Devlog Seven

Act 2

I’ve nearly completed Act 2 of the game - the period wherein the player is out of work and might need to fall back on less-than-upstanding means of getting by. At this point, it’s just a matter of chugging through the project plan - I don’t forsee any major twists or turns in the next few weeks, although I might add sound after I’ve completed the main narrative course of the three acts.

This being a Digital Humanities course, I discussed with a classmate of mine (who I’ll name if they request it!) the possible shortfalls of the game narrative I’m creating. The player character is a (presumably) straight male, who starts the game off with a wife and two children - one boy, one girl. To address the central ideas of the game - that is, to encourage reflection on what drives gang violence and its relationship with poverty - I decided that the male role would suit best, since it could more directly result in the player’s character participating in that violence. As for the straight role, it mostly exists to facilitate the family - keeping your family fed and healthy is an important aspect of the game, and removing that feature would likely diminish the impact and desperation the player might feel if their sole goal was simply keeping themselves alive - a much more manageable goal, in the context of the historical time period. Nevertheless, the protagonist having a family does not necessarily exclude them from having a non-majority sexual orientation or even gender identity - these are thinks that bear considering as I continue onto the final act.

Another problem we discussed was objectivication. When I first started this project I underestimated the amount of work that would need to be put into it - and found myself spending hours upon hours chipping away at the mechanical foundations, pulling my time and energy away from the narrative and stylistic elements that I would have liked to focus on. As such, the characters have no real personality of the sort - they serve as mechanical tools, flat characters with only surface-level personality. In fact, the only real, recurring ‘character’ is the protagonist. If I had more time, I’d love to work out their personalities more, and fill the protagonist’s family with people rather than walking, talking health bars - but I think I’ll have to accept these shortfalls, acknowledge them, and move on.