Week 9: Save The Game Or Save Pavle (Choose One)

While the past few weeks were all about combining the work that had been done by different teams and people into one fully-functioning game, week nine saw Team Fortitude working on a more individual basis again as we worked to develop more content. Let’s take a look at what they did this week.

The game didn’t see any major design changes, though since the designers thought the game could use more emotional impact, they decided to include an extra conversation for each profile with someone who doesn’t understand their situation and says something ignorant that undermines all the work the player has done in the game. We hope that this conversation will help the player feel how hurtful the misunderstandings towards people in poverty can be, put them into the role of defending those in poverty, and create a cathartic experience for any players who perhaps experienced something similar in real life, but felt like they couldn’t react how they wanted to without damaging their relationship or reputation. The design team also spent some time (finally) playing This War Of Mine. In the game, Pavle may have died, but the design team’s sense of inspiration has not. We noticed that This War Of Mine really made the players care about the characters by providing minute details from their lives to make them seem more real, and by communicating that anyone could have fallen into a situation like the one in the game, regardless of personal prowess. We hope to carry this into Broke. One way we talked about doing this was making the homeless character act like an intellectual. Our client confirmed this happens. She told us about finding Harvard alumni in homeless shelters, sabotaged by mental ailments, just like the homeless character in Broke. We also think that adding characterization to the playable characters will help separate the player from them, which will counter a problem we’ve had with players reacting to the choices they may make with statements along the lines of, “I wouldn’t do those options; I would do a third option that isn’t available in the game.” We’ve been writing dialogue for the homeless character with that in mind this week.

Meanwhile, the tech team has been taking steps to include data saving capabilities. The database has been modified to be writable, thus allowing data to be saved directly to the database. Data restoration has also been worked on, so that when users open the app, it will display the restored progress for them. More work has also been done on the bank app, namely in how the UI is arranged and scaled. Work has also been done into organizing the cluster system through which content is presented to the player.

The art team has mainly been designing the layout of the bank app and working out the logo and intro for the game.

This was our last week before spring break. Will we come back energized and ready to dump out massive amounts of content, or will we be somehow more tired than before? You’ll find out next time. See you soon!