Category: Collaborative Unit

We have spent the whole previous week working on the collaborative unit, so I was pretty much exhausted to work on another game.

So, up to this point I have one cut-scene and two mini games ready: music and maze one. I didn’t record it in action as it was quite easy to make and didn’t have any issues with it. The idea is to the to the end of the “maze” in 10 seconds. This is the plot game just before the climax scene, so it should be quite intense. I’ve set up a 10 seconds timer to make a rushed and anxious feeling as from cat’s point of view those are final meters till he’ll finally meet his friend. But as soon as he reashes border barriers, they close, not letting him in.

Somewhy I preferred to go from end to beginning in creating scenes, so the next one according to my plan was the ragdoll, where you have to drag the cat to a trigger point. And this was pain.

There was a huge issue with using Unity physics in this one. I sliced the cat asset into body parts and used hinge joints to connect them according to the tutorial I was following. And it was all fine when I dragged it in the scene window. It looked perfect with falling to the ground nice and helplessly, and was hanging quite naturally when I dragged him by torso element. But it all went wrong as soon as I added the drag script to it. Actually it dragged the ragdoll when the game played, but physics was going crazy, which spoilt everything I was trying to implement:

A day later I made it somewhat work. At least I could drag it by a collider over his body and the body behaved as needed. But still two issues are left. First is he is not falling to the ground anymore, though each part had ridgidbogy, gravity and mass. Second, the collider that allows to drag him moves away upward as long as you drag, and when you release it, you won’t be able to reach it anymore.

I have spent hours and days to solve all these issues, but eventually decided to leave it at that. At least the idea works for now and I’m already afraid to spoil everything I’ve achieved so far. So this area will be highly bugged, unfortunately, and I will make a warning in read me file as well as a reload button in case something goes completely wrong with the scene so that players can proceed further. At least if player doesn’t release mouse button, it all works well enough. That’s why it is the shortest scene in the whole game. But I couldn’t omit or remake it as it was very important for the gameplay and narrative connection.

I’m very exhausted by that point and the best choice would be just to proceed further in development, or I’m risking getting stuck with one issue and not completing the main body of the game.

This week Trini continued our research part with case studies of several satyrical games

We are still working on that and if needed, will make a deeper analysis, depending on the information we need further.

Also we did some brainstorming and came up with 3 ideas:

1. “Dress your character”: the game is reacting in a fun (or sometimes creepy?) way for the “wrong” choices of clothes and other stuff. In the end the result tells you to what extent you’re a conformist or smth like that.
2. “The Challenge”: the goal is to get to the counter while taking a range of things you need. But the space in the basket is limited to just one type per item. The robot will try to make you take the things it offers. If you bump into the robot, the item slot will be taken by his item and you’ll have to move towards another one. In the end you can see how much your stuff you managed to save.
3. “Click here to continue playing” Player tries to click the ‘play’ button on the game (or a button or something), but is swarmed by fake ‘advertisements’ popping up saying that they will help them, or with real stuff that advertisements say like “click here to lose 50 pounds” or something,  they have to close out all the x’s (which are tiny). There is a hidden timer that will show you in the end how distracted you got from your goal? Gets faster and faster

For now we have chosen the second option because it offers the challenge element and will communicate the idea of struggle with manipulative ads not only via visual cues, but with the mechanics itself. I feel that the game will be stronger if the message is supported by the gameplay as we have established in the literature overview. Thus elements of other idea options, like popping out adds, can be incorporeted in the main gameplay to emphasize the main message even more and make the experience more annoying.

Having decided on the main idea canvas we have distributed the roles. Trini will do the coding while I am responsible for overal style and assets. Trini is already doing some coding tests. I am experimenting on art styles from which we would choose the one to develop further. As style references we have a top down pixel option

and a more smooth one like in Dumb ways to die. This is still in progress.

For this unit we decided to cooperate with Trini again and choose the brief about adapting a comic strip from the New Yorker. This week we decided to start with research and literature review. While I’m doing theoretical research on satire, she is doing several ca\se studies on humoristic and satirical games.

Satire in games design

Since the topic of our collaborative project is comic strips in the New Yorker, after researching and analysing several of them we noticed that quite a significant amount is based not only basic humour, but includes an element of satire. We decided that this is an interesting, but underrated element withing games design, so it would be interesting to make some research within this area to implement further in the game.

Theoretical part of the research includes answering the questions of what is a satire, what is satire in games specifically and if it has any distinguishing features within this medium. Practical part includes analysis of several case studies, e.g. games with a noticeable satire component and, finally, analysis of the comic strip of our choice to be transformed into a satirical video game.

We will highlight the general definition of satire briefly as it is not our main question in focus. All researchers of satire agree on the position that it is hardly possible to make a solid definition of satire as arguments on its essential features vary greatly from author to author. Declerq (2018) mentions that there’s even  consensus that satire has no essential features. [p. 321] Feinberg (1967), for example, gives a very broad understanding of satire as something that “pretends to be something other than what it really is”. [p.3] But like the majority of scholars still mentions 1 main feature (that we can consider as essential, but opinions vary) – criticism of something. In most cases it comes together with humour, but the amount of it varies greatly and even its necessity in a work to be considered as satirical is still debatable. For the purposes of our research we have chosen Declerq’s definition which matches with the understanding of satire by scholars, who research the topic within game design area. So we would define satire as “a genre with the purpose to critique and entertain (with the qualification that these purposes necessarily interact, although neither is wholly instrumental to the other).”  [p.328]

If we narrow down the area to game design, we can notice that the topic of satire in video games is barely touched. In a relatively old work (2002) Helene Madsen made an attempt to research satire in short flash games like “The Mustafa Game”. She claims that games of such type primarily exist to communicate an idea, rather than entertain. [p.76] She applies Feinberg’s study of classic satirical techniques and demonstrates how non-narrative satirical devices work in these games, and illustrates usage of incongruity, surprise, pretence and superiority along with their subtypes. Thus we think that Madsen didn’t manage to distinguish any particular functions or characteristics of satire that are specific for games. Because according to her conclusions it is not games that bring new aspects to satire, but satire as a classical genre and its techniques “allows computer games to exceed themselves as games” [p.86] But despite that she finishes with an interesting point that urge of “game mastery”, e.g. player’s wish to reach game goal or the best highscore can work as a satire itself, especially is the gameplay was intentionally designed to be hard. “Why spend a lot of time on a game that is meant to be too difficult? This is also part of the joke” [p.86]

Thus, the article points out several satiric techniques proven to exist and work in games. For our project we now have some understanding of which techniques can make our game work both as satirical and humoristic. The best techniques so far are parody and superiority since we will be highly likely to touch upon social satire. A deeper look into Feinberg’s study suggested even more relevant techniques such as reductor ad absurdum, caricature, unexpected honesty and symbols. [3, pp. 101-198] Together with that worth thinking about if we could make the gameplay itself work as a satirical element.  

Hence, we will focus on the recent article by Caseli et al (2020) who consider games as a new means to express satire and try to distinguish new features of it, relevant particularly to the game medium. Their main definition is identical to Declerq’s, where they focus on 2 key elements – critical intent and entertaining purpose. So they claim, that “as long as a discourse or narrative necessarily sets out to entertain and critique some state of affairs via the use of win, derision, irony parody and so on, it could be understood as satirical” [p.4] What they notice, however, in terms of novelty in understanding satire in such a new medium in games, is that it acquired a new feature – playfulness, which means a viewer or player being involved into it instead of being a silent observer [p.3]. Based on the theory of procedural rhetoric (introduced by I. Bogost) they state that games “can be satirical due to their procedural rhetoric”, e.g. because game designer made it work as a satirical artefact, but at the same time “satire can exist only during the players’ appropriation of that rhetoric while playing” [p.5] In other words despite game rules or other game elements are designed to express satire, the game can’t be considered satirical if player themselves doesn’t understand it as satirical. In addition, worth mentioning is that in games often “satire is ultimately context-relative”, which means players must know or recognise some historical or cultural facts on the game theme.

Caseli’s ideas in combination with game components, identified by Treanor et al were developed in a practical way by Schellekens et al (2020), where they create and analyse satirical game design on a board game of their own “Construction BOOM!”. Their main idea is based on defining 2 groups of game components: operational elements (like goals, mechanics, performance etc.) and interpreted components (like dynamics, theme, aesthetics). The evidence provided profs that satire must be present in both groups of elements, but at the same time “operational elements on their own don’t provide sufficient information to players for them to reach conclusion on the game’s satiric intent”. It means that “operational elements can reinforce satirical elements, but are unable to communicate the message on their own” [p.2] Schellekens et al illustrate every element from both groups from the perspective of satire functioning and also mention an important role of paraludic components (such as instruction videos, packaging) which can provide “further elucidation of the satiric intent” [p.9] This can be pointed out as another new feature of satire with its ability to go beyond the “text” it originates from.  

We found the two latter sources as the most relevant for now. Caseli stresses on the idea of balance between the 2 key features of game satire and advices that “one way of ensuring that critique is not overshadowed by entertainment is to bring the designers’ intention into the foreground to reduce the possible variations that could occur in the process of their interference” [1, p.6]. With practical approach of Schellekens we could define more carefully via which game elements we are attempting to express satire and if our gameplay elements cooperate with interpreted components and successfully communicate satirical intent.  

Sourses:

1. Caselli, Stefano & Bonello, Krista & Bonello Rutter Giappone, Krista & Schellekens, Jasper & Gualeni, Stefano. (2020) Satire at Play A Game Studies Approach to Satire. DOI: 10.1145/3402942.3403007.
2. Dieter Declercq. (2018) A Definition of Satire (And Why a Definition Matters). The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76, 3 (2018), 319–330.
3. Feinberg, L. Introduction to Satire. The Iowa State University Press, Ames Iowa, 1967, 101-42, 176, 205, 143-75, 206-75.
4. Helene Madsen and Johansson Troels Degn. (2002)  Gameplay Rhetoric: A Study of the Construction of Satirical and Associational Meaning in Short Computer Games for the WWW. In Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. Tampere University Press. Available at: http: //www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/05164.20160.pdf (Accessed: 14.02.2021).
5. Jasper Schellekens, Stefano Caselli, Stefano Gualeni, and Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone. (2020) Satirical Game Design: The case of the Boardgame Construction BOOM!. In In the Proceedings of The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. FDG. Available at: file:///C:/Users/ValeryCrow/OneDrive/Desktop/ACM_Style_Construction_BOOM__Pre_Print_2col_Version__.pdf (Accessed: 14.02.2021).