Base ideas

Level design

The player would begin with a group of characters and would have to try and get as many of these to the end of the level as quickly as possible.

Pathways that require characters to be sacrificed may include a tall obstacle, which can be climbed

over by making a ladder out of the groups’ bodies. However once the majority have climbed up the

ladder there would be the struggle of how to get the characters that made up the base of the ladder

up to the top, so some would have to be left behind.

Another circumstance would be that they have to cross a river and that characters have to cross the

bridge in pairs because the wind is too strong but if you’ve sacrificed characters and have an odd

number in the group then a lone character would be swept away.

As a reminder of how the player has treated the characters, at the end of each level the characters that had been left behind would be displayed in the manner in which they had been sacrificed.

For instance if a character had been blown away and washed down the river, they would appear dripping wet, waterlogged and exhausted. One abandoned by the wall after being used as a ladder might just be slumped against the wall, miserable.

Character design

The character design within Dilemma is motivated by the fact that I want emotional connection between the player and the game. For this reason, the characters will be expressive and display human feelings such as sadness and joy very intensely. Ethically I want the players to feel distressed when deciding whether being able to finish the level quicker is worth sacrificing one of the group or not. However the characters are not fully based on humans as I wanted them to also be able to move and function interestingly and be more flexible within the game, while removing the societal rules that players may have felt restricted by if it were completely human characters. Due to that I have given them an almost plastic look so they can move as bendable objects and to create a slightly more playful feel to them. I wanted their emotions to be fully portrayed through movement and their eyes as I felt that would be more powerful than standard faces which often lead to their design being predictable.

Character design

I've changed tact when it comes to character design quite drastically. Instead of going for a realistic group of characters which would make the game harder to design and would drag down and complicate the gameplay too much, I want to go for something a lot simpler. 

Some of my inspiration came from the new PS4 playroom robot design.

These bots are simple but have a lot of emotion despite no complicated facial features. I want my characters to be able to emit powerful emotions but through simple expressions and for this to impact the gameplay. 

I also felt that the precedent of Machinarium's main character was quite interesting as his core is big and even bulky but his arms are thin and look bendable. Although I want a more 'plastic' look to my character the base idea of him is relative to my design as I want the simplicity and possibly the idea of my character being able to manipulate their body like the Machinarium character below.

Character design

For the main character I want a strong individual to make sure the player knows they are the leader and able to make decisions. This may change their ethical decisions which I want to challenge.

These are some images of the feeling I want to portray although not necessarily the complexity or style.

Development

I want to split my game into more sequential parts to give it more opportunity to have development. The idea will therefore change to be about reaching certain checkpoints which become the 'levels' and breakpoints for all intensive purposes. 

For instance the above map (as an example) would show the checkpoints that the characters would have to get to and they would be in the safe zone as they reached them and would be able to save the game, but the end point and the way to win the game would be the red star finish point.

Each level would consist of you as the main character trying to get as many of your group to the checkpoint and therefore to the end of the group. The basis of the resource management elements will still be a major part of the game as it will determine the route you take to get to the checkpoint. 

The safer route:

Taking the safe route would obviously mean you're more likely to be able to keep the group together and less likely to get fatalities. However in this case you are more likely to be slower and have the attackers who are following you to catch up. This may not be an immediate threat but could take its toll over the course of the game. 

The more dangerous route:

This route is a lot more likely to cause fatalities and there would be choices all along it as to force resource management and sacrifice. For instance there could be a rickety bridge where the rope snaps and you have to decide between pulling up a child who has slipped or a stronger member who could help you later. 

Differences and examples of the contrasting routes

For instance crossing a river-

You could either take a bridge thats down the river but which will take longer to get to or you could take the rickety swing bridge. 

These are obviously over complicated circumstances but give the idea of the choice mechanic within the game

This image illustrates the kind of thought process that I really want to engage- if the quicker option isn't viable for some members do you take the time or in the long run who do you sacrifice to win?

Moodboard

This mood board sums up the different types of colourings, textures and balance that I want.

I want to aim for a natural looking website as it is for a cattery and so should be something that reminds of animals. I also want a lot of white space with a base in brown and a clean cut typography and layout. Because of this I used a lot of photos that have linear aspects such as the books and architecture. 

Website layout concept

These are my base setups for my website for the macbook pro 15", the iPad and the iPhone in that order.

The base idea will be that there will be certain break points for each resolution and that the layout will be specific to the device. Although they look quite standard I want the greyed out area to scroll upwards over the rest of the content in parallels. For instance, in the mobile option the greyed area would slowly go over the 'Home' 'About Us' and 'Contact Us' as the user scrolled down until only the logo and the title of the website was showing.

The box with the cross through it and the dots underneath represent a slideshow of pictures. 

Concept to develop

Taking the idea of disposable people I've tried to enhance the idea and create opposing reasons for keeping different types of people over disposing them. For instance a child being able to crawl into smaller spaces that adults would be an opposing reason to keep them around even though they might not be as strong or as fast.

Within this idea you control a group of people running away from something (I haven't decided if this  is a monster, a virus, a group of attackers yet) and you have to decide the different path you'll go down- each with its own perils, advantages and disadvantages. You also must take into account which path will be the most beneficial for the group or whether you take a path which could mean some of the group not making it, but which will take you further from the threat.

For instance there would be paths which would be more difficult for children because of the spaces they needed to jump or the heights they had to reach but the path would mean the 'monster' falls behind also and therefore it could be an option to take the path despite the fact that the children may not make it.

To keep things tense and make the decisions harder to make certain paths would require specific members of the group to do specific tasks. For instance there might be a path later on where it requires someone small, like a child to climb across a small plank to release a wider path for the rest.

These opposing reasons to keep different members create an emotional and ethical tension which would keep the game interesting and still holding onto a main mechanic of resource management in relation to people as the resources and deciding on who is necessary to continue running.

Iterated Ideas

I wanted to take away the idea that I already had and focus on the base idea of how people see other and whether they see them as disposable and why. 

Through this base idea I wanted to come up with an idea that demonstrates the ethical challenges and whether people would sacrifice others for the greater good or for their own survival.

The first idea I had was based around a small boat that was loaded with different types of people- including children, women and men- both strong and weak. The aim is to get the boat to a certain location by rowing using the oars and the people in the boat. However there is the problem of the boat sinking at the same time because of the weight of the people. The player has to chose if any of the people are disposable- do you sacrifice the children because they can't contribute to rowing or keep them because they're not heavy.

Although this idea may have had merit in the way it made people examine if they see people as disposable or who was the most valuable but there wasn't any more than that to the idea. It doesn't seem to have any other redeeming fun features or interesting gameplay so I'll try to remove the placidity of this idea into something more fast paced

Base ideas

My first base ideas for the 3D game proposal were all based on the idea of ethics and how we can often justify certain actions if we believe its either for the greater good or for the advancement of ourselves or someone we care about.

These ideas all look into the idea of people as disposable and how people take on amorality and the disregard for the moral when it helps them achieve their goals.

However this could be too complicated as it would mean having multiple different people animated and interacting with each others to figure out whether they're infecting each other and the rate that they're infecting.

I will try to bring this down to a simpler idea which holds the same ethical challenges. I want to see if I can bring this down to a single player game also to simply the gameplay and really focus on the core mechanics.

Children with morals and videogames

Looking at the effects of video games on children is often the best and most pure representation as they absorb information without many barriers. James Vicents' article on this illustrates the impacts that can be made and how people in general are influenced "to recognise the cause and effect reality of their actions, the focus of games on winning actually encouraged cooperation, rather the self-interest."

Two quotes I found interesting were: 

“What we found was that what they were learning was a whole lot deeper and more profound than we had imagined,” said Dr. Sanford, speaking to The Globe and Mail. “They are doing a lot of problem solving and strategizing. They are learning collaboration and leadership skills."

“But the most profound thing that got me really thinking about their civic engagement is that they are actively making ethical and moral decisions all the time. They are trying out roles through the characters in the stories. If they act badly, if they choose to be evil, they see the significant results of each of the decisions they make.”

These are going to make me look into reward systems/ the game objectives to challenge the person's ethics and relate back to the way that telltale games inflict emotional forks within the game to create a realism

Article from:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/video-games-can-make-children-more-morally-aware-8649583.html

Telltale Games

Telltale Games is a company which really interests me in the fact that they pose interesting ethical questions within an intriguing narrative.

More commonly known for The Walking Dead game they most recently released they've also produced games such as the Jurassic Park Game and Back to the Future and they all offer different moral questions with few escapes for players to excuse their behaviour. 

For instance in Walking Dead there are often choices you must make between saving one person over another- even bringing children into the equation to illicit certain responses. To evoke these emotional responses is a powerful way to make players examine themselves. I'm looking into whether I want to attempt evoke emotions that are powerful or as pointed as these because these are obvious in the way that they play with you choosing specific people over others or whether I want something subtler.

Ethical Real Life Games

Looking into ethical issues that have come up in game design I came across a real time game which uses bacteria and single cell organisms which can be influenced by electrical currents. 

Although not completely computer generated this brought up the interesting question of morals. I found that I was slightly repulsed by the idea of using charges to shock bacteria for our own amusement where as if its virtual I find myself indifferent to violence and other moral questions.