VIDEO GAME NARRATIVES IN EXHIBIT DESIGN: THE THESIS OF ANDREY MINTCHEV

Final Project Reflections | Caitlin McCurdy

---

The number of students who choose to do the thesis stream of the MMSt program is considerably smaller than those who choose the exhibition project route. One of these students is Andrey Mintchev, and he very kindly took the time to answer some of my questions about his path to the thesis stream.

His decision to pursue a thesis occurred after taking Velian Pandeliev’s course INF2164H: UX Research and Design for Video Games. He described the class as a study of the positive impact that UX-forward thinking has on elements such as level design and gameplay in video games. He then thought to himself, “Is anyone doing this in museum studies? How awesome would it be if museums felt like videogames?” As he discussed this idea with Prof. Pandeliev and continued learning more about human-computer interactive (HCI) sciences and their research methods, he realized that there wasn’t a particular class on this topic, and that his new conception of an amalgamation of gaming and museology would be best realized in a thesis. 

Courtesy of Andrey Mintchev.

Andrey has a very interesting story about how he came to meet his thesis supervisor, Tony Tang:

“I was waiting for the light to go green on Saint George and Bloor, when I overheard a conversation between two people, who were discussing something about AR. The one guy responded with a “I don’t know Tony, but that sounds interesting” and I immediately assumed that it was Tony Tang. I sheepishly interrupted with a “hi, sorry, but are you Tony Tang? I want to talk to you about turning museums into a VR world”, to which he pleasantly offered up his email.

Andrey then fulfilled his research methods course requirement with a reading course overseen by Prof. Tang, where he was able to make connections between HCI and museology and began to work out his ideas for his thesis. Andrey’s final thesis proposal was the fourth or fifth iteration of his initial idea, and it was at this point that he approached Costis Dallas about being his second reader.

When I asked Andrey for the elevator pitch for the current iteration of his thesis, he was kind enough to give me the short elevator ride pitch, the slightly longer elevator ride pitch, and the elevator ride to the penthouse pitch. Here’s what he said:

“My thesis is on applying videogame level design and narrative design to exhibit design. What I’ve done is record 14 hours of gameplay between five games that boast a compelling narrative, recorded every instance where the story was being conveyed and what the level in that moment looked like, and then produced 598 lines of code to synthesize each screenshot into qualitative data. The idea is to use my synthesized data to identify the best practices for level design and narrative design and apply them to the reinterpretation of an existing museum exhibit. The final deliverable should produce a compelling exhibit that improves on the existing one.”

Courtesy of Andrey Mintchev

This all sounds very fascinating to me, as someone doing an almost entirely theoretical thesis based in historical research and epistemological philosophizing. I’m excited to see the final product of Andrey’s work, I think his research could definitely shed light on how video game practices could innovate our approaches to exhibit design.

Courtesy of Andrey Mintchev

I asked Andrey to give one tip for prospective students considering the thesis stream, and his answer was very insightful.

“There is no right or wrong stream at our school, but if you’ve got this awesome idea, I promise you that our faculty will do everything it can to help [you] walk out of this program with a publication that you’ll be proud of.”

Ultimately, if you have an idea you can’t get out of your head that you’ve brought into the program with you, you can make the thesis stream work for you, and you control the subject, process, and end result of your work, with insight along the way from your very knowledgeable supervisor(s). Andrey also pointed out that this control is fairly unique to the thesis stream, as the final exhibition project is subject to variables like the makeup of your student group and the flexibility of your industry partner. To give Andrey the last word, “Real-talk, it’s the most academically satisfying thing you can do if you hate group work.”