Documentation 4 - Dive into the design

This week, I started on the design part of the project. It was quite difficult to start a new phase since it was kind of messy at the very beginning. Unlike the research part, while I have the structure of what I would do, I was super confused at the beginning. I know I need to write the script, design the mechanics, design the interface, and make the assets. However, questions come up when I try to make progress. What kind of story should I write to create sympathy? How long should it be? How can I cover the information I need to talk? Not to mention the big change of audiences and key mechanics. 

For the audience, compared to what I did last week, I decided to do Asian Expecting Dad who is a first generation immigrant or international non immigrant resident. I did more research on it and I found academic support for the needs of this group of people. According to the research,

From a selected group of studies found from a literature search, researchers discovered many demographic factors of Asian populations that showed significant association with PPD. Some of these include age of mother at the time of childbirth as well as older age at marriage. Being a migrant and giving birth to a child overseas has also been identified as a risk factor for PPD. Specifically for Japanese women who were born and raised in Japan but who gave birth to their child in Hawaii, USA, about 50% of them experienced emotional dysfunction during their pregnancy. In fact, all women who gave birth for the first time who were included in the study experienced PPD. In immigrant Asian Indian women, the researchers found a minor depressive symptomatology rate of 28% and an additional major depressive symptomatology rate of 24% likely due to different health care attitudes in different cultures and distance from family leading to homesickness. In the context of Asian countries, premarital pregnancy is an important risk factor for PPD. This is because it is considered highly unacceptable in most Asian culture as there is a highly conservative attitude toward sex among Asian people than people in the west. In addition, conflicts between mother and daughter-in-law are notoriously common in Asian societies as traditionally for them, marriage means the daughter-in-law joining and adjusting to the groom’s family completely. These conflicts may be responsible for the emergence of PPD.

For the key mechanics, I changed the game from a narrative typical twine kind of game to a balancing game that would show the hard decisions, and the key idea is to balance life to make it better. There would be several millers in the game to track the score of different variables like mental health level, energy, household income and baby wellness. They will sum up into overall wellness which affects the final ending of the story. Weight will apply to the sum of the variables. The more balanced variable is the more weight applied. 60/60/60 is better than 20/80/80. Moreover, millers will split into two parts if they affect both husband and wife. It will show the comparison of husband and wife as well as the idea of the wellness for both of the parents is the wellness for the family. There will also be some random events that come up in the game. It can be “your baby is fuzzy, go see the doctor.” and it decreases the mental health level, baby wellness and household income. The game will still be a two round experience. The first time player would only achieve the medium ending and bad ending. In this story players will know 

1. What is postpartum depression? 

2. Cause of postpartum depression? 

3. Dad has postpartum depression

4. Life struggles

5. Importance of preparation both body and mind

6. Go seek professionals know treatment

And then they will go back to the history and go through the story for the second time. In this line of the story, they will have more choices since they learned something from the first time. And this would provide the opportunity to achieve a happy ending. Players will more understand about 

1. More options because of the first time experience

2. Help for baby blue

3. What is ok to handle? 

4. Prevention

5. Idea of balancing instead of focusing

6. Support, patient, help

I started writing the scripts as the screenplay, then I found out that I cannot show the flow of the story. I was also disappointed by my own story writing. I deleted all the scripts, and started to do the design of the interface since I am pretty clear of what kind of game I would like to do. 

I started to design interfaces when I was stuck with story writing. I designed the interface in the XD, and decided that I would do the beta ver. with the XD. I am still undecided whether to develop the game in twine or unity, but one thing for sure is that it would be a game including several ways to communicate. Players will play as the new dad messaging with people who are close to him, and talk to his wife and some other related people in the game. They will also handle life events that may or may not be predicted. The way to show the story is two figures moving on the calendar so that it won't feel like a boring narrative script. Then I started sketching in the XD. One thing I explored a lot is the miller. Since the key mechanics of the game is to balance, the difficulty of the game would depend on the number of variables. Each variable needs a miller. I definitely would not put tons of millers on the top, but I still need to show different aspects like the comparison of husband’s and wife’s. At the very beginning, I designed it separately, like the husband's mental health level, wives health level. However, I found it redundant. So I combined all the millers that have the same measurement, say husband’s and wife’s health level. In order to show the idea of balancing the variable of two people, I put them in the different ends of one miller. However, it could not show the total amount of the variable. After several editing, I decided to design the miller with two colors. Colors represent different people, and they add up to the overall points of that variable. 

For the scripts, I have written the first scene by the flow chart, and it would be easy to understand later in the development phase. I was so confused where to start, and I was so lacking in confidence that I could not write an immersive story that players would sympathize with. I was trapped for a really long time, and I decided to go step by step. I went back to the research and found out all the specific topics I want to talk about in the story. Then I wrote down the scenes I could come up with right now. I linked the topics to the scenes, and see if I need to add some topics to better write the scene or I need more scenes to talk about the topics. I set up another meeting with new dads to collect stories and try to put them together as my story. 

Contents to be covered: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-0gVqDMTiDN0SsUzpioruVSs9o7-cFE9Nvr9UKEjkbo/edit?usp=sharing

I will finish the script next week, and put them in the interface. Hopefully I will have done the assets and the moodboard to create a unique style of the game. 

Sources

Mehta S, Mehta N (March 2014). "An Overview of Risk Factors Associated to Post-partum Depression in Asia". Mental Illness. 6 (1): 14–17. doi:10.1108/mi.2014.5370. PMC 4253395. PMID 25478140.