Newsletter 1

GREETING

Hello everyone! We are team Fear & Freedom, consisting of 4 graduate students at the Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. We are making a transformational game about North Korean human rights for the next 14 weeks. We will send a weekly email to update you on our progress. These newsletters will include our game’s development, goals and struggles.

 

BRIEFING
The game is about North Koreans struggling under their oppressive government. This week, we focused on making sure our game didn’t feel too “preachy”. Our emphasis will be on the daily lives of North Koreans, unlike documentaries that focus on the propaganda of the North Korean Government. We want to present North Koreans as strong independent individuals who are hindered by their government. We believe that letting players feel “admiration” rather than “sympathy” reduces the preachiness of the game.
We joined a workshop at ETC to “playtest” our concept with 50+ students. It was interesting that most people believed that our game should be less than 15 minutes, while we initially wanted an hour long game. It was also interesting that there was a lot of praise for Papers Please. That was encouraging since Papers Please was a prime reference for what we believed to be a successful transformational game.

 

CLOSING
We are all very excited and feel attached to this project since we pitched it. Our goal next week is to make a playable prototype with low fidelity for first 5 minutes of the experience to test our fundamentals.

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