Meng-Hsien

Mental Health Final Project Game:

Description: The Mental Health Game is a 2-4 player semi-cooperative game where players have to survive a total of ten weeks, representing a real-life shortened college semester, by completing tasks each week. These tasks will represent what any normal student would go through where if the tasks aren’t completed, there will be some sort of punishment, whether it be your grade being lowered or your mental health being lowered. The main goal of the game is to complete all the tasks every single week and survive ten weeks without reaching a failing grade, or 60%.

Rules and Setup: 

• • 2-4 players
  • Sheets of Paper for keeping Mental Health, Score, and Energy every round.
  • 2 6-sided dice for energy 
  • Every week, players randomly receive 3 tasks that they must complete or they will receive some sort of punishment
  • Players start at 100% for grades. If the students grades reach 60%, they are out of the game
  • Mental Health starts at 5 where the highest it can reach is 10 but can go lower than 0
  • Players can bring over a maximum of 2 energy per week
  • Players can trade 1 Mental Health for 1 energy unless your Mental Health value is less than 0.
  • Players gain 1 Mental Health each week

Majors: 

• • Each Player rolls a 2 6-sided dice to decide their major at the start of the game. Players with the greatest roll value can pick their major first. These will give small bonuses or negatives towards the players depending on the tasks.
    • Business 
      • Projects and Homework tasks take 50% less energy
    • Pre-Med
      • Tests and Quizzes tasks take 50 % more energy and failure means taking 1% more.
    • Computer Science
      • Projects and Homework tasks take 50% more energy
    • Psychology
      • Mental Health benefits give 50% more. Mental Health negatives are 50% less.

Code for Game (Randomizing Tasks Every Week): https://replit.com/@tsai-me/GameFinalProject

Tasks: List of Tasks: Anything with Group in front can be split between two or more players. Anything with Finals in front is for the last week of the game.

Mental Health Tasks: List of Mental Health Tasks that the Players can decide on doing whenever they want during the game.

Winners: The students that survived ten weeks of the college semester graduate. However, they soon realize that they will either have more semesters or graduate and go into the real world, facing the exact same issues of balancing their energy, mental health, and grades or work life wherever they go. They still see the sacrifice in mental health for better grades or better job opportunities or workload where they must constantly sacrifice mentally to essentially “survive” in a stereotypically world.

Artist Statement: 

One of the most important aspects of an art game is that the game’s mechanics speak in some way to the player, creating some sort of underlying message that can somewhat criticize or shine light on a certain topic. While brainstorming ideas, I realized that I wanted to create a game that has some sort of impact on my daily life, specifically about a community that I am heavily involved in, while also including commentary on that community about its stereotypical norms. Thus, I created the Mental Health Game which wishes to speak about stereotypical college norms and how that affects any student’s daily life which then ultimately speaks about the mental health of students in college. This idea was inspired by reading about the ending of the art game Braid and the meaning behind Braid where I also wanted to create an impactful game that can be applicable to many people. Braid speaks about the obsession of people when working towards a goal where they can become so obsessed to the point of not understanding the circumstances of some of their actions. This is further reinforced with its main mechanic of time travel where the main character sees the mistakes that he made and only focuses on correctly performing the necessary actions to continue yet he still doesn’t realize the fault in even trying to continue. Many more games that we discussed in class and from the book Works of Games, such as The Marriage or the Passage, contribute to creating some sort of art game that can attribute or comment on a certain aspect of daily life or a controversial topic. The Marriage talks about the relationship and connection between couples while Passage also sneakily talks about the same message but in another way. Learning about all these different art games inspired me to create the Mental Health Game where I want to solely focus on the mechanic of trading a mental health value for an energy value. I wanted my game to somehow speak to the way many college students feel where they have to sacrifice their personal well being, whether it be mental or some other factor, to maintain their grades up to the standard they want them to be. To further create a realistic game, creating effects for picking majors creates the stereotypical feel of what many people believe what some majors actually feel in terms of mental health. Overall, I believe my message that sacrificing mental health becomes a key factor for any college student where sometimes maintaining their energy, mental health, grade, or any other factor becomes challenging. Furthermore, as college students graduate, they realize that they are stuck in a cycle of sacrificing mental health with other aspects of their lives.

Players deciding on how they should spend their energy depending on their major, amount of energy given, and the given tasks for that week. The laptop shows the tasks and the players write down the three values of Mental Health, Grade, and Energy.

Playing League of Legends: The Correct Way

My intervention idea was basically playing League of Legends without any constraints or without apply the community’s norms when playing the game. League of Legends is a 5v5 competitive multiplayer game with 5 roles on each team where for each role, all the champions have implied role or roles. So, I would jump into a game of League of Legends and depending on whatever role I selected, I would pick a champion that would usually not be considered part of the acceptable champion pool of that role. So, for instance, the champion Irelia is considered to be a mid or top laner but playing her support is counterintuitive since her skill set is based on killing minions and stacking them whereas the support role usually does not kill all the minions.

Artist Statement

During the process of coming up with an intervention idea, I really wanted to intervene in a community that I was part of and somewhat try to suggest new perspectives or ideas that would be considered unordinary, toxic, or confusing. So, I decided to intervene the League of Legends community by picking champions that were not necessarily in their correct position in the eyes of the community. I was really inspired by the phone game that was presented by Professor Curry and Gradecki and the Yes-Men where both of these interventions really tried to comment something about part of their community. The phone game explicitly showed the entire process of how an iPhone was made where the game showed the somewhat radical forced labor that goes through in other countries that makes the phones. This included child labor in Africa to mine resources for the phones. This game was only on phone game apps such as the Apple Store which speaks volumes towards how someone in another country can play the game and view these horrific real-life issues but still go on with having a phone. Also, the Yes-Men inspired me in a similar way where they created an obscene outfit that would definitely not be mainstream, yet people were still inviting them and asking them to talk about these outfits. Nobody considered them wrong at all and continued to take notes and listen even though this was complete joke. In a similar way, my intervention wanted to touch on the subject of toxicity and the rigidness of competitive games especially in team games where other players actions heavily influences the outcome of the games. I chose the role support and picked champions that would typically not be considered a support such as Irelia, Azir or Lee Sin. I wanted to see the reactions of my teammates from these unconventional picks and see what happens when I would do bad in game or well. I found that whenever I played better than my teammates expected, they didn’t really have anything negative to say but whenever I did bad, the opposite happened. The community became toxic and start to question my choice. However, besides this comparison, most of the time, my teammates would already question these champions. I realized and asserted the fact that, maybe not as a whole, but gamers would be set on what is the norms in competitive games and whatever happens outside would be questioned unless done well. Especially the League of Legends community, unconventional ideas that don’t fit what’s right or normal causes doubt and toxicity.

A bundle of responses that I received from my teammates because of the champion that I played. Sometimes this was a mix of bad gameplay but for the most part, players would either or include all, leave the game before the game started, question my support pick, and criticize me because of my pick.

City Guesser 2-Players

My appropriation game is a modified version of a very popular game online called City Guesser. In the game City Guesser, players would observe a video playing on their screen and based on the video that’s playing, try to guess the location of the video. There are buttons on the top right of the video that can help players by controlling the video so that they can get more information. After guessing where the location may be, the game will tell the players how far they are away from the actual location of the video. There is no score or map limit, so players are free to continue guessing and playing however long they want.

My Modified Version of City Guesser:

Players:

• 2 Players

Rules:

• At the start of the game, position the players so that Player 1 cannot look at the video and Player 2 can. Player 2 must give as much detailed information as possible to Player 1 about the video, however, Player 2 cannot make the guess about where they think the place may be. They can give suggestive guesses but ultimately, Player 1 makes the decision about where they think the place is.

Modifications/Setting Changes:

These are additional rules that the players can add to make the game more challenging

• Limited Amount of Questions
• Time Limit
• The Player describing may not suggest any country
• The Player describing may not say what language is spoke or shown in the video

Artist Statement

Throughout the process of forming an idea of appropriating a game, I was mainly focused creating ways to make an original game more frustrating, difficult, or unique. Yoko Ono’s piece, White Chess, really inspired me to somewhat appropriate a game where there was a loss of information. In Yoko Ono’s game, the lost of information was what game pieces the players control where if the players do not completely remember all of their piece’s positions, then this game essentially becomes impossible to play. Likewise, when appropriating my game, I realized that by taking away a player’s vision and hearing, my game creates the same type of challenge as White Chess in terms of a mental challenge where that player must constantly infer about the given information to formulate and achieve the goal of my game. Unlike Yoko Ono’s piece, the difficulty in mine comes from the coordination between players and whether the descriptive information correctly leads the other player to the destination or that information becomes too opinionated to the point where other player wrongly infers about the location. These types of interaction between players interests me where I believe in the idea that enjoyable or good friction within challenging games creates some sort of satisfaction or euphoric feeling when overcoming these hurdles. Although the players might not get the right location or be remotely close during their first attempt, after multiple attempts, the players would start to understand certain tips or tricks that would help each other, possibly forming some interesting way of communication exclusive to both of them, overcoming each obstacle until they finally have a guess that is close to the location. However, to constantly facilitate these challenges and feelings, I felt the need to create more modifications or settings to my games that would ultimately create more obstacles, which once again, create the sort of interactions that I would like to see in a my game.

Documentation:

Peers in my class playing my modified version of City Guesser.

One player is describing the location to the other player.

The player choosing the where they think the place may be.

The final result of the video’s location.

Pick up an old instrument

Choose a piece

Play the piece

Ask someone to twist and turn the knobs

Play the same piece

Tune the instrument.

Artist Statement

I came up with this idea while reading Yoko Ono’s book, Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings and listening to pieces made by John Cage, most notably, his love for tinkering with instruments, such as the piano, with screws and coins. What catapulted me to make the decision of tuning the instrument at the last line of the piece was reading Keyboard Piece where the artist typed on their keyboard and then opened the computer. Their work’s meaning is different from what my meaning will be, but I felt that the processes was essentially the same. My intention behind my piece is to break the daily routines of musicians where whenever they pick up their instrument or begin to play their instrument, they would usually always have to check if they are in tune. If they are not in tune, they can still play a piece correctly but rather, they would play the piece differently. However, I truly wanted the performers to play the piece the same way but experience the unique notes that may come about with an out of tune instrument. This leads me to many questions that I wish my piece can ask towards the audience members. Would their play still be the same piece but just out of tune? Or would a newly created piece be created where the rhythm is the same but now the piece probably doesn’t have a melody or maybe it does? I wanted to create an exploratory form of expression through playing instruments that every time TunePiece is performed, the piece would be uniquely different each time. Especially on the violin where there are four different strings that all have different pitches to tune, if they are not in the regular intervals of each other, the piece that is being played would always sound different. Furthermore, just like Yoko Ono’s participatory art, I wanted the audience to be somewhat involved with the music making process. When I ask others to “tune” the instrument, I basically ask them to completely change the entire piece even though the song on the music sheet is still exactly the same. This way of modifying an instrument is inspired from John Cage’s performances but in different and much safer way. However, the eccentric music that is produced is exactly the same. My score can be repeated every single time with new combinations of notes and with new people “tuning” the instrument, implying a smaller message that everyone can compose art that is uniquely different but also allowing musicians to explore more freely the musicality of the pieces they are playing.

Documentation:

TunePiece