The theme for our final projects was encapsulated in a single word – “disruption”. I believe this concept fits perfectly with the overall conceptual basis of our class, as games and play experience are inherently disruptive of our daily lives, environment and personal state of mind. The play experience essentially provides the individual with an opportunity to escape the default in order to express, enjoy and explore.
For this assignment, I have joined Claudia and Dogukan to create a disruptive game experience of our own design. Our final product is a 2D decision-making game of an educational purpose. We were originally inspired by Brenda Romero’s “Train” boardgame, in which players move the trains until, in the end, they realize that they have been transporting Jewish people to concentration games all throughout the process. We were inspired by this disruption of people’s expectation for what a game is conventionally perceived to be – a joyful activity, a recreational experience. We wanted to create a digital decision-making game that would similarly have a real historical event in the center of its plot that would be disrupted by own perspective on it and by the input of the player. We envisioned that the player would be forced to make different decisions for the main character that may seem rational and beneficial, but when he/she would reach the end, the story would reveal its true narrative. We wanted to focus on a real traumatizing historical event for educational purposes and also in order to raise awareness about how small innocent decisions can contribute to something more global than just an individual’s life and that may not be a positive thing at all.
Our game “The Choice” is an educational play experience that is centered around the Homestead Act of the US government in the 19th century that resulted in massive displacement of Native Americans. As Americans were offered by their government to move out west to establish and settle in new states, they have taken away the land that belonged to the native population. The consequences were devastating for the indigenous community, and we wanted to raise awareness about this issue which is often disregarded in the shadow of American Manifest Destiny.
“The Choice” is a short narrative game that offers the player an opportunity to imagine as if he/she is in control of the life of John, our main character. The story begins in John’s early childhood and introduces the player to his background. The plot unfolds into a vague biography of John as he becomes an adult and has to make some life-changing decisions. The character eventually makes the decision to take a risk of moving to the West with his significant other to start a new life in a new land full of possibilities. The innocent story of John and Sophia clashes with its historical background when John encounters “neighbors” at night who claim that he has stolen their home. The game ends with several slides that provide a lot of information on the Homestead Act and its lasting consequences.
To be honest, we have struggled for a long time as a team to agree on the idea. Initially, we have discussed completely different concepts and game experiences before we agreed on making “The Choice” game. The game-making process has forced us all to collaborate with our stronger sides and skills and to make certain sacrifices (in terms of our personal preferences) in order to collectively agree on the same story, concept, and feeling that we wanted to convey. However, sacrifices come essentially to any team-working process.
In terms of design and production, we chose to prioritize concept over form. The technological aspects behind the game are fairly simple. We have used Adobe Animate to code our short branching story, which eventually finishes with only one possible outcome no matter the choices that the player makes throughout the plot. Because of its simplicity, the game is very intuitive and easy to interpret. The story has been divided into small scenes in order to create a rather slow game flow for the user to take time when making decisions and to pay attention to the ending, in which we provide a lot of historical information. I have personally put a lot of time and thought into the visual aesthetics of our game. I have used Adobe Photoshop to create illustrations for the story. Although creating over 50 different illustrations was quite time-consuming, I did enjoy this creative process a lot. I tried my best to create a coherent system of design aesthetics that would cater to the effect that we originally envisioned. For the visuals, I have used museums’ and art galleries’ archives (along with some other open source collections) on 19th century America to stay as historically accurate as possible. Also, I have tried to create a design system that would have a general old book-ish feeling to it.
Having our classmates playtest our game has provided us with really valuable feedback. The majority of their suggestions and comments were on our minds already, however, we had to stay realistic of our capabilities and the upcoming deadline. Nevertheless, the playtesting has given us a lot of useful information to consider in the future when it comes to optimizing user experience. I personally think it would have been great to have a more extensive plot with a more complicated branching of the story. There are many other suggestions that we have received, but overall, I feel pleased with our final game because it does accomplish our main goal of educating and raising awareness. Our goal was not to make the player feel guilty of guiding the character that has mildly contributed to such a terrible event in the American history, but rather to consider how small decisions of ordinary men that can seem so insignificant may actually have a much larger impact in the long-term.
Earlier this semester, we have talked about how games are artifacts and I believe that our “The Choice” game fits this concept perfectly in so many ways. Not only that it is an artifact our team’s creative collaboration but also an artifact of a real-life event that reflects upon a traumatic chapter of human history. Lastly, this game is an artifact of our class, because it was the final project that symbolized the end of this semester and all the things that we had a chance to learn and discover throughout.
The link to download the game is here.