SystemMalfoy

I picked my obsession with movies for my designer choice game. Specifically, I drew some inspiration from the movie "Snowpiercer", where the remaining humans on Earth are surviving on an infinity train.  The train is separated into classes where the back of the train are treated far worse than those in the front. My game is not about classes or differences in socioeconomic status, but rather the inspiration comes from the abstract art in the movie where the staging is incredibly unique and almost bizarre. In that sense, in "Hell, You Thought, I wanted to describe what absurdity can look like in unexpected places.

The thematic argument of the game is to shake down the conception of hell as a place of misfortune, darkness, and despair. What if it was the exact opposite? Many have the idea that hell is a place to go to only for people who have committed sins. What if it was a place where people go to have fun and party or relax and meditate? What if the deeper you went, the lighter and more fun it became? Also the idea that hell is a bad place. The decisions you make may lead to the same thing, but I want to provoke the idea of openness to experience. Players may decide to play with hesitation, but by the end I want them to see that hell might not be all that bad after all and in turn, maybe that will challenge players to be okay with being comfortable with uncomfortable situations or life choices. You only grow from experience and to experience, you have to try new things.

As for craft elements, I used a second-person POV to immerse the player in the experience and hopefully have them feel as if they are in the driver's seat. I took a lot of inspiration from "With Those We Love Alive", in that, the structure employs a lot of user choice, while still arriving at the same end. I wanted the point of the theme to come across which I felt was best done with a single ending.

I had my roommates playtest both games and they loved how many different options there were to choose from. Originally, I had set less passages, but they encouraged I keep adding more choices to allow for the user to have more autonomy, hence why every stage has two different options, and if you want to re-explore what those options were if you chose the other, you can return to passage 5.

For my cycle game, I chose a work+school cycle that balances how I felt about my current school schedule mixed with the grind of work.

I approached the meaning gap by creating a story about a baseball player with a completely different life than mine, yet we still reached the same problems. The theme of doing something different than originally written in the magpie book was to exemplify how there are differences in our lives, yet our hardships can still connect us together.

TTRPG ARTIST STATEMENT

Artist Statement

• Concept
  • The concept of my game “Help Me, I’m Stuck” is that you, the player are a character that is stuck living in a TV show. You are almost like an NPC, in that, your character knows they are a sentient being, but you are being controlled by the genre of the show. This game is about a few different ideas, but most notably in talking about specific thematics, “Help Me, I’m Stuck” explores the humanization of artificial intelligence, the cohesion of multiple genres, the human need for control, and how quickly that control can slip away.
• Aim
  • The aim of “Help Me, I’m Stuck is as a player, to eventually return to your fully sentient self. The mechanics of the genres and characters force the player to act out of a state of being constantly controlled, thus when they break down a wall with the hammer, it is the central action mechanic that allows players to not only feel like they can release some of this power over them, but also it’s putting them that much closer to winning the game by breaking down the walls leading to “reality”. The stakes are high, and if you lose 5 lives, you become a fully entwined NPC of the tv show. It is the tipping point between gaining control and losing control that I hope adds intensity and value to the playing experience
• Tone
  • There are multiple approaches to tone that you could bring into the gameplay. I designed the game so it is not specifically easy, thus you could argue that a very serious approach may be more suitable to winning the game and giving yourself the best opportunity to break down all the walls to becoming sentient, however, players may have more fun playing the game over a couple of seltzers or beers and not taking it too serious in a gonzo format, which will potentially ultimately lend them better off than seriousness given the stakes set on remaining in character.  
• Subject Matter
  • Given that a large thematic element of the game revolves around AI, sentiency, and control, there may be players who feel uncomfortable playing this game, which is completely okay. This game may spark feelings of claustrophobia, or feelings of helplessness, while also giving players a chance of reward and triumph. I knew that while making this game, there may be times when players feel like it is too much, but the hope was that by playing it casually, you can immerse yourself in the character and really think about it as a roleplaying activity rather than the potential consequences of real life.

I made this game for a few reasons, but I really have an affinity and love for dystopian worlds along with the craziness that the real-world is experiencing revolving around AI advancements and new technology. In an essence, I wanted to try and capture what it might look like to re-enact the possibilities of what an AI person might see through their lens -- it’s the lack of control, but mixed with the possibility of sentience. Maybe this game represents a feeling that exists in AI already. I was hoping this game might allow players to think of AI sentience a little differently in a humanizing way, rather than a destructive or intrusive way. 

• For inspiration, I used many of my obsessions to construct the concept of “Help Me, I’m Stuck”. I love sci-fi movies and TV shows so much that I have a relentless letterboxd account. For this game, I drew inspiration from “Ex-Machina”, “Her”, “Blade Runner 2049”, “WandaVision”, “The Wild Robot”, and that is just to name a few, but in general, all of these movies have AI that either become fully sentient, lack complete sentiency, or grasp at the idea of becoming fully sentient. All of these shows and movies really sparked the idea that maybe I could turn an idea like this into a tabletop role playing game.

• In “Help Me, I’m Stuck”, the themes are the humanization of artificial intelligence, the cohesion of multiple genres, the human need for control, and how quickly that control can slip away.  In talking about craft, I have a character list, 4 different settings that are constantly interchangeable, a first-person POV, and a clear story of fighting for the end goal of sentiency.  The mechanics I used to support this playing journey are, space (discrete in that players have an objective, and cannot stray from the path), time (discrete in that, you will either win or lose after playing roughly 30-40 minutes), objects (each genre in the game has a different object for players to interact with upon chance feature), actions (hammer prop to break down walls to sentiency, wand prop to cast a spell, shot glass and bottle prop to assess accuracy), rules (operational: explained on game sheet/basic rules; foundational: how to act/immerse yourself in the rules), Skill (bottle and shot test: pouring what they think is 1oz into red solo cup and then pouring back into shot glass to see if they get the amount right, will likely mess up at first and get better with repetition), chance (dice rolled determines outcomes, must get somewhat lucky to have favourable rolls, also chance on wheel spin determining whether to interact or not with object).

• I’m hoping that players walk away experiencing perhaps an enlightened perspective on AI and the topic of sentiency. I am also hoping that players can like the game enough to really immerse themselves in the characters and enjoy the game as a dystopian reality and separate themselves from their own reality. In doing so, the goal is that not only players leave the game feeling like they gained a new perspective on AI, but they also enjoy the game enough to feel like they gave it their all in an attempt at winning, and felt challenged enough by the mechanics to not be overly disappointed in losing, in that, the game was fair.