As students coming from South America, Africa, and the Middle East, we have witnessed how women are constant subjects of social expectations in different societies. Throughout our childhoods, we heard “jokes” that indicated how “women belong to the kitchen” and we perceived social conventions that implied how “good wives should take good care of the house”. We are aware of the continued efforts of social groups throughout history to fight for more equitable scenarios. While not in every society, the prescribed roles for women have evolved. As such, we created “Up” as a third-person perspective and 2D digital world to reconstruct this evolution of social expectations for females in daily life. Although it was inspired by real changes in society, “Up” generates its own version of reality and offers a framework for immersing in a gameplay experience that allows the navigation from “women in the house” to “women doing whatever they want”.

For us, the evolution of social expectations for women is a way to advance in society, so we decided to build a space that could provide a vertical perspective and convey the feeling of moving “upwards”. Our aim was to create a space that could be subjective in the sense that would not convey a direct message to the audience. However, we wanted to have some clear primary signs of our topic so that the message could not be perceived right away but internally processed and created while and after navigating the space. Therefore, we decided to build four different environments related to “house”, “education”, “work”, and “leisure”, each having specific objects related to the environments. Each was created through the combination of clip art images and art pieces made with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. We used the variation of our backgrounds and objects to give the space an overall random aspect while keeping a logical organization. The environments represent how the perceived roles of women have evolved from housework to “more freedom” to get proper education and thus increasing the possibilities of getting the jobs they want and deciding how or where to spend their free time. Our space does not intend to represent a specific timeframe, but a progress of ideas towards women’s lives. The player represented by a women figure starts in the “house” and can move up, down, or to the sides. We decided not to provide a lot of freedom to move to the sides by narrowing the space so that the player would rather explore it by going up or down. By going down, the player notices that it cannot go outside of the prescribed frame, and by going up the player is exposed to different environments that contain a variety of objects.

“Up” allows the exploration of a space that changes while moving upward. While the behavior between the player and the objects is maintained throughout the experience, each environment changes the type and amount of objects presented as well as the attire of the character. The interaction player-object does not allow the player to either collect or go through them, but rather the player needs to go around them if necessary. This simulates how society usually expects us to perform specific actions. In the case of the evolution of social expectations for women, they changed from being cooking and cleaning to receiving a good education, having a job, and enjoying free time. Also, the evolution also involves the change from a strict to a more lenient set of expectations. This is represented by the number of objects presented in the “kitchen”, which decreases as the player moves from one environment to another.

Throughout the process of building the final working version of the digital world “Up”, we faced several obstacles and limitations related to our little experience with the program “Unity”. For instance, we first wanted to create a completely random game space with a pineapple as a character and no concrete meaning. Our aim was to create a 3D space that could enable a more game-like experience by having a first-person perspective and interaction with Unity assets. Instead, we decided to create a 2D space using our abilities in Adobe programs to create our backgrounds and design our character. However, we -luckily- changed our theme as the desgin process progressed. We started creating our own objects but decided to find them online due to time restrictions, and therefore faced the problem of not having a coherent aspect for our objects. Nevertheless, we tried to turn the restrictions in our favor by creating an overall random space built by different types of images. We used the playtest to make the final arrangements of the space. First, after realizing how the upward movement was not as intuitive as we thought, we restricted the movement of the character to the limits of our backgrounds. We also changed the number and position of objects in the “kitchen” environment to be more cluttered and congested in order to restrict the player’s movement. This shows how in the initial phase of the evolution, society’s expectations were more intense and strict. To accentuate the changes between the environments, we decided to change the character’s attire as well as the facial expressions according to each environment’s topic. Finally, we implemented a fade out in the last environment to display the end of the space or game experience. Overall, we were required to accommodate our expectations according to what we were capable of doing, yet we tried to use different available tools to implement our ideas.

“Up” narrates the evolution of social expectations towards the roles of women from a strict idea of housework to an increased freedom. The space first shows a woman in a white apron facing a window, which might leave the player confused of what comes next. Quickly after performing the first moves, the player realizes there is a world full of house objects related to cooking and cleaning. Can the women collect them? Can she interact with them? By going up and with the help of the camera movement, the player sees that there is more to discover. The player might be frustrated by how the arrangement and behavior of the objects restrict its movement. The appearance of new environments and new objects shows that the space is not uniform and it changes with time. The feelings of the player might also change as the experience progresses as the environments become easier to circulate. What am I supposed to do? The exploration continues until an environment with a beach-like background and few objects. Then, everything fades and the space seems to come to an end. For some, “Up” might make little or no sense, and would be just an interesting experience with no concrete meaning. For others, the space might be a representation of changes in women’s lives in society. As designers, we want to give space for imagination and representation through subjectivity, yet we intend to convey a general message that might have different interpretations. Through its own framework of reality, “Up” tries to show how cultural and social expectations for the roles of women have changed with time and -hopefully- continue to change for the better. “Up” is not a direct picture of the real world, but a fictional world that represents the progress we want to see in it. We hope that “Up” provides an experience that can make players feel how frustrating life for women was and still is, and how easier everything turns when society moves “forward”.

Link to the game: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pum6HXvEpGdrLZ1CfO6BZFbCP-SdU2Of

Yeho, Rowda, And Claudia

Our game, Valley, is a 3D first person simulator. The player is in a mountainous valley and can freely walk around to explore the area. While walking around, the player can collect small red mushrooms growing in small patches in several areas of the valley. We wanted the overall experience of the game to be explorative so we created four different areas within the valley for the player to find while navigating through the valley- a Lily flower patch, a cemetery, a hill with huge mushrooms and a hill with a view of the whole valley. Because of the explorative nature of the space, there is no single objective that needs to be achieved to reach the end. The player can keep walking in the space and discover the mini-areas.

The players starts at the hill with the view. When we started the project,the player started at the other end of the terrain. But we decided to make this change in order to give the player a better idea of the environment that they have landed in. Since a part of the play experience is collecting the mushrooms growing in the valley, we created a small path where the player lands which goes down the hill. This path has a few mushrooms that the player will inevitably collide with. The click sound generated on walking over a mushroom helps the player understand that they can collect these mushrooms. Even though we have created a path through the valley to help guide the player to the various mini-spaces within the valley, we have also placed mushrooms outside this path to encourage the player to explore the space on their own instead of just following the path. So the player has both options- just following the path created and landing on the mini-spaces, and walking through the space without following the path and coming across the mini-spaces gradually.

The four mini-spaces were added after the play-testing session. During the play-test, we only had a mountainous terrain with the player starting at one end and walking through the terrain while collecting mushrooms. The player needed to reach the other end of the terrain to find the hill with huge mushrooms and a view of the game space. However the player was not aware of the hill at the end- it was supposed to be found out through exploration. According to the feedback received, the distance between the start and end points was a lot and walking from one end to the other while just collecting mushrooms with the same environment throughout would become boring after a point and might end up with the player ending the game without even finding the hill with the mushrooms. Therefore, we decided to create a more explorative environment by creating the four mini-spaces that are spread out throughout the valley.

I believe we were able to create an environment where the player would explore the valley and have a pleasant experience while doing so. Even though we did not have the mini-spaces during the play-test session, the player was able to figure out that they can collect the mushrooms and also ended up exploring the valley instead of just following the path which was the goal of our play space.

Valley conveys the narrative of exploring without a definite goal. Throughout the game, the player comes across various instances that could count as the objective but the game as a whole does not have a final goal to be achieved. The only goal is exploring the space. There is also an element of peace and calmness in the game space that is conveyed through sounds like the chirping of birds and a light breeze blowing. This creates a more natural and pleasant environment. There is also an element of mystery since the player has no idea about what to finally achieve or where to go to end the game since there is no end to the game. Seeing how each individual player reacts to the space is interesting.

Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xIWQ7997REO8swUPN8KmjJ9a2NymHEfs?usp=sharing

Overwatch’s wide roster of fighters

Overwatch is a PC game that came out in 2016. It’s a first-person multiplayer team shooter online game, based in a futuristic sci-fi alternate earth setting. In this analysis, I will explore how space affects or is affected by the gameplay of Overwatch and how it is used to create a game world with its own lore, rules, and story.

An alternate passageway in the Volskaya Industries map. Only flier characters can access it.

In every Overwatch game, the players choose from a diverse array of superhero-like characters and are divided into two teams who fight each other over an objective; escort a payload, protect or attack a zone, etc. The matches happen in a set of different maps based on real-life places; a Hollywood movie set, an oasis in Iraq, a city in Egypt, etc. The maps all share certain points in common; there’s a spawn area for each of the two teams, defensive zones where the players can take cover from attacks, and high platforms where the player can observe the game from afar. But they are all constructed differently; some have more high ground than others, some are contained in a building while others are in open space, and all of them have alternate passageways to the objective. Knowledge of how the maps are laid out gives the player many advantages. For example, knowing the location of health packs keeps you alive, and knowing where the secret routes are allow you to sneak up on the enemy team. As I became more familiar with the map, I found myself improving and winning more matches. Moreover, every character moves differently. Some are slower than others, some can fly, and others can use grappling hooks. The player can use this to their advantage, and some maps cater more to certain characters’ strengths than others. For example, the character Pharah has a jetpack which propels her to higher spaces that other players cannot access. Thus, open area maps with lots of high ground suit her well. Maps with long sightlines and windows are more suitable for sniper characters such as Widowmaker. A character with no movement abilities, such as the elderly Ana, cannot access many spaces of the same map. Thus, playstyles and the experience of any space varies depending on who the player plays as.

Blue lines enclose objective points.

One of Overwatch’s strengths is that it is easy to pick up. In addition to the levels’ architecture, there are design elements that make the goals clear to the player. For example, there are glowing blue arrows on the ground that lead the way to your current objective, red arrows line the enemies’ path. Lines that enclose contested areas change color depending on the stage of each game and which team is winning. Furthermore, green silhouettes show the location of your allies. Along with these design elements, the soundscape also changes to cater to player understanding of the current match. For example, voice lines signal the beginning and end of each match, as well as announcing when objectives are lost, won, or changed so that the player can quickly orient themselves as the match progresses. Other sounds that the player will note are footsteps – the most dangerous enemies have the loudest footsteps, and each of the 27 characters have unique footstep sounds. For example, hearing the loud jingling of spurs alert you to the highly dangerous McCree being nearby. However, the pacifist healer Mercy’s high heels make a hardly noticeable clack. Being attuned to these sounds and other graphical elements such as the shadows of ambushing enemies is crucial to winning, as well as making the game very beginning-friendly.

Table set for one at Château Guillard

Overwatch is interesting in the fact that most of the storyline and lore is established outside of the game, through short videos on Youtube, comics and biographies found on the Overwatch official website. However, knowing the whole story requires playing the game, as many of the in-game details, such as character interactions and the design of each map allow for a better, more immersive understanding of the Overwatch universe. During set-up time before matches, characters interact with each other through short voicelines. Some are comedic, some are heart-warming, such as the dialogue between Ana and her daughter Pharah, in which they warn each other to be careful. Others hint at the relationships that exist between characters, such as the hatred between former teammates Soldier 76 and Reaper. The attention to detail put in the environments as well is incredible and can tell a lot about the characters. One of the maps, Château Guillard, is a castle in France that we can infer from flags on the wall and the black widow spider on the window belongs to the French sniper Widowmaker. The single glass of wine placed on a crate in the darkened basement helps to illustrate the lonely, broken character of Widowmaker better than any sentence can. Another map in Egypt contains a small room stocked with Ana’s medical equipment and rifle ammunition. We can infer that this is where she hid during her time pretending to be dead.  The maps are also prone to change according to holidays (Halloween or Christmas decorations) or in-game events: one of the maps was initially a normal airport in Western Africa, until it was attacked by a villain. This event is once again never shown in-game, but the damage caused to the area and signs of a fight – robots smashed against walls, debris, a broken glass case – allow players to make connections.

The attention to detail in game space makes Overwatch a highly immersive, beginner-friendly game with a memorable universe, unparalalled by any other game of its genre.

For our Spatial Writing Analysis I have chosen to play “Microtrip”, which is a simple mobile arcade game. The  character is a white microbe-like blob creature that travels inside what seems to be a live organism. The control of the game is the phone tilt. The microbe goes through a series of obstacles and always keeps traveling down the body tract. The goal of the game is simple and straightforward: the character needs to go as deep as possible. It is a player vs game kind of a play experience, where an individual is challenged by the game design. Its competitive aspect is individual, meaning that the game keeps a personal high score that motivates the player to continue.

The user has to tilt his/her phone to navigate the space and has a choice of collecting white cells that increase the high score and can help when the character’s life is in danger. The traveling experience is complicated by “villain” characters scattered around the path that either harm you or kill you, so the player has to dodge them in order to continue the quest. Those are live creatures that remind me of the black sea urchin; they end the player’s game when you hit them. There are also smaller needle-like obstacles that harm the player, so that the “life” displayed at the top left corner drops. However, the game is also full of beneficial bonuses shaped like pills. Those pills can help the player collect the good white cells as a magnet, make the microbe grow in size and destroy obstacles on the way, allow it to be immune to the villains for a limited amount of time, etc.

It is a procedural game with multiple levels, however, in the process of playing, it feels never-ending due to its challenging nature and minor differences between the levels. Yet I have to admit that each time I started over the layout was different, which makes the game consistently interesting and unpredictable. I personally love the visual design of the Microtrip. Its graphics are really smooth, colors are very pleasant and the sprites are well designed and coordinated into a coherent game aesthetic. The mechanics of the game are rather simple. It has a certain “gravity” feeling to it because of the tilt control, and the way the game layout and space unfold. Microtrip is a smooth down-scroll game. The created space makes the player feel like the microbe blob is falling/floating down the insides of an organism. Although the game only uses x and y axis for character movement, there is also a sense of depth. The background is contrasting with the sprites because of the clarity, contrast, saturation and color (blue on red/red on blue). It also has organ-shaped graphics that are slightly blurred, which expands our understanding of what this space is and does create a feeling of being inside a body. This means that the space accommodates the meaning or, in other words, the “plot” of the game. The fictional world of Microtrip is simply understood by the user because of its associative graphics. The space in this case is essential for understanding the game’s narrative. The shapes, colors and sprite behavior suggest that the game space is actually inside a living body. The game design is imaginary and unrealistic yet it gives just enough of a hint for the player to subconsciously understand the metaphorical interpretation of organs, tissues, cells, etc. in the game space. In Microtrip, one can observe a well-designed parallel between the fictional and the real world.

I don’t think that the perception of time is affecting the play experience much in Microtrip. The game flows smoothly. The speed changes are rare, however, the game certainly feels more rushed and chaotic when the microbe is trapped between a lot of obstacles and dangers. The desire to go as deep as possible is intriguing and addicting. This game aspect may force a passionate player to feel the need to speed up, however, I find the game’s default flow charming as it is. Also, the concept of time is present when the microbe hits one of the needle-like obstacles, and its life is slowly draining. The character will die if the player does not catch some good white cells before the life icon is completely empty. The risk of running out of time gives another twist to the play experience as it provides another rush of adrenaline (in a sense). It contributes to the player’s understanding of the game environment where danger is present and real.

Earlier in the analysis I have used the word “quest” to describe the Microtrip playing experience. However, I doubt my own choice words, since the meaning of a quest implies a certain end to the game. Yet, in Microtrip, the player does not know why the object is traveling down somebody’s organism, what is there in the end of the tract and whether there is an end at all. This endlessness paradoxically makes this game so addicting (for me personally, at least). I definitely recommend this simple arcade game as a pleasant destress activity.

For this project, the main aim of my game was simplicity. The game is very block based, as we can see that everything is designed in a square or rectangular shape. In terms of the theme ëscape”, it quite fits the description because essentially the main aim of the game is to escape from purple “bully” blocks that will kill you upon collision with them. The main character is a small green square that needs to navigate around a red maze and reach a safe spot, which is a yellow square. To move around, you need to press the arrow keys that corresponds to the direction of the keys (left, right, up and down). I chose this particular type of gameplay as it involves a bit of strategic movement in order to avoid the bully blocks, as they move at a faster speed than the actual player. You get 3 lives, and if your 3 lives are up, then the game is over and you need to restart (which involves refreshing the webpage). You are restricted from playing out of bounds, because the maze walls also take away one life from you upon contact. This may contribute to situations in real life because often we find ourselves in negative situations and we need to find ways to avoid the source of negativity without being caught or trapped by the negativity, hence the description of “escape”.

I designed this game based on an earlier game that my brother and I developed as children using a child-friendly game engine. The interface and controls are  similar, but this version is much simpler as it requires more programming in a language that I’m not very familiar with. The design of this game is pretty much based on blocks, squares, and rectangular shaped objects, very much like the older version that we’ve designed. During the process of designing the game, I would save and test the game every time id add a few lines of code, just to make sure that the game was working properly. creating the maze itself was probably the longest process of designing the level, as each wall in the maze required a separate sprite with located on a different position. The speed of the bully blocks were also altered several times to make the game a little more difficult.

Looking back at the game now, I feel quite pleased with it, but at the same time disappointed. I was hoping I could make a few more levels, but that proved to be quite difficult for me. Also, during my latest test of the game, there seems to be an error in the code which prevents the game from actually running, and I wasn’t able to figure out what was causing the bug. Another issue that I felt a little frustrated with was the concept of mobility in the game. Initially, I was hoping I could find the code that would allow the character to move at a constant speed as the player hold down a button, but I was not able to do that. With more time, I probably would have focused on designing more levels and tried to experiment with more sophisticated types of movements and characteristics that each of the sprites could have had.

An artefact is something that is created by a person that can be utilised and interacted with, wether it is digitally or physically. In The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, the author describes an artefact as “not stable”and something that changes over time”. I’d like to think that the game I designed is an artefact in that sense because 9 years ago, the game I designed with my brother had a different interface, different ways of movement, it was more complex and  was inspired by different thing. The game I have to present today is a very toned down version of what my brother and I created, hence, the claim that my game is open for changes, editing, adding and taking away certain aspects and all of that is okay, because I believe that this is how many games (or artefacts) have been treated in the past, and I would love to see many different versions and interpretations of this in the future.

Here is a link to my game 🙂

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1-ogPkq3oWa92GH480UzSTFwCujel9ma4

We have decided to work on a 3D spatial game. Our main ideas so far have been:

-Graphics: Low poly graphics

-Setting: Desert, oasis, volcano

-Character: One player

-Other characters: Friendly snakes and killer rabbits

-Camera: 3rd person following the character

-Plot: You wake up in a desert, thirsty and disoriented. You must explore around, avoid the enemies, and find the oasis inside the volcano.

Arantza and Hatim

Our group decided that we wanted to do a 3D exploration game. We hope that it could be something like escaping from a dungeon or an island or even a more narrative “solve the mystery” type of game with collecting artifacts. Over fall break, we hope to get a more solid plan together!

Need for Speed – Most Wanted

Need for Speed – Most Wanted is a single-player car-racing game. The car-racing in this game, however, is street racing rather than formal track racing. In Need for Speed – Most Wanted, the overall objective of the game is to race as many times as possible and defeat certain racers in order to climb up the hierarchy of racers and become the number 1 racer in the game. The entire game is played solely with cars – there are no human figures in the game. All choices are made when the user drives the car to certain predetermined areas and presses a key to activate a certain response from the game. Owing to the fact that it is a car-racing game, the controls are fairly simple: the player uses the arrow keys to move the car in the directions of the arrow keys and uses the spacebar to handbrake.

This game does well to incorporate real-world aspects into the gameplay and offers an overall feeling of real racing. Despite the fact that the player is well aware that things that are possible in the game are in no way possible in real life, the player at the same time doesn’t feel too disconnected from reality. This is because, the game space was designed to look like a real city, with buildings, roads, street signs, real cars in production, etc. The striking difference is seen in the kinds of interactions that the player has with the elements in the game. The game is designed to encourage reckless driving in the sense that the player needs to drive at a very high speed and in a very dangerous manner (swerving oncoming vehicles, making sharp turns, crashing into other racers) in order to win races. Also, when a player crashes into a building or any immobile object, the game just restarts from where the crash happened and everything is restored whereas in reality, such crashes may have fatal consequences. Also, time is the game is sped up. In the sense that there is regular day and night, but the intervals they last for is drastically shortened. Day and night each last for approximately 30 minutes. However, there is no measure of days, weeks and years simply because it is not relevant to the game. Everything happens in the moment and there is no need to keep track of dates. In fact, the representation of day and night is just present to offer different racing experiences to the player in that when it is night, there is less visibility and so the player has to drive more carefully in order not to crash. Also, races done at night have a slightly higher difficulty for the same reasons.

Altogether, the fabrication of the game space in this manner makes the game more enjoyable to play since it mimics reality to a large extent minus the fatal consequences. This gives the player more room to explore certain stunts like driving off a bridge or over a rump at high speeds just for the thrill of it. Obviously, this is not something that would be done in real life but in the game, the player is able to do it without the need for second-guessing his/her actions.

The game that I’ve played for the “spatial” topic is called “Torchlight II”. It is an 3 dimensional RPG game on steam and takes place in a fantasy world. The story of the game talks about an alchemist who has become corrupt with power, and your playable character, who can be classified as a mage, barbarian, rogue etc. has to defeat the evil driven alchemist. The game is played by using the W A S D arrows to move, the right mouse button to attack/loot, and the left mouse button to use mana attacks (magical power). Looting items allows you to be stronger, faster and more defensive, while killing enemies and beasts gives you more EXP to level up and grow stronger.

The viewpoint of the game can be described as “god’s eye view” but at an angle, allowing the player to view their character as well as enemies, treasures, and different paths that one can take in the map. The space is view is set so that the player will not have a hard time exploring the vast map and world that is created in the game. In the real world, we can look forwards, backwards, up, down and to the sides (first person), but being put into a higher perspective allows the player to look at the world from more than one angle at the same time, making navigation and fighting off dangers a lot easier. Some of the structures in the space resemble those to our real world, for example, mountains, bridges, rivers, even graveyards, but others, such as bosses. Our expectations are challenged in the sense that we never know when to expect surprises such as enemy attacks and random loots. It also challenges us in the sense that while searching for loot, we never know what to expect, because looking into a pile pf bones for example, two similar piles of bones could disperse completely different loots.

Meaning is created in this game through the story line and the characters found across the widespread location of the map. The player can talk to NPCs and interact with the people around the world, and each NPC has a story of their own and information to give to the character to help them continue with the story. eventually, with the help of the NPCs and items, the player will be able to progress through the game and finally defeat the evil alchemist.

The concept of time in this game is similar to that which is in the real world, however, the only alteration to time here would be that it is sped up so that day and night passes through much faster. A day in the game would go by every few minutes. There is no time limit to which the character must abide by in order to finish the game, and time is not exactly counted. It is really only there to tell which enemies shouldbe attacking at what time of day.