Individual Contribution Links:
Synopsis
Players act as algorithm designers curating short-form video feeds for cat characters on a social media platform. Each cat has distinct interests and preferences; players explore their rooms to find clues about what content to serve them. Content options range from peaceful and motivational to polarizing and inflammatory. Scoring rewards emotional intensity, meaning provocative content earns more points than constructive material. Players curate a running feed that characters scroll through. When the score point is too low, players may get fired from the algorithm company they work at.
The cats are interconnected in ways that reveal themselves over time. A misinformation video placed in one cat’s feed can disrupt another cat’s livelihood or relationships. These ripple effects are not immediately visible, but will manifest slowly as the game progresses. The broader world also shifts gradually in response to cumulative player choices. Players who optimize for high scores will inevitably encounter negative consequences.
Audience
Our audience is 13 and up, specifically teenagers and young adults who are old enough to understand social contexts and the moral implications of influencing others and being influenced through media. They may be familiar with viral short form video content that floods social media each day, but may not have yet understood how they shape the beliefs we have.
Setting
The game takes place over a wide variety of locations – in someone’s bedroom, in the park, or in a super secret government building. The idea is that doomscrolling is connected to your phone, and your phone goes with you wherever you go. You can’t escape from your algorithm, and your algorithm is always affecting you.
Tone
This is a game about the invasiveness of the short-form video algorithm, and how deep of a grasp it has on our consciousnesses. We want the player to balance a tradeoff between different forms of “success”; players can feed characters the videos that would get the most engagement out of them to make the most money, or they can show the characters videos what they need to see. Our game should hit upon the joy of sharing something fun with another person, but it should burden players with the responsibility behind the messages that they share with the characters.
Mood
The start of the game should feel comforting, fun, and lighthearted, where players get options of goofy/funny reel choices to send to characters. In the beginning, players are focused on trying out algorithm options that maximizes their points. Over the course of game play, more polarizing content will appear to entice the player with higher point rewards. We want this to reflect how people are incentivized to make emotionally loaded and misinformation to gain views and likes in real life. Players will experience an ambivalent mood, conflicted between curating healthy reels at the risk of losing points or complying to maximize their score. Towards the end of our game, the choices that the player makes will culminate in a huge event. Players will experience discovery, realization, regret, or satisfaction based on the different outcomes that their algorithm has made for the digital world they are in.
Gameplay
Choosing certain reels to send to characters based on their values, interests, and emotional reactions will change the character’s relationship with others and the world and trigger key narrative events.
Earning Points vs. Narrative
We want the player to choose between conflicting motivations. As the game goes on, it becomes more and more evident that their actions have consequences on the lives of the users they entertain. If they choose the benevolent option (less addictive or emotionally engaging reels), then they will get less points. The user may eventually leave the app, and they will be fired. If they keep sending users reels that make them stay or that provoke them, then those users’ lives will be affected, and, eventually, the world will be, too.
Core Gameplay Loop
- Day system with currency. You make points via a successful reel, and at the end of each day points are deducted from you like a quota.
- Players are presented with one of three reels to send to the character on the screen
- The character will react to the video that they saw
- The reel will have some lasting impact on the character – they may be more inclined to consume reels of the same type. Or, if they’ve seen a lot of that type of reel, they may be more likely to do something that aligns with the reel type.
- Normally the player is an outside narrator.
- At the end – the narrative events propagate to and affect the player.
Key Challenges and Initial Considerations
Design Considerations
- Art Direction
- Visual Style
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- Pixel art across the board. The perspective shifts depending on context: overworld exploration for navigating cat rooms and neighborhoods, and a phone screen UI layer for curating and selecting reel content. Both modes are integrated rather than separated into distinct phases, so players move fluidly between exploring a cat’s space and managing their feed.
- The color palette starts cozy and warm, then gradually darkens as the consequences of the player’s choices accumulate. Early stages should feel inviting, almost playful. Later stages introduce muted tones, dimmer lighting, and visual decay in the environment to reflect the social deterioration happening in the world.
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- Audio Direction
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- 8-bit chiptune soundtrack. Early game music should feel comfortable and lighthearted, complementing the pixel aesthetic.
- Sound effects TBD. Worth considering distinct sounds for feed interactions (swiping, selecting, posting) versus overworld exploration (footsteps, doors, ambient room noise) to reinforce the two layers of gameplay feeling connected but distinct.
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- Core Gameplay
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- How can we create complex characters that all interact? How much interaction between characters do we want?
- Should every “storyline” be possible in a single playthrough?
- Will the core game loop (of selecting reels and receiving feedback) be compelling? How do we maintain the player’s interest before they enter the main game.
- How do we incorporate challenge into our puzzles?
- What is our method for disseminating information? How will the player learn enough to make careful or thoughtful decisions?
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- Tech
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- Building in Unity for PC/browser.
- What system do we need for sustaining a complex storyline? How can we make our initial design scalable as we add many character interactions?
- How can we avoid hardcoding every possible interaction?
- How can we accurately represent reels (especially in the number of unique reels we have to generate)?
- Right now the idea is to make AI generated videos but blurred to a pixelated video. Or maybe use a hand crafted two-frame boomerang (still a lot of videos)?
- How will we create realistic animations and support a wide variety of scenes?
Other Notes
- Key aesthetic: contrast between approachable, low-stakes visuals with the gravity of the decisions being made.
- At the end of the game we get to see stats of how each character gets influenced by the reels player sent them.
Sketch of our game:
