My game’s primary aesthetic goal was discovery. I also think there can be some submission/abnegation in there if you ignore the conspiracy and go about doing your to-do list items (like requesting a bulk recycling bin). The mechanics were relatively simple—the user has a fixed filesystem to work with (unless an external site downloads new files to it), and a set of commands that they can run. All they can do is run commands, read, and click. Behind the scenes, the mechanic of government surveillance is represented by a dictionary monitoring the user’s online activity (any flagged websites visited and for how long).
Here are the questions I answered to design my interactive fiction! I actually think it ended up being a pretty straightforward/easy process, although this process was preceded by a trillion years of not having an idea for my IF.
- In what situation would government surveillance pose a serious problem for the player? (Answer: We are poking around at something they are keeping top secret.)
- What secret is the government protecting? (Answer: they have assassinated the Socialist president of France so that she is replaced by the more moderate Senate president.)
- How can we initially enter this rabbit hole? (Answer: pop-up ad on a news website.)
- What evidence can we find that build our conviction? (Answer: financial documents, location data, internal memos.)
- How can this escalate? (Answer: we can literally hack into some government website or database or something — this did not end up making it into the game but I was thinking maybe we could find leaked passwords for a lower-level CIA employee that could give us access.)
- What is the point we realize we are f’ed? (Answer: we find the government dossier of information about ourself.)
- What is our end goal? (Answer: get this news out there)
- What happens when we release the information? (Answer: no one cares because it’s election season!! This also didn’t make it into the game.)
Anyways, after planning all that out, I then made the game engine (terminal + browser), and then creating the files and logic was actually relatively quick. I wish I had started earlier on making the game, since I could have built it out a lot more! But I was really stuck on the ideation step. I did not realize ideation would feel so unnatural—I felt sort of inauthentic. I think making this game has made me a little more comfortable with the process of dystopia generation for IFs, though, so I think if I did P2 again I would start making progress much more quickly. And I feel that is a win! Because now I am positioned to be able to do this without the support of the class.
Also, I’m really hung up on how fun it was to create a game engine (with a set of base mechanics) and then design a narrative within the engine. That might be a niche I’m particularly interested in:)
