Documentation 7 - Hey, why games?
After finishing the scripts of the main scenes, I was totally lost a week ago. I was neither confident enough to put the scripts together to a prototype, nor clear enough for my game design. There are ideas going around everywhere, but I don’t know how to put them together to have a satisfactory outcome. I was anxious, and had no motivation to move to the next step.
Things changed after getting the advice from professor Clay. I thought about the question: “Why game?” and I started to find out the problems:
I haven’t changed the design questions along with the modifications of target audiences.
The target audiences are no longer the same as the one I used to pull out the design questions. I was still focusing on the educational side of the content that I was going to make a game to provide information. The problem is the game is not efficient when it comes to information obtained. Then why am I going to do it in a game? Why I thought it would be powerful to develop a game for the issues?
The Experience.
That’s the answer!
The reason I thought games are powerful is because they are able to allow players to immerse themselves in to experience, feel the emotions and resonate with the characters.
Below are the new design questions:
Old version:
How can I give them the information without priming in mind?
How can I make the story interesting without being overwhelming and offensive?
How can I narrate a strong story by using messaging mechanics?
How can I educate players efficiently and interestingly?
How can I write a story players resonate to?
Now is:
How can I prime the awareness of Postpartum Depression in their mind?
How can I get their mind prepared efficiently without being overwhelming and offensive?
How can I narrate a strong and immersive story from a husband’s view?
How can I make the players resonate to the characters?
I felt so unsatisfied because what I was doing was not going to achieve what I expected, or in other word, I wanted to cover too much information in one project.
At the beginning, I was going to make a game to arouse awareness of postpartum depression, educate expecting parents about it, and call for actions of family support. I want players to experience, learn, and practice. It is impossible to do all of these in one game that is strong and sleek. Since there are too many topics, I felt I did nothing perfect after I wrote the scripts. And that’s why I am not satisfied with what I designed and can’t move on to prototyping. I was also afraid of going in the wrong direction so that there was no chance to turn back.
So I came back to the questions, and redesigned the goal of the game. Instead of doing a game to arouse awareness, plus call for action, plus educate player, I now am going to develop a game that allows players to rehearse their postpartum period so that they could be mentally prepared for a healthy parenthood.