Background
In January I started this Interactive Fiction module with trepidation. I love literature and language but I’ve always had little confidence in my own voice, as an author of anything. I generally stick to ‘abstract’ or less representational visual art where I don’t have to consciously narrate the story and the imagery does the talking. The games I’ve made before have merely suggested a narrative through subtle mechanics and environment design.
I knew this time would have to be different. It was an opportunity to finally face this anxiety as an adult in the safe space of an MA degree. At first I started wondering ‘what text will I adapt?’. My main drive in making art is to create something ‘beautiful’, and I like highly stylised presentations of texts like Greek myths, fairytales, Shakespeare plays etc- narratives I view as like a ‘trellis’ structure for the artist to work around, play with, subvert, embellish etc. I like dense intertextual playfulness and ‘abstraction’. But in my opinion, that isn’t exactly pure storytelling for its own sake.
The last big game project I did was a working-through of some mental block I had or an issue I couldn’t avoid dealing with: addiction to Instagram and disinterest in deeper engagement with media.
This project is the same: working through or trying to explain my feelings about climate destruction and powerlessness to stop it. I think the problem-solving nature of game development lends itself to this kind of thought process and engagement with your own ideas in making it. I wondered what would happen if I tried to speak to my feelings of impotence, dulled anger etc.
This particular issue something that works well for a written medium, I think. I wouldn’t be able to tell this story with different/visually based game mechanics.
Research and influences
My inspiration for this story has come from lots of places over many months. I think the first influence was If A Tree Falls, a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front. Some of the members were charged with terrorism for doing non-violent acts of sabotage against logging companies and other environmentally destructive actors.
After watching it with my housemates, we reflected on whether we’d be willing to do what they did, and go to prison for it, and I was really surprised that they immediately said they wouldn’t. I felt that my (abstract) desire to martyr myself for this particular cause which is planetary and universal should be interrogated in some way.
I read How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm and it spoke to how I’d been feeling for a long time and I’m sure most people must feel in some way: ‘someone must do something’. The book is a sort of polemic against the non-violence of popular climate movements and tactics, i.e. Extinction Rebellion, and the ideology behind that.
Underpinning this whole theme, and an obvious starting point of reference is the Unabomber, Ted Kazynski, who has in recent times become a memefied figure. I had to have a cabin in the woods as my setting, and it seems that all my test readers understood the reference, consciously or not.
I put extracts from important/popular texts in the game because I wanted to ground it in reality and ostensibly give the player some references. I wish I could have read more in but I think I did reasonably well, giving the subject a lot of thought over the development period. The reading and research was actually 70% of the process I would say. Other particularly relevant books to mention: Being Ecological by Timothy Morton and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
By amazing fortune, my housemate who has a car announced that she was going to visit a HS2 protest camp for a few nights and I didn’t hesitate to go with her. At the camp I met some people who were actually invested long-term in the cause. They were totally braver than I was, or much hardier at least. The camps were occupied purely by force of will and determination, which was pretty awe-inspiring. There was seemingly little strategy, just a waiting game to occupy key areas of woodland and protect whatever trees they could.
Characters
The characters aren’t universal but the main character is quite non specified. ? I had some key characteristics for them but didn’t really find space to bring them in- the most important thing was the plot structure and progression.
Emails/tech
Technology is a large feature in this.
CollapseOS (“Bootstrap post-collapse technology”) and Urbit (“…a compact system for an individual to run their own permanent personal server on any Unix machine with an internet connection”) are sort of semi-speculative works of art as programming(?) which I keep hearing mentioned in different places. I wanted to bring those speculative tech ideas into it although it’s a bit trivial to the story(?).. no- the story is mostly told through emails, that was what I intended. So the landscape of the computer software should come into it and set the scene. It’s supposed to show the lengths the characters go to to stay undetected in the present-day/very near future surveillance globe-state.
Environment
I’d originally wanted to situate this in a specific place- maybe Australia with wildfires. Oh yeah I need that as an ending.
Style
The itch.io page I wanted to keep simple, like the game. The tagline gives some information/context you don’t get in the game itself, which I quite like.
I would have added sound but ran out of time. Someone suggested I add images/illustrations, which would have been nice but that definitely would have taken away from the writing. I didn’t want to rely on visuals with this project.
Story branching
I went from back to front and front to back at the same time, generally finishing in the middle. The writing basically gets progressively more lazy from the beginning. I think I have good pacing at the beginning and the rhythm of most of the story branches is a bit weird. I didn’t really have one particular ending in mind as the ‘right’ one- what mattered to me was the active space in the game before the end. I kind of let go of trying to make each ending meaningful i.e. saying something about the choices the player has made, I tried to allow it to feel more like chance. The character is at the mercy of their surrounding world.
It was interesting to read about the different types of branching and see the graphs. But I feel that’s more for reference and analysis- I’m writing a short story not an interactive novel, so it felt more intuitive to let it branch itself out as necessary.
Just out of interest I have drawn a graph of it:
A correct production workflow
So, this project did come out of some fairly extensive research.
The plot ideas came out fully formed and one of first things I did was map out the ‘inciting incident’, tensions etc etc. This is the skeleton I came up with before building things up in Ink:
Events:
1. OS booted. (intro)
2. person contacted (instigating event)
3. person returns contact or doesn’t (first ending?) (2nd instigating)
4. supplies drop (side story or tension release idk)
5. exercising? Description of surroundings? Thinking about what to do
6. somehow planting the bomb or being given control of it, idk. Pipeline? Oil refinery?
7. lost sibling or friend gets in touch and wants u to stop? (conflict)
8. find out they’re looking for u.. sooner than expected
9. EITHER someone turns u in OR u make a mistake and the cops find u OR u detonate OR cabin burns down.
Playtesting
I asked people for 1–3 points I could improve on, as we had talked about the perils of asking ‘what do you think?’ or other open-ended questions to people. People will just say ‘it’s good’ unless you ask for something specific. Yeah weirdly, everyone I asked seemed to doubt their literary judgement and feel unsure about the text format of the game! I don’t understand why really.
Environmental storytelling wouldn’t really apply here in the text-based game, I would have to put across what was happening in the clearest way possible.
I thought the ‘game mechanic’ could be emails. But.. there was also a lot going on inside the character’s head and they respond to challenges of their environment as well.
I wanted to focus on loneliness and their loss of connection with people in an almost suicidal way. Am I glorifying suicide..? Not exactly but it is a kind of martyrdom.. and something that is necessary? It’s not a good idea to try to avoid all controversial or sensitive subjects in fiction.
I brainstormed, I mind-showered. I.. have screenshots of my initial thoughts in the document. I did purposely go on a field trip to try and gain some insight.
What went right
What went right? Keeping it fairly simple on the packaging side. I like to get carried away with embellishing things but with this, I kept ‘form follows function’ at the forefront of my mind. The photos I’ve used are from my phone camera reel, images/memories that do make up the mental landscape of this story for me. I think it’s quite aesthetically pure and honest. That was my main goal with this, to make something honest.
What went wrong
What went wrong? Erm.. not putting enough time in. Not having enough courage. I let self-doubt in, I thought, what kind of insight could I have on this issue- but of course it doens’t matter it’s personal. I think the character(s) are maybe not unique enough they need more defined characteristics. I don’t know I’m not a writer!
The choices are supposed to give an element of chance or there are subtle consequences of things.. it’s very traditional really. Aah I wonder if I can put timers in. at the end.
I think this could have been better researched! But would it ever be enough? It may be pointless to imagine the perfect realistic story that’s also supposed to be speculative fiction.
I wanted music but I don’t have time.
A problem I always will have with making games is that I’m “not a gamer”. Games aren’t my preferred entertainment! I dunno. I dunno. I didn’t really enjoy the games we were told to look at. Maybe I just have good taste lol. Ugh. Theres a relationship w game culture and literature hm. Idk. I feel like there’s a strict binary between ‘gamer’s games’ and ‘outsider games’ and I look at the latter if at all. I’d find out about them through other channels. Does that make sense?
Conclusion
I’ve made a game that seems to be well received. I’m reasonably happy with it. I think it’s a good step towards greater union of form and function, and clarity of purpose in my art practice.
