P2 Reflection
P2 required students to write an Interactive Fiction game that encourages a better understanding of an issue that threatens our collective future. My story is set in the distant future when all the problems facing humanity have been solved. Energy, transportation, climate change, even death itself are all within the control of mankind and AI that serves it. The player plays as a man named Alion who was among the first humans to become immortal and invincible. The length of time that he has been alive is intentionally left vague, though he is likely closer to millenia than he is to centuries. In a world without problems, no need to work for survival, and nothing but free time, the character has reached a point of his life where he is perfectly bored. He has done everything there is to do. As such, the ultimate goal of this character is to die. As the player goes through the story, they find that they do not have a large degree of agency to make choices that affect the player’s path through the world. It would not make sense to the plot if they did. The character must die, and he must go through the bureaucracy necessary to do so. There is one true choice at the end describing whether you have chosen to die a painful or a painless death. All other meaningful choices provide more background information about the world in which the character lives.
I had a large number of playtesters go through this project, and the feedback was largely positive. Players enjoyed the one true choice at the end. Nearly all of my playtesters reported that the story made them think about the nature of immortality and what they might experience should they become immortal. However, after questioning the playtesters, it became clear that some of the details I included were not being understood in the way I had intended. For example, the character uses several highly sophisticated technologies far beyond the capabilities of our modern technology. Because these technologies were advanced beyond the realm of modern possibility, most players read through these areas quickly and without pause. They did not expect to encounter something new and special, and so they totally missed it. Moving forward, I attempted to make these moments more obvious by including phrasing that serves to better “other” this technology from the players’ expectations, without simply telling the player what is happening.
I enjoyed this project, but I have room for improvement in the future. Finding ways to incorporate more “meaningful” choices into a deterministic narrative would likely benefit the creation of a similarly constructed story. If I were to create another Interactive Fiction piece, I would attempt to make it more of an actual game. Though my story had merit, it was largely just that — a story. I believe that Interactive Fiction has the potential to be a game medium, but I believe that not every Interactive Fiction is a game by default. Mine felt like a story to me. There wasn’t a sense of play. I would like to experiment with how far the medium can go towards game creation in future.