Game Log 2 - PLAY

1) Process and refinements based on results from the PLAY phase

From the process in the PLAY phase and feedback from the expert council, we merged some of our ideas. Instead of only going for our idea with the still/shift, we wanted to include the idea of oranges in the game. The bright colour and the symbolism of hope provided by the oranges are cool additions to our idea of changing the environment from happy and national romantic to dark and dystopian based on user movement. The oranges add an extra element to this idea that enables more user interaction and gamification by collecting oranges from trees. This symbolises hope in the dystopian world and allows the user to move towards a better future.

2) Reflections on how our game-making process has changed from the experience to the play phase

During the artwalk in the experience phase, we learned that image manipulation – altering photos or representations of the real world – has been practiced for hundreds of years. This is not a recent phenomenon brought by digitalisation and social media in recent years. We observed several paintings where some modifications had been made by the artist, like adding a tree to a landscape that doesn’t exist or including elements that don’t necessarily belong to that time period or region of the world. 

Inspired by this, we came up with the idea of altering reality by creating an experience where oranges grow on Scandinavian trees. 

In the EXPERIENCE phase, we came up with three different ideas for our game concept by using the artwalk and the ideation wheel as inspiration. At the beginning of the PLAY phase, we narrowed our ideas down to one game concept: switching between two game worlds, when moving and standing still. We talked to experts who work with creating VR/AR experiences and games, which opened up new directions for our main game concept. This meant that our concept evolved by combining two of our original ideas (ideas 1 and 2 from Game Log 1), such that our concept is collecting oranges in a dystopian world to get to a good world, in comparison to just shifting between two worlds based on movement/standing still. 

3) How are we now nearer the cultural gameworld and empowering gameplay that we are aiming for? How is our concept stronger?

We have moved closer to achieving the cultural game world and empowering gameplay we envisioned by establishing a shared understanding of the main game elements among all team members. This alignment has helped us to develop a unified game concept. Through sketching, each member visualized their current interpretation of the game world and its interaction techniques. By comparing drawings, we were able to identify differences and work toward alignment. In addition to strengthening our shared understanding, this approach also helped refine our concept, ensuring it reflects our goals of cultural heritage and EU values. 

4) Feedback from Friday's expert council

The expert council loved the orange metaphor, and they were happy that we chose to bring oranges into our game concept. They thought the concept was concise and easy to understand and enjoyed the simple mechanism of the game. 

We received feedback about what the worlds represent, in that the bad world is today’s world, and the good world is the romantic nationalism period. This made us realize that we need to make it clearer what we want to achieve with these two worlds and what they represent. 

We were told that our gameplay needs a stronger connection to the EU values (human dignity and freedom). The expert council could see that they fit, but they still wanted it to be a bit clearer for the player exactly how they fit. After the expert council’s feedback, we talked about making one of the two EU values the dominating value. We will be working more on how exactly to make this clear through the gameplay.

The council provided feedback that made multiple new ideas emerge. We were suggested to make the move from the bad to the good world gradually so that the more oranges the player has already collected, the brighter the dystopian world gets, such that it ends up converging towards the good world. We were also suggested to include an eating sound (namnamnamnam) when all the oranges have been collected. 

The council also suggested we revisit the exhibition to see what other paintings include oranges to see whether these also included anything we could use as inspiration for our game concept. After revisiting the exhibition, we got the idea of having something like a physical serving dish, where the player has to place the oranges on for them to be considered collected (see the silver serving dish with oranges in the first painting below).

Current game concept:

Title: Harvest of Hope

Concept: 

When the player starts the game, they will be faced with a sad and dystopian reality with bright oranges hanging in the trees. The purpose of the game is to gather these oranges and place them on a serving dish. These oranges symbolise hope. As the player gathers more and more oranges, the world will grow more and more similar to the bright and idyllic world, which is visible whenever the player moves around. This is the world the player is working towards. But while this world is visible, the oranges disappear, forcing the player to face the bad reality, if they want to move towards a brighter one. Once all oranges have been gathered, the player will stay in the good world.