Today’s Plan:
- Talk about Papers Please
- What Do I Mean By the “Theme” of Your Game
Papers Please
I want to show you a thing. Then have a quick talk.
What Do I Mean By the “Theme” of Your Game
Games are very different. Not all games have explicit themes. Not all games even have an easily discernible topic (think back to Tetris). Sometimes games, and stories, have meanings that the creator might not have intended or recognized. So, one of the first things I want you to do is to think about your game a bit, and see which of the questions below help you to frame the purpose of your game.
You have to do this, because the paper project asks you to think about how the mechanics of a game augment or diminish its theme (its message, its purpose)!
- What does this game represent/do? [What is the theme? Rhetorical Purpose? Argument? Message? What does it want to say about being human or living in the world?]
- Is the game making an argument about how we should behave in the real world?
- Is the game addressing a human problem we might face in the world? How does it suggest/teach us to deal with that problem?
- Do you think you are feeling/experiencing/thinking something that the developer didn’t intend? Is that an accident or because the game pushes you to think something that runs different to your politics / ideology?
Note, it is also possible to write a “this game does something really, really cool mechanically” paper, and then write about how that could have been even cooler if the game was more artfully constructed.
