This assignment is my first interaction with creating interactive fiction games. Because of the game’s structure and my limited interactions with interactive fiction games, I know that I would like my game to include role-playing. I imagine the game to unfold while following one character. However, I don’t quite want the game to be from 1st person’s perspective: I worry that I would not be able to provide all the choices that people might want to make, which may disengage the players from the story.
As I continued with the story and observed people playing my game, I realized that my game also involves experience-based play. A lot of players responded with high enthusiasm about finding out what happened to the granny in the story. However, I have structured the story intentionally with no clear answer to this question but some vague clues. Despite the lack of answers, I feel that this question engages players as they continue with the story, which offers some element of experience-based play.
The mechanic of interactive fiction games is mostly the choices that players make, with each choice leading to a different outcome as the story progresses. My game involves a similar mechanic: depending on the choices that players make, they can interact with different people and, sometimes, arrive at different endings.
In addition to the choices, I also was very mindful of when to force a choice on players. For example, when coming near the company’s headquarters, the players were provided with choices to go inside or to remain outside of the building. As soon as they step feet into the building, however, the players have no choice but to continue with the story as instructed. Another design that I incorporated into the game was to take away the back button. While playtesting the game, I noticed my uncertainty with the players rechecking each step as they went. To provide a more realistic experience, I took away this freedom. There’s often no second choice in life, and sometimes, your decisions in the past will simply push you into another decision, even if you don’t like the direction you were forced to go. With my forced choices and the deletion of the back button, I try to simulate the same environment in my game.
While working on this assignment, I was surprised by the educational value of creating such a game. This game offers me a chance for introspection. It reveals for me my conception of the world. My choice of villain, AetherTechn instead of AI, informs me of my unconscious belief that AI is and will always be a tool that humans use. Additionally, the creation of this game practiced my divergent thinking. For each decision that the main character may make, I need to think of as many choices as possible to simulate real decision-making in the world. Due to this, I was able to think from different perspectives, identifying how different people may react differently to the stated scenarios. I wonder, having noticed how I have reacted to the development process, if game development can be used as a tool for teaching creativity and allowing introspection for high school and college students.
