Digital Media Studies Research

my sad attempt at a sneech, but this will work fine for my...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:38:50 -0500

my sad attempt at a sneech, but this will work fine for my proto…

Sneech inspired game

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:37:00 -0500

So after a week of trying to come up with some sort of idea based around Dr. Seuss’ “Sneeches”… here’s goes nothing…

Game goal: Keep all of the “sneeches” from passing through the various gates in the gameplay space by stamping them with symbols that do not allow them to pass…

So each gate will have a symbol, and in order to pass through a gate, you must have the corresponding symbol. You stamp the sneeches by clicking on them, with each click cycling through the available symbols… star, x, circle, square for example.

What would be interesting would be to build relationships among the sneeches depending on what stamps they had. Would you have a situation where the star’d sneeches would hoard together? That would be a very bad situation for the player if they found their way to the star gate while you were dealing with another sneech situation.

In order to visualize the success, I want to bring in a mayor/overlord sneech, maybe, that would get angry or stay content based on how many sneeches you’re allowing to get through the gates.

A couple of concerns without having built this out… is the clicking mechanic going to be too easy? Is there a way to make this harder?

Is the relationship thing making it too complicated?

Should I have two types of sneeches… those you want to get through the gates, and those you don’t want to let through? Are two types of sneeches enough (I think at least two might be necessary so I’m able to get my message across…)?

New game ideas

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:29:00 -0500

First idea…

From a first person point of view, your goal is to get to get to the polls to vote. However, along the way you are posed with civics literacy questions. Depending on the avatar you have (this could be chosen, or randomly assigned), these questions will vary or may not even be posed at all. They might be harder or easier depending on your demographic. For example, if you have a character that has dark skin, you may find that you have harder questions, and as you progress (that is if you’re able to), they become more difficult. Conversely, you may find that the questions are very easy, or not asked at all. You find that you are trying to be kept from voting at all, and it’s very hard to win when you’re in this progression.

Ok, my first reaction to my idea is that it seems a little obvious. How do I make this more interesting? Have I thought about the issue completely? How do I tie this into a grassroots movement?

In spite of how interesting or not my initial idea is, there are two things I see happening in this type of game play situation. One, racism is brought to the foreground. Tom Tancredo’s speech in Nashville, and the cheering on of his idea to bring back literacy tests, is just one big example of how strong racism still is in this country. So as far as user experience goals, the player should realize that this is still a huge problem. Obama’s coming into power has just made the pot boil over. Secondly, while this isn’t a primary goal of the game, there is some secondary learning going on with the testing of civics knowledge. In theory, high school students should have an easier time answering the questions that will be posed since they are studying the material according to the cirriculum standards. In addtion to getting a refresher of some of this information, as players progress through the game, they will realize how hard some of these questions they’re being asked are, and why “literacy tests” were such a bad idea to determine whether or not a person should be able to vote. Hopefully they will see how this could be skewed…

Second idea…

From a third person perspective, it’s your job to administer literacy tests to a group of “voters” that you can see from a top level view. Certain “types” of voters gain you points as they make their way to polls, while others subtract from your points. You need to be able to identify who you want to keep out and who you want in. Not sure about the specifics of all this but this idea actually excites me more than the other…

Although the obvious thing to do would to base this soley on skin color, but I’m think that there are some other things that could be embedded into that game, such as voters that look like college students, or those that have a certain dress that makes them look “intellectual”. These, in all actuality, are types of voters that would also potentially need to be supresssed.

The win condition will be dependent on your keeping out the “types” of voters that promote a socialist agenda (as Tancredo put it). So basically you’re playing the bad guy. The goal would be to get the player to recognize the systamtic opression of certain groups of people, and the empowerement of others. By putting the power in the players hands to make these decisions, it’s like giving them direct control of a polarizing situation.

Although I won’t know this until I start working with prototypes of these games, my gut instinct that that the third person point of view might give me more to work with and could potentially be more powerful… but then again, that’s an early judgment based on some weird vision in my head. To be continued…

Oustanding questions...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:17:00 -0500

What is the goal with my final degree project? Well, I’m striving to make a game that focuses on current issue of deepening political polarization in the United States. The idea would be to one, educate my audience about the issue (although some may know this is in fact an issue, they may not have necessarily understand the complexities of the problem, or they may just feel that that’s just the way the country is). Secondly, as with any grassroots effort, the game will need to provide some way to spring people into action, whether that be in game or not. I’ve got a lot to work out…

Audience

Initially, I was inspired to try to capture a middle school audience as the result of a previous game project I worked on, along with my own biases. However, I’ve come to realize that the middle school demographic might not necessarily be appropriate for the subject matter. So I’ve started looking at some state cirriculum standards in Florida, California, Texas, Colorado, and Iowa. To sum it up, I’ve realized that I need to be looking at high school students rather than middle school students, especially if I’m going to be working with local students (Coloradans) to test this out. More about my findings later…

Platform

I really wanted to develop for iPhone/iPod Touch, mostly because at the time I was dreaming up this project I thought it’d be cool, but also because of the large amount of young people who have an iPod Touch. Off the top of my head, almost half of iPod Touch owners were in the 12-17 age range. However, I feel in spite of that, it may limit my reach with this game, and although I’m not counting this out in a future endeavor, I may find that I might just be able to develop my game on the web which could be accessed by mobile devices with web capabilities. What I really think I need to do is concentrate on making a Scratch prototype of the game first, then worry about getting it to the next level with something like the Processing js library, or maybe just Processing itself. I’m not confident that I could get an iPhone game built in time for May 2010, so I figure I need to scale down! If I go the web direction, I have a much better chance at gearing my efforts towards hooking my game in with Twitter or some other form of social media (that is if it fits into the overall message strategy for the game).

Game Content

I think I’ve finally found my inspiration for a single event that is not only close to home, but also recent and encapsulates my issue of polarization. Tom Tancredo gave a speech in Nashville recently where he stated President Barack Obama was elected because of “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English.’” And further that in order to vote, people should be subjected to a civics literacy test. Does this remind anyone of the Jim Crow laws? Although when you think about this objectively, one would think “yea, a person should understand the way things work before they can vote”. But that’s not necessarily how it would play out as we’ve seen in the past. The way this seems to me, it’s incredibly polarizing because it’s aimed at keeping “the cult of multiculturalism” from having a say when it comes time to cast ballots. More about the details of how I will work this into some game ideas…

Goals?

Now that I have an idea for content, this obviously will help flesh out my goals. It’s much easier to envision a game now that I have some content to work with. When you think about this situation with the suggestion of literacy tests to vote, what comes to mind first is the fairness in which these tests are administered. Who gets what questions? Is everybody screened? If not, how will people be selected to screen? I will go into more detail about this in a subsequent post about game ideas…