Posted September 30, 2021 by The Sam
Making an Idea
When it came time to take the research on doomscrolling I conducted and actually translate it into a game idea, I'll admit, I had a bit of a hard time at first. When it comes to designing games, that initial ideation phase is definitely one of the most fun parts of the process. However, I find that if you don't already have an idea for something going into that phase, coming up with one can be challenging. I knew I wanted my game to be a bit of a commentary on doomscrolling, and for it to have a message about taking breaks from the things that stress us out. Figuring out how to take those messages and make mechanics out of them was tough, but I was satisfied with what I had come up with; a turn-based RPG that uses a time loop system that forces the player into stressful battles, mirroring a disheartening loop of doomscrolling. The player would progress not by fighting enemies, but by taking the time to help NPCs that are also struggling with the loop.
Presenting the Idea
Once the idea was made, making the pitch proposal (while time consuming) wasn't too much of a challenge to make. I even ended up making a couple of little sprites for the game. I'm not much of an artist, so it was fun to step outside of my comfort zone for a little bit. I found that my presentation was a little long in terms of slides though, so when my turn to present rolled around, I went through them a little quickly to stay within the time limit.
Getting Feedback (special thanks to those who gave feedback, by the way)
I got a lot of good feedback from that process, and that helped me identify ways to remedy what appears to be my idea's biggest problem: the fact that the theme wasn't really clear. While I was kind of deliberately making the theme a little more subtle during the ideation phase, it's not one of the best approaches to take for a "game for change", looking back. One way I thought I could make the message more obvious was to change the setting and background from a depressed mercenary group trapped by an evil wizard to a social media thread of depressed users, stuck in a physical version of the digital world by an evil force. As for what the evil force is, I don't know for sure yet. I'm kind of torn between having it be an evil algorithm, or the CEO of the site, or maybe a politician that's just making everything worse. Outside of that though, I'm satisfied with how I ended up delivering the message through my mechanics; I think the context just needed to be a little clearer.