Contextual Statement - In Search of Distinction

How does people’s constant chase for distinction relate to status and happiness in society?

My role for this project Involved the programming for the game, as well as contributing to the initial concepts for the final product created. I also worked on some of the era specific animations such as minor character gestures and actions. This required the blending of separate animations to allow the overall animation to flow as a whole while the game runs.  The game script that we created as a group aided me as i worked on the programming for the game.

For our final work we created a Flash game that explores the different values of status and distinction in the past. In the modern world, status is generally defined by having lots of money and material possessions. Sparta, 400 B.C. is the one of the time periods that we decided to take the players back to. There was an interest for us as a group in this conversation across time that we are able to reveal to the players, thereby giving us the ability to educate people drawn to our game about past events in time, whilst giving them the ability to reflect amongst themselves and view a different part of themselves that they do not usually encounter on a day to day basis. As well as this, the aesthetics drew us to the period with the robust fighter like atmosphere. This era, in contrast to modern day, was defined by strength, fitness and being able to fight which is reflected also through these aesthetics.
The game will take the player to these time periods and allow them to play a small scene, interacting with the characters and environments which will portray the meaning of status from that specific era, comparing and contrasting these ways of living to their own. The game indirectly questions the player’s values of status after playing each level.
Decisions the player makes while playing the game are important as these impact how each story plays out and could even lead to the players death resulting in the game ending before the last world. An article by Serrels (2009) supports our decision to create the game in a third person perspective to make the characters story more believable and immersive for the player.
“The first-person character is never you but merely a make-believe character you are improvising as you go. In third-person games, that character is deeper for a number of reasons in a number of ways, which makes inhabiting their lives a more compelling experience for me”
This will encourage players to think about their decisions more while playing and becoming involved in the story while developing their own character.

An important decision was deciding how much freedom the player would have in the game. "Being allowed to do whatever you want can be overwhelming - and, over time, surprisingly dull. Sometimes we need structure : a goal to achieve, a target to hit, a world to save. A sense of performance is a refreshing change"  (Barr, 2011)
Our game still has a fair amount of dynamic options/decisions, while still having boundaries so the player will stay on course and still feel a sense of progress from their actions. De Botton states: “The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status.” (2004).
The ideas of social hierarchy, impulse, and power are major influential components  which surround the game we have created and have driven it towards this successful outcome as these ideals make our game engaging to our modern audience.

There are multiple points where the game can end, these are when the player dies in a world, for example; the player loses a battle in the Sparta stage and the opponent finishes the player off. This will prompt the game to end. The player should feel that there is a risk in their choices. Another Idea we had for achieving this was to make the game involve two players, each playing the game on a separate computer but the players would be playing the game as the other person, using their name and making decisions they believe the other person would have made. Once this game ended the players would discuss their decisions with each other. In the end we decided it was best not to use this two player idea, I feel that this would have restricted the player too much and would be difficult to set up with another person you know well enough.

At the end of the game we were going to have the game analyze the players decisions that they made, to give a basic profile of the player. This would make the players decisions obvious to them but would end up being too literal, so we removed this idea. There will not be an analysis at the end of the game but the player will be encouraged to reflect upon their decisions on their own.

Overall I think this game is quite successful, It performs its intended goal of being an interactive game based around distinction and status while having plenty of decisions to keep the player engaged in the game.