Project start
The first week of building projects fell on the same weekend as Global Game Jam 2019, so we decided to use the theme and the jam for Project 1. The announced theme was “What Home Means to You”. Through discussion with Jack, we both realized we thought of our childhood home, even though we had long since moved away and had our own places. What first came to mind for me was the experience of rearranging furniture over and over (thanks mom). I did some preliminary brainstorming on a game focused around that. However the constraints required me to use existing art assets, and I could not find a suitable backdrop to build a house and furniture. Even if that constraint did not exist, I am not enough of an artist to create the art I would need by myself. I moved on from this idea. The next idea I had was centered around my family watching our favorite movies together. This expanded into the idea of flipping between movies or TV channels, trying to pick something and please everyone. This was the idea I kept.
Originally I built a game in 3D, which I named Family Channel, using all art assets from the Unity asset store. I struggled for days with learning to use the video player, using the UI system, and lots of other technical issues. The technical issues made me struggle to achieve my core game loop, as I simply did not have the skills to solo build was I was trying to achieve. The 3D art assets were fine and certainly more than I could have created on my own, but they resulted in an uncanny valley feel, especially with the video clip playing. Oddly, that latter part was what I had considered to be essential, but made the game feel very strange.
Second round
After several days of fighting with the game, I threw it all out and started over. This time I used 2D assets from The Noun Project. I kept the same core loop of changing the channel, but made took away the visible happiness meters that the previous version used. Instead, I built the game to respond to player input, but without a clear win condition. This shifted the game feel from one of trying to win to participating in the experience. Immediately this felt more like my family. Sure we had likes and dislikes but choosing a movie together was never about winning.
Ultimately I used all Noun Project art and Freesounds audio, with the exception of the audio of movie clips pulled shamelessly from YouTube (hey stealing is literally one of our rules). I used a visual scripter called Fungus. While I did need to consult tutorials to learn some of the functionality I hadn’t used in the past, this significantly sped up my production time. I did have to sacrifice some functionality but I was still able to develop my core loop.
With simple art and only a few interactive objects, I focused on providing feedback- juicy feedback, if you will. I added extra wiggles, sounds, and reactions from the game characters. All of this ended up contributing to the simple and sweet aesthetic that the Noun Project artwork had started. I enjoy sound design, but with so much time spent on the first prototype, I did not have time to edit audio clips to fit. That became an interesting, unintended constraint. I was forced to find audio clips that were already suited to my needs; the biggest challenge here was finding one second clips to use for the character reactions, while not spending so much time searching that I might as well have edited a sound clip.
Emotional response
One entirely unintended result was my emotional response to this entire process. I was excited about the furniture rearranging idea, because I could send it to my mom and that would be hilarious (for me, sorry mom). I felt fine switching to the TV idea because I could use clips from my family’s favorite media, giving it a nostalgic feel. I was unprepared for how creepy the game would look in 3D, which also made me sad because The Lion King has never looked worse. I got nostalgic playing my family’s favorite films. I was frustrated with the original product, then excited about the final result. It was a ride.
The most significant emotional response was dealing with imposter syndrome. I’ve always worked on teams, only producing one solo digital project which was only for research anyway. I’ve served as lead designer, sound designer, and producer, but never as technical lead. The struggles with developing even a simple project hit me hard, and made me feel like an imposter, even after two years in this program. I felt like a failure as a designer, while still being forced to push ahead to meet the deadline. If I hadn’t had a deliverable due, I would have trashed the whole concept and walked away. However as soon as I switched the project to 2D and was able to tackle my technical issues, those feelings went away. I was excited about my project, and was proud of what I completed. Yes I still need to work at my technical ability, but in the end I still designed and created a good project.
Learning goals
One of the learning goals of this course is to develop a personal design methodology, and perhaps even a design aesthetic. What type of game do I make, and how do I do it? This project showed me that, when left on my own, my methodology is try first, plan later. While that approach can work in some circumstances, like in the quick pace of this course, it’s not a sustainable method when working on a larger project. When I’m conducting research or being the general google-obsessed person I am, I examine many angles and learn as much as I can before proceeding. In a sense, trying first and planning later is a form of that approach; I’m doing research on what will work and what will not by just doing it. Going forward however, I want to develop a more systematic approach. Map out the features I want, and perhaps quickly test those, but wait to develop the idea a little further before building the entire project. With the quick pace of this class, the planning stage may be just a matter of hours, but it’s a system I want to develop.
Another learning goal was to build games within the time frame, constraints, and prompt. I did meet all of these requirements, which gives a small feeling of success. I enjoyed the constraints because they provided structure when creating the initial design, and the prompt gave me a starting point from which to work.
Next steps
Currently the systems in Family Channel are built so that movies affect each character’s happiness variable in a predefined way, but the movie selection is random. I would probably keep this, but add more movies so it’s not the same five repeating. I would also have the movies pause rather than stop and restart, but that was more than I could do in Fungus. I added popcorn for a lighthearted feel, which also boosts the characters’ happiness and can be used to win. I would add wine glasses if the player spent more than a few minutes playing without finishing. I also wanted to make the beginning and end transitions more meaningful. I demoed the game myself, so after playtesting, I may need to make adjustments to show which buttons are actually clickable. Beyond that, I would not change much. The simplicity of this game is ultimately what led me to consider the project finished.
The next topic is “influence” and I have the main mechanic working. I’m debating using The Noun Project again. It would be interesting to have an entire collection of games with art from there at the end of the semester. It would provide a sense of unity (heh) that could be a way to tie the semester-long project together.