"Make a game about sad."

M

• Goal is to lift sadness from the world
• Players placed randomly on the track
• Pull a sad card; next player has to answer the question. Player judges whether or not the sadness level in the world has been raised or lowered.
• Rafael: philosophy of the game may be: "For evil to win, all it takes is for good people to do nothing."

S

• Neighborhood between Park Hill and Five Points; only three houses left with owners who've been there for a long time
• Jill (and two other residents) have a timer that moves really slowly compared to the timer of the new residents
• New residents move in, fix the house, close the gate to the alley (things being shut in general)
• Original residents "curb appeal" goes down as the game progresses
• Rafael: Which point of view does the player have?
• Mike & Rafael: Tell the player that their goal or victory condition is to "save the cats" and letting them discover the ethics of the game through play
• Neighbors don't respect Jill's spayed/neutered feral cats
• This game idea reminded me of an editorial in the New York Times that I read recently about the decline in the neighborhoodliness of neighborhoods.

General - Rafael lectur; still discussing S's game

• Is the goal to make a game about a sad situation or to make the player sad?
• If we are to investigate the sadness of loss of community, we must first define community
• What does it mean to make a neighborhood better?
• Different metrics: wealth, health, etc.

P

• "Anvil of Life"
• Player's answers to questions determine the size of the anvil that you have to carry
• Give the player a list of options based on the size of their anvil
• Start with a "bling anvil"; if it gets too heavy, then player starts to bend with the weight
• Rafael: What is the scale going to be? Are you going to show the numerical feedback to the player?
• Could show the animation of the player either strugging or having an easy time with the anvil
• Should players create their character or pick available characters?

J

• Death of an innocent or hurting of innocent people
• Representing the numbers of the events in a graphical way on the screen
• Graphical representation is more important than the activity that the player does
• 2004: 200 murders in Colorado; 1900 forcible rapes; 11,000 aggravated assaults; 11,000 abortions
• Compressing 1 year into a smaller amount of time; placing dots on the screen
• Rafael: 365 seconds (1 per day) or half of that (1/2 second per day)
• Mike: large color converging on center of screen rather than random placement of pixels filling in the screen
• 2 systems - one system closing in on the player; another system representing something fun and frivolous