Author: Jessica T

Procrastination’s A Bitch

 

The scenario is that you’re trying to find something, anything to do to keep yourself from finishing your homework. Because everyone loves procrastinating.

 

So, you click around the various items on your desk and see what happens. However, I want each reaction to be very extreme/weird. Examples:

You click on the eraser to furiously erase whatever shitty work you’ve done so far. You start erasing so quickly that the friction causes a flame to spark and now your homework is on fire. You can click on your water glass to douse the flames, or keep them burning

You click on the window to distract yourself with the outside world and see someone getting abducted by an alien.

You click on your Toast plushie to find that it has come to life and starts shredding up your papers.

Basically, everything you do will result in a hot mess. Picking up the pencil to actually do work “ends” the game.

#1: Mannekijn

Your name is Andrea (Andie for short) and you are a Mannequin in a medium-sized mall in middle America. You are bored and unhappy with your life as a Victoria’s Secret underwear model, so you decide to quit your job one night and look for another modeling gig that suits you more. You are a feminist, highly independent, and somewhat disgusted by how some of the other mannequins are happy to be objectified. The choices you make will revolve around talking to other mannequins.

One of the mannequins that you talk to, Kelly, is an Old Navy model who has to be perpetually cheery and smiley. As you befriend her and learn more about her job in the hopes of finding one for yourself, you can find out more about her life and dig deeper into her true thoughts about the job. She’s exhausted ofhaving to put on a front each and every day for customers that don’t appreciate the hard work that she does. She’s deeply
unhappy with herself for settling for this mediocre mannequin job, and wants change.

The main part of the game will have you explore the mall and talk to mannequins across different stores. Choices will focus around either befriending the other mannequins or acting agressively towards them, which will in turn either reveal more dialogue about the other character or cause them to behave agressively back to you/silently fume at you/etc.  I want some dialogue to happen about issues such as body image, the portrayal of women in media, etc.

#2: Who Wants to be a Pop Idol

You play a nameless character who wants to break into the Korean pop music industry. The art style of the game will be simplified and cutesy, but the tone of the game will offer a dark contrast to this. You find out about the hardships of training to be a so-called “idol”, including living off of meager funds, facing competition and hostility from other trainees, and being under pressure to lose weight.

Your character is an introverted, thoughtful guy (INFP). You’ve always had dreams of being a singer, and you barely finished high school with passing grades due to the fact that you were spending most of your free time taking vocal lessons and recording songs. Your self-confidence is very lacking from having to compete with so many other talented singers. As you interact with other characters, you encounter hostility and agression no matter what you do. This is a cut-throat industry, and characters which may seem friendly at first will later turn around and stab you in the back. Your manager belittles you, other trainees dislike you, and as an awkward introvert who struggles with social interaction, the choices you make will center around your struggle to ‘say the right thing’ to the people you talk to to make it further in the industry.

Hills Like White Elephants –

I love this story. The tense, argumentative atmosphere is built up entirely through the dialogue. Somehow, even though there’s almost no exposition in this story, I got a very clear picture of “the man” and “the girl” sitting at a table, attempting to navigate the issue of “the operation” (presumably, an abortion). The little exposition there is has some great symbolic touches. The girl reaches out to the bead curtain, takes hold of the strings, and says: “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.” She’s reaching out to a faraway dream, a future in which she gets the abortion and she and her man are happy. She toys with the idea of getting the operation done, but is unable to commit to it and go through that curtain.

 

The Eliza Effect –

 

It was very interesting reading about the different ‘scripts’ that Eliza had. The default was to assume the role of a ‘Doctor’, a therapist-like character that seemed to restate questions back to the user more often than not. This makes me wonder about the future of therapy – is it possible that we could have automated therapists in the future, and that merely typing back and forth to a bot could help you navigate emotional issues?

 

 

Hello!

My completed game, “The Pointer”, is linked on the following page:

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jtumarki/project1.html

Description: You play a computer cursor who is a bit bored with their everyday life. One night, while ‘The Human’ is away, you decide to explore the depths of the file system. What kinds of documents and applications will you delve into? What sorts of characters will you encounter? There are many different options, so choose wisely!

Enjoy!

-Jessica

1. The Pointer

 
You are a cursor on a computer screen. The human who normally controls you has left the computer on and you decide to explore a bit while he’s away – to the places that he never lets you click upon.

You will navigate from application to application. The tone of writing will be somewhat humorous. I want to explore what the thoughts and feelings of those unused applications on your desktop would be. You encounter many characters – a homeless Clippy from Microsoft Word who has been kicked out of the lastest update. An abandoned, ‘starving’ Neopet whose owner left them a good five years ago. An old Geocities webpage that is about to be torn down. Etc. You have many choices in terms of how you interact with these  characters – some may join you on your journey if you choose to befriend them.

The game will be more focused on exploration than reaching a certain goal. Eventually the game will ‘end’ (either positively or negatively) when the human comes back to the computer and assumes control of you once again.

Sample:

 

The human has left the computer on once again. The mouse sits helplessly on the desk, unable to move itself without the human’s assistance. You blink sleepily, flickering a bit on the screen. Gently rolling green hills surround you, and their familiar presence is somewhat comforting in the human’s absence. Gazing around the desktop, you wonder if you really do need to depend on the human to move. It would be nice if you could see the other side of those hills.

Well, there’s no harm in trying, right? Flexing all of your pixels, you prepare to…

-Wiggle slightly to the left

-Wiggle slightly to the right

-Wiggle upwards

-Wiggle downwards

-I don’t want to move anywhere. I’m content with sitting here.

(Depending on which way you move, you would have the option to explore different applications. Not moving would end the game.)

 
2. Mannekijn

You are a mannequin at Victoria’s Secret with an independent streak. Fed up of your body being put on display in lingerie for men (and women) to ogle daily, you wander the mall at night looking to trade places with a fellow mannequin. You decide which stores to explore and what to do – will you push fellow mannequins to the ground, brutally shattering them to pieces as you take their place? Convince them to leave their job? (I’ll try to not make this very dialogue-heavy.)

Sample:

It is 11 PM, and the store is being closed up. You angrily glare at the floor manager with your wooden-carved eyes. Today, she decided to put you in a skimpy push up bra and a thong that barely covers anything at all. The other mannequins giggle and grin to each other, cooing over colorful heels and bras and underwear, but not you. Why couldn’t you have been put in a classier place, like J.Crew or Bloomingdale’s? As you look towards the entrance of the store, you realize that the floor manager has left and shut the lights off, but has forgotten to put down the iron gates that prevent anyone from entering and exiting the store at night. This could be your chance!

-Wander over to the entrance of the store
-Sprint out of the store as fast as your wooden legs can take you
-Chat with the other mannequins a bit
-Stay frozen in place. After all, this is what you’ve been trained to do for the rest of your life.

The Garden of Forking Paths –

My first thought upon finishing this reading was that Dr. Yu Tsun’s method of delivering his message may not have been the most efficient, but it was definitely clever in a morbid way. As Albert spoke to Yu Tsun and described many different universes in which he and Dr. Yu Tsun may never meet at all, or in which he was already dead, he recognized the possibility that Yu Tsun could be formulating a plan to kill him. Albert turned his back to Yu Tsun despite this. My question is, was this intentional? Did he want to impose a choice upon Yu Tsun? Shoot Albert, and one future is created in which Yu Tsun’s message is delivered. Do not shoot, and an entirely different future is created.

I also was interested by the idea that Tsui Pen wrote his novel about multiple universes without ever mentioning the word “time”. He left his many manuscripts as a puzzle for future generations to figure out, while slyly commenting: ”I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths”. He even envisions the future as a multitude of branching paths leading to a number of different futures/universes being created. In some of those futures, people are able to solve his puzzle and grasp the concept of his garden of forking paths; to others, his ideas are lost completely.

 
Computer Lib / Dream Machines –

I appreciated Ted Nelson’s discussion about the existence of a huge gap between computer people and ‘laypeople’, which I think still exists today. This gap is certainly closing as programming spreads into other disciplines, such as computational biology, language technologies, and much more; but, there still seems to be a separation between those who are ‘computer people’and those who are ‘not good with computers’. I completely agree with Nelson in that the basics of computers aren’t too hard to understand – it’s just that more information needsto be made accessible and understandable to those who are interested in learning, free of overcomplicated and unecessary technobabble. Oftentimes introductory programming coursesare intimidating and present the student with a huge amount of new information, especially if you’re not too familiar with computers. I think there needs to be more classes that are in a more apporachable middle ground. These should be presented to children at a younger age, to introduce the basics of computers to kids as they grow up so that computers aren’t quite so intimidating anymore.

As for his ideas on computer-assisted instruction, I love the idea of the branching path lesson structure. This could definitely be beneficial to students with short attention spans who want to jump around to many different topics, but it would also allow students who excel at certain subjects to pursue those subjects further. I also appreciate how much he emphasized design and control schemes. Nelson describes how a team of artists, writers, and designers should create the layout and main structure of the lessons, and it’s up to the programmers to implement it and adjust the software/hardware accordingly. While that’s not always how it works in the real world, I appreciate his inclusion of the design components of software as a vital part of the software development life cycle, for I believe that the importance of good design is often overlooked by programmers.

Hi all, I’m Jessica 🙂

 

I’m currently a Junior CS major hoping to minor in Game Development. My hometown is Potomac, MD. Some of my favorite games are Earthbound (SNES) and Catherine (PS3).

My technical skills include:

• Some experience making games in C# using the Microsoft XNA Framework
• 3+ years experience coding in Java, which includes making basic games like Breakout and Tetris