Shawshank Redemption The Game

By Max Cassella and Axel Barredo

Intro

For our project, we decided to remediate the prison break scene from the 1994 film, Shawshank Redemption. Our game is fairly simple overall, but it took some time to obtain our final product. We knew we wanted to stick to the prison break scene, but we were unsure as to how we could portray our vision in a fun way while sticking to the same tone as the movie. Given our wanting to accurately match the seriousness of the scene, we began our quest with the vision of creating an escape room like game that would be playable in virtual reality. Our vision was bold; however, we felt it could be done. After researching how to make a VR game, we realized that our vision may have been too bold to accomplish in such a short duration. We shifted our focus to create a more simplistic remediation as our second goal was to have a completed game that we were passionate about rather than pieces of a much more complicated game that would leave us unfulfilled and struggling to explain its meaning. After watching the trailer for a game based off of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we decided to shift our focus to a platform game developed in Game Maker Studio. To address our concerns regarding matching the tone of the film, we decided that it was best to develop our new game, and then determine how to remediate the serious nature of the film after we had a better understanding of what our final product would look like. 

(The beginning stages of building our level)

Gameplay

For those who have never watched Shawshank, the main character Andy Dufresne escapes Shawshank prison by digging a hole in the side of his cell, climbing through the inside of the prison, and crawling through sewage pipes to a small river a few hundred yards away from the prison. In our remediation, our hand drawn sprite representing Dufresne jumps from platform to platform in order to reach the end of the level; however, unlike the movie, the objective is to avoid the sewage that is spread across the level. If a player were to fall in, they are guided back to the start of the level and given another attempt to successfully escape Shawshank. 

Why Remediate Shawshank?

Our choice to remediate Shawshank Redemption stems from a few different factors. Firstly, the film is one of our favorites, thus the opportunity to remediate the film was a project that both of us welcomed and were engaged with from the start. Additionally, we felt that the film offered us a unique challenge: creating a game from a film that offered minimal opportunity for remediation. In other words, the film’s serious tone and ambiance was an obstacle we recognized could be difficult to overcome in an elementary game. 

Combatting Issues of Tone in Remediation

To combat issues of remediating the overall serious nature of the film, we decided to go the complete opposite direction of our original goals of matching tones and instead opted to create a game that focused on the humorous aspects of the scene. Inspiration came mostly from Axel’s remembering of a Shawshank remediation from Family Guy which focuses on the humor associated with the scene such as the fact that Dufresne appears in the river on the other side of the prison walls “clean” despite crawling through hundreds of yards of human waste. Upon rewatching the scene from the original movie, we found humor in the fact that this was not entirely untrue as Dufresne’s character does appear from the pipe in a relatively clean state when considering the journey he had just endured. To replicate this mistake in our game, we offer players unlimited chances to complete the level; the sewage is merely an obstacle and players will not die if they accidentally fall in; however, they will experience a much more difficult journey as they will certainly find themselves continuing to encounter the sewage until they reach their destination. This realization in our process led to a much sillier game mechanic; however, our result adequately portrays that the sewage is merely an obstacle rather than a barricade for our player similar to how Dufresne experienced the sewage. In other words, we did not create a game that was meant to be too easy; however, we also felt that if our game was too difficult, players would get frustrated and lose sight of the end message of perseverance.

Visuals

Axel was the main designer for the visual aspects of the game. The only sprite in the game was designed by hand in Game Maker Studio. All other visual aspects of the game were taken from the public domain. The visuals for this project became exceedingly important as we moved further into the development process. Because we decided to create a satirizing game for a serious film, it was very important that our visuals sufficiently matched the seriousness of the film. For our trailer we chose to continue with our satirical view of the scene as we incorporated serious scenes from the movie and matched them alongside our goofy gameplay. To add to the satirical nature of our game, Axel included fake quotes and other allusions to the comedy within our game which helped close out our satirical goals. 

Challenges and What Did We Learn

While it would be easy to spend this section talking about the difficulty of learning to code since neither of us are coders, we faced many other challenges throughout our development process. For us, the most difficult part of this project was getting our views aligned with each other as to what we wanted our final result to look like. In the beginning we had trouble settling on an idea as many of our initial ideas did not interest us, were not unique, or were too difficult to complete with such limited time and game development skills. We realized early on that creating a world from scratch was very difficult as is, but the added difficulty of remediating a classic film brought an entirely new set of challenges along with it. This aspect made the brainstorming process the most difficult process of our development as once we settled on a concrete idea and learned the skills to execute, our vision began to come together very quickly. 

Conclusion

While this project was a daunting challenge at the beginning, we had a great time creating a game that both of us can be proud of. Given more time, we would have loved to add more levels as well as a scoring system; however, we are happy with the result and are now equipped with new skills regarding game creation. We have also developed an extreme appreciation for game developers and are impressed with the creativity that goes into creating even the most minute details of a game. While our players should not expect our game to be topping the charts as game of the year, we hope to provide our players with an experience that challenges their ideas of the classic film and pushes them past obstacles they perceive as impossible barriers just as Andy Dufresne did when escaping Shawshank. 

Microtransactions… Mega Problem

When I was younger, when a game was released, the only payment a player would be responsible for was buying the disc. However, as I began to play more mature games like Call of Duty, I noticed that a few times per year there would be DLC (Downloadable Content) releases in which new maps would be released. While purchasing these releases was not mandatory, those that did not purchase the DLC maps would not be able to play with those who did purchase them, essentially splitting the player base in half. I always did purchase the DLC maps as they weren’t too expensive and I looked forward to new in-game content. While the Call of Duty franchise was not the first game to include in-game purchases, my experience with Downloadable Content first came while playing COD and games released by EA Sports such as NHL and FIFA. 

Although the splitting up of the player base in Call of Duty was irritating, a player’s in-game performance was never directly influenced by anything that was available for purchase. That is, until they decided to release “supply drops” in 2014’s Advanced Warfare. Supply drops were initially earned in game; these drops included variants of weapons that provided players with a distinct advantage, as many variants included increased damage and range or significant improvements in mobility speed. While the release of supply drops received a bit more backlash than Activision (developers of Call of Duty) expected, because supply drops were originally not available to be purchased, the backlash was limited. However, Activision ultimately decided to release advanced supply drops which were available for purchase and provided significantly higher odds of obtaining the best weapons in the game. 

(Call of Duty Advanced Warfare unfair weapon variant and Advanced Supply Drops in the Marketplace)

Unlike the original supply drops, this move by Activision caused extreme damage to the game, as many players felt that the integrity of the game had been lost. Now, the skill gap was smaller, and the game became “pay to win.” Although I think the community overreacted to these supply drops since the weapons weren’t that much better than the originals, Call of Duty’s player base began to decline at a rapid rate. Call of Duty seemed as though it would be a dead game so long as supply drops and microtransactions were a part of the game. To combat this issue, Activision made supply drops that include strictly cosmetic items that did not impact game performance. Although this change was positive, Call of Duty has never been the same game as it was when microtransactions were limited to DLC maps. 

While Call of Duty may have ruined the game by way of microtransactions, one game that enhanced the player experience through the use of microtransactions is CS:GO. CS:GO also allows players to purchase skins for real money; however, these skins hold monetary value and can even be resold on the marketplace. Through microtransactions, CS:GO has not only preserved the longevity of their game, but also created an entire community of players who are obsessed with collecting and trading. While no game that includes microtransactions will ever be perfect in my opinion, I think CS:GO does an amazing job of integrating microtransactions as an optional enhancement to game enjoyment. Some of these skins have even gone on to sell for tens of thousands of dollars, even hitting prices well over $100,000.

(This CS:GO knife skin is valued at over $1 million, and its owner has turned down offers over this price tag) 

While my complaints regarding microtransactions seem to be very minor as they only affected my enjoyment of the game, there are more tangible reasons as to why microtransactions are more harmful than good. One thing I have noticed in microtransactions is that there are two specific types, both of which ruin the experience: microtransactions that provide an advantage or those that look to exploit children. 

In my experience of playing games, since Call of Duty, I have mostly seen the first type of microtransactions in sports games, specifically FIFA. For example, when I was in high school, I watched one of my good friends become addicted to opening FIFA Ultimate Team packs just to gain an advantage against other players. When it was all said and done, he had spent around $2,000 in under 6 months, causing a long discussion with his parents. Again, microtransactions of this type may be annoying to those that do not wish to spend money, yet they can also be extremely problematic to individuals, especially when the perceived in-game advantage they provide is extremely large as is the case with FIFA.  

For the second type of microtransactions I have come across, the first game I point to is Fortnite. Although the items offered in the Fortnite marketplace do not affect gameplay, the inclusion of pop culture icons and characters in game “skins” is directed at mainly children, especially when considering Fortnite’s player base. While this may be profitable for the developers of Fortnite, it begs the question: are microtransactions truly ethical? When purchasing from the Fortnite marketplace, it takes about 15 seconds for an individual to add money to their account and purchase a new skin. And with each skin costing roughly $15-$20, purchasing skins quickly becomes a very expensive hobby that young kids are most likely unable to stop themselves from participating in. Considering that the revenue from microtransactions is nearly $100 billion per year, I would argue microtransactions in this context are absolutely not ethical; however, there is no chance that microtransactions are going anywhere, as they’re just too profitable.

(Fortnite marketplace featuring Star Wars skins for purchase) 

As mentioned previously, microtransactions can be positive for a game; however, they also cause a lot of problems when overused and when they’re meant to exploit young kids. In the days of early Call of Duty and CS:GO, I thought microtransactions could help enhance games; yet, when a game revolves around its microtransactions, I learned how microtransactions could become exploitative and lead games to lose their integrity. While I’m not exactly sure how to fix this issue, I do think we need to investigate solutions, as it is typically more of a problem than a game enhancement. 

Master of Distraction

In my nearly 15 years of playing video games, I have seen how videogames can be used for good and bad. Emily’s blog post for Tuesday made me question my idea of togetherness, which led to me remembering the times during Covid when my buddies and I would hop on XBOX for a few games of NHL, Call of Duty, or even Fortnite. Man, those were the days! Just a couple of unemployed highschool seniors grinding away for hours at a time without a care in the world. It was like clockwork. Everyday. All day. The only decisions we had to make were what game we were playing and who was at fault when our team died. Although we weren’t able to see each other for months, I never felt closer to my best friends. Even when we hang out now, we still talk about the awesome moments we had together. Video games helped us turn a negative into a once in a lifetime experience. Through the first few weeks of class, I have redefined what it means to be together. While I initially defined being together as being in the same physical location, the past few weeks made me reflect on my experiences and realize that togetherness isn’t such a clear concept. As I mentioned in my comment on Tuesday, I now think of togetherness as the act of progressing in personal relationships by way of any form of communication. 

Another example of video games serving as a distraction came more recently following the loss of a loved one in November. However, unlike my Covid story, video games were a more negative distraction. For me, video games became an outlet where I entered a different world. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine. But along with these feelings of separation from the real world, I found myself neglecting the true problems that loomed over me everyday. If I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t, and so I did just that. I sat in my room and played until I was forced to face the real world again. And every time I turned off my XBOX, I was hit with a wave of realization that I was pushing off my responsibilities and placing myself in a virtual world–a fantasy land. While I am a very happy individual, video games were consuming my days, as it was easier to grab the controller instead of open my laptop and face the overwhelming amount of homework that we college students have.Though it is human nature to opt for play over work, I found that this feeling was exacerbated by my recent experiences. 

Based on my two experiences, at the very least, I myself find video games are best at a happy medium. However, what I do find interesting is that over gaming and overuse of electronics is not a very common topic in the media or really anywhere for that matter. Have we really been so consumed by our devices that we are all, quite literally, addicted to them? My screen time on my phone alone has exceeded six hours per day, and it’s only been increasing since I’ve added more responsibilities to my plate during college. While I don’t consider myself addicted to video games, there are many people around the world, known as “shut-ins” who live their life online while they remain inside alone. As the internet has developed, more and more “shut-ins” have appeared, and the addiction is spreading quickly. While the effects of over gaming are not as easily recognizable as other addictions, gaming addiction leads to similar symptoms of the more well known addictions, and as we know addiction can lead to isolation and negative effects on personal relationships. 

I completely understand that I’ve contradicted myself in this post by saying that video games can promote togetherness while also harming it, but isn’t that what the blog posts are for? Anyway, as for closing remarks, I want to encourage everyone to be mindful of the time we are spending on our devices. While we may think we are taking a break for a few quick games, an hour or two quickly turns into a full day away from what really matters around us. 

-MSC