Goals

I can only speak for myself, but for the first time in my life, I'm presented with the opportunity to impart change and affect people who aren't just within my personal realm. In creating the game that we've been working on this semester, we've finally come to a point where, in trying to create a connection between casual and hardcore gamers, our focus is now entirely on making people care. For the longest time, we were focusing in on obvious, but honestly somewhat short-sighted ideas regarding how a casual gamer increasing his or her stats helps a hardcore gamer, how a hardcore gamer could give the casual gamer money to buy things for his or her avatar, etc. These were all things we thought we had to focus on and get done.

It wasn't until now, when we've released the game for Alpha 2 to the ETC, that we truly realize what this project is really about. It's about making people know that they're actions matter. It's about making people feel like they belong in a community. It's about making people feel like they're wanted, needed, dare I say even loved. While we aren't entirely impartial due to the fact that we're making this game, we're becoming increasingly frustrated with the fact that our band members don't appear to care about the band. We play the hardcore game, we talk to them, we earn them money, we unlock badges, and they don't respond to much outside of the badge system. The hardcore gamers takes actions and make choices and decisions that affect everyone in the band, but somehow the casual gamers don't seem to care. And the fact that hardcore gamers can feel this frustration in dealing with potentially complete strangers for casual gamers, means that there's something to be frustrated about. They're frustrated that the relationship is only one way. They're frustrated because the hardcore players and the casual gamers are focusing on different end goals.

We need to make the casual gamers feel like they matter.

Even though there aren't any over narratives in the games, stories can be easily created out of the things that are happening in the game. Henry's band, "The Emo." features four members: Cutie, Queen R0x0r, Tonto, and Henri. Cutie and Queen R0x0r are the stars of the band, being the lead guitarist and singer, respectively, while Henri and Tonto are the emo guys in the back supporting the band. Now this is a story that comes from simply looking at the avatars, and what comes from the actions that are taken in the hardcore game. We need to make those actions apparent to the casual gamers. We need to tell these stories to the casual gamers. We believe that they would care if they only knew what they were doing.

This isn't entirely a game project anymore. It's more a game project to make people respect and care about one another.

This post comes from an incredibly passionate and intense discussion with the team, and by far the most important discussion we've had this entire semester.