novels as a form of digital literature/storytelling

Owner: Emmarie Toppan

Summary: Create a platform that presents and discuss visual novels and their place in digital humanities as a medium that combines video games and literature

• How do visual novels immerse you in interactive stories and differ from other kinds of video games and storytelling mediums?
• Talk about what a visual novel is, criticism of the genre, origins/past/present future, levels of interactive storytelling, educational uses for visual novels, top genres (like nakige and why it’s important), Japan and anime, are they actually video games?, do they actually qualify as literature?, Japanese influence in the West, VNs from around the world, lemmasoft forms and all the homemade VNs (programs like twine), Mobile VNs
• Would like to create a website that presents all of this information in an interactive and organized way, including an interactive timeline and maybe an archive of less sketchy games
• Audience: people who enjoy video games and/or literature and want to see how they can be successfully combined

Deliverables:

• Primary sources (gaming platforms)
• Articles and essays (resources/references)
• Images/screencaps of games and gameplay
• Timeline tool, maybe data analysis as well? (rise in popularity)
• WordPress

 

Timeline:

 

Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8
List of resources	List of articles	Create timeline	Collect images	Complete visualization	Project draft	Final project	presentation
	Project charter	Read all articles	Start implementing wireframe
		Wireframes completed

 

End of Life/Future Plans: As the realm of Visual Novels develops and evolves with the video game industry I’d like to keep the website up to date. If I do end up making an archive I’ll have an option for people to submit titles that aren’t already included, so I would monitor that as well. I’d hope that website and its information would evolve along with the field it represents.
– something to show future employers (maybe)