Proposal

A video game experience to raise awareness about ocean pollution, designed for children as well as adults of all ages.

Ocean pollution is an incredibly important issue that has significant impact on everyone’s lives. There is a lack of information on this topic, not to mention significant misinformation surrounding ocean garbage.

My game will use scientifically accurate data to represent the pacific garbage patch in a way that shows the true extent of ocean pollution. The player will pilot a boat through a video game representation of the pacific garbage patch that is accurate to size according to scientific data.

Currently the only way that humans have to deal with ocean garbage is simply gathering it all up in large nets, which aside from being grossly underfunded, ignores many other issues such as microplastics, which are too small to be picked up in nets. As such, the player’s goal in the game will be to collect the garbage they come across in the ocean. They will do this in order to navigate to the center of the pacific garbage patch. The closer to the center the player gets, the more dense the garbage will be, blocking their path and forcing them to collect it to open a path.

Any search on ocean pollution and its prevention will likely focus on what you as an individual can do, such as using less disposable plastic and recycling more. However, individual use makes up a miniscule part of ocean pollution compared to the practices of plastic and oil companies. Plastic produced by plastic corporations is specifically designed to prevent decomposition, and it is the fault of these companies that so much plastic ends up in the oceans. These companies that invest huge amounts of money annually into campaigns promoting recycling and eco-friendly practices in order to redirect blame from themselves onto average people. However, the true issue lies with the production of plastic in the first place. To highlight this issue, in the center of the game representation of the pacific garbage patch, a massive factory building will stand on top of an island of trash, spewing garbage out of large openings. The speed of garbage coming out will reflect the scientifically accurate speed of the growth of the pacific garbage patch.

Reading

Kapp defines games as having a number of features. He states that games must have Quantifiable Outcome, in which the actions that a player takes on the game world, and the state required to “win” the game are all clear and visible. However, with my game I’d like to bend this rule a little bit, by minimizing this feeling. I want the player to feel that the impact they’ve made on the game world by collecting trash is miniscule, in order to understand the significance and size of the problem being presented.

Games Played

德国心月在病

Crazy Circus

Sayit

通雅令

Favorite Game: “Sayit”

Mechanics

In this game, players all have a hand of cards. On each card is a unique and whimsical drawing. Players take turns putting down a card, face down, and giving the other players a word to describe their card. Then everybody else picks a card from their own hand that best reflects the word chosen, and puts it face down with the rest. Finally, players vote on which card belonged to the player who chose the word. When it’s not your turn, you get points for guessing the right card and for other people guessing your card. When it is your turn, you get points for people guessing your card, however if everyone guesses your card, then you lose points.

Emergent Gameplay

The added feature of losing points is what adds the most emergent gameplay to “Sayit.” At any stage of the game, you are always trying your best to match word and image. When you are picking your card, you want it to be as close to the word chosen as possible to get the most points. When you are voting on whose card was the original player’s card, you want to be as accurate as possible with your vote to get the most points. However, when it is your turn and you are picking a word for your card, you can no longer be totally obvious, because if everyone knows that card is yours, you will lose points.

Connection to Video Games

This game most resembles video games in its emergent gameplay, because it asks players to consider the position of other players, and not just their own success. On Bartles taxonomy, this appeals to those who like to compete. However, the aesthetic and design of the game also appeal to explorers who get to experience each new card.

• What’s your understanding of Game Mechanics?

The experience of games comes from play. In other words the defining aspect of games is their intractability, so one could define game mechanics as the things that happen in a game when it is played. For example, the interaction that a player has in a game, such as drawing and playing cards or shooting a gun. Game mechanics are the events that happen according to the game’s rules that change the state of the game. Shooting a gun is a game rule – one of the predefined actions a player can take – that changes the state of the game. In card games, the times during which you can draw or play cards is limited according to the rules, and always changes the state of the game. Game mechanics might also apply to things that happen inside the game that follow the game’s rules, but are not necessarily instigated by a player. For example, some video games feature complex physics systems such as flowing water or things that can catch on fire. These systems, which by nature follow the rules of the game, can have dramatic effects on the state of the game without being caused by the player.

• What’s your favorite mechanics? Do you have good examples and bad examples?

My favorite game mechanic is physics. I love the way that despite being complex, physics follows real world laws and is easy to understand by even people who don’t have experience with or knowledge of game rules. For example, platforming games use physics as a main game mechanic. For example a player must make their character jump from platform to platform under the influence of gravity. Good platforming games take advantage of momentum and acceleration. Celeste, a 2018 2D platforming game features a simple jump mechanic and a dash mechanic which allows the character to move a short burst in any direction even in the air. However, chaining jumps and dashes together, the player can pick up speed. Furthermore, in order to move left and right, a player must cancel out the moment they had in the opposite direction. This adds complexity to the simple rules of moving to the sides and falling due to gravity.

Even more complex physics systems such as destruction systems are still easy to understand because they follow real world laws. Take the 2016 Tetris game, Tricky Towers. This game is a novel take on the original block stacking video game, Tetris but with multiple game modes. In all the game modes, though, your towers built out of Tetris shapes are effected by gravity, and will topple over if too much weight is applied to either side, or shapes are not supported. Even though the controls remain exactly the same as the original Tetris, this added complexity of gravity introduces the possibility for many game modes.

Physics are one of the most enjoyable game mechanics to experience and play with, and many of the emergent concepts that arise from it are only possible through computers.

• What’s the future of game mechanics in your opinion?

In Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams explain that because video games are a young medium, the integration of story progression and game mechanics is still being developed. It is true that as games become more complex, more games that exhibit incredible synchronization of these two elements will emerge. However, I disagree that this will improve. I believe many (though not all) video games already feature innovative use of mechanics in collaboration with story. Even in this book, Dormans and Adams reference games that are now decades old which showcase effective storytelling and game mechanics integration. Furthermore, games are by no means a young medium. Video games may be, but games in general have existed for most if not all of human history.

This response contains spoilers for the video game Celeste!

Celeste is a modern indie video game about climbing a mountain made by Matt Makes Games. You play as Madeline, a woman climbing Celeste mountain to prove to herself that she can accomplish her goals. As the game progresses, Madeline struggles with the personal conflicts that led her to try to climb the mountain, but she meets different people who help her along the way. Celeste is a platforming game in a pixelart style, featuring stylized environments and beautiful music. As you explore a haunted hotel, a ruined city, an ancient mirror temple, and occasionally the actual mountain, Celeste’s story unfolds completely naturally and alongside the gameplay. 

Despite Celeste being anything but realistic, Celeste’s gameplay and music design, specifically the way these two are connected, make it immersive. A lot of games use the word “immersive” to describe incredible realism in graphics or gameplay. A game is more “immersive” the harder it is to differentiate from reality. Celeste is immersive in the way that while playing it I am entirely focused on the game itself.

Celeste is a challenging game and the challenge is designed expertly so that it increases in difficulty and remains challenging throughout. In this way the game keeps my attention. Even as I die many times on the same screen trying to overcome one obstacle, the game keeps my attention. In fact, it is this repetitive gameplay that becomes very entrancing to play. Madeline respawns instantly when you mess up, so there’s no time spent waiting between attempts. Each stage has its own sense of progression as you die further and further in, and eventually complete it without mistakes.

One thing that allows me to maintain my focus and not get frustrated through this process, (which can sometimes be many minutes per challenge,) is the music. Each of the tracks for the game areas are over seven minutes long, which prevents repetition. In addition, the music is designed in parts so that it develops along with the stage. As you progress, the music changes, grows, and relaxes along with what you are doing. In the second main zone, Madeline’s dream sequence, the music starts off slow and sparse, but builds up as you activate a trigger which changes the entire level, opening up many new paths. Then an entirely new more intense stage of the music picks up when you enter a chase sequence at the end. Not to mention, each of these sections of music also have their own developments that the player controls based on their progress through the zone.

The two elements of difficulty and music create a zen-like experience when playing. Finally, the story is told expertly in between these challenging gameplay stages. It relaxes the player between ever increasing challenge, but it also takes advantage of the focus achieved through the zen that the gameplay puts the player into to make the player invested in the story. In this way, the story simultaneously serves as the goal for the player to reach as they keep playing, and also becomes more desirable because of the focus the player brings from the gameplay. As a 2D platforming game which will struggle more to synchronize its story with its gameplay, Celeste is unique in the way that both story and gameplay are tightly connected.