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I wish for friends.

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palacio itamaraty, brasilia, 2015

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Necessity is the Mother of Invention... (Creative Exercise 07)

...but iteration is its midwife. Hello Friend. I’ve been busy again, this time creating prototypes. I’ve opted to abandon Twine outright and refocus my efforts through a new medium--- Powerpoint. Yes, I know, very weird. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve created two prototypes so far and conducted three impromptu playtests / evaluative interviews. Here’s what I’ve learned....

Interview Subject: Adam [REDACTED]

Age: 29

Three (or more) Interesting Things:

Enjoyed the effect of the CRTV Monitor background.

Initially confused re: the distinction between characters communicated through colored text. Suggests it would help if there was an early question that would help player’s identify who *they* are versus who the *other character* is.

Text animation needs to be faster. Increase speed to ‘0.75’

It would be helpful if there was a login screen at the begin of the game, to help players be immersed immediately.

Three Questions:

How did you come up with this?

Why is Hollis *specifically* assigned to interview the subject

When’s the game going to be finished?

Interview Subject: Nezar [REDACTED] Age: 24

Three (or more) Interesting Things:

Enjoyed the story, liked the characters

Looks like something they would play in their spare-time

Loves the look of the game (“the background and music was cool”)

Three Questions:

How did the Americans first obtain the subject?

How did you make the CRTV background?

What were your influences in writing the story / characters?

Interview Subject: Nick [REDACTED] Age: 27

Three (or more) Interesting Things:

Things I liked— The overall narrative, the mythos of trying to decipher who or what the subject is.

“I would want more of the musings between the two, where you're less learning about the characters and the universe itself.”

I like how the prose allows the player to make multiple different interpretations of the relationship and history between the two characters.

Text should be faster, first line should show up automatically, uneven animations, console font is illegible in some parts (change it), trouble who was who at first

Get rid of the exposition, fold into the narrative itself

Three Questions:

What is Hollis' purpose outside of being assigned this assignment? Why would it matter for him?

What is the subject? Want to keep playing

Why this game?

All in all, a successful trial run. My classmates appear to enjoy what they’ve seen of it too. All of this will factor into the final iteration. ———————————————————————————————————– That’s all for now. Talk again soon. . . . > Signing off.

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How We Spend Our Days is, Of Course... (Creative Exercise 06)

...how we spend our lives. Hello Friend.  I’ve been busy, mostly just wrapping my head around Twine prototyping. I’m strongly considering abandoning the platform altogether and going a different way. Anyway, what I’ve been up to? Thanks for asking, here’s a detailed peek into my life for the past week...

October 31st 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________

• Work on prototype 1 for 'Creative Process' Personal Project • Work on visualization '1' (of 3) of commute times for 'Visual Thinking • Touch base w/ Sean re: ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ interview w/ ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ & ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ • Draft up update post for 'Life-cycle of a Software Object' Tumblr • Drop off shirts at the dry cleaners • Do laundry • Watch ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ for review

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________

• I will actually drop of my shirts the dry cleaners today • I will actually do my laundry

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

I made contact and sent over my interview questions to ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ and ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ ⬛  without incident. Now I have to wait a day or two to get back to me with answers.

I did my laundry and dropped off my dry cleaning at the cleaners! Got lunch while I was out, so it was productive.

Ended the day by watching ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ . Took some notes and blocked out ideas for my review due first week of December.

I worked on creating graphics for my prototype in Photoshop. Didn't complete my first but I made it 1/3 of the way through.

Neglected my visualization work and drafting my update for the blog. I must work on this!!!

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

I learned I need to start earlier in the day if I'm going to use my momentum to get the most done for the rest of the day. I need to start a little of everything in the morning, that way, I won't be paralyzed by having nothing done by the middle of the day. I will try this tomorrow for my prototypes, blog post, and visualizations.

November 1st 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________

• Work on prototype 1 for 'Creative Process' Personal Project • Work on visualization '1' (of 3) of commute times for 'Visual Thinking' • Draft up update post for 'Life-cycle of a Software Object' Tumblr

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________

• Finish prototype 1 for 'Creative Process' • Finish visualization '1' • publish a post on 'Life-cycle of a Software Object'

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

No— I got distracted and didn't get nearly enough work done as I needed to. Found my debit card. Drafted up a blog post for the tumblr, posting tomorrow morning. Did the reading for creative process, drafting up my response/question and posting tomorrow morning.

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

I learned I need to manage my time more efficiently so I can get my work done faster.

November 2nd 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________

Start on visualization #1 Start on Prototype #1

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________

Start on visualization #1 Start on Prototype #1

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

Yes.

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

Designing the CRT background for the Prototype was fun— there’s a lot you can learn about Photoshop (and PowerPoint, for that matter) on YouTube. Still need to hammer out some details with the visualization, Tableau’s been acting up lately. Maybe switch over to Excel?

November 3rd 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________

Take Mom out for breakfast Work on other prototypes. Work on other visualizations.

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________

Finish two visualizations today. Make headway on the second prototype.

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

Yes.

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

I learned to save my project frequently, or else powerpoint will periodically explode and erase all my work. Switching over to Excel helped tremendously for my visualization project. Really happy with how progress is going with that. I should be able to submit it finally if everything goes as planned.

November 4th 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________ Apply sound effects and visual cues to my prototypes Circle back with ⬛ ⬛ ⬛ and  ⬛ ⬛ ⬛  re: Interview questions Submit visualization assignment to D2L

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________ Creating a metatext branching choice adventure game in PowerPoint is enough of a challenge in and off itself.

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

Yup.

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

How to make an audio file play over multiple PowerPoint slides and create a non-linear succession of slides within PowerPoint.

November 5th 2018

AM - 1. What are my goals today? _______________________ Go to class. Go over visualization assignments. Study for Visualization final exam. Tune up prototypes.

AM - 2. How will I challenge myself today? _________________________ N/A

PM - 1. Did I reach my goals today? ___________________________

Yes.

PM - 2. What have I learned today? ___________________________

I learned I have to do a presentation assignment for my visualization course that is not graded and has no bearing on the class in addition to another presentation assignment that is worth more points than any other previous individual assignment up to date in this class. Yay.

Typically I only keep a daily calendar when it comes to keeping an eye on deadlines for class projects and freelance assignments. Reflection and Evaluation don’t typically make their way into those kinds of notes, so doing this assignment was an elucidating experience. I’ve always thought of myself as an efficient time-manager, but this past week was a struggle between my course load for my two classes, juggling freelance correspondence, and entertaining my mom while she was in town for the weekend. I think I’ll start incorporating evening reflection and evaluation in my daily itinerary planning from now on. I thought this assignment was useful, beyond just motivating me to work on my personal project. ———————————————————————————————————– That’s all for now. Talk again soon. . . . > Signing off. 

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Scatter, Adapt, Remember... (Creative Exercise 05)

Hello Friend. It’s that time again. This time, I went out and did some research to define my audience. Don’t get jealous, it’s only research. Here’s what I learned from my interviews...

Subject: Adam [REDACTED]

Age: 29

Gender: Male

Do you play videogames: “Yes”

How often do you play videogames: “Not as often as I used, but still fairly regularly. I would say at least a couple times a week, ranging from ½ hour a day to 3-4 hours on weekends.”

What types of videogames do you play: “I have a huge backlog of PC games I’ve been trudging through for a couple years, ranging from first-person shooters, RPGs, a couple mobile games that have come out recently. I would say that some of my favorite games are the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind in particular, the Legend of Zelda series, Pokemon since the very first version.”

What characters do you empathize the most with in videogames: “Would games that put you in role count, or only pre-made and written characters? [whichever. What do you look for in an empathetic protagonist]  I tend to gravitate toward games that have a silent protagonist that adapts to the world around them and it kind of forces you to think about the world, as opposed to the character saying and thinking something outside of the player’s agency. In terms of what types of games I really like if you take Morrowind as an example, it was a character that you create that has no voice, no personality, but it’s meant to make you the player live in that world and make your own decisions. And that’s kind of what I prefer and what I gravitate towards as opposed to a character that’s written by one or a team of writers that has a certain goal, personality, and mindset. I do like characters that tend to have a motive or two in the beginning and as the story progresses, they become more flexible and adaptive to circumstance. They tend to be more three-dimensional and fleshed out and not just be condensed to a single sentence about them. As the story progresses, the character can change whether in a good or bad way.”

So one of the gratifications you get from videogames is fleshing out a character’s personality, disposition, and goals yourself as opposed to following a pre-written story: “Yes.”

Tell me your feelings about dialogue trees: “It’s a step in the right direction. I wouldn’t say ‘a necessary evil’, but they’re very limiting and it’s one of the current ways we can create different paths. In terms of games like Mass Effect, that was one of the earliest games I played that offered that, KOTOR also had them. I’m okay with them. Some games deal with it better than others, the only issue I have with them is, by the end of the game, your hundred-plus choices are pretty much moot and the ending usually hinges entirely on one last choice which in turn produces one or three endings. It would be great to see games that, throughout your entire playthrough, you’ve been making choices that factor into a certain ending and not just being left up to one last dialogue option.”

Would you say that one of the pet peeves of dialogue trees is that when you pick a certain option, the character does not say exactly what was listed?: “I hate that. I don’t know why, but I almost feel duped. Sometimes the character will say either the exact opposite or be tonally way off the mark. Sometimes I might want an angry reply and instead the character is mildly sarcastic. I think it would interesting if the emotion of the response was listed alongside the option in brackets like, [Angry] blah-blah-blah or [Sarcastic] blah-blah-blah.”

Let’s switch gears. Who are some of your favorite videogame villains?: “I really liked Bioshock’s villain. The game itself was a fantastic playthrough. The villain in the end, besides the final fight which was tacked-on, was memorable. His character was nicely portrayed and had a good twist. It was satisfying, you didn’t really see it coming but it made sense and it hit you emotionally when things started to unravel. It helped with the entire setting and worldbuilding of that game. If we go back to KOTOR, which is Knights of the Old Republic, that had an interesting take on the villain because in a way, if you play the game you realize towards the end that a lot of the people in the world that your playing through talk about this so-called villain and you feel like he’s going to be coming up towards the end of the game. And then it turns out to be you who is the villain, through a series of flashbacks and cutscenes. There’s also a partner who you have to fight as the final villain, but that was definitely an interesting portrayal. That was a character that didn’t have much spoken dialogue but had a dialogue tree,  the character you made did have a personality. You resonated with that character because you were playing them, inhabiting them, and felt immersed in that world. You made choices that affected your playthrough, sometimes pretty significantly, often to the point of other characters could possibly die due to your actions. So there were heavy choices, and then to turn around and find out you were the cause of so much misery and destruction in the past was pretty cool. It prompted introspection. I found myself trying to reconcile that new information into my playstyle. I tend to play through as though I was the character, I make pretty moderate decisions. So when that happened, I felt pretty bad about that character’s past actions and place in the larger story. Actions that were totally independent of my own but nonetheless a part of my characters.

What are the characteristics you find most memorable in a villain?: “I like to see villains who, to an extent, succeed in their goals. I think that it creates more impetus for action and motivates me to keep playing. Every villain talks about their goals, what they would like to do, but to see them talk about it, attempt it, and succeed in doing it raises the stakes. It definitely encourages me to keep going. Villains with a gray background, moral ambiguity. That’s what I remember the most about my favorite villains.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Subject: Nezar [REDACTED]

Age: 24

Gender: Male

Do you play videogames: “Yes I do.”

How often do you play videogames: “I almost play daily, like an hour and a half to two hours a day casually. In a week, 10 hours or around there.”

What kinds of games do you like to play: “Story-driven games. The Last of Us, Legend of Zelda, Mario, obviously. The last good game I’ve played is the newest Spiderman game. Adventure games are my favorite.”

Describe to me your favorite protagonist in a videogame: “I want to say Joel, the guy from the Last of Us. A dark, gritty guy who doesn’t care about anything until he meets this young girl and does everything in his power to keep her safe. Goes from being selfish to being extremely selfish, but for obstensibly a “good” reason. I could empathize with him even though I didn’t entirely agree with him.”

What are some of the most memorable villains in videogames for you: “The most memorable one recently is the guy from the newest God of War, Baldur. He’s evil, but he wants to die and he can’t because he’s immortal. So, evil with a hint of insanity. I would say he’s empathetic. He can’t feel anything so he stops caring about everything. The best of intentions come back to haunt him. I think being relatable in important in a good villain. Madness for the sake of madness is unrelatable. A cause, maybe they’re doing it for a certain reason. A “greater good” situation. Like Thanos, to some degree I understand him but I don’t agree with him. That dimension is important in a good villain.”

What do you think about dialogue systems in videogames: “They’re okay. What I like about them is that it gives players control over a story in a certain direction, but they need to be updated. I think there needs to be more story, more material. I think it’s important the description of dialogue in a choice resembles what is actually said.”

What do you look for in a good story: “Just, a good story? Development of the main character. Recognizable arcs, different thought processes, the world reacting to them and them reacting to the world. Having that reflected is important.”

From these interviews, I was able to generate a sample of branch hypertext case examples in Twine of the conversation system I would like to implement in my person project. Here are a few of those examples...

Default Dialogue Tree

Contextual Dialogue Sub-Menu

Angry Prompt

Mischievous Prompt

Seductive Prompt

The three main takeaways I came away with from the interviews I conducted last week were that, in order to create an engaging hypertext fiction game, I need to write a game that affords some measure of player agency and self-definition, provide more story options that afford context and nuance to player’s experience, and incorporate that into format that can be played in under a half-hour. In response to this, I came up with an idea for a system of contextual modifiers would be prompted by select dialogue choice options throughout the game. These modifiers would be color-coded and, when selected, would modify the text of a given dialogue chose in ways that would allow the player to inject their own nuances into the pre-written disposition of the game’s protagonist. Examples of such modifiers are “anger”, “seduction”, and “mischief.” The secondary appeal of these modifiers is that these individual choices would be collated and factor into the type of endings afforded to the player by the end of the game. For example, Players that demonstrated a “sarcastic” or “angry” disposition throughout the play-through would be given endings which reflected those dispositions. I think that this would be a great way of ameliorate the concerns for more player agency and more story content, while also offering more content to adequately fill the space of a half-hour playtime. ———————————————————————————————————– That’s all for now. Talk again soon. . . .

> Signing off.

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Everything is a Remix (Creative Exercise 04)

Hello Friend, I’ve missed you. It’s been awhile since my inaugural update, what with my being so busy this quarter. But we can pick things up again, just like it was yesterday. --- Following my creative lineage presentation, I was tasked with taking one of the key inspirations for my own project and transforming it in whichever meaningful way I chose. Because my personal project is so reliant on the written word, what with it being essentially a choose-your-own-adventure hypertext game and me being such an avowed fan of cerebral science-fiction and horror, I chose to adapt a few chapters of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 Southern Reach Trilogy in Twine, in particular the opening of the trilogy’s first installment— Annihilation.

Twine is an open-source hypertext tool created by developer Chris Klimas in 2009. It is essentially a platform for creating interactive fiction stories, emphasizing the visual structure of hypertext without requiring any previous  knowledge of programming languages that most other game development tools require. It is for this reason why I am not only interested in using Twine for this assignment, but as the primary means of iterating my own personal project.

Creating a hypertext remix of VanderMeer’s prose allowed me to gain a first-hand grasp of the possibilities and inherent limitations afforded through the use of Twine. The platform allows the author to creating scrolling text animation and fade-in prompts, adjust the color of hyperlink prompts, and creating multi-branching scenarios through an intuitive visual board interface. The creative frustrations and setbacks began to manifest when I tried to flex my muscles and get more creative with customizing the preattentive attributes of the text (i.e. size of font, color, animation variation, etc.) and assign different colors to different hyperlink options throughout the work. From these observations, I can surmise that Twine will not be the most appropriate medium for my own personal project. I will explore other options in the future, but for now, this exercise was an edifying experience of “learning through doing.” You can download and play through my short-form twine interpretation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation here.

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That’s it for this update. Check back next time for more. . . . > Signing off.

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Am I a replicant ? от Benjamin Bardou на Vimeo.

https://www.artstation.com/benjaminbardou

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Roberto Aizenberg Dream of the One Sentenced to Death 1955

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First Things First...

...though not necessarily in that order. Hello friend, My name is Toussaint, and this space is dedicated to documenting the development process of my personal project for my Creative Process & Strategy course at DePaul University. At the outset of the class, every student is required to choose a topic for their own self-directed project, chosen with the intent of developing and helping one to reflect on their own personal creative process. I chose to create a videogame, more specifically a text-based adventure game built in the open-source game engine Twine. Working within the limitations of time and resources alloted to the project’s completion, the premise of this iteration of the game would function as a one-room interrogation sequence, albeit with a few...speculative quirks.

Earlier this quarter, I presented the pitch for my personal project in a “Creative Lineage” presentation for my class. In this post, I’ll lay out the founding questions steering the project, unpack some of the project’s initial inspirations, and elaborate on how those might come to bear on the final release.

The three guiding questions of my personal project are,

How is a short-form text adventure made, from initial concept to final product?

How can a narrative designer illicit horror and suspense solely through a text-based platform?

If a machine were conscious, and capable of “being” a human being, would it want to be?

Naturally, these questions became more abstract as I was working out the initial pitch to convey what it was I was aiming for by the project’s conclusion. A bit ambitious, I know, but I’d prefer aiming high and hitting the mark just below my aspirations than to have had no aspirations at all.

Above is a mind map of the creative influences behind my project. Not all of these are indicative of all of the inspirations of the project, let alone of the project as it exists now, but it was stipulated that we list 12 influences in our presentation as a whole and so here we are.

I’m not going to list off all of them in this post, but I will talk about the initial four and close out with a road map of where I see progress going forward.

ECHO (2017) - ULTRA ULTRA

More than any other influence on this list, Echo is the north star that guides my thinking as to what I want to achieve in my own game. I’ve already written an exhaustive breakdown of the game’s aesthetic, literary, and historical analogs for Heterotopias, but just to sum it up briefly: I love this game. I love Christel C. Graabæk’s writing that seems to channel Jorges Luis Borges by way of Arthur C. Clarke and Ian M. Banks. I love Rose Leslie and Nick Boulton’s turn as En and London, artfully bringing Graabæk’s story to life with pathos and aplomb. I love the intricate lattice work of the Palace’s design, drawing inspirations from the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Tsutomu Nihei, Alexander McQueen, and Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

To quote a character from Ridley Scott’s Alien, “I admire its purity.”

Echo is the platonic ideal of a stealth game pared down to its core. It’s a game that doesn’t so much as wear its influences on its sleeve but stitches them into the very crux of its DNA, transmuting them into a universe of sights and sounds all its own. It’s what happen when a small but remarkably talented team of developers come together to create something that punches higher than anything they’ve ever made before. It is a dark horse in every sense of the word; beautiful, at times unwieldy, and unmistakably a breed all its own.

Austin Kleon says that instead of writing what one “knows,” one should write what one likes. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem once said that, “The best way to complain is to make things.” My way of complaining that there hasn’t been a game that’s inspired me in the way that Echo has is to create one of my own.

EX MACHINA (2014) - Dir. Alex Garland I’m a science-fiction fan, if you couldn’t already tell. I enjoyed Garland’s scripts for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Dredd, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I would enjoy his directorial debut. Ex Machina has everything I like in a good design fiction premise: a compelling core “problem” and a concise cast of strong characters working to figure it out. It also helps that it’s set in an elaborate modernist compound secluded in the forest because hey, I love architecture. What drew me to look at Ex Machina as an inspiration is in the way it unpacks the question of Ava’s artificial Intelligence and its fidelity to human intelligence in very methodical, phase-oriented way. Even the arcs of the story are denoted as ‘sessions’, something I might borrow to implement in my own project. Most of all, the part of Ex Machina that draws my interest the most is when Nathan (Oscar Isaac) is debating with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) about the role of sexuality as prerequisite of consciousness. In particular, this exchange: CALEB: Why did you give her sexuality? An AI doesn’t need a gender. She could have been a grey box. NATHAN sits opposite. NATHAN: Actually, I’m not sure that’s true. Can you think of an example of consciousness, at any level, human or animal, that exists without a sexual dimension? CALEB: They have sexuality as an evolutionary reproductive need. NATHAN: Maybe. Maybe not. What imperative does a grey box have to interact with another grey box? Does consciousness exist without interaction?

A TOOL TO DECEIVE AND SLAUGHTER (2008) - Caleb Larsen

I can’t remember when I first came across Caleb Larsen’s A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, but I know that it stuck with me by dint of its sheer conceptual audacity. In Larsen’s own words, ‘A Tool to Deceive’ is an art installation inspired by Robert Morris’ Box With the Sound of Its Own Making and Jean Baudrillard’s criticism of the role of art auctions in the political economy of art. An acrylic cube equipped with an internet connection with custom programming and hardware that is perpetually attempting to auction itself on eBay.

Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself. If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.

I took inspiration from this as an object that derives its value and utility through constant connectivity. What would happen if said object was denied that connectivity and, more importantly, what would it resort to in order to gain it back?

THE HOUSE ABANDON / STORIES UNTOLD (2016) - NO CODE

The House Abandon represents the most direct corollary to what I’m looking to achieve with my project. Developed by Glasgow-based developer NO CODE in 2016 and later remastered and expanded in a stand-alone release titled Stories Untold in 2017, The House Abandon is an interactive horror adventure game that elaborates on the framework of ‘80s text-input adventure games and reinvents the genre with some fiendishly ingenious twists. If you haven’t played it already, I highly recommend it. The House Abandon demonstrates that creating a terrifying text-based adventure game is possible. That is, if you’re able to introduce some auxiliary audio-visual elements to accompany the story. The question is: How can I achieve this without visuals? Or, at least rudimentary visuals that are limited by the scope of what I have available at present? WHAT”S NEXT Going forward, I’ll be looking to narrow in on my target audience, conduct interviews, and refine and adjust the core concept of my project accordingly. Every week, I’ll post a status update of where I am in the project, whether it be new developments, occasional pain points and frustrations, or general musings. I’ll also be using this space as an vision board of sorts. Since I’m a visually-oriented person, I’ll be reposting or posting images or ideas that speak to what I’m looking to achieve and provide ample commentary where I deem it appropriate. That’s it for this inaugural update. Check back next week for more details. . . . > Signing off.

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The best place to start is at the beginning.