Fiction – New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games

Omission – A Remediation of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Introduction

Embark on a strategic escapade as Sadie Green in Omission, navigating from the game room to the nurse’s desk. Your mission: log community service hours without being caught by Sam. With each passing second, your logged hours diminish, along with the prospects of earning the community service award. Most too fast, and you may alert Sam, ending the service project.

Why Remediate Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow?

Although there are several games woven into the narrative of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that we could have remediated, we wanted to create a new game based on the central relationship in the novel. The book follows thirty years of conflicts between gamemakers Sam and Sadie, beginning when they met as children in a hospital game room. It was during these formative years, through shared gameplay and blossoming friendship, that Sadie covertly logged her time with hospitalized Sam as community service hours–a fact she kept from him.

The months of lying by omission lead to their first major conflict, shaping the beginning chapters of the novel and hinting toward the future of their relationship. We chose to use the community service conflict as the foundation for our game, believing that it reflects the pivotal moments that will define and drive their relationship forward, both personally and professionally.

Game Design Process

Revisiting Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Our initial step in the game design process involved re-reading the beginning chapters of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It was essential to re-familiarize ourselves with the characters Sam and Sadie during their time in the hospital. The game adopts young Sam’s perspective on the community service conflict yet paradoxically casts the player as Sadie. Essentially, we wanted to make the game as if Sam was the creator trying to understand Sadie’s actions in her lying by omission ‘game.’

*Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow* by Gabrielle Zevin

Upon discovering that Sadie had been logging their time together as community service hours, Sam’s initial response was to shut her out, feeling reduced to a mere means to an end rather than a true friend. Although he grew out of this mindset, we used his initial perspective to make our game competitive. We integrated a countdown mechanic into the game, where the longer Sadie takes to beat the level, the more community service hours she loses. The countdown begins at 609 hours – the number of hours Sadie records in the novel. This mirrors Sam’s perception of Sadie’s priorities––questioning whether her intentions stemmed from genuine friendship or a mere tally of hours. Understanding the nuances of their relationship and their personalities at our early design stages was crucial for accurately translating their dynamic into our game’s narrative and elements.

To translate our vision into a playable game, we planned every aspect of the gameplay with detailed road maps. These plans outlined the journey from the welcome screen to the various end-game scenarios, with clear instructions for programming Sadie’s and Sam’s interactions and specific conditions for winning or restarting the game.

Program Selection – After evaluating various options, we carefully selected GameMaker Studio 2 to develop our game. This decision was driven by the specific needs of our project, particularly the demand for a program that excels in 2D game development with comprehensive features such as sprite and animation management, and a drag-and-drop interface that simplifies complex game development tasks.

Sprite and Background Design – Our first real step in the game design process was designing the sprites. After discussions on the visual style we wanted to achieve, Henry meticulously crafted detailed sprites for Sam and Sadie, and a nurse. Sam and Sadies’ sprites included profiles for multiple directions (front, back, right, left) to support a more fluid gameplay experience. Henry utilized GameMaker’s sprite editor to layer colors and add depth, ensuring the characters stood out against the background.

Background design followed, with specific attention to interactive elements like doorways, which are vital to the game’s aesthetics and mechanics. In designing the background, we aimed to mirror the ambiance of a hospital by incorporating elements such as checkered floors and numerous doorways while also integrating a bright wall color to create a more engaging atmosphere for the game.

Character Movement – For character movement, we programmed Sadie with basic directional controls (right, left, up, down), while Sam’s NPC movement (right, left) included pathfinding and collision interactions with walls. We also programmed character interactions, such as collisions between Sadie and Sam.

Sadie Basic Movement (Up, Down, Left, Right)

Challenges

GameMaker Studio 2 & Collaboration – One significant challenge we faced was GameMaker’s limited support for real-time collaboration across separate computers. This limitation posed difficulties in our early development process, as it restricted the ability to simultaneously edit our design game elements as a group. In an attempt to overcome this limitation, we tried to integrate Git to share game files between different computers. We successfully created a repository and separately downloaded the programs; however, integrating Git with GameMaker proved more difficult than anticipated, and we had to look at other options. Instead, we used Henry’s computer to install GameMaker Studio 2 and scheduled in-person meetings to collaborate on programming the game.

Complexity of Wall Collisions – Handling collisions, especially with walls, introduced a new layer of difficulty for our group. Initially, our characters would react unpredictably upon hitting a wall – sometimes getting stuck, other times passing through as if the barrier didn’t exist. We initially suspected it was a boundaries issue, but our many attempts to edit didn’t yield the results we were looking for.

We had to program walls not only to stop character movement but also to influence it depending on the game’s physics. For example, when Sam (the NPC) hit a wall, he needed to turn around and bounce back.

Score/Countdown Timer Error – The most challenging aspect we faced – and one that caused errors even after game creation – was implementing the countdown timer that updated Sadie’s logged hours. The finished game was meant to work as follows: a countdown timer starting at 609 seconds would begin at the start of the game; when Sadie reached the nurse’s desk, the timer would stop, adding the remaining seconds from the timer to the player’s score. The player’s score was meant to be cumulative, meaning that if they did not get the necessary score of 609 from their first playthrough, they would need to play again. For example, if Sadie finished the level with 598 seconds left on the timer (which translated to hours on the score sheet), this would be her starting score for the next level. When the next level starts, the points will be cumulative, but the timer will restart at 609 seconds. Additionally, Sam’s speed would increase, making the game more difficult at each level.

The root of our problems came from updating the score based on the amount left on the countdown timer. Due to GameMaker’s limited drag-and-drop ability, we were unable to update the persistent (cumulative) score variable with the temporary (resets each level) timer variable. Our limited knowledge of how to stop the game’s clock and, therefore, stop the timer prevented us from storing the remaining timer value in the score variable, as GameMaker could not update the score variable with a constantly changing integer. We tried storing the timer’s value at the exact moment Sadie reached the nurse’s desk using an intermediary variable, but this, too, failed to resolve the issue. If we had an expert in GameMaker on our team, we certainly could have fixed this error; however, over several days and many YouTube tutorials watched, the error persisted. Ultimately, we had to accept this unresolved challenge, deferring its solution to the future.

Successes

Sprite Design – One of our major successes was our work on sprite design. Our sprite designer, Henry, decided to craft each sprite from scratch instead of relying on premade options available in GameMaker. This decision allowed for complete creative freedom to personalize Sam and Sadie. The detailed and unique sprites Henry created added a distinct visual appeal to our game, enhancing the overall player experience.

Movement Mechanics – Another satisfying achievement was mastering the basic movement mechanics. This fundamental aspect of our gameplay had to be smooth and responsive to ensure a satisfying gameplay experience. After a series of interactions and adjustments (and with a lot of help from Lizzie), we managed to program movements for Sadie that were not just functional, but simple and fluid.

Collaboration – These successes were not just about getting certain aspects of the game right; they were milestones that reflected our growth as game developers. Each sprite and every movement that worked were testaments to our evolving skills and deepening understanding of game design. We celebrated every small achievement. These successes propelled us forward, encouraging us to tackle more complex interactions within our game.

In addition to technical achievements, another area of success was our ability to work as a cohesive team despite the initial challenges with collaboration tools. We found ways to streamline our communication and workflow, ensuring that everyone was on the same page and could contribute effectively to the project. This collaborative spirit was crucial to overcoming the obstacles we faced.

Final Takeaways

The limitations of the free version of GameMaker Studio 2 initially slowed down our progress. In any future projects, we plan to invest in the paid version of the software, which offers enhanced features for real-time team collaboration.
The varied skills within our team played a pivotal role in our project’s development. For example, Lizzie’s programming expertise and Henry’s talent for design provided a balanced approach to tackling technical challenges. Sterling’s documentation was crucial in articulating our process in the game design document, while Alex’s creativity shone through in creating a compelling game trailer that captured the essence of the game’s story.
One of the key lessons we learned from this project is the importance of persistence and continuous learning. Game development is a field that is constantly evolving, and being adaptable and eager to learn new skills is crucial. Sometimes, it was difficult to find a tutorial to aid our programming difficulties, so it was essential for us not to give up and try different approaches on our own.

Credits

Game Development: Henry, Lizzie

Game Design Document: Sterling

Game Trailer: Alex

Link to Game Trailer: OMISSION – Game Trailer

MarxBlaster

*The Cover of* Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow *by Gabrielle Zevin*

Introduction

For our game design project, we were particularly inspired by Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a book about game-making, friendships, and lives lived together & in conflict. We were particularly inspired by the passion, creativity, and care that Sadie and Mazer put into each game they created over the course of the novel, even as they struggled with their relationships with one another. In creating our game, we wanted to remediate the novel by pulling together aspects of two different games that Sam & Sadie made: EmilyBlaster and The Master of Revels, in order to touch on the importance of the name of the book & explore more deeply the scenes within it. This led us to create our game, MarxBlaster.

What Our Game Is

MarxBlaster is a remediation of two games, EmilyBlaster and Master of Revels, from Zevin’s novel. EmilyBlaster is a first-person shooter game, one of Sadie’s early games described in the book, where the player shoots down phrases from Emily Dickinson’s famous poems in order to assemble the finished works. In Master of Revels, the game is set in Shakespearean London, where the gamer has to discover who killed the playwright Christopher Marlowe. Our game remediates, in part, a section of the game Sadie created an actor styled after her deceased partner Marx, who gives the “Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow” speech from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the same speech that the novel is titled after. We combined the two games by borrowing the scene and the speech from the Master of Revels scene while placing additional emphasis on phrases like Sadie did in EmilyBlaster. In our game, the player is tasked with navigating the Globe Theater in order to find her friend Marx, who is preparing to deliver the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech. Over the course of several levels, you must collect speech bubbles containing the lines from Marx’s speech while moving through various rooms of the theater, including the light room, a makeup room, on the side of the stage, and at the end, meeting Marx on the main stage. The speech bubbles constantly change speed to increase difficulty as the game progresses. Upon collecting all the speech bubbles, the player completes the game by reaching Marx, who then performs his speech before the audience (and the player).

At the end of the game, a voice (voiced by our group member, Sarah Beth) reads the speech aloud. The screen switches to the lines of the speech displayed and read together for the first time in front of an image of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave, by Katsushika Hokusai – the same image referenced on the cover of the book alluding to the iconography in Ichigo – Sadie & Sam’s first game.

*The end scene from* MarxBlaster *where the speech is read aloud and shown as a whole work*

Game Design & Our Process

In designing this game, we tried to balance what scenes we thought would be interesting to remediate with our group’s game-making inexperience. Originally, we were deciding between our final project idea, inspired by our love of Marx, or trying to recreate one of Sam’s mazes in LA, with several dead-ends referencing core plot points of the novel. In learning more about game-making, we decided a platformer game would be within our skill level while still having the capacity to remediate the work how we wanted to. In placing Marx’s character directly in our game, we remediated the novel by both featuring games & scenes in the work, but we also remediated Sadie’s love letter to Marx by placing him in our game, just as she placed him in hers.

Once we decided on MarxBlaster, we tackled the design of the obstacles to reaching Marx. This is where we took inspiration from the mechanics of Sadie’s game EmilyBlaster. We used the concept of shooting phrases to create the obstacles to getting individual lines of the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech but implemented it within the platformer rather than as a shooter game. We decided to use the platform Scratch, as none of us had any coding experience. Because our concept was more complex, we tried to balance it with the simpler system in order to add in all the details we wanted to, such as moving from scene to scene through the Globe Theater and with our moving text boxes.

*One of the scenes from the game, which is also an interior shot of the Globe Theater*

Visually, we decided to use photos from the inside of the Globe Theater in order to give the player the feeling of walking through the game. We made text boxes that simulated text we associate with classic video games and tried to reference the font used on the cover of the novel in the process, especially considering the phrases the game’s main character collects to reference the speech.

Our character design was based in part on convenience and in part on the type of remediation & game we wanted to create. There are only two characters in the game: Marx & the main character. Marx’s character was chosen mainly because the sprite was dressed appropriately for an actor in Macbeth. The main character was chosen for some of the same reasons: she was an existing sprite that had good costumes available, especially to animate her while she walked. However, part of our motivation was also because, as we’ve talked about in class, there is a lack of diverse representation in video games, and we wanted to challenge some of those notions in our protagonist selections, especially because race & representation are hugely important themes in Zevin’s novel.

*A screenshot of our game where the character jumps to hit a moving textbox*

Our entire group collaborated on the design of the game. Mariah did the majority of the coding, especially around creating the stages, coding each sprite’s movement, creating the beginning & end sequences, and figuring out how the text boxes would move. Brynn did most of the graphic design work, especially in the end scene & with the text boxes, and coded the movement between scenes, the point value system, & switched the text between levels. Sarah Beth helped with finding the scene pictures and created our trailer.

Successes & Challenges

In terms of concept, our game was very successful. Our finished product does what we set out to do: we have multiple levels the protagonist goes through, the text bubbles move with varying speeds and difficulty, the introduction & end of the game align in terms of our messaging of the game, and we were able to create text bubbles that disappear when touched and add points at the top left of the screen. Our game was also successful in that we learned a lot about game-making and just how much goes into it – although Scratch is certainly a simpler tool, we were able to use it to learn more about game mechanics and foundational lessons around game-making. Marxblaster is certainly not without bugs, and because of time and experience constraints, it is not as difficult or complex as we may have wanted it to be, it is cohesive in terms of the story we wanted to tell through game-making and the way in which we wanted to remediate core aspects of the novel.

Along the way we did have a lot of difficulties. Learning to code with zero experience between the three of us led to a huge learning curve. We had a lot of difficulty even getting our game to save our progress in Scratch because too many of us were signed in, leading Mariah to have to recreate more complex sequences of code multiple times. Although the simplicity of Scratch was why we chose the program, at times, it also was too simple for us, and we had to come up with workarounds to the software in order to get our game to do what we wanted it to do. Additionally, we had a lot of issues with our text boxes and changes between our six total scenes. We had to come up with a bit of a convoluted workaround that led to some of the boxes running across the screen upside down, and difficulty in keeping them on screen in order for players to be able to collect points. For a while, we struggled to get the player to progress through the game and had to switch around our mechanics; first, when the player touched every text box they would switch screens, and then we moved to a model where when Avery touches an x-value on the right end of the screen, the backdrop switches and a new level begins.

What We Learned

We learned a lot about how difficult game making is, but also how unique a tool it is for remediation & storytelling. As we discussed in class, game type has a lot of impact on the feeling someone has playing a game; in LOTRO, the ability of players to never have to beat Sauron while enjoying the world of Middle Earth creates a far different atmosphere from that of the book & movie, which draw on the imagery of fated heroes on impossible journeys. In our game, we tried to use the platform game type and the remediation of text as a backdrop to MarxBlaster, creating a game that anyone could play but that a reader of Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow would get a lot more out of. Games allow for multiple levels of remediation: we were able to combine aspects of two different games described in the novel, several major plot points in it, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth into one project. Although it’s far from polished or complex, we hope the nuance within our concept and the variety of scenes you experience offers an interesting game to play!

Trailer

Thanks everyone!

How The Impermanence Of Online Games Both Mirrors The Human Lifespan And Gives It Meaning: A Study Of How Cyberspace Occupies Time Through The Lens of Retired Online Gaming Platforms

As human beings, we have the pleasure and curse of occupying a relatively short amount of time within the existing timeline as we know it; from the moment we are born, we can make the fair assumption that we will live anywhere from 0-122 years old based on all prior recorded human lifespans. We can live comfortably knowing that no matter what we do, eventually our time on this Earth will end. We can leave remnants of our existence behind in the form of art, history books, nuclear waste, and to be more abstract our loved ones’ memories, but as far as we know there is no way to immortalize our existence. Art erodes, history books burn, nuclear waste decays, and families forget. No matter how much time we individually occupy, which I’ll define as any period of time that is touched by any result of one’s own existence so I don’t unnecessarily limit the impact a human life can have, a single human cannot have existed within our timeline from the beginning of time to the end of it. Some may argue that religious human figures such as Adam and Eve break this logic if they existed and are still known of today, but to that, I would argue that even before those first humans, time marched backward–for at least five days according to the original source text (The Bible). For those who are of a different belief, or are not religious, I would emphasize that there has always been a time before humans: whether it be a time of dinosaurs or a time of cosmic energy. Given all of the logic above, it is safe to say that we, as individual humans, occupy a subsect of time. If you give me three minutes of your short subsect of time, I’d love to tell you a bit about why I believe that just as we are allotted time to exist on the ultimate timeline, online games are allotted time to exist on the internet. Then, after that, if you give me one more precious minute, I’ll tell you a bit about how the impermanent nature of these video games should teach more about how we view our own lives and impact.

Part One: A Brief History of My Own Experience With Retired Online Games

*Poptropica* is an online role-playing game that was first released in 2007. It operated using Adobe Flash Player until 2020, when it was briefly retired before being reprogrammed to run with Haxe. In the transition, many of the original gameplay aspects were lost, but players could still access them using a Flashpoint work around or the Steam download of the game (with a few server issues). However, in 2024, with CoolMathGames’s acquisition of *Poptropica*, the Steam download has been rendered largely inoperable, and many of the old aspects of the gameplay have been lost outside of Flashpoint.

Two weeks ago, I was feeling a bit nostalgic for my childhood back in the late 2000’s (do you feel old yet because I do), and I wanted to visit my childhood gaming website: Poptropica. As I remembered it, the site was a beautiful Oasis in my elementary school computer lab where my after school care friends and I would congregate to solve puzzles located on in-game islands in order to unlock different achievements and mini-games. My favorite island, and one I can still remember every step to solving to this day, was Reality TV Island, where you could follow a sequence of steps as your character to effectively apply, get accepted to, and compete in a Reality TV show. Obviously, still on that nostalgia kick, I immediately went to look for that island after logging into my old account. What did I find? Nothing. A big empty space where the island was supposed to be located on the map. My hopes and dreams for reliving my childhood were crushed. Needless to say, I was more than a little upset, but this got me thinking: how many games has something like this happened to? I knew of Club Penguin, which was another of my childhood games that was recently retired, but I didn’t know of the over sixty online games that had gained a cult following online before being shut down. This list includes, but is not limited to, Marvel Heroes 2016-a free MMO released in 2013 and shut down in 2017, Firefall-another MMO released in 2014 and shut down in 2017, and Spark City World-an MMO geared towards girls released in 2008 and shut down in 2017.

An interesting pattern you may have noticed was that all three of the games I listed shut down in 2017. This is not the result of me manipulating data and only showing you games that shut down in 2017 on purpose, as the games I selected were entirely random. A better explanation, however, is that Adobe Flash Player was deprecated in 2017, rendering many online games that relied on the software as good as dead, as there was no chance for players to emulate them on their own machines. In a matter of months, due to a corporate decision, the lifecycles of these games within the timeline of the internet were officially ended. To make this concept a bit easier to understand, I’ll employ an analogy that helped me wrap my own head around the idea of relative time: humans are to the ultimate timeline as a game is to the section of the ultimate timeline that the internet takes up. Therefore, when an online game hasn’t existed for the entirety of the time the internet has existed, that game mirrors the temporary nature within the timeline of the internet that humans have within the ultimate timeline. If you’re a keen reader, which I know you are, you may take my examples of retired games and argue, “If you could find information about them on the internet, then their lifespan hasn’t ended yet.” To that I say, first of all you have a great point, but second of all you’ve got to think a little bigger. Think back to before the game existed-the game’s lifespan certainly doesn’t extend to the first ever instance of the internet, as the internet was originally created to house and parse raw data. Then, think to the future. If these games could be deleted because the software they relied on for the backend was given up on, the same can be said for every website that houses an article written about those games, as well as every website that houses a video, and every website that houses any information about it whatsoever. These games, therefore, are not immortal within the timeline of the internet, just as we humans are not immortal and all-existing within our own, ultimate timeline.

Part Two: Why We Should Care That Online Games Are As Temporary As Human Life

A representation of a wormhole, which Forbes uses to link to the possibility of time travel. For our purposes, it’s best to think of humans as at the very least occupying contiguous time. With our current scientific knowledge, for something to happen in the future, it must have happened in the past. For our theory, this means that the human who caused something in the future would occupy all of the time from when they started the future event to when the future event happens, as it happens as a result of their existence.

The fact that these games are not permanent will effectively allow us as humans to experience the games within the time of the internet as if we were the ultimate timeline experiencing humans. In the same way that we view these games as just a glimpse of an event within our lives, we are a glimpse of an event within the ultimate timeline. Nevertheless, just as the games were well-loved, fostered connections, and were entertained within their brief time allotted within the time of the internet, us humans are well-loved, connected, and entertaining within the time of the ultimate timeline. It is in this comparison that the main reason we should care as humans is revealed: no matter how short our allotment of time within the ultimate timeline, we can still make an impact on those who have the pleasure of perceiving the time we occupy. Just as we are impacted by perceiving the limited lifespan of the games, the ultimate timeline is impacted by perceiving the limited lifespan of humans. What we do may seem insignificant or small relative to such a large amount of continuous time, but if online games can make an impact within the timeline of the internet despite occupying such a small amount of it, us humans can do the same with the ultimate timeline. By recognizing that these games have limited time, we can hopefully become more comfortable ourselves with our own limited time, knowing that it can have an impact. I can only hope that through the lens of ultimate time I am as loved, cherished, and important as Poptropica is to me and the internet.

With love,

Lizzie

Sources:

Poptropica Picture: linked here ; Human Lifespan: linked here ; Retired Online Games Reference Buzzfeed: linked here ; More Retired Online Games: linked here ; Poptropica History: linked here ; History of the Internet: linked here ; Spacey Picture: linked here

NieR: Automata: a discussion of video game sound effects design

There always comes a time when I’m playing a game and feeling a bit labored, so I put down my gamepad and just watch the game screen for a brief rest. However, one game happened to hit me out of nowhere at that exact moment. When I first stopped in NieR: Automata, I felt a powerful soundstage surround me, not just for its excellent soundtrack but as a combined experience of the different layers of sound in the game. In this blog, I’m not going to talk about Studio Platinum’s excellent action and fight design or the philosophical ideas that Taro Yokoo wanted to discuss. However, instead, I’m just going to talk about its soundtrack and sound effects, how it affects the potential for interactivity in the medium of video games as game development technology continues to evolve, and what considerations are made for sound effects design.

NieR: Automata is an ARPG video game released in 2017, developed by Platinum Studios and published by Square Enix, whose story revolves around a proxy war between robots created by aliens and robots created by humans. The music in Nier was arranged by Keiichi Okabe and his team at Monaca, and Platinum Studios used real-time processing of the audio in the game to achieve unprecedented effects. The following technical discussion comes from Platinum Studios member Shuji Kohata’s technical presentation at the Game Developers Conference 2018, please check out the presentation, which includes a number of compelling live demos.

Spatial-based real-time sound effects

For large-scale games like NieR: Automata, which include open-world elements, players exploring different areas within the game is undoubtedly one of the key gameplay elements. And the Platinum Studios team realized powerful spatial audio effects through two technologies: spatial audio technology independent of the output device (simple 3D) and interactive reverb technology (K-verb).

Among these, simple 3D is a spatial audio processing technique that does not depend on the sound output hardware and is designed to enable the player to be aware of objects behind them using only stereo sound. Audio differentiation is accomplished by adjusting the sound source’s volume based on its position, increasing or decreasing its high and low frequency components, and responding to objects behind it with bandpass filters. Interestingly, Shuji Kohata and his colleagues manually adjusted this set of techniques by comparing the audio of a stereo in front of Kohata and one behind Kohata. K-verb refers to a real-time reverb technique (named by Shuji Kohata himself) based on the position of the game character and the size of the surrounding space. By shooting ranging rays in multiple directions from the character’s position and calculating the size of the space around them, the duration of the audio reverb is controlled, resulting in a spatial audio effect that is dominated by the character rather than the player’s point of view.

K-verb: rays shooted on surrounded areas as balls

Real-time sound effects based on game mechanics

Hacking into enemy robots is an essential part of the gameplay. This is where the player enters a shooting mini-game to simulate the process of hacking into other machines. And based on this gameplay, the Platinum Studios team developed a unique audio filter that doesn’t rely on the 8-bit version of a specific track but instead 8-bitizes the current audio through software to achieve smooth overdubs and adjustability of the 8-bit effect. Secondly, like many games where scarlet begins to color around the screen when the protagonist is injured, NieR: Automata produces a unique lo-fi sound effect when the player is injured, mimicking the state of old-school machinery when it’s damaged without making the noise too jarring to add to the immersion of the game.

demonstration of 8-bit sound filter where the “8-bit” level is adjustable

In addition to the above two types of audio technology, Shuji Kohata also mentioned other fun designs used in games, such as odd voice effects if the player adjusts the volume of a character’s voice too high or too low, as well as Doppler effect processing of audio produced by rapidly traveling units, and other sound effects designed to complement the game’s graphics. It’s worth noting that all of the above audio effects must be lightweight and not cause the game to lag by acting out the audio. For example, the lo-fi effect reduces the sample rate of the game’s audio before processing it and subsequently resampling it, while the 8-bit sound effect simply uses mono audio.

Whether it’s a K-verb or 8-bit effect, these techniques demonstrated by Shuji Kohata make in-game audio relevant to the player’s actions, with exact feedback when the player presses a button. This is fundamentally different from playing footsteps when the player starts moving and switching to a “battle” soundtrack when they enter a battle. The sound design in NieR: Automata is integrated into the gameplay. There are few video games I’ve seen that focus on the player’s auditory experience as much as NieR: Automata, which seems to be an aspect many creators don’t pay enough attention to. However, gamers who have played the NieR series know that sometimes games can impress you with their sound alone (please try it here).

—Howard

My Connection with Final Fantasy and its Musical Magic

I started piano lessons when I was five years old at my local Fine Arts Center. A couple years into my musical journey, I upgraded to an advanced piano class, where the teacher, on top of making everyone learn and perform songs from the Suzuki Piano books and academic track, allowed students to choose their own songs to learn. I was a bit of an ambitious 8-year-old, bringing in works from the likes of the entire Piano-Conductor score of Les Misérables to classic songs by the Beatles, but I remember throughout the years of learning the Suzuki method, I consistently brought in music from the Final Fantasy series, specifically Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2, both games I owned on my XBOX 360 and was obsessed with at the time.

For sake of context, Final Fantasy is a role-playing video game series known for its incredible world-building, deep character development, and rich combat systems, all of which change for every single game in the main franchise (for example, if you play through Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake, you’ll quickly realize that the two are not the same in terms of combat and even plot). The Final Fantasy series is also known for its rich and sprawling musical catalog in the repertoire of video gaming. The music is one of the main contributing factors to how the player delves into whatever world they are given, whether it’s Spira from FFX, Valisthea from FFXVI, or Gran Pulse and Cocoon from FFXIII (two worlds 8-year old me was VERY familiar with).

The style of music Final Fantasy involves can mostly be attributed to composer Nobeo Uematsu, a self-taught piano player who composed the scores to Final Fantasy games I-X. Uematsu listened to quite a bit of conceptual and progressive rock music, such as the Beatles, Elton John, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson, citing all those names as his biggest influences for the Final Fantasy series. On a first listen, it may be initially confusing on how these bands and musicians could have influenced these scores so much, but luckily there’s a connection: the leitmotif. A leitmotif is any recurring musical theme, usually representing a symbol or character(think of the Imperial March playing EVERYTIME Darth Vader shows up in Star Wars – just the existence of that piece adds so much to Vader’s characterization as a terrifying and dark figure). These leitmotivs appear individually in albums such as Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Dark Side of the Moon, and In the Court of the Crimson King, usually representing symbols of emotional value, changed by the context in which they are found.

These leitmotivs are more than prevalent in Uematsu’s work. If you listen to Kefka’s Theme from FFVI (the theme for main villain from the game which plays every time he appears, a la Imperial March), you hear a clown-like (yet simple) theme, mockingly played out through chiptune. Later, when he (spoiler alert) comes back as the final boss after becoming the ruling deity of the game’s universe, the final boss theme, a prog-rock epic called Dancing Mad, recites this same melody surrounded by shifting basslines and sporadic time signatures. The progression of the musical theme allows the player to identify with this character and also the progression of their arc throughout the game. Originally, this melody is played through an accordion-esque instrument, perfectly fit for a clown. When this melody comes back in Dancing Mad, it’s played with a church organ patch, an instrument used typically in a religious context, musically illustrating the “GOD” status Kefka has reached at this point in the game(for reference, look at the sheet music snippets below, specifically Kefka’s Theme and the top line of Dancing Mad — same melody, different contexts). These kind of leitmotivs are used throughout every single Final Fantasy game, even games Uematsu didn’t compose, showing both his influence and Final Fantasy’s roots in music that tells a story.

**Kefka’s Theme (FFVI) – Nobeo Uematsu**

Nowadays, Final Fantasy music is popular, well-known, and revered by most people. “One Winged Angel” (Sephiroth’s theme from Final Fantasy VII) is known as one of the most recognizable songs from gaming due to both the popularity of FFVII and its Remake, as well as the features of Cloud and Sephiroth in Super Smash Bros. Square Enix has released three separate Theatrhythm rhythm games, which feature Final Fantasy characters fending off against monsters while the player presses buttons in time (think Guitar Hero but an RPG). Distant Worlds is a touring orchestra that specifically plays orchestral arrangements of Final Fantasy music, and they were just at the Nashville Schermerhorn Symphony Center last year. Clearly, Final Fantasy music has resonated with countless other fans besides me. In my free time, I still pull up a FFXIII Piano Collections sheet music book now and then to work out the melodies I grew up with and track my own personal musical journey, and it’s a really special constant in my creative life. It makes me glad to know that music I feel so fondly about has affected so many others.

-Spencer 🙂

Sources:

MuseScore – musescore.com (transcriptions by Torby Brand(Kefka’s Theme) and Umbral Goat(Dancing Mad))

Death and The Fool’s Journey: Persona 3 Reload

As a word of caution, this post will contain spoilers for several of Persona 3 Reload’s Social Links. I highly recommend you put off reading this until you have had a chance to play and finish the game for yourself if you are at all interested. An additional trigger warning is that this blog will discuss topics surrounding death and suicide.

Three years ago this past weekend, I finished Persona 5 Royal for the very first time. After 106 hours and 34 minutes of playtime, I completed a game almost a year after I started playing. My journey with the Persona series began in March 2020, during the pandemic. We all had been sent home, not knowing what the future held for us. I had been so busy through high school that I had lost time for gaming, but during the lockdowns I had so much time on my hands that I could make time again to play games. On March 31, 2020, Persona 5 Royal was released worldwide, after a Japanese release in October of the previous year. After some pestering from a friend, I bit the bullet and purchased it on release day.

What is Persona? What’s with the suffixes?

Persona is a spinoff of the Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) series Shin Megami Tensei, with the first Persona game releasing in the West as “Revelations: Persona” on September 20, 1996 for the Playstation. Each game follows a similar structure: a group of teenagers are able to harness their Persona, a physical manifestation of their consciousness, to defeat shadows and save humanity for one reason or another. Up until the last several years, the Persona series had been relatively underground. It had its fans, but never really took off for Western audiences until the release of the original Persona 5 in 2016. Which leads into the next question, why so many suffixes? Usually, each main game (with the exception of Persona and Persona 2, which actually has two versions but that’s a totally different story) will get an enhanced re-release a few years later with bonus content and polished game mechanics. Examples include Persona 3 FES, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal.

A Re-Release

However, this year marked something new for the series. This is the first time a game had been completely remade from the ground-up for modern systems. Earlier this month, after massive fan outcry and several years of begging, Persona 3 Reload was released worldwide for PS5, Xbox, and PC. Many fans hold Persona 3 as their personal favorite in the series, and for good reason. It was the beginning of the “modern” Persona formula. In addition to the JRPG combat system and dungeon exploring, it added the Social Links (called Confidants in Persona 5), and other Life-Sim attributes. During the day, your player character (Makoto Yuki) would be able to hang out with friends after school, ranking up their Social Links and unlocking new combat tactics and the ability to wield stronger personas.

Social Links

For most players, including myself, the Social Links are the highlights of playing a Persona game. They offer additional stories outside of that of the main plot, and often lead to great rewards, and are the perfect compliments to the main theme of the game. In the case of Persona 3, that main theme is death and loss. Every character in the game is touched by the loss of someone important or close to them. These stories start simple, but end up breaking your heart by the end. The first one to really hit me enough to move me was Maiko’s Social Link. Maiko is a grade schooler the player meets at a shrine. While she doesn’t experience death in a traditional sense, the player quickly finds out that her parents will be getting a divorce. Obviously, as a grade schooler, she has a hard time being able to properly handle this and her emotions surrounding this situation. So, she decides to run away, leaving her parents devastated at the loss of her daughter. The end of Maiko’s story does have a happy ending, with her parents reuniting to find her after she runs away. With this being the tip of the iceberg, let’s move on to a Social Link that isn’t quite as heartwarming.

At about the halfway point of the game, the plot starts to take a turn for the darker. You then can unlock what might be my favorite Social Link in the game, Akinari. You meet Akinari in the park, while naturally progressing through Maiko’s link. Only later are you able to unlock him as a Social Link. His story is that he is diagnosed with an incurable disease, and feels hopeless to the world. He doesn’t have friends, as he feels that he shouldn’t be close to anyone because his time is dwindling. It’s a moving story that I won’t spoil further. I encourage you to check it out sometime.

To reflect on the main party of the game that you adventure with, all of them have experienced loss and death as well. For instance, Yukari and Mitsuru both lost their fathers, Mitsuru even during the course of the game, and we see it happen with our own eyes. Junpei loses his first love, Chidori, after she sacrifices her life to save his. Akihiko lost his whole family, then his sister in a fire at the orphanage they grew up in. Ken has no family left. And the player character makes the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the game.

In Summary

But what fun is it if I spoil everything? I heavily encourage you to play Persona 3 Reload, or even any version of Persona 3 you can. Actually, why not just play any game in the series at all? Persona 3, 4, AND 5 are very easily accessible on most consoles! If you are at all interested, start with Persona 5 Royal, then Persona 3 Reload, then Persona 4 Golden. The stories are all self-contained, so you could completely disregard my recommendations if you like too! Happy playing!

-Ethan

Bioshock: 9 Years ago, 6 Years ago, and 2 Years ago – Growing Up with a Game

I, like so many others of the Zoomer generation, grew up on Let’s Plays, whether that be Pewdiepie playing through some rage-inducing platformer or SkyDoesMinecraft and his friends playing through “parkour maps” on Minecraft(basically a backseat gaming sitcom I watched and adored).

The typical SkyDoesMinecraft thumbnail

It was about 9 years ago when I first saw a “Let’s Play” of Bioshock, the first game of a series I had heard about through online forums, comments, and friends with some more lenient parents than mine when it came to playing violent games. This “Let’s Play” was distinct and different to me – there were no rambunctious comedians playing rage-inducing or community-based games. In fact, there wasn’t even a voice at all, just the darkness and liminality of a game that came out 7 years before I watched this video. I only remember watching the first ten minutes and being absolutely enraptured (pun intended) by an intense plane crash and this mysterious lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. By the time the player went down the lighthouse’s elevator and was introduced to the failed underwater utopia of Rapture – cryptic, corrupted, and captivating – I immediately turned the Youtube video off, telling myself even at the young and naive age of 10: “I have to experience this myself.”

Descending into Rapture for the first time

Those ten minutes were the only exposure I had to the Bioshock series, but the introduction to the world of Rapture really stuck with me, and when I did my bi-monthly late-middle school Gamestop trip (a ritual I begged my mom to occur more often than every two months) , I , at the age of 13, bought Bioshock: The Collection for my PS4. Eager, I got home, played through it, and was honestly pretty frightened. Bioshock utilizes a lot of horror elements to world-build (or really, “world-deteriorate” since it shows the effects of time on an isolated dystopian society). In fact, it was scarier than most horror games I had played at the time because of all the societal implications of collectible audio logs and even torn propaganda posters on the tattered walls. I felt completely immersed with the new world around me, and like the playable protagonist Jack, spent hours discovering the buried secrets of Rapture. After I beat the game, I played it again immediately, which had never happened for any game before for me. After playing through the entire series, I spent weeks going online to forums, subreddits, Youtube videos, and analyses to further understand the worlds I so excitedly delved into. Needless to say, I was a little obsessed.

One of the many posters you can find in Rapture.

Jump to 2021. I’m a senior in high school in a bunch of APs, including AP Literature and Composition. Out of all the teachers I talked to after class, it was the humanities teachers who really took interest in discussing media with me (David Lynch, Stephen King, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, etc.), and while having an after-school analysis session with my Latin teacher Mr. Weganhart(we all called him Wego), he told me to look back at video games I’ve played and see how much classic literature has affected the themes of those games. While Wego’s side-quest he gave me focused on Roman influences on modern media, I immediately jumped back to Bioshock and decided to delve deeper into the non-Classical literary references. Instead of delving into Rapture with a PS4 controller, I delved into wikis about Objectivism(“the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute”, quoted by philosopher/author Ayn Rand) and books written by Rand to further understand this game I loved so much when I was younger, and came to an incredible conclusion: I realized the game was actually satirizing the concept of Objectivism and the allusions to Ayn Rand were ample. Antagonist Andrew Ryan (of “Would you kindly…” fame) is a quasi-anagram of Rand’s name with the same initials. The entirety of Rapture, I found out, was based off of the Objectivist, hyper-capitalist society Rand outlines in her novel Atlas Shrugged, further emphasized with the final boss being a replicated statue of Rand’s book cover (see photo below). The game consistently blurs the line between emergence and progression game styles (as Juul outlines) with the moral system of killing or saving the Little Sisters, ultimately showing the futility of Objectivist ideals (no matter how much individuality or free will you may have, society can’t be perfect).

The cover of Atlas Shrugged and Atlas, the final boss of Bioshock

As I grew up and changed mindsets from a child seeking fantastical worlds to an adolescent seeking answers to a young adult seeking literary references and intertextuality, I realize how much this game has stuck around with me throughout my life. It’s pretty fantastic to say that a piece of media could take on so many different meanings to me throughout my life, on top of being a good nostalgia trip. If anyone has the chance, I would implore you to sink to Rapture in Bioshock and Bioshock 2 or fly to Columbia in Bioshock Infinite.

-Spencer

Sources:

Why Bioshock still has, and will always have, something to say , Ars Techina- https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/bioshock-objectivism-philosophy-analysis/

Juul, Jesper. Half-Real.

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action: The Game That Warms Your Heart

You might want to open the song list in Spotify to listen to the full song

Have you ever wondered what mixing cocktails and changing lives in a cyberpunk dystopia would be like? If the moral dilemmas of Papers, Please and the mind-bending puzzles of Braid have left you yearning for something different, then it’s an excellent time to dim the lights, hunker down under your covers, put on the headphones, turn on the VA-11 HALL-A, and enjoy this small but warm story in a corner of cyberpunk Glitch City.

A Brief Overview

VA-11 Hall-A, or Valhalla as it cleverly suggests, is more than just a visual novel bartending simulator. As the player, you take on the role of a bartender named Jill, peering into the anti-utopian cyberpunk world from her perspective. Each cocktail you serve influences the narrative’s direction, with your choices behind the bar shaping the experiences and lives of your patrons. This unique gameplay mechanic transcends traditional dialogue-based storytelling, making you actively participate in the unfolding drama of Glitch City.

Don’t Play Valhalla on Mute

Immersion in music is one of the hallmarks of great games, and it’s not just “here we need a happy song, oh, there we need something sad.” The production of soundtracks is even more critical in the visual novel genre, which relies heavily on the emotional experience of the plot to create a great gameplay experience. Often, a classic scene will accompany a soundtrack that players will find hard to forget. Conversely, Valhalla does the opposite; you can even choose the music you want in the game. Before each lively night at VA-11 Hall-A starts, players are free to set up their own settings in the jukebox, and none of them will disappoint.

Interface for players to adjust songs (jukebox)

Where Does the Sense of Immersion Come From?

Aside from the music, what else has Valhalla succeeded with in game design? I’d like to discuss its visual style and the vehicle of information. Valhalla isn’t just about the story; it’s a feast for the senses. The pixel art style, reminiscent of classic 90s games, brings a nostalgic charm that perfectly complements the futuristic setting. Each character is vividly brought to life through detailed sprites and expressive animations, set against the backdrop of a city that feels both alive and oppressively dystopian.

As I mentioned, the player is “peering” into Jill’s cyberpunk world. Japanese director Mamoru Oshii has mentioned two ways of creating a plot: starting with the world or the characters. The former emphasizes the plausibility of the characters’ actions in a well-developed world, while the latter creates a world for the characters to rationalize their actions. In Valhalla, on the other hand, the worldview of Glitch City is built as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, and as the player collects the pieces, the characters in the game become more in line with the setting. Players can learn about the world between each workday from celebrity blogs, local tabloids, and internet forums. Perhaps what was experienced only yesterday in a bar becomes a colorful report the next day.

The “at home” interface: on the left is the interface of the tablet in Jill’s hand.

Reality Seems to Be Malfunctioning

It is undeniable that the experiences of the game’s creators, Christopher Ortiz and Fernando Damas, greatly influenced this work. The design of Glitch City is mainly based on the lived experiences of the creators in pre-2016 Venezuela. Government corruption and mismanagement led to widespread social unrest, including economic recession, currency devaluation, and high inflation, severely affecting the population’s living standards. Moreover, economic hardship and inappropriate policies led to the collapse of the national healthcare system, resulting in medicine shortages and inadequate medical care. Violence and crime in society, such as human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and underage involvement in sex work, increased, further deteriorating daily life and social stability. In an interview, Fernando mentioned their dilemma when developing the game, “not to mention stuff like medicine shortages, shops being barren or having no new stock.” And it was in this broken reality that Glitch City was born. The setting of Glitch City is clearly based directly on the social situation in Venezuela.

Dorothy and Sei

The characters within VA-11 Hall-A not only populate the world of Glitch City but also bring it to life through their complex narratives. Two characters in the game captivated me: Dorothy and Sei. Dorothy, a sex worker in the game, defies conventional portrayals. Her youthful appearance juxtaposed with her profession challenges what is typically deemed acceptable in modern society. This poignant character design is rich in dark humor and irony, subtly reflecting aspects of Venezuelan society.

Contrary to the typical portrayal of sex workers in media as having tragic or painful pasts, Dorothy’s character in VA-11 Hall-A is depicted as cheerful and independent. In contrast, Sei’s experience is perhaps more tragic: she was victimized by a White Knight (akin to a police officer) in her youth. Still, she chose to become a White Knight to protect the people in adulthood. Sei’s role as a White Knight provides a counter-challenge to the current state of Venezuelan society and to the corrupt image of the police and the government in the setting of Glitch City in VA-11 Hall-A.

Sei’s image in the game (you’ve already met Dorothy!)

Dorothy and Sei prompt players to contemplate societal issues and encapsulate game’s theme: finding hope in despair and happiness in insignificance. Echoing Albert Camus’s existentialism, their behavior represents a rebellion against social absurdity. Challenging the traditional norms of “normalcy” and “acceptability,” Dorothy seeks personal happiness and dignity in a dystopian reality. Her attitude proves personal autonomy and rejection of social expectations. At the same time, Sei chooses to become a White Knight and actively opposes the injustices and corruption prevalent in society. Her journey emphasizes the importance of individual choice and free will in a world rife with injustice, in line with the core principles of existentialist philosophy.

You Don’t Need to Be a Hero

When it comes to games in a cyberpunk setting, perhaps the first game that comes to mind is Cyberpunk 2077. So you might ask: can I attack Arasaka Tower in VA-11 Hall-A? Or at least do I need to destroy the anti-utopian government with some bros, right? My answer may disappoint you: the truth is you can’t do much, but so what? Valhalla is a story about accepting yourself. “We try to make the player feel small,” says the game’s author and programmer Fernando Damas. In the twenty days or so since you became Jill, a lot of things may have happened: an unidentified bang from a suspected explosion in the street, a terrorist organization attacking a major bank, hackers seemingly digging into the government’s darkest recesses. But Jill lives in a society with its own personalities and stories. In contrast to this troubled society is the small, intimate space of the game’s bar. Best friend Alma comes to you to pour her heart out about her family problems, new employee Kimberly seems to be struggling at work, and boss Dana is full of spirit and new ideas as usual. Jill and the people in the bar all tell the same story: life is just an experience, and when the sun goes down tomorrow, the story of Valhalla will go on again.

–Howard

To Know But Not Be Known: The Blurred Lines of Parasocial Relationships in Video Games

We’ve probably all over-identified with characters from media. Whether you’ve written fanfiction, scrolled through other’s in-depth analysis of a character’s motivations on Twitter, bought products an influencer recommended, or cried when Jenna Marbles or Mat Pat from Game Theory retired from YouTube, it’s a common hazard of our modern age. These identifications are called parasocial relationships, which are the one-sided ties between individuals who consume media and the characters (or people) they consume. The definition is increasingly growing to encapsulate the blurred lines between knowing and being known in a digital world. Parasocial relationships dominate new technologies and social media and have particular implications for how we should think about characters in video games and ourselves when we play them.

How do Video Games Differ from Other Media?

Video Games, as discussed by Jesper Juul in Half-Real, are “real in that they consist of rules,” and real in that winning and losing the game is a real thing that happens, and “fictional in the actions you do.” Essentially, they are “real rules in a fictional world” (Juul). Video games, especially games with a strong narrative, use many of the same tools as other forms of media — storylines, music, and visual art follow many of the same characteristics you see in movies and TV — but the difference is spoiler alert, they are games. You are put in the middle of the action, in many ways just as immersive or even more immersive than other forms of media, but as a player in a game, you are constrained by its rules. And, even more importantly, your connection to characters in the game and other consumers of the game isn’t relegated to you simply viewing a character and discussing your love of them on a Reddit board; you can interact with characters, be a character, and (depending on the type of game) connect with other fans on the medium itself.

Getting to Know Your Friendly Neighborhood NPCs

NPCs, or “non-playable characters,” are the bread and butter of video games. How you interact with NPCs is based on the rules and norms of a particular game; in some, your character can marry NPCs; in some, you can just buy a sword and be on your way. Sometimes they just kill you. NPCs are a hugely important part of our interactions with games and often are part of our attachment to them.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons by Nintendo

One example is Animal Crossing. In Animal Crossing, you play the only person on an island with cute animal townspeople where you help to build a town for your furry & feathery friends. The newest version, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, came out on March 20th, 2020, and saw incredible popularity among various age groups during the pandemic & beyond. Part of this is inherent to the culture and vibe of the game — people resonated with having domestic goals in a sunny town after weeks at home. I think the other reason it’s so popular is because of parasociality. Connecting with happy and cute NPCs and walking around a little town gave people a taste of what they were missing during lockdown. It’s not just that it gave people a break from the anxiety-inducing news coverage of 2020; it also represented one of the critical aspects of parasocial relationships, especially with NPCs: there are almost no consequences for your social interactions.

Animal Crossing screenshot of talking with a character. Rosie wants to know how you’re doing – so sweet of her!

So what does that mean? The lack of consequences for interactions with NPCs means you don’t have to worry about the “fall-out” of a social interaction with an NPC. In a game like Animal Crossing, the rules don’t allow anything bad to happen. Even in other games with higher stakes, killing an NPC is unlikely to have any negative consequences. Outside of the fictional world, this had real implications during the pandemic. Especially during the early days of the pandemic, there were real consequences to interacting with others in physical spaces in the form of breaking laws & social norms and spreading disease. Certainly in Animal Crossing, but also with all video games, you don’t really have to worry about that, especially with NPCs! During the pandemic, it allowed people to have a semblance of social interaction without the consequences of doing so. And in Animal Crossing, it’s relaxing, the townspeople are happy to see you, and in March 2020, I was certainly excited to see them!

Why Does it Matter?

A scene in “The Last of Us” TV show (2023), and the game (2013)

Even beyond the pandemic, our connection with video game characters is culturally significant. The popularity of video games like The Witcher and The Last of Us has led to huge TV series following the main characters, where our connection to characters spans not just series but mediums. Video games allow for a blurring of lines between what is known & unknown, who we connect & interact with, and the medium itself has important implications for the meeting spaces of the future (thinking, unfortunately, about the corporate nightmare of the Metaverse, but also video games as places where you can interact with your friends from the real world). Because video games allow for connection with characters in a way no other medium allows, the social interaction feels more real. You can buy the lipstick an influencer tells you to, but you can’t fight a dragon with them. You can write fanfiction about a character from a movie, but can you play the character in their world? I don’t think so.

Sources:

Stranger Games – Group 11

Introduction

For our game design project, our group decided to remediate the Christmas lights scene from season one of the hit TV show Stranger Things. We decided to make a puzzle strategy game using Game Maker Studio 2 where we use the Christmas lights on the wall to decipher a message. While our group did not have much coding experience, we truly enjoyed the game design process. From making the sound effects and sprites to developing the frame-by-frame game functions, we got to set foot into the challenging world of game-making.

Source: Stranger Things season 1, episode 3

Why Remediate Stranger Things?

When brainstorming game ideas, our group wanted to create a classic puzzle game with a complex background. After reviewing a few movies and TV shows, we landed on Stranger Things: a TV show that remediates the timeless game Dungeons and Dragons. In the specific scene we chose, a young kid by the name of Will has gone missing from his home. Later, it is discovered that he is trapped in the “Upside Down”, another world that exists beneath Hawkins, Indiana. While trapped in the “Upside Down”, Will tries to communicate with his family by interacting with different electronic items in his house (traversing worlds). At first, his family thinks it is an electrical issue but his mom, Joyce, later finds out that it is Will communicating with her. She decides to set up a wall full of Christmas lights, each light representing a letter of the alphabet. Will uses this wall to send messages about his whereabouts.

Through this scene, our group decided to make a puzzle game where one deciphers a message using the light wall Joyce created in Stranger Things.

Game Design

In terms of game design (led by Diego), our idea was pretty straightforward. Our idea was to develop a three-part cryptic puzzle. The first part of the game focused on understanding what the lights on the wall indicated. We went about this by developing a two-room platform where the player can switch between the light wall room and the living room. In addition to the two rooms, the player is also given a text box with 26 text slots. Each text slot corresponds to a letter in the alphabet. As well, each light on the wall corresponds to a letter in the alphabet (but the player has to figure this out). In the living room, a variety of items lay around and will shake. On top of the shaking, the lights on the wall would brighten up corresponding with the letters in the name of that item in chronological order. For instance, if a lamp shook, the first light on the wall would turn on as it corresponds to the letter “a” in lamp. The player must figure out the relationship between the items, the lights, and the chart. Once they fill up the chart and understand that the lights represent the alphabet, they are free to move on to the second part.

In the second part of the game, Will turns on the lights to communicate various words that are part of a phrase. The players’ job is to use their knowledge of the light wall to decipher the words Will is trying to tell Joyce. The player must type the correct word into the text box in order to move on to the next word. Once all the words are properly guessed, the player can move on to the last section of the game.

In the last part of the game, the player must take the words from part 2 and put them in the correct order to decipher what Will is trying to say. Once the player puts them in the correct order, the game ends.

Art Visuals

In addition to the game design, we also had visual sprites and audio produced by Amelia. The intention was for all the object names to cover each letter of the alphabet, so we came up with a list of 10 common household items that held the letters A-Z. Each item had to be drawn separately from the backdrops and to make a sound when shaken by Will, so we drew several of these items and sourced sound clips that correlated with each object. We then hand-drew the two 2D game backdrops – the living room and the Christmas lights display – in a style we found fitting for the era of the show. Stranger Things is set in the 1980s, and the cartoons of the time often featured marker and outline-based drawings, which we incorporated in the style of the object and background drawings. We thought it would be fitting to have a visual remediation that matched the visual media of the characters’ temporal setting, especially as the protagonists are middle-schoolers who would be watching cartoons. We also studied the clips of our remediated Stranger Things scene to try and match the rooms as closely as possible (ex. the pink floral wallpaper behind the Christmas lights).

Background Music

The music was the most difficult artistic element to create, as we wanted to take inspiration from the Stranger Things theme, but still create something inspirational out of it. We followed a theme and variations, in the form of ABA, where we took the main Stranger Things theme and remelodized it in different lead lines throughout the A sections. We swelled in and out treble and bass elements so that the music would not feel stagnant, even with the same repeated harmonic construction.

We then added an original B section that we felt broke-up the repetition of the main theme, but still kept it in the same synth-based style of the A section. We made the B section more harmonically complex and introspective than the A section, reflecting the game’s original intention of being a puzzle-solving experience. We also wanted the B section to reflect Joyce’s worry over her son, Will, in a way that the A section isn’t as capable of. The synth sound we used for the lead line is based on an FM radio, which is indicative of their communication between the two dimensions through artificial means (and the Walky-Talky and radio elements which were integral to our original game-design).

The piece then returns to the A section, which allows the piece to repeat over and over (as often occurs when playing a videogame…the track can’t just end at its 5-minute conclusion) without any jarring re-start. We also added some little sparkling, high-frequency synth hits in this second A section that reflect the twinkling of the Christmas lights on and off. We felt that the composition both reflected the 80s-instrumentation style and pulled elements from the original Stranger Things theme in a way that suited the goals of the game the best (in musical remediation). The music isn’t meant to be the focus of attention, but instead an integral background element that helps provide necessary atmosphere.

Challenges Faced and Remodel

While we wanted to develop this game with Game Maker Studio 2, we, unfortunately, were not able to. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, our team had to remodel our game design and build our project with Twine since we did not have any coding experience. Jamaal led our efforts by creating a “choose your own adventure” game along with the script and video trailer! The new game concept follows the same storyline as our original game design with an emphasis on the plot surrounding the Christmas light scene. The player is tasked with picking various potential storylines within this scene. In order to beat the game, the player must select the right storyline options that lead Joyce to Will’s location.

Twine “Strange Games” home screen

What We Learned

Throughout the game development process, our group learned a lot! Our biggest takeaway from it all is that there is a lot of work that goes into making a video game. From the game design and script to the coding and audio/visuals, a lot of hard work is required to make a game work. Additionally, we learned about the importance of collaboration. Everyone has to play their part in order for the game development process to work. If one person falls short, it sets the design process back a big step. All in all, video game development requires a team effort where everyone must contribute their strengths. There are so many moving parts in the design process and each part is just as important as the next.

Closing Thoughts

While we were not able to create the game we wanted, it was fun exploring video game development. For all of us, this was a new, fun, exciting, and scary experience that we are glad we got to experience. Being able to work on all the moving parts of a video game and seeing what it takes to put such a production together was also pretty eye-opening. Anyways, while this isn’t a finished, polished product, we hope you enjoy our game!

Game link: http://jamaalfinkley.vudigital.net/Media/StrangerGames.html

– Amelia, Diego, and Jamaal!