#studio iv

A Sad Reflection

This project has been a big let down and a disappointment.

Conceptually, everything we need is there. We had the research, we were well informed in our decisions, we had a great project in our hands. 

The execution, however, was not there.

More than half the semester was spent on research. Comparatively to last semester, it was a big step up, and gave us a solid foundation to base our project on. What we lacked was the time to go through an iterative process, to find out what works and what doesn’t, as we did last semester.

Was it poor planning? I definitely feel this was a part of it. We should have spent some time, especially early in the semester, to plan out when we wanted to finish doing research, when we needed our first iteration, and when we expected to have a finished product. Instead, we took the “chug along until we know where we’re going” approach.  Also, we started the semester knowing we wanted to continue with and improve on last semesters project, but we didn’t really think about how we would go about this until the semester began. Perhaps taking some time during the break to really figure out what we wanted would have been smart, and time saving.

Was it poor advice? There was a lot of pushing from lecturers to continue with research, to really delve deep into our chosen topics, until we could talk about them with confidence. Of course this is important, and I understand the impact this had in our project’s foundation. However, taking up over half our time with research really cut into our fabrication time, leading to the disappointing outcome we had. It was not bad advice that we were given. I believe that at some point, we really needed to take the advice with a grain of salt. The lecturer’s words are not law, we don’t have to take on everything they say. We should have recognised when we were falling behind. 

Was it a lack of technical skill? For me, definitely. I feel that perhaps the outcome of my contributions to the project would’ve been better if I really had the skills necessary.  I’m not very good at creative writing. My narrative is a big let down for me. Last semester’s narrative was cringy and ill-informed. This semester’s is still cringy, but at least it was well informed right? This is an aspect of our project I wish I had more time to execute better. I would have like to playtest more to ensure my writing wasn’t going to be cringy. I didn’t allow myself time to do this though. My drawing skills also aren’t the best. I tried to inform myself to ensure I knew the direction I wanted to take. I think what I would have liked from this was the time to iterate on designs, until I came to one I was truly happy with. With this technique, even with a lack in skill, I could’ve found a style which worked for our project.

Looking at our final product, Andrew and I both agree this was not the outcome we were wanting to achieve. These last few weeks in which we had finally settled on an idea, we worked our butts off to complete it. We were rushed for time. We rushed our work. We knew we weren’t producing our best work, but it just had to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in the concept of our project. As previously mentioned, we had the beginnings of a great project in our hands. I was excited for the potential our project had. We haven’t completely missed our project goal, we did conceptually achieve what we wanted. But the work we did produce just isn’t something we can truly say we’re proud of.

So, what do I take away from this whole experience?

More planning. Plan out the semester at the beginning. Set due dates. When it comes around to it, re plan. Don’t let time be an enemy to my project work. 

Research is so important. I cannot assume, I must learn, read, experience, talk to someone who does know what I need to know. Good research is fundamental for a great foundation to a project. But don’t let it consume the project. Know when it’s time to put the research on pause and work on iterations. 

Work on aspects of the project in which I have the required skills, or allow for the time to learn the skills I need. I always joke about how my best skill is being very average at every skill, but it’s coming to the point where I need to hone in a certain skill or set of skills. This may (probably will) require me to think about my future and where I want to head with this degree.

Although it is a bit heart breaking to end my second year in this way, this project has been a big learning curve. I can take away a lot from this semester, and utilise it in future. 

Research 2.0

Thanks Ben for the juicy research content, here’s what I think about them!

Training Moral Sensitivity Through Video Games

This paper was a bit more on using video games as a method to train moral sensitivity in people, however I did find it had some useful bits on morality as a subject. 

“To become morally sensitive, people should develop a) an empathic concern for relevant groups, b) alertness to values/principles, and c) awareness for their vulnerability to biases.”  In terms of empathic concern for others, it’s best to allow the person to take on a different perspective, and to understand consequences for other people. Alertness to values/principles was a little difficult for me to understand, but I’m pretty sure it’s understanding what is viewed as morally correct, which is easily known through seeing how other people act. Awareness of vulnerability to biases is understanding that we tend to stick with the status-quo, that what may be viewed as normal may not be what’s morally correct.

To correctly engage with moral sensitivity through video games, it must have “(1) possible actions and choices of players, (2) how these are framed (role, perspective, and goals), and (3) which consequences the players’ actions and choices may have (feedback, rewards, etc.)”

The paper also lists many different methods of executing this such as; playing as a victim, playing a perpetrator (although this one could justify immoral decisions), perspective changes, prosocial challenge (side quests which you can help someone), and ethical dilemma (as Papers, Please does).

Focus, Sensitivity, Judgement, Action: Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games

This paper discusses how video games have been too blunt with morality (right and wrong), but also how video games are seen as an “amoral space”, however there has been few games out there of recent, aiming for a higher morality theme within their games.

The four core abilities they’ve identified for a good morally challenging game are:

“1.Moral Focus – the extent to which one is committed to one’s moral choices and the degree to which one prioritises moral concerns over others.

2.Moral Sensitivity – the ability to identify morality in the world,to understand the motivations of others, and to perceive the consequences of one’s behaviour.

3.Moral Judgement – the ability to understand moral concepts and to reason about moral issues.

4.Moral Action – the ability to overcome temptations and persist in the face of adversity. Doing the right thing even when it is hard.”

In short and simple terms, focus is about allowing the player to reflect on their moral stance. Having a morality meter is not a good option as it tells the player straight up if they made a good or bad decision, however, putting the player into a role (sounds familiar hmmmm), or having NPC’s around that show them what is moral is a much better way of achieving this.

Sensitivity (as discussed with the previous paper) is about allowing the player to have empathy. Again, NPC’s are great at allowing the player to understand how their actions affect others.

Judgement is having the player decide between choices. Having just options is not ideal as it limits the player’s ability to think and act as themselves, however this probably cannot be achieved for our project (could have a think about how I could do this though). Judgement can be about moral dilemmas, picking between right and right, or temptation, picking between a right and a wrong but the outcome of the wrong seems to have a better outcome.

Action is about choosing vs doing. Choosing to do an action is a lot easier than actually having to go through it. In this sense, I believe Andrew and I have achieved this in a small way through making our players physically stamp in their option, rather than just selecting and continuing.

This blog is getting pretty lengthy so I’m gonna end it here and make a research part two blog. 

References:

Katsarov, J., Christen, M., Mauerhofer, R., Schmocker, D., & Tanner, C. (2017). Training Moral Sensitivity Through Video Games: A Review of Suitable Game Mechanisms. Games and Culture, 1555412017719344.

I found that volunteering at AUT Live acted as a crit session with the public. Walking people - who have only just been introduced to Colab - through my Studio project brought to light places in which I am lacking. Overtime I rephrased myself my explanation to be more concise and make more sense, and other time the direction of each individuals interests would determine the conversation.

Other than asking what we’re working on, what job do you want or will you get? seemed to be a very pressing question, and to be honest with a good point. Eventually I would explain that this is the sort of degree that will become exactly what you make of it. It becoming clear to everyone that without a drive, interest or passion for what you are doing within Colab you won't get very far. This again making me reflect on how my Studio project is progressing.

Am I happy with what I’ve done? Why is it interesting? Where is it going?

At the end of the day my attitude coming into the second semester was to be completely hands on and constantly be exploring and discovering. Reflecting on this I believe that I have been 100% true to myself. Everything I have done has naturally lead me on a journey. Piecing this journey together being something I will need to focus on in order to present my work in the right light and to express my focus properly.

Implementing into Unity

With the narrative completed, I started by placing it all into YarnSpinner. It turned out to be quite a decent length. Good thing I cut down the narrative.

Next was to integrate it into Unity.

I told myself that during the big semester break, I would learn at least something about Unity. 

I didn’t do that, so this part was, again, difficult and couldn’t be possible without the help of Max Kooij ( @synergybct ).

I still had the unity files from last semester’s narrative, so I essentially copied over everything I needed from there. Everything I didn’t know, I tried googling, or turned to Max when I couldn’t figure things out.

Max helped out a lot with teaching me how to set up the character sprites and other aspects. 

We put a lot of effort into trying to seamlessly transition between nights, however, this eventually crashed and burned, so the game is a bit broken in this aspect, but the effect is still there. 

I thought it would be great to have different fonts for each of the characters. I picked out fonts that I believed best represented the personalities I gave them.

Ultimately, this is the final result.

Definitely looks like a 2000′s flash game all put together. 

There’s so much more I would like to do with this, but lack of programming skills and time means I can’t.

It’s super disappointing to me how this all turned out. I’m not proud.