Queen of Hearts
Link to game: http://philome.la/nahejeon0511/queen-of-hearts/play
Introduction
Queen of Hearts is the evil queen in Alice in Wonderland that gives Alice so many trials. However, in this IF game, Queen of Hearts would be the Queen of Gram High School. Yes, the Prom Queen. ‘You’, the main character, wants to be the Queen of Hearts by getting the most hearts. What does that mean?
You are Alena, and you want to beat Samantha, the most likely Prom Queen, because she stole your crush from you. This year, choosing the Prom Queen is based on the number of Instagram likes the candidate gets. Your job is to analyze Instagram and upload the a photo that would get a ton of likes.
Theme
Social media permeate our lives. It became so much easier to peek into the carefully curated parts of other people’s lives, and compare your life to theirs. This is particularly easier because there is a numeric component to social media (e.g. number of likes, number of followers) that makes “objective” comparisons all the more feasible.
Of course, social media is fun. It is nice to be able to share special snapshots of your life. However, it is so easy to be trapped and spend countless hours on these platforms. Many social media services measure success by the amount of time users spent on the platforms (otherwise, how would advertising partners trust these platforms to sell their ads?), and A/B experiments are repeatedly performed to make them more addictive to users.
I’ve been guilty of spending too much time on social media, too. At first, I open the app because it sounds like a noncommittal way to spend break time aimlessly. But then I get sucked into all the recommended posts and chains of stalking, as well as constantly checking how many “likes” I have. I also realized my friends would automatically open Instagram during silent moments between conversations in a group setting. I also realized my friends would spend maybe too much time taking social media worthy photos during hangouts.
What does it feel like when someone spends a lot of time on such a platform? Not too good. According to an article by Time, Instagram is detrimental to mental health.
Through this game, I hope people are able look back on their social media habits and adjust their behavior accordingly. They could spend the time they spend on personal photos and less-than-a-paragraph captions on reading fiction, or (haha) playing well-made games. I think the worst thing about social media is that it takes people away from high-quality media from which they would actually gain something.
Process
V1: Straightening the story out
In the beginning, I tried to write my story straight on Twine. But I realized it wouldn’t work because I was getting familiar to the medium. So I wrote down the text on Google Docs first.
My biggest question was how to convert the theme and plot I had in mind to a game. A game needs numbers, and a way to win and a way to lose. In Queen of Hearts, the key is that you “win” by becoming Prom Queen, but that victory comes at a big cost. You “lose” if you give up the battle towards becoming Prom Queen, but maybe it’s not a loss at all. In the real world, that cost for spending too much time and energy on social media would be wasted time and worse mental health. But in a game, there needs to be a more concrete consequence. I initially thought maybe Alena wouldn’t get into her dream college, but it doesn’t really make sense because she is a senior and would have finished applying to colleges already.
I decided that the numbers would be two variables — $time and $likes. The more deep Alena goes into Instagram, the more she checks for likes, the $time she spends on Instagram increases. $likes is the number of likes she gets on her posts, but she has to keep checking the app again and again to check $likes, which would increase $time.
In the game, Alena “wins” if she gets 200 likes, but she would have lost a lot along the way, including time. She “loses” if at any point, she closes Instagram or otherwise give up trying to fish for the perfect photo. Yet, it doesn’t really feel like a loss.
V2: Spending time on Instagram
I created an initial flow in which Alena has an AP US History Quiz the next yet opens Instagram. She finds out that Samantha has commented on Michael’s recent post, and enraged, she stalks through Samantha’s profile and compares her posts to her own. I made conscious effort to highlight how much Alena compares herself to Samantha.
However, each time she clicks on something to view it, the $time variable increases. Later, after she closes Instagram, the user can see how much time she has spent. If she closes Instagram earlier, she would have spent less time.
V2.5: Formatting text
There are multiple voices in the game. There is voice of the main narrator, which addresses the player in 2nd person. There is also the voice of the email that Student Council sends out, and also the text for Instagram itself. I differentiated the font for all three so it was clear which was which. Also, I incorporated emojis when feasible.
V3: Actually posting on Instagram
I introduced more plot elements in this part. I incorporated the obstacle-victory-bigger obstacle pattern for stories I learned in class. To post a good photo on Instagram, Alena needs to go through a lot of challenges because it is out of her usual comfort zone. If she gives up at any point, she loses. However, if she sustains, she wins.
The last and biggest challenge is after she posts. She needs to keep clicking “Refresh” in order to check the number of likes. I won’t spoil the number of times she needs to click Refresh. But I thought the mechanical dull in mindlessly checking for more likes is quite similar to real-world behavior.
Learning
Videogame Zinesters
The Videogame Zinesters reading was extremely helpful in developing my idea into a concrete game. Chapter 8 was especially helpful. I followed the advice that I should introduce a character and teach the character do something. As such, I introduced Alena and let the player go through the first iteration of working through Instagram on Queen of Hearts. The reading advised game-makers using Twine to write an opening passage that characterizes the protagonist, what she’s capable of doing, and what her relationship is with the world. I did this by introducing Alena’s love triangle with Samantha and Michael.
Writing Excuses
The Diction episode in this podcast was very applicable to my project, because how do you choose words to make the simulation of emails and Instagram posts convincing? The podcast gave me a lot of answers. For example, I decided putting hashtags, emojis, and words like ‘#zen’ would really give the Insta-vibe.
Story arc
In class, we had story-writing exercises where we introduced a goal to the character, followed by an obstacle. After the obstacle was removed, a bigger obstacle would be introduced, and there would be the Biggest Challenge. I modeled my game to follow this model. The Goal is to get enough Instagram likes to be Prom Queen. The obstacles are stuff like financial difficulties, having to talk to Samantha, and every little step the player has to take in order to finish the Instagram post. The Biggest Challenge is checking the post until the desired number of likes is achieved.
Playtesting
I tested this game on my friends. These are some of the feedback I got:
Very realistic. The most surprising feedback I got. A playtester said she thought the game mimicked real world Instagram and Instagram behavior very well. She especially liked the part where the player gets to choose the app to edit the photo with.
Where are the pictures? However, if this is a game about Instagram, where are the pictures? This is something I considered as I was making the game too. Simulation of Instagram can never be complete without the actual pictures to go on the platform. However, in the scope of this assignment, I thought it would be too much to acquire the photos and incorporate the editing part accordingly.
Limited number of choices, too easy to hit ending soon, too hard to play through the whole testing part It is a bit too simple to have only one way to “lose” out of the game. Any time a player clicks something other than pushing it through on Instagram, it is the end of the game. Thankfully, having the back button made it feasible for the player to replay that part.
Summary
I was able to create an Interactive Fiction game that realistically models Instagram users’ behaviors and warns against spending too much time on the app. I achieved this through following the learning materials we were presented in class. I see lot of rooms for improvement in Queen of Hearts, and ways to make this more interactive and intuitive, which is something I would like to potentially explore in the future.
