When I think about the directions that our game could go, I think about the message that we should try to instill in our users. So here are the main effects of social media that I want to think about, and thus the narrative directions I could see us going in.
Emotions To Evoke
- Shock: I want a narrative or gameplay shift that catches the player completely off-gaurd.
- Joy: I want moments of comedy and silliness that produce pure pleasure and excitement.
- Connected: I want the user to feel care for the characters around them in this game.
Direction 1: Polarization
In this game, you gain points by giving the characters reels that garner the highest emotional response. You are the algorithm, and you must encourage virality. However, as your points go up, so do their feelings of anger and fear, and society feels these effects. The world changes, slowly, and you are faced with a decision: do you allow humanity to destroy each other or get fired from your job?
Direction 2: Disconnection
In this game, you gain points by giving the characters reels that keep them scrolling, that force them into addiction. You are the algorithm, and you must encourage endless doomscrolling. However, as your characters get sucked deeper and deeper into your obsessive realm, they draw away from the real world. You watch as the characters you’ve grown to know, grown to love, lose the connections that make them who they are. Can you live with that?
Direction 3: AI
In this game, you gain points by giving the characters reels that lead them to buy the products of your marketing clients. You are the algorithm, and you must encourage product success. As the game goes on, the products you are advertising become more lucrative, but also more impactful. Are these users simply consumers? Can you abstract away their lives? Can you convince the US president to swap out his cabinet for the newest iteration of Grok?
