P2: Panoptica
Interactive Fiction for Ethical Expansion of Technology
Concept
The world is changing so incredibly fast. In Silicon Valley we’re at the epicenter of technology designed to make our every moment safer and more convenient. Every day I make the choice to engage with technology like Facebook, smart home devices, and internet doorbell cameras. Behind each of these technologies is a team of two, ten, or hundreds of software developers just like me that had to make a choice: to work on these technologies and bring their benefits to more people, or to let the opportunity go and have someone else take their place.
Last year I learned about a piece of black box technology called COMPAS and the ProPublica research that revealed the dangers of this technology. COMPAS analyzes people who have been arrested to determine whether they should be released on bail or held as a risk to the community. There are so many uses of new technology just like COMPAS that are designed with good intent and still cause irreparable harm to the communities we live in. As a person that lives and works in this space, I have to confront and understand my own ethics when I choose where to contribute.
Panoptica imagines a world in the not so distant future where technology designed to judge and predict people does just that. You work as a developer for SafeCOR, a technology company that helps police departments and others identify, track, and analyze suspects, among other uses. I hope that through living in Panoptica for a brief moment players consider the role they play in developing technologies that tangibly effect the world in good and bad ways.
Play first, process after!
Process
I began by thinking about topics that really matter to me and that I want to share with others. This is where I crafted a singular storyline that was admittedly very complex — the protagonist originally has a niece who gets punished in a way that does not fit her crime, there is a family history component, etc. After some helpful feedback from Ben, our wonderful TA, I pared down the original story and began building past the inciting incident — getting arrested for a crime you did not commit. The first prototype was very simple:
I wanted the player to be able to react to being released in a way that felt real to them. This was also just to get accustomed to Twine, so I didn’t playtest this version.
The next version included context leading up to the inciting incident. This gives the player more choices that immerse the player into the role of the character. It included work up to the same inciting incident and going home after as before, and looked like the following:
Notice that the storyline in this prototype is incredibly linear: even though the player can and does make choices, there are many converging checkpoints.
I was able to playtest this version with Nylah, and she gave me some incredibly useful feedback related to this issue:
Nylah felt frustrated by a particular moment above: even though the user chose to go from home straight to work, I force the player into the coffee shop. This feels a bit like taking away the player’s agency and distracts from the game. I could have either removed the coffee shop choice or allowed the player to be arrested in either place, and it would not change the story. I chose the latter for the next prototype.
I was worried that I might have fallen down the wrong path being too moment-by-moment for the scope of story in the first prototype, so I started over with the next one.
Notice that this version is much closer to a branching tree — there are still checkpoints shared throughout the story, but there are now nine independent endings. Each of those endings converges to a mini-experience of reflection modeled from Creatures Such as We that I hope helps the players contextualize the game in their own lives.
I was able to playtest this game with Fiona, who gave me some incredibly useful feedback. At first, I took the feedback as minor suggestions of choices or wording, but I noticed a big theme while going back through my notes. Fiona played through the story as the character, empathizing with the personal situation that the character is placed in, rather than playing the dystopian world itself. For example, thinking about the character getting fired rather than the system leading to the character getting fired.
This makes perfect sense and is a reflection of interactive fiction’s unique ability to get players immersed. But this isolated a flaw in the way that I approached conveying the story — I assumed incorrectly that players would go immediately for the big picture and intuit how their choices affect a larger world. But I know now I have to make them care about that world before they’re willing to fight for it.
To that end I made several changes to the game in the eleventh hour:
- Players pause to consider the direct actions of the technology they worked on in the plot of gameplay
- Players can choose to be selfish or selfless in more points of the game, bringing this consideration to the forefront.
- Added entire plotline allowing players to get justice for themselves, but realizing what they lose in the process (thus adding several more endings)
- The end experience forces players to get it right — if you don’t agree with your choices, you have to try and fix them at least once
I’m excited to playtest these changes. As I think reflect on the work I’ve done for this piece, I realize that I might have needed a very different story to convey the meaning I wanted. To perhaps start even further back, and allow the player to own the choice of working for a company that can do things both good and bad for the world. Maybe that was the part I needed, not handling consequences of waking up in the middle.
IF felt like a daunting task, and now I understand why. This is a medium with unprecedented power to put a person in the shoes of a character. I may not have taken advantage of that in the way I hoped to, but I like to think I understand a bit better how to build empathy with fiction in games.
