Author: _Becca___

So I was late, arriving after Prof. Clover let us out of English 167 at 6pm, but I caught the last hour of presentations and discussions.

Not gunna lie, I was so done with last week at that point, so I was feeling just a little salty and difficult to control. I’m so fed up with the current state of affairs in this country and the world because I know how it is all connected to the struggles everyone and I have to overcome to get through our daily lives.

First of all, this image really annoyed me cuz I’m so sick of the sexualization of femme’s pain in video games–it just encourages and contributes to this rape culture that we live in that fetishizes and sexualizes femmes in pain.

One of the speakers, Anne-Marie Schleiner (^Pictured above), mentioned that she’s a video game activist and talked about her new book, The Player’s Power to Change the Game, which is about the gameification of war, and the power that games hold over the player, and the player’s ability to change the game. At first I was hella stoked that she’s also an activist. So I asked her, “How can video games actually aid a revolution? Not reformist “revolution” but an actual revolution that abolishes capitalism. Like can we make games that simulate a militant revolution by the means necessary for an anticapitalist revolution that actually results in the eradication of classism, racism, sexism, homoantagonism, ableism, and other forms of systemic oppression?”

And she responded saying that she believes in non-violence.

What a privelaged thing to say; like of course that shit sounds good in theory but in actual practive non-violence doesn’t work when you’re going up against a capitalist military state system that is the most powerful in the world. I responded by asking her if she knows of any successful revolution in history has ever not been militant (rehtorical question; none have). I’m not advocating violence perse, I advocate for militancy and revolution by the means necessary, which is probably going to come off as violent to some (ignorant) people.

I hope I wasn’t too disrespectful, I wasn’t trying to be, I was just confused and trying to figure out if, and if so, then how video games can aid an anti-capitalist revolution, and if it would be worth it to dedicate my time to developing games like that. It sounds like a good thing to do potentially, if it’s worth the effort. This was an interesting talk and I’m glad I went.

Puddle is published on itch.io! Check it out here:  https://b-payne.itch.io/puddle

I hope it works and people can download it! I actually have not been successful at downloading an playing it off of itch.io, so i think idid it wrong. (T-T) I hope it works at least for Mac users.

Wow video game making and distributing is quite a difficult task, but we did it! Go us! I’m so happy to have this finalized and published! xD

I want to make more poetry games or games that include poems as prizes or rewards for players.

I’m pretty happy with the cinematography of the game, ^  i think it came out nicely.

Also I’m so in awe of everyone else’s work–WOW–so many talented game designers in our class! I wish you all the best over the break and hope to see you all around next quarter! <3

Sorry about the cursor in the .gif I took that like 6 different times and finally got it the perfect length, only to discover that the mouse is front and center. UGH. Whatever, I’m letting it go and hoping it’s not too annoying to other viewers.

Please check out the soundtracks I chose for the three different scenes! They are FREE! The songs are listed below, just follow the link (below the song titles), and were produced by Cleenscreen (AKA Jamendo) on an album called “Meliza.” I fell in love with this instrumental music about a year and a half ago when I discovered it.

Song titles: “01 – Meliza Wake Up,” “03 – Meliza Crying,” and “08 – Meliza Forest.”

Link: https://archive.org/details/jamendo-074871

I took out the particle system because I decided it is too much for this simple game, and takes away from my rainfall mechanic. It is so cool though, I hope to use it for other work in the future!

I was super worried about writing the code that would make the puddle grow this week but it all worked out thanks to the extra lab hours we scheduled this Monday, yay! I’ve never coded before in my life so learning to code this game (and all the games) has been quite the challenge to overcome. But success has been found nonetheless!

So i changed my mind and i actually don’t wanna make this text-based game that deals with my trauma right now.

Instead i’m gunna work on it over the winter break, or at another time when i am feeling stronger to deal with rereading my detailed written accounts of trauma. I have added more scenes to the original prototype but i had to put it down again for a while because it got to be too much for me.

I hope to still combine it with Puddle for a completed text-idle based game of some sort. I think it might keep the name Puddle still. Or combine What The Fuck Why (WTFW) with it.

This game has been difficult to develop mainly because of the content. Also because I do not think that I am prepared to hear critiques about a game that involves my trauma. I am conscerned about taking people’s critiques personally on some level, and that could hurt me more. I am trying not to be disappointed about having to put this text-based game away for a bit because to me completing this game would mark an achievement in my healing process of some sort.

But i know whatever game it becomes will be that fulfilling progress mark for me, and i know that Puddle will come out well without it too.

I have been working on developing the procedural rhetoric game, Puddle, lately. I have been trying to get the spheres to change color, as if they are raindrops falling from the sky and hitting the ground and eventually drying up. As well, I have sounds to insert but haven’t completed that either. Also I need to add a title page and I’d like to have a cool moving banner for that along with the instructions:

You are a small body of water trying to grow,

make connections to other small bodies of water,

though you are stuck, stagnant in your place

eventually other drops of water will come near

and help you grow into a big puddle.

I added a particle system to this. I just need to figure out how to make the particles look like the other water drop objects.

In the end, for a final thought, I drafted a similar poem:

No matter how much or how little you grow,

[Puddle] you will eventually be reabsorbed

into the larger water cycles of the world

reunited with new and old water bodies

in another time and space, a different place.

The game I pitched is called What The Fuck, Why!?!? and I chose this for many reasons: it’s my response to messed up behaviors that people do, it’s my response to this world in general, and specifically it’s how I feel right about now since I’m having a difficult time processing my trauma.

*Content warning: discussion of multiple forms of abuse and assault.*

I chose to make a text-based game that isn’t really meant to be played because I need another way to report what I have survived. I mean that my game is meant for people who don’t seem to believe me, and/ or undersand my traumatic experiences and how they affect me. Too many times I’ve just wanted to hand someone a file with all of my trauma documented in it and just say, “here, read this, becaues I’m not reliving this again for you,” too many times these people have been friends and family–people I’m forced to be in contact with for various reasons like being stuck seeing them in common spaces. The gameplay is going to be the player flipping though the most traumatic experiences I’ve had. I plan to make a calming procedural rhetoric sub-game within the text-based game that can be played in between the reports of the trauma as a breather. It’ll be me completing Puddle.

After my presentation Prof. LeMieux asked if I’m sure I wanna do this and I’ve thought about this more and I’m less sure about if I want to continue working on this game right now because it has the potential to seriously negatively impact my life if I feel further invalidated by the people who will be playing and critiquing my game. I hadn’t really thought about how people critiquing my game until now, I just really really want to make it, so I think I might just do it on my own when the time feels right and make another game. I’m thinking about just working on completing the procedural rhetoric game I started, or the procedural generation game that I didn’t really get anywhere with 2 weeks ago.

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.

 

Hopefully I get points for honesty because I don’t have a lot of content to discuss. I wasn’t able to finish my project or even get it to a playable place–but at least I have a place to live and that was my top priority this past week. Honestly, I’m having a really difficult time managing my time and staying in school right now. I don’t know how everyone does this life thing when it is so difficult to get enough food, clean water, and sleep for so many of us. Now that I have a secure living situation all I want to do is rest because I feel so burnt out. Somehow I’m going to pull myself out of this shitty place I’ve been stuck in. I have a place to sleep that is safe, so now I can refocus on lining up the tasks I need to complete today, tomorrow, this week, and this quarter. Everything, the game we played in class this week really stood out to me because it is such a fun, silly and calming game. It made me so happy watching it that I was smiling and laughing at the playthrough we were doing in class. I want to make games like that: games that can make anyone’s shitty fucked up day better.

Though “Puddle” is currently unplayable, I think it has a lot of potential to be a therapeutic and relaxing player-less game.

Currently, Puddle looks like the above images and the puddle (the large circle in the middle) can move around, over the other raindrops. When the game is finished the puddle, the player, will be stationary and those raindrops will turn on and off (or make contact with the ground) and when they make contact with the puddle the puddle will grow eventually expanding past the edges of the player’s screen at which point the game will restart.

In order to complete Puddle I’ll need to make a modification so that the FPS controller doesn’t move, and so that the only button the player can control is “R” and when it is pressed it will cause another rain drop to fall (AKA: turn on one of the grey-blue game object spheres at random). I will make an autoplay modification to do all of this and use collision detection to determine when the drops contact the puddle, and transform to increase the size of the puddle as a result of the collision.

Also, I will set the game to music. This instrumental liquid drum n bass album, called Meliza, was published by Cleanscreen on the Internet Arcive in 2010. It has special significance in my life because its message has helped me process my stress and release many tears and fears. Hopefully my game Puddle will too.

As someone who honestly doesn’t have a lot of interest in video games in general, and next to no experience playing video games, this has been quite a challenge for me.

Also, I think game design is a very personal thing for me because it can be a beautiful way to express oneself when other methods fail–as we learned from the Beginner’s Guide. I like that CODA seems to be using game design as a way to process feelings about life. I decided to make a game about the first thing that came to my mind and that was my first day of school worries and one for me is how I’m going to get people to call me by my pronouns. I think it has taken me so long to do the DevLog, at least in part, because I don’t want to discuss this concern of mine because I know some people don’t care and that is really hurtful. My hope was to simulate what it is like for me when introductions on the first day of class don’t include asking what everyone’s pronouns are, and I feel it was pretty successful. IDK. I liked how when Mike played the game and read the first message out loud he backed the player out of the room and fell into the abyss below. I felt that was successful because of the message it conveyed: on some level I feel like I’m falling into an abyss when I realize that I have to stand up for myself or else get ignored.