It’s hard for me to remember what I thought about interactive fiction before; however, I expected interactive fiction to be less engaging than it actually is since it’s mostly static text, but I hadn’t really tried interactive fiction before this project. Now I feel like the medium can be emotionally strong and capture the player’s attention. You don’t need animations to capture someone’s attention, and it still immerses you in the game. I feel like it’s perhaps even stronger because it creates points in time where you really reflect and ponder about the meaning and emotion behind the game. It’s nice to have a good graphical user interface, but it isn’t really necessary. Rather than roleplaying as a character in the game, you kind of physically embody the person. I understand the point of view that it’s just a game after all (for my game specifically), but I feel like it would be much stronger if players actually treated it as real life and asked what they would do.
The point of the vote in my game was to make it a tough question. For me, the dilemma felt hard. However, when I talked with my playtesters, some of them said it seemed obvious what was right and what was wrong. For me it would have been a difficult decision, and interestingly, the two people who said it was an obvious choice chose two different options lol.
What I would do differently is maybe not focus so much on AI safety because this version feels more abstract. It’s hard to really emphasize with a startup founder or AI company leaders with lots of power. Perhaps, I should make it more clear that they supposedly have a lot of power but don’t have much autonomy. They have the power to do what they want, sure, but they also have realistic limitations, and they have to do things they don’t want to do because the market rewards that kind of behavior. Interestingly, in general, the most powerful people in the world are beholden to the shareholders/important stakeholders, so even if the most powerful people do something they don’t like, their power can be removed.
Also, I used AI to help polish my writing.
