Revolution, a Metaphor? is an experiment to see how an idle clicker game can represent revolution in the current political climate. I wish I could remember who was discussing how it’s ironic that my game says, “For educational use only,” in the bottom right corner when played. (The screenshots below don’t have it because those were captured in Unity while playtesting the game.)
I started off thinking that the score would represent the total number of people who support anti-capitalist change, and the player would collect contacts and comrades who support an anti-capitalist revolution. Since coding and game development has been such a time consuming challenge for me I spoke to Prof. LeMieux and he suggested modifying his code and game instead of writing and making my own and that saved me time, which I spent on modding the game he made in the tutorial videos this week. I’m still spent 10 hours in the lab this week trying to figure this out, but I need a lot of breaks, so I think the time I actually spent working may have been more like 8-9 hours.
I’d say that as far as how long it takes to find support for revolutionary change, this game works well as a metaphor for how change is slow and tedious. Also, the more people you find who want change, the more people you’ll find who want anti-capitalist revolution, and the more that you’ll find who are willing to fight and give their lives for the change they believe in.
Although there were some successes in this idle clicker game as a metaphor for revolutionary anti-capitalist change in this country, I think that overall it is impossible for any “idle” game to really represent revolutionary change because change is the opposite of idle. A major inconsistency of the game is the score, which is supposed to represent the number of supporters of revolutionary anti-capitalist change, but it would better represent your energy level for recruitment. If I made this change it would show that it is important to rest and regain your strength before going out and making more connections with people and discovering more comrades for anti-capitalist revolutionary change. I would like to modify the game to that there are two scores: your energy level and the number of supporters of revolutionary anti-capitalist change, and I’d keep the messages the same, but add more goals, like getting millions of supporters for a global anti-capitalist revolution to finally win the game.
