Brainstorming Value-Based Games
Idea One
A Twine interactive story that follows a young woman dealing with abuse through her media of choice, Discord. Mental, emotional, and sexual abuse is prevalent for young women online and there are many stories of grooming, stalking, police not getting involved, women getting hurt, and a lot more. This experience will cover how women can get entangled in these abusive and dangerous relations and the emotions that come with it, especially in male-dominated areas such as gaming and esports. I plan to bring awareness to this kind of abuse and how it’s not as simple as “block them.” Since the experience will be made on Twine, the mechanics will mostly be different ways to interact with the text: decision making, clicking words to reveal more details, player input, and player interaction with the environment. The story will look like it’s happening through Discord and the player is actively talking to the abuser and making decisions for different endings.
Idea Two
Made in either 2D Unity or Unreal, this game will have the player be put in various situations where they are addressing a women. There will be good interactions and bad interactions but no matter what the player chooses, the player character will always do a good interaction. This is to discuss how women are treated and spoken to in multiple situations and how the only appropriate responses are not the bad ones, a person wont get far trying to be negative. For example, you’re watching a woman play a game on Twitch and she misses her last shots, you can choose to type “NT (nice try),” “you should go back to the kitchen where you’re useful,” etc. The game will only type a positive response like NT or you’ll get them next time, etc. Therefore, the main mechanic is the illusion of choice but really there will only be good interactions. There shouldn’t be any aggression or punishment for choosing the wrong choice because we don’t know what lesson that could be suggesting, instead it’ll just hopefully frustrate players that are trying to be negative when a positive response pops up anyway, regardless of their decision. All of the situations/responses will be based off of personal experiences.
Idea Three
A two player game made in Unity or Unreal where one player has limited sight and the other player has limited hearing and they have to work together to traverse through unknown territory and avoid/defeat enemies. Hopefully this brings awareness to difficulties not being able to have or use a sense that is usually available to abled, or even talk about the difficulties of living in an able-driven society. I’d want the player to reflect on the difficulty of completing the game’s tasks and relate that to what a lot of people are facing daily, to put it in perspective. A different twist is maybe have the player have a lost sense and try to complete mundane tasks to see the increased challenges or see how they have to improvise.