I hadn’t played IFs before this class, but early on, I realized that they were a great format to explore ethical dilemmas. As such, I wanted to use my IF to explore the potential pitfalls of building/using highly advanced technology as well as how these pitfalls tend to impact the most marginalized members of society.
Erosion is a mix of fun and serious. It starts with the protagonist, June, heading to a party. The player chooses what she’s wearing, what she drinks, who she talks to, etc. This part of the story helps build up the player’s sense of who she is as well as her relationships with two key supporting characters—Robert (her boss, who founded the company she works at (Cerebra)) and Elena (a DoD analyst who tells her about an unethical application of Cerebra technology). The game then gradually transitions to more consequential decisions as June needs to decide what to do about a major ethical dilemma.
As I detailed in my write-up, I didn’t actually start with the storyline I ended up with, and I switched between game formats and branching maps multiple times in earlier versions. That’s not to say that early feedback wasn’t valuable—there were actually multiple instances of it coming back to corroborate later feedback and helping influence design decisions—but it was a bit of a roundabout process. I learned a lot about the importance of both knowing what my long-term direction is (i.e. scoping out the full story) but also starting with the simplest (but still complete) version of this and iterating on that, instead of trying to do everything at once, which often resulted in nothing being done that well.
Playtesting P2 (in comparison to P1) felt a lot more personal and not unlike a writing workshop, except I playtested a lot more often than I typically share my writing for feedback, so I was getting constant pointers on how to shape the world, characters, relationships, etc, which was all incredibly valuable. It was also very fulfilling to watch players experience the world I had created and feel a connection to the characters, and there were some special moments during playtests where players would remark on an interesting choice or a meaningful connection between characters.
I also really appreciated how diverse playtest feedback was. I got notes on everything from the lack of a back button to how spaced out the text was to the merits of having inconsequential choices (and how inconsequential they should be). There were also multiple points during the process where I got conflicting feedback and needed to make a decision, so I’d make the decision, test it in future playtests, and discuss with playtesters the alternatives I had considered. This process helped me build up my trust in my design instincts, which I believe will be very valuable going forward.
