Talia’s Supremacy

Talia’s supremacy is a game that has the player make quick decisions that will affect the food distribution to different nations and thereby affecting the equality on the universe. This idea came about from the current world situation of wars and how one decision that may seem small can lead to the world crumbling.

Here is the link to the final game – https://kmalde.itch.io/talias-supremacy

[Don’t read the rest before playing the game]

After playing the game, you must have noticed how collaboration with different nations leads to you winning the game. I am using this game to show the player that when making any critical decision, it is important to be empathetic and understand where different parties head is at. War is not the solution. There is always a resolution.

Evolution of the game and playtests

Initially, the game started out as a simple one choice game with a brief story line.

The following was the story line that was given to the player:

“Cindy McCain is a diplomat, humanitarian, and executive director of the World Food Programme. At the G7 summit, Cindy is calling for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States to at least double their contributions in order to save the lives of over 200 million people who are suffering from famine around the world in countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine etc. However, the United States ambassador is pushing for countries to reduce the funding to the World Food Programme and invest in technology and AI advancement as this would make the process of providing aid and support to countries more efficient. There are over 200 million people who rely on the World Food Programme and by cutting funding, over 80% will lose their lives in the next 5 years and there is no guarantee that new technology will be developed by then – it can be 2 years or 10 years.

Cindy McCain will be choosing arguments that will either get her closer to convincing the US ambassador to agree to doubling contribution and thereby get all other 6 countries to double contribution or the US ambassador reduces contribution and other members follow suit and the lives of 200 million people are at risk.”

The following is the map of how the game was to run:

Here is a picture of the set up of the game and from playtest 1 with Zoe who is also a member of the class. She comes from a background of being a teacher so learning outcome was an important factor for her while she played the game.

In this version of the game, the player would read the story cards which would set up the premise and then choose an option. The outcome of the option was then determined by a dice roll or random pick from cards (folded pieces of paper). When I play tested this version of the game with Zoe, here are something I noticed and feedback I got:

• Zoe didn’t seem excited by the fact that there weren’t more choices to be made and even with the choices being made, the player didn’t have control on the outcome because it was so randomized.
• I also got the feedback that the story wasn’t a fiction – it was too non-fiction. This is when I started thinking more about how I can keep the goal the same but add some excitement through fiction.
• It was too short of a story and not interactive. So it got me thinking about the different ways in which I can expand the choices so that the player feels immersed in the experience.

I then worked on creating the story line to be more descriptive and fiction. The way I did this was by creating different names for the nations and giving it a more authoritarian, monarch like feel. Here is an image of the expansion of the story that I then had a friend (Geeta) who is a software engineer at Salesforce read through it to see if it was engaging.

As Geeta read this story, I saw that she was able to understand what the premise is and seemed excited to learn more of what happens. She gave me feedback around the names feeling complicated. I decided to refine that later on and work on building out choices and a digitizing the IF.

I chose to use twine and here is the game that I created – https://kmalde.itch.io/aurons-divide

In this version, I expanded on the story and gave more details to the characters. I added different choices that the player could take and that would eventually lead to a different outcome. The player is making decisions on behalf of Talia.

I play tested this game with a student in class (I unfortunately don’t remember her name and I am terrible with names). As I tested the game with her, I saw that she kept going back and forth on the story screens in the beginning and it looked like that she was having a bit of a hard time understanding the story. When I asked her at the end of that was the case, she shared that it was just the names – they felt too confusing especially Aeron and Auron (too similar). As she played the game, I saw that within 2-3 minutes she would get to the last outcome. She did play the game 4 times and that showed me that players are interested in seeing where the other choices would lead them too. When she played the first time, she lost and so got motivated to actually win. This helped me understand that once the player is in the game they are interested in solving the crisis. So they are engaged. However, the feedback I received was that it would be nice to have more choices and that some routes/options didn’t fully make sense. Here is a screenshot of an example:

Of course Talia would want the hacking to succeed and not fail. So the player wasn’t really making a choice at that point. There were a few others like this so it meant I needed to go back to the story and make the edits so that the choices flowed.

I then had Christina test out my game. Again, I notices that she went back and forth on the story passages before starting the game itself. This meant there was some confusion in understanding the premise. She then got very excited for some choices e.g “yes lets work behind the scenes with Lord Vael” or “No I don’t think war is a good idea…”. This reassured me that some choices were good. She did point at the same case as above where some choices need to be expanded on. Here are some points of feedback I received:

• The story is exciting and it does make the player care about resolving the conflict. Christina liked exploring the different options too
• I got the suggestion to get rid of AI because that was a distraction and the story didn’t have any AI like choices/the story wouldn’t change without the AI part. This would help simplify the story
• She also suggested that I change the name of the countries to feel more real but still fiction. This would make the player be able to relate more. So I chose Pacifica to represent America for example.
•  I asked Christina if the story would be more exciting if I made the player be Talia and have the player making the choices. She shared that it is a great idea and I do feel that it makes the game more immersive for the player.
• She suggested that as this is a situation where together with making high stake decisions, time is also important, I should add in a time limit to solve the game. This sounded very exciting as then the story can remain short but be impactful and fun as there is a time crunch.

Through all this feedback from the play tests, I made the following big changes and created the final game:

• Changed the name of the countries and made the player be Talia. So most of the story is now second person.
• Checked all the choices and edited several of then to ensure the story flows and the message is clear (war is not the way forward). This led to many choice changes but made it such that the player has more control over the direction of the story
• I added in the timer of 4 minutes to make it exciting for the players and also make it represent more of the real world where time is very much of the essence.
• I added more details to the story and refined it

Reflection

While creating this IF game, I initially didn’t focus much on character and setting building and along the process, I realized that this is much more important than the game have different mechanics. I initially was adding game mechanics e.g rolling a die which was less important than the story. Next time, I would spend more time on building the character so that the player is able to immerse into character more easily.