Author: Gregory

To The Top is a 2D multiplayer platformer which allows players to compete by seeing who can get to the top of the level. All you have to do is jump up platforms. Of course, you’ll need to pay the cost of living for being a cube, as well as for any jumps. Fortunately, the world is full of opportunities to earn a living, that anyone can take advantage of. To The Top is an exploration of the idea of opportunity, and how you can succeed and win if only you work hard.

Download

Windows

Mac

Instructions

Goal: Reach the door at the top of the level.

Controls:
WASD to move and jump.
M to mine.
R to reset the game.

Jumping:
Base jumps are available for the low, low cost of ¤20.

We also offer premium upgrades:
2nd Jump: ¤40
3rd Jump: ¤80
4th Jump: ¤160
5th Jump: ¤320

Income/Cost of Living:
Over time, you are billed for cost of living expenses, and also have income coming in.

Press H to dismiss these instructions (and bring back up if needed).

Build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ggfosoezn35zz1w/CubicInequality.zip?dl=0

(Sorry I couldn’t upload earlier, my computer decided to stop booting up)

This provides a demo of the current leveling, jumping, and mining mechanics. It also experiments with creating cycles, where if you reach higher levels earlier, everything else becomes easier for you, and it gets easier to level up.

Going for a minimal theme, oriented primarily around large regions of color, and simple rectangular or polygonal shapes.

Music:

Goal:
Music that’s not sad, not too uplifting, but gives a feeling of perhaps making steady progress, like in puzzle games. It’s moving, but not excited. More towards classical instruments, but with some more contemporary elements.
Has a classical feeling. Both because inequality separates out people into a “higher class”, and because inequality is a phenomenon that’s been around for virtually all of human history, since perhaps the agricultural revolution.

Echochrome II: Primary reference

John Carmack is a long-time veteran of Game Development, having won a lifetime achievement award, which at the time had gone to only a handful of people including Shigeru Miyamoto. He is best known as one of the founders of Id software, and as a co-creator of Doom, along with the equally well known game designer John Romero. I read Masters of Doom, a book chronicling the creation and development of Id Sofware.

Carmack joined the industry when it was a much smaller and less mature place. He founded Id, starting off as an indie developer. There are many different reasons to their success. One was the shareware moment: instead of trying to distribute their games through retail, they went through the underground world of sharing, and games. Free demos, pay for the full game.

His success was characterized by tremendous technical achievement, and putting in a ton of work in order to achieve it. He was willing to try out numerous approaches to any problem he encountered. This, combined with working with the right people, are the simple, but deep reasons for his success.

Description
Cubic Supremacy is a multiplayer 3D platformer game with a minimalist cube art style, and the surface objective of climbing to the top of the level, and the deeper objective of using this to explore the mechanisms of social inequality. As you climb, mine for gold, and use that to buy powerups that let you jump higher, and unlock new areas. Some players will start off with the privilege of more access to the map, and the ability to get more out of their work, but don’t worry, everyone can succeed if they just work hard enough.

Art/Research statement
My goal is to give players the dual experiences of living with and without privilege, to understand firsthand how these affect outcomes, and hopefully get players to transfer this analogy to real life, and gain a broader perspective on the world. There are a lot of people with privilege who do not fully appreciate the benefits this confers, and the goal is to get these people to empathize with those with less privilege, appreciate what they have, and understand that people’s success must be evaluated in the context of what they were given.

The experimental elements would be to use platformer and RPG mechanics to represent these societal mechanics. These mechanics are intentionally very transparent, as the goal is understanding of these mechanics, and what they correspond to in the real world. The minimalistic art style will hopefully serve to remove any distractions, and reinforce focus purely onto the mechanics. Multiplayer is the third pillar of the game, serving to engender competition, which leads to comparison, which leads to an investigation of fairness, which discovers the imbalance. The goal is that players will agree: while with sufficient work, either player could win and be successful, the one with privilege has a substantial advantage, and all other things being equal, would win.
Mock Screenshot

Game references
Loneliness (http://www.kongregate.com/games/jordanmagnuson/loneliness)
– A notgame exploring being lonely. Minimalistic art, and very very simple mechanics make the game’s message very clear.

Thomas Was Alone
– An example of storytelling with minimal art.

Parable of the Polygons
– Reference for the use of abstract concepts to represent a social issue.

Non-game references 
Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
– A direct influence on the game, I’m using some of the core game mechanics in this article.

This Brilliant Comic Strip On Rich Vs Poor Upbringing Will Humble You

– Illustrates the accumulation of advantages.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/27/poor-kids-who-do-everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything-wrong/
– Somewhat of a guide, and justification for the difficulty of the game, and disparity between starting conditions.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
– A book exploring the story of success, and how important “where you’re from” truly is, in ways you wouldn’t have thought of, even if you can already imagine some ways.

All cubes are equal, but some are more equal than others.

The game is an abstract representation of social and economic inequality by means of a 3D platformer. The key analogy being that “moving up in the world” literally corresponds to moving up–in the vertical axis (up in Unity).

You play a cube that has the ability to jump higher than other cubes, starts higher than other cubes. If you fall, you have safety nets to catch you. There are obstacles, but for you all of them are offset by what you start the game with — the ability to jump higher, and safety nets to catch you. In this sense it’s kind of a notgame — the point is to watch all the other cubes without your resources have trouble climbing the same ladder.

Extensions to the concept might e.g. include walls that only let one color pass through (for you, they are no barrier — they might form a labyrinth, but you don’t collide and pass right through them, while others are forced to navigate it.

A game exploring the ramifications of fairness, inequality, and Christmas.

(tried to upload an image, but wordpress says “Failed to write file to disk.”)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x0cntd7qidsuv7x/PrivilegeClausV1-all.zip?dl=0

Programming: Gregory Rose
Art: Joseph Jung
Music: “The Jazz Piano” – http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/jazz

Walking Simulators: Thanks to the Gamasutra article, I finally feel like I see fully where the interactivity lies in so-called “walking simulators”. With that in mind though, the genre name “walking simulator” does not seem appropriate at all. If the point of these games is to tell narrative by exploring the environment, then these games are not at all about walking. But, the fact that most “gamers” would label these games as “walking simulators” is telling.

Almost any game design class or textbook will begin with trying to define “what is a game”. They’ll go through the timeless rituals of adjusting the definition to be broader or narrower, and eventually reach a much more nuanced and thought out definition. For all this though, it seems like in practice, even game designers will throw out these carefully thought definitions for a few heuristics that describe what the Industry thinks a game is. For example: “Can I win or lose?”. If a game doesn’t contain the ability to do this, many people, even game designers, will label it as not a game. I know this, because I worked on such a game at the Global Game Jam, and this was people’s reaction to it.

Gamers think of games by how you manipulate the game state (i.e. moving in-world), and how you win. So, if they looked at a game like Dear Esther, it’s no surprise that the only material thing they would see to “do” in the game, the only obvious control, is walking. This goes with my reaction to the notgames article: that the industry’s mindset on games is so ubiquitous, that it is hard to even think outside of it.

http://www.flickgame.org/play.html?p=ce7b8c7f4fdf22a2dcfe