Interactive Fiction? What is that?
The Dome is an interactive fiction project. Interactive Fiction is defined as fiction that you can interact with. It can take the form of interactive narratives (not unlike a Choose Your Own Adventure game) or as a video game in the form of a roleplaying adventure adventure, where you enter text commands.
I decided to create a text based game where players continue the narrative through the choices they make, and the choices would directly affect the ending players get. This was a four week project in the Interaction Design class called Story, where we focused on narrative and use of narrative to generate understanding and empathy. In many ways our prompt was for a dystopian world - if a negative behavior were to continue, what would happen?
The Dome focuses on the negative aspects of air pollution as we have it today, and how it may affect our future.
I decided to create a text based game where players continue the narrative through the choices they make, and the choices would directly affect the ending players get. This was a four week project in the Interaction Design class called Story, where we focused on narrative and use of narrative to generate understanding and empathy. In many ways our prompt was for a dystopian world - if a negative behavior were to continue, what would happen?
The Dome focuses on the negative aspects of air pollution as we have it today, and how it may affect our future.
play here: http://philome.la/dragonofthenyc/dome/play
State of the Air Report 2013 -American Lung Association
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Secondary Research: Air Pollution NowI didn't really know that much about air pollution beforehand - I knew it was something that affected a greater population in the world, but I didn't know just how bad it was. I started to formulate my idea on the basis of what might be done now, but also start to think about what society was like today. In many ways I had started with a focus on climate change, but narrowed it down to pollution.
I started to look toward the future, started to speculate just what could go wrong and what our government is doing about it (nothing, at this point in time the Trump Administration denied climate change, and only months later did they withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord). |
Process: Brainstorming
There's a element of world building that comes with creating such a large-scale story with branching pathways. When coming up with dystopias, it's important to try to figure out what or how it has gotten to be so bad as it was. Therefore, I wanted to push the concept to the very maximum - for this world to be an unbreathable land, where only air that has been purified can be breathable.
The toxic atmosphere is a very important part - already there are countries where dust masks are the norm, and the atmosphere is unhealthy to breathe, as my research about air pollution proved.. Being unable to breathe without a mask provides a core function to story. Humans are, generally, very smart, but can be very reluctant to change from what they know.
The dome idea is more of an isolation by the government's part, a way to enforce a dystopia. Many dystopian novels center around the government, which I touched upon, although I felt as though specifically air pollution is something that not many people may talk about. Everyone wants to save the environment, with climate change on the horizon, but it feels that there's a lack of real understanding that goes beyond the surface of such a task.
By keeping the world from knowing about the large scale problem feels almost scarily like some current governments, denying climate change as a reality despite the scientific proof right before their eyes.
The toxic atmosphere is a very important part - already there are countries where dust masks are the norm, and the atmosphere is unhealthy to breathe, as my research about air pollution proved.. Being unable to breathe without a mask provides a core function to story. Humans are, generally, very smart, but can be very reluctant to change from what they know.
The dome idea is more of an isolation by the government's part, a way to enforce a dystopia. Many dystopian novels center around the government, which I touched upon, although I felt as though specifically air pollution is something that not many people may talk about. Everyone wants to save the environment, with climate change on the horizon, but it feels that there's a lack of real understanding that goes beyond the surface of such a task.
By keeping the world from knowing about the large scale problem feels almost scarily like some current governments, denying climate change as a reality despite the scientific proof right before their eyes.
Process: Building and Creation
The project was created in the story building engine Twine. It focuses on the branching narratives that change based on the choices you make while playing. Some use of logic was required in order to make sure that certain choices were registered. I was learning the engine as I was creating the story. While I had some outline of what I wanted to write and what I wanted to portray, a lot of the choices branching was limited. I didn't want to sacrifice the story nor did I want to sacrifice any of the different endings.
I wanted choices to have real effects on the outcomes. I wanted this game to have a profound impact, I wanted this story to be the spark for a change, or at least plant a seed of understanding.