P2: The Future We Deserve – Sam Jett

Link: https://samjett.itch.io/out-of-sight

——-PLEASE PLAY FIRST!——-

Overview:

“Out of Sight” is set in a dystopian future where the state rules through mandatory use of screens. Children are mandated to use them from a young age, with the expectation that they will continue to use them as adults, although adults on paper are “free to go” about in public, unlike children. The character the player controls is part of a family who is resistant to the regime’s control. The player’s father is missing and must navigate the situations presented to them in the game.

History of Versions:

Initially, the game was conceptualized as very similar to modern times with some minute adjustments. The initial reason for the family’s dissent was not ideological, but physical: they were unable to look at screens without suffering physically. I tried working with this version of the story but was unable to make anything of great interest (at least in my opinion). I was stuck here for quite a while unfortunately. Another reason for the struggle was that I had not written any non-fiction work in a very long time, so being “creative” in this way again took some warming up to (I write music often, but stories are something I am not used to). Thankfully, I decided to change the setting to a more 1984-esque Matrix-esque one. This made more interesting events realistic in the world, and gave me a lot more options to work with.

After I got my foot in that door, I was able to develop a more interesting story. This was also when I started to work with Twine (once I finally had some time to sink into the project. Thanks, 16 units of pset classes). The first Twine version was o.k., it was mostly playing with exposition of the world. I wanted a “show, not tell” type of exposition, so the player could be engaged with the mystery of the world instead of reading a big block of text at the beginning.

I had Seamus playtest the initial part and I also brainstormed some of the story with a friend from Berlin who worked professionally as an interactive fiction writer for some time. They both gave nice feedback on what was working with the storytelling method and the premise, and asked me some interesting questions to get me thinking about the rest of the story.

After this initial feedback, I iterated again and tried a lot of different possible storylines for the character. Ultimately I ended up sticking with a more scoped-back version of the story for this plot, as I realized fully fleshing out the story would make it like a novel and not a short story (especially considering that players would be replaying the game at least a couple of times due to various aspects of the game). This iteration is where I made the most progress.

After this iteration, I playtested again with some of my other friends (particularly friends who have not seen the game yet). Also throughout this iteration and the previous one, I playtested with students in class. I got a lot of helpful feedback with particulars in the game, while I was developing the last bits leading up to the end of the story. At the final iteration, I playtested with two of my siblings and I sent Seamus the final version to check out.

One of my goals with this game was to highlight the conflict between doing the “right thing” (not being submissive to the particular regime depicted) versus being happy – the character is lonely and struggles while being resistant, but would be able to socialize if they defected to the regime.

Game Testing Summary:

Pretty much everyone I playtested with were college-age Stanford students, all with various backgrounds. I did playtest with two of my brothers, who are 14 and 15 years old. They both liked it a lot and had not played any game like this before (save Oregon Trail which our family is a fan of). I got a lot of great feedback on particulars of the game, e.g. things that were not clear or little improvements to make the player experience better. For example, making the objects click-able instead of leading to a separate passage was something I should have thought of on my own. I also got a lot of positive feedback on the writing style of the game, which I tried to keep with throughout the development process. I tested with a total of 11 playtesters: 3 friends, 2 family members, and 6 classmates, including my P1 teammates.

Reflection:

Longer reflection will be submitted tomorrow. I made a fun interactive fiction world and game to go with it. I learned a lot about the development process of choice-based games and how complex they can become (very quickly so) and I learned how important playtesting and player feedback is in writing stories such as this, because it is very important to get the story across to the player in the format (you aren’t able to be completely clear as you would in, say, a novel). Next time I would hope to be able to sink more time into it and develop more interesting choices and a greater multiplicity of outcomes for the player to experience, to make the decisions seem more meaningful and increase replay-ability.