{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/adonaac\/","author_name":"adnzzzzZ","cat":"LD #28","categories":["LD #28"],"comments":[],"epoch":1387477440,"event":"LD28","likes":7,"metadata":{"p_key":"81020","p_author":"adnzzzzZ","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"290137","p_title":"Drain \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #28","p_event":"LD28","p_time":"1387477440","p_likes":"7","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1386892800","event_key":"20","event_name":"LD28"},"source_url":"2013\/12\/19\/drain-post-mortem\/","text":"<p><strong>There are few games that use the gaming medium as the powerful force of change that it can be.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Currently, there exists a diverse selection of games that someone could choose to play: from simple platformers about heroes saving princesses to first person shooters about gangster rap on Venus. Yet, this diversity is extremely constrained to subjects that ultimately <em>do not matter<\/em>. Where are the games about social anxiety, dropping out of college, falling in love, losing your parents or feeling jealousy? There is a whole array of experiences that are common to most human beings that are not being explored by the medium. There is also very little discussion (through games) about global issues that are relevant today, such as global warming, consumerism, privacy or hunger and poverty. How amazing would be it for a game to clearly show the relations between people\u2019s lives and world starvation? How buying an iPhone affects underage workers in China? Or how not caring about things that don\u2019t affect your daily life (such as the NSA spying issue) can lead to decreased freedom of expression and freedom of choice?<\/p>\n<p>There is a prevalent idea among game developers that games are supposed to be fun. Most players agree with this notion, but it doesn\u2019t mean that games have to be devoid of any humanly or globally relevant subjects. It\u2019s not a binary situation, an either\/or type of deal. Games can be interesting to play and at the same time explore issues deeply (Papers, Please is a great example), but this takes effort and risk. The chance that people will not understand what is being said, the chance that a game won\u2019t be financially successful, the chance of being called \u201cpretentious\u201d\u2026 And so, collectively, game developers choose to go for an easier path of certainty and fun. Quoting Alan Moore:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They\u2019re not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we\u2019re waiting to die. It\u2019s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn\u2019t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The gaming medium has the unique capacity for making certain feelings emerge in the player, and therefore has a higher capacity for empathy and projection. Game developers should abuse this uniqueness more. The industry (especially the indie scene) shouldn\u2019t strive for dealing only in fun, but also in experiences. Fun is not the only thing you experience in life. So why should fun be the only thing that you experience in games? There\u2019s a great podcast episode about this on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/infiniteammo.ca\/podcast\">Infinite Ammo podcast<\/a>. It\u2019s episode 20 with Kayla Kinnunen and (if you wanna skip) it starts at 1h 43m 30s. And there\u2019s also a great talk about this from Jonathan Blow (he\u2019s immensely better and more organized in his thoughts and in the way he makes his points than me, so watch it!):<\/p>\n<p><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SqFu5O-oPmU?feature=oembed\" width=\"500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Drain<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With all that said, for this Ludum Dare I decided to make a game that talked about population growth, consumerism and global warming. The idea is pretty simple: there is a planet (where gameplay takes place), there are resources and there are beings. Beings need resources to not disappear and to reproduce. The goal of the game is for society to thrive (have lots of beings alive at the same time) before the world becomes too poluted or before there aren\u2019t enough beings alive for it to be feasible that that society survives.<\/p>\n<p><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"375\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LMCb4Ylbn2s?feature=oembed\" width=\"500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The goal that I had as a designer was to make sure that the game made it possible for people to more easily see the relations between the three topics I wanted to talk about: population growth, consumerism and global warming. I think I managed to do this in a number of ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A being connected to no resources will eventually disappear, saying that if people don\u2019t consume things they cease to exist (this can be interpreted (in my head at least) in two ways: directly, people who don\u2019t eat will die or indirectly, people who don\u2019t consume objects are not, in a way, part of today\u2019s consumption based society).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>When a being connects to a resource the being grows larger, and if a being is too large it creates another being. This says that people need resources to create more people and that, if that new person doesn\u2019t want to die, they will also need to consume resources.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>When a being connects to a resource, the resource grows smaller, and if the resource is too small it will disappear. This says that resources are not infinite and that people consume them in order to survive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So far the points made are pretty obvious, but at the same time it\u2019s nice that there is a clear way of stating those obvious truths about life on earth as gameplay mechanics. Using those obvious facts as a base, I suddenly can say more complicated and nuanced things (much like you can start from axioms and go on to prove all sorts of crazy stuff in some mathematical system):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When too many beings are connected to one resource a city is created. This city randomly spawns more resources and beings. This tries to talk about how having some reserve of resources can bring more people together to some specific place (basically how the rise of agriculture (renewable resources) led to the rise of population centers).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Growing your population to the final goal of\u00a0<em>n<\/em> beings means that pretty much all resources in the planet need to be used, that some beings will overuse some resources (and therefore some other beings will be deprived of that resource) and that the planet becomes a complicated mess of connections everywhere that makes it harder to see what\u2019s actually happening (much like we fail to see the connections between our lives and the environment).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Many beings die because the player simply didn\u2019t have enough time to get to all of them, since they start becoming smaller (and therefore harder to click) as they go on without being connected. This talks about how sometimes (or most of the time) the problem isn\u2019t much about resource consumption but about resource distribution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The more time goes on, the higher the number of beings you need for your society to thrive. This talks about how complexity and specialization of labor in our society makes it so that there is a higher amount of knowledge (and therefore people) needed for us to maintain life at our current levels of comfort.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The more time goes on, the darker the map gets. This talks about global warming\/pollution. The more those people are there consuming resources, the more they\u2019re producing waste and changing the environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so, with those simple rules I said some pretty interesting things about the world. People who weren\u2019t aware of those things before may become aware after playing the game, and hopefully they\u2019ll start changing their actions so that they more closely reflect this new knowledge. This probably doesn\u2019t happen that much (it\u2019s hard to imagine that everyone who played it got all that from the game), but it\u2019s nice to imagine that <em>someone<\/em> got it and that that <em>someone<\/em> changed their opinions or actions about one or more of the subjects talked about in the game,<br\/>\nas that is the ultimate goal: being a force of change for good in society.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Presentation was not bad. I\u2019m not an artist at all, but I managed to make basic shapes look rather interesting. My inspiration came from this game:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"375\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wZZJZ1_WmBc?feature=oembed\" width=\"500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gameplay was simple, I had enough time to finish it and make it visually interesting. Contrary to past Ludum Dares, where I chose an idea that was way too complicated, barely managed to finish it and had no time for \u201cdetails\u201d (making it visually pleasing, play test, tutorial, sounds, etc\u2026).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/superlevel.de\/spiele\/ludum-dare-28-drain\/\">Some guy wrote an article about the game<\/a>. This really caught me by surprise because I wasn\u2019t particularly pleased with the game (it really isn\u2019t that fun to play and the main mechanic isn\u2019t that interesting either, despite having a good message), but apparently games with strong messages resonate a lot with people, so that\u2019s pretty interesting to learn!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>With only two sounds I created a pretty fitting and good mood for the game. The heart beat makes sure the player is connected to the beating planet, beings and resources (they all have a very visible \u201cbeating\u201d effect to them), and the background noise makes sure that there is a slight sense of urgency (at least in my head) present.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i.minus.com\/iboLXp5uhsjBca.gif\"\/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I managed to make a reaaaaally decent tutorial (probably even better than the game itself). Compared to other Ludum Dares, where I gave no instructions whatsoever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bad camera controls. I didn\u2019t have enough time to test the game with other people, so while I knew that the camera controls weren\u2019t good, I sort of pushed it down the stack of things to do and in the end forgot to pop everything. Lately I\u2019ve been trying to avoid doing this and getting to problems\/bugs as they happen instead of pushing them for later (in a depth manner instead of breadth), but it\u2019s hard sometimes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The game isn\u2019t fun. I said that games don\u2019t *need* to be fun, but it\u2019s better if they are at least a bit engaging\/challenging\/fun. My game doesn\u2019t have any of that. It\u2019s simply there to be played once\/twice and to make a point. I know that games about connecting things can be engaging (because I\u2019ve played similar ones, even though they ultimately had very different mechanics), but I didn\u2019t have enough time to figure out how to make that in two days\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Lessons Learned<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Presentation matters <strong>A LOT<\/strong>. Make sure your game is visually pleasing. I\u2019m a terrible artist, but I managed to make something that is kinda OK to look at by simply playing with tweens and alphas. Make sure to try out lots of different ways of drawing simple shapes so that you always have some tricks that make your game stand out a bit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Meaningful messages resonate strongly with some people. Even though your game will probably not be of massive appeal if it\u2019s about depression, it will resonate very strongly with people who are\/were depressed. So in a competition like Ludum Dare, don\u2019t be afraid to talk about subjects that aren\u2019t of massive appeal. People are forced to play and rate your game, so it\u2019s a more concrete way of ensuring your message will be heard by <em>at least<\/em> a few people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Experience! I\u2019ve been programming games pretty much every day for this past year, so it stands to reason that I have more to pull from when I have to participate in competitions, which ultimately means that it\u2019s easier for me to get something \u201cgood\u201d out there. So the more games you make, the better your next games will be (if you challenge yourself, of course).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This was a pretty fun one. I\u2019ve seen lots of games that are really interesting and polished. The one thing that always bothers me about LDs is how nice people are. People have a huge tendency of not pointing out obvious issues and only focusing on positive feedback. You can\u2019t do anything with positive feedback other than feel good for a while. You can only improve through \u201cgood bad\u201d feedback, the type that points out your mistakes and ways to solve them. So, don\u2019t be afraid to be a bit negative sometimes. If you can see an obvious way to improve someone\u2019s game, say it! If someone can\u2019t handle getting criticized then they won\u2019t improve, and if they don\u2019t want to improve then why participate in the competition in the first place? Why even be alive if you\u2019re not levelling up? why even bother playing games when you will just die and forget them<\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2013 6:24 pm","title":"Drain \u2013 Post Mortem","title_was_empty":false}