We made a lot of progress this week! At this week’s client meeting, we presented our game background, game overview, concept art, chapter flowchart, and chapter 1 design. We were eager to hear feedback from our client as we can’t wait to make our story alive in the virtual world. The client responded mostly positively to our design.
Background
The protagonist is an international student at CMU.
The player will experience a day in the life of the protagonist who has problems dealing with stereotype threats and racial microaggression. During the gameplay, the player will do various interactions like solving puzzles and making choices to get to know the story of the protagonist. The ending is tailored by the choices that the player makes.
The transformational goal is to inspire a marginalized group to respond to threats and microaggressions actively. The secondary goal is to raise the awareness of the non-marginalized groups.
Game overview
We initially came up with “good” and “bad” choices and endings. However, the client pointed out that it would be better if we could provide choices that aren’t black and white. All the endings should provide some sense of hope. We agreed. A “bad” ending could be discouraging or even potentially traumatizing to the player. We should also pay more attention to the choices we give to the player and the meaning it conveys. We will definitely playtest our choices later in the semester. That said, we came up with an improved version of the game flow.
We will have a Prologue that introduces the background of the protagonist and have 3 Chapters that take a place in different places at CMU. In each chapter, the protagonist will encounter different threats or microaggressions. We intend to educate the player to respond actively by taking some techniques that we embedded in the game. Based on the player’s actions (whether practicing the techniques or not,) different endings will reveal.
Concept art
The art style we choose is pixel art. There are two main reasons. The first reason was that the player will better relate to the story if he/she doesn’t see the details of the faces. The second reason was our artist felt more confident in this art style, compared to cartoon/sketch which will take lots of effort to draw the details of figures.
Chapter 1 design
Chapter 1 is about a story happens in a lecture hall.
The theme of Racial Microaggression
1. Ascription of Intelligence
Intelligence is ascribed according to racial stereotypes
2. Ridiculed for Accent
Feel ridiculed because of accented speech or language proficiency
Puzzle 1 demo
Our programmer prototyped Puzzle 1 using online assets. We’ll replace our own art assets later. This demo was just to show the interactions and flow of Puzzle 1.
Here, Puzzle 1 represents the process of solving a math problem. After hearing the offensive conversation, the “dark clouds” appear makes the puzzle harder and indicates that the protagonist is affected. In this puzzle, the player doesn’t have the choice to respond to the stereotype threat but only experience bad feelings. However, in Puzzle 2, the player will be able to learn and apply a technique to overcome this issue.
Alright! That’s lots of information. Hope that you are not overwhelmed. Next week is our 1/4 walkaround where we will have a chance to present our current work to the ETC faculty and get their feedback. We are feeling excited to hear about their thoughts about this direction.
Stay tuned and till the next time 🙂
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