Evan

For my art game I decided to create a game that tries to depicts social anxiety by using Minecraft. Weeks before the pitch meeting I was thinking of making an art game about loneliness or anxiety. I planned to use rpg maker to create a game that is largely empty to give players a sense of loneliness. I then give up on the idea and move on to an idea about decisions. This idea is inspired by a song that I was listening to where a line says “Life is multi-ending”. I thought about this line and wanted to create a game that is kind of against what majority art games depicts life. Unlike the an art game that was shown in class, life isn’t just a straight line. The choices we make determines the outcome and ending of our life. I then decided that I would be using Minecraft to create it. The reason is that Minecraft is also used as a adventure map maker by its players. Players can create minigames and map with commands and redstones in creative mode. I was thinking of making a map where the player make choices and collect stuffs. And their ending depends on the stuffs they collected. However, I thought that the game will be too boring even if the core idea is interesting.

So, I finally decided to make a game about social anxiety in the middle of the pitch meeting. I chose this theme because it’s something that I personally struggled with and want to express it. The game will depict how it feel when trying to make a new friend or even tries to talk to new people. The game will give you simple task such as “Talk to a person” and have a difficult task standing between the player and their goal. The difficult tasks will be difficult Minecraft minigames such as parkour and mazes. During these challenges there will be “voices” telling you to give up and discourages the player. This emulates how it feel during or potential social interactions. This function is inspired by the game “Loved” that was shown at the show and tell. If the player decides to give up there is a room at the end of the hallway that the player always have access to. The room is designed to be cozy to be the player’s safe space that people with social anxiety retreat to, usually their home/room. The environment also changes as player progresses through the level. The hallway becomes bigger, brighter and colorful to represent the player’s emotion. The safe room also changes to from dark and cozy to bright and empty as the safe room doesn’t seem necessary anymore. And a change to add on to that idea is the levels will get easier as player progresses through the game. This emulates the sense of courage with each successful attempts.

The game contains 4 different hallways that gets brighter and the final hallway, which is the ending.

The first level is parkour and the player’s first task is to introduce yourself to “Sam”. Sam is a Minecraft dog that is suppose to represent the person that the player is trying to befriend. I chose the first level to be a parkour because it’s one of the hardest minigame in Minecraft, at least to me. However, it has proven to be difficult not only to me during the first play test.

The second level is a dark maze with monster inside it. The monster is named “FEAR” and I made it to be invincible. The task is to talk to Sam more and the player have to get to the end while avoiding the FEARs. I put light up safe area within the dark maze where the player are invisible while being inside it. This was the third level of the game but I thought this is much more difficult than the previous second level. Play tester expresses the same thought and said that this is more difficult because you can’t see the goal.

This is the current third level where previously this was the second. The reason for the change is that it’s easier than the current second level. Also if you’re lucky enough you can easily clear it. The task is to accept Sam’s invitation and the challenge is to reach the goal without being killed by the mob.

This is the final level which is a dropper. Dropper is a classic Minecraft minigame where the player have to thread the needle and fall into the hole. This is the easiest level of the game. The task is to invite Sam out which is something people with social anxiety can only do when they’re confident enough.

The final hallway is the ending where you’re finally close friend with Sam and escape the hallway. This gives a sense of liberation.

Appropriated material: Minecraft by Mojang

For my intervention I decided to have people from Isec and Ryder hall draw some robots. My idea first came up when we were talking about our intervention pitch for next week. I had a mix media art pad that I got for my 2d fundie class. I thought that I can have people draw stuff on it. The first idea that I had is having people from two location draw on the same paper. In the first location I would have people draw something cute and harmless on one side. Then at the other location I’ll cover the drawings on one side and have the people in the other location draw on the other. The prompt for the second group would be “draw things that will defeat the other side”. My idea is that people would draw dangerous and violent stuff that would attack the cute drawings. This is to demonstrate the idea of blindly follow direction. When thinking about the location I recall to when we played with the parachute. When we played the parachute in the common I saw a lot of people and some of them did participated. I thought maybe I can also conduct my intervention there too. During the intervention pitch meeting I had a second version of my idea. Coincidentally, we talked about a woman with a sign that says “draw on me” which is similar to my intervention idea. The second version will still involve two locations but the prompt will be the same for both locations. And the prompt will be vaguely worded to let the audience come up with their own interpretation. This way I can observe how people in two location think different and how the first drawing affects others interpretation. However, it is pointed out that this will heavily depend on the location. After many thought about the locations I decided to held it at Ryder and Isec hall. And the prompt must be relevant to both hall. Isec is more engineering and computer science centric hall. Ryder has more art and media students gather around. So I pull the two theme together and came up with having the people from the two hall draw robots. Students from Isec are familiar with robot and students from Ryder can express their creativity with drawings. My hypothesis before executing my intervention is that Isec students will draw more realistic robot like Roombas. And Ryder students will draw more creative robot like Gundam.

During Friday I decides to execute my intervention after game design. I looked around Ryder hall and noticed that there isn’t that many people, so I decide to go to Isec first. In Isec there were a lot of people studying and sitting around. So I stood outside the entrance where people would come and go. I held up my mix media with the word “Draw a robot of any kind” and marker to let people know that they can draw on it. People who walked by took a look at the pad before continue going. I waited for around 5 minutes standing like an idiot before someone came. It was a girl and she asked if she could draw. I answered yes and then she asked if this for a project and what class. A lot of people also asked this question. The robot that she drew is a conventional robot with boxing head and body and antenna. As time went by more people drew on the pad. In the end all the robot have a similar aesthetic in the form of a conventional robot. I believe that the first robot also influenced the others. The outlier is by a dude who’s with his friends, he drew the robot with the drill and whisk. Next is Ryder where I did it on Tuesday right before class. This time people are more willing to participate and I only have to wait aboutFff two minutes. The first robot is also a conventional robot however it’s more toy-like. It’s also the first time someone used more than one color in their robot. Then someone surprised me by drawing Doraemon which is a robot cat. The result was a lot different type of robots, people even drew laptop, car and claw. The last person participated asked if she could take a picture of the pad. She said that she have a similar project.

There is a lot of interesting result by comparing the two experiences and pictures. Students from Ryder are more likely to participate than Isec. I also noticed that in Isec, women are more willing to participate than men. Meanwhile, in Ryder both men and women have the same chance of participating. Everyone in Isec used only one color for their robot while 2 people used more than one color in Ryder. Ryder also has more unconventional robots, meaning that they think more outside the box. This has been a fun intervention and experiment.

Isec

Ryder

Washing Cycle

1) Pick up a dirty laundry
2) Wash it until it’s clean
3) Throw it at any surface that would make it dirty and do one of the following
a)Pick up the laundry and repeat step 1-3
b)Leave the laundry

Development and Inspiration
The first iteration of my score is a simple three step instruction. The first step is to “pick up a dirty clothes”. The second step is to simply “wash it clean”. And the third and final step is “throw it in a dirty puddle”. My inspiration for this score came from the scores in Grapefruit. In Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit there is a lot of seemingly pointless and absurd scores and instructions. Scores that stand out to me are Water piece which just simply stated “water”. Another one is where it tells you to hide until everyone forgets about you and die. I wanted to make a score that seem pointless like washing a dirty clothes just to throw it away and make it dirty. During the class discussion people brought up a lot of good points and observation about my score. Such as the score could represent a cycle or breaking of it. And that there is no further instructions after the last step, where it’s up to the person. So I took in those ideas and made the final version of my score. I wanted to give a clear option to the person performing this score. One option will create a cycle and another with break it. I also changed some of the wording to give more freedom to the performer. I changed dirty clothes to dirty laundry so that they can use other things such as socks, pants or even backpack. I changed the dirty puddle part to any surface that would dirtied the laundry. The reason for this change is because during the discussion someone brought up the point of what if the performer couldn’t find a dirty puddle. All these changes would let the performer use any laundry and at anywhere.

Idea
My idea behind the score is the idea of redundancy and cycle. Everybody is technically already doing the first three steps in their everyday life. They got dirty laundry and they would wash it. Eventually the clothes gets dirty by touching multiple surfaces and then the cycle repeats again. This is why I made the score vague in terms of time. I did not tell the performer to do the step right after the other. I left out the words such as “then” and “finally” so that each step can be done at any time. Everyone is repeating the 3 step until they chose to leave the laundry. The option at the end is a representation of the option everyone has: an option to stop. But ending a cycle is difficult. For example a bad habit, people can tell you stop but it’s difficult. You’re not gonna stop unless you want it to. Like the dirty laundry why would you throw it away just because a score gave you an option to. Only reason you would want to is you choose it yourself.