{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/adonaac\/","author_name":"adnzzzzZ","cat":"LD #25","categories":["LD #25"],"comments":[],"epoch":1356102360,"event":"LD25","likes":6,"metadata":{"p_key":"79925","p_author":"adnzzzzZ","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"288935","p_title":"Video Games Cause Mass Shootings \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1356102360","p_likes":"6","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"source_url":"2012\/12\/21\/video-games-cause-mass-shootings-post-mortem\/","text":"

Ideas and Theme<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known for a while now that I\u2019m pretty insensitive to some subjects that other people feel strongly about. So when I heard about last week\u2019s shootings<\/a>\u00a0I felt pretty much\u00a0nothing and just read a reddit thread about it (that\u2019s how cool I am, yeah!). As expected, some people were angry and saying how terrible the shooter was for shooting children (because shooting adults is totally okay!); others were going on about how 24\/7 media coverage encourages more shootings, which is probably true; most people were just terrified and sad that something like that happened.<\/p>\n

Very few people, though, talked about why someone would do such a thing or tried to imagine\u00a0a situation in which that kind of act would\u2019ve been sort of justified (it will never be justified, but putting yourself in the shooters shoes,\u00a0can you imagine how you would\u2019ve gotten to that point?). So that stayed in my head for the day\u2026 Later the compo started and the theme was released: \u201cYou are the Villain\u201d. I knew right away that I wanted to make a game about the shootings and explore the reasons why someone would do that. I also knew that, in those cases, people usually do have their own reasons, mostly because I had read a very\u00a0interesting blog post (sorry I can\u2019t find it anymore) some years ago about the Virginia Tech shootings<\/a>\u00a0explaining in detail the events that occurred\u00a0that led the shooter to do what he did. According to that blog post, from what I remember, a lot of stuff that is said in that Wikipedia page I just linked are only half truths. For instance:<\/p>\n

Several former professors of Cho reported that his writing as well as his classroom behavior was disturbing, and he was encouraged to seek counseling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Written by Cho\u2019s classmate, the post says that some teachers would just not accept Cho\u2019s writing\u00a0because they deemed it too disturbing, while the student who wrote the post thought it wasn\u2019t a big deal. Also, some teachers would \u201cforce\u201d\u00a0Cho to speak out loud and express himself better in class when they knew he had issues with that\u2026 Anyway, it\u2019s a lot of stuff and I don\u2019t\u00a0really remember the details. What I\u2019m trying to say, though, is that those types of massacres are usually not without any type of reasoning behind them. It\u2019s very easy to say someone is crazy and get it over with, but analyzing the whole situation regarding someone\u2019s mental health,\u00a0social status and whatnot is considerably harder, trickier, and may even make us feel bad about ourselves. I mean, who wants to feel like they\u00a0are directly responsible for someone\u2019s eventual mental breakdown and indirectly responsible for the death of others?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

With all that in mind I decided that the game would be about a boy\/girl\/person who keeps going from interactions inside video games and\u00a0interactions in real life (and by real life I mean the environment outside the game, but inside it\u2026 !).\u00a0Their interactions in real life should be as terrible as possible, in an attempt to justify the ending (killing everyone) and their\u00a0interactions inside the game should be also pretty violent, in an attempt to justify the game\u2019s title. But this is more of a joke\u00a0than anything. I don\u2019t actually believe video games cause mass shootings! I had a bunch of ideas on how the real life interactions would be:\u00a0you get to speak to your mom who hates you and resents having you around; you get excluded from a group of friends for some reason;\u00a0your girlfriend breaks up with you; you get humiliated, ridiculed, bullied by a group of people in school (there\u2019s a variation of this one\u00a0when this happens as you\u2019re confessing your love or whatever to some girl you like (and there\u2019s a variation of this one too where the girl\u00a0is in on it and she makes you believe she likes you only to get you to confess to her so that others can make fun of you\u00a0(kids these days\u2026))).\u00a0I had very few ideas on how the games would be but they didn\u2019t really matter. This was a more story focused game and if the games\u00a0(the ones inside the game) themselves were fun that would\u2019ve been great, but it was definitely not necessary.<\/p>\n

What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

The game itself was not fun at all.<\/strong><\/em> In fact, some people felt bad while playing it. While I feel pretty great that I made other people\u00a0actually feel bad with something I created, I wasn\u2019t aiming for that completely. I thought I had made the little children that you get to kill inside\u00a0the games pretty funny and entertaining, but not cute and relatable to the point where players would feel horrible killing them,\u00a0after all, they were just squares! My goal was to get the player to feel bad in the ending when you have to kill children in the game\u2019s\u00a0real life\u2026 I guess I\u2019m just bad at emotions. ;_;<\/p>\n

I should have thought way more about what I wanted the game to be. Instead of spending 20\/30 minutes fixed on the idea of making the game\u00a0about the shootings, I could have spent some hours trying to really nail down a creative and interesting idea before jumping to code.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t scope it properly.<\/em> While I managed to finish the game, I had no time to see if it was fun, to add music or to just playtest\u00a0it with other people. I spent the first day building the basic systems (platforming, enemies, guns, speech bubbles) and the second day\u00a0creating content. I realized I do not enjoy creating content (compared to building systems), so it took me a lot longer to get stuff done on the second day. I also had no time left to polish the game as much as I wanted. There were no particles, music or just overall\u00a0juicyness. Those are pretty simple features that really make a big difference\u2026<\/p>\n

The game looks terrible.<\/em> I\u2019m not an artist at all so I have to rely on primitive shapes, mainly squares.\u00a0But I\u2019m not at the point where I\u2019m familiar enough with shader magic so that I can throw a bunch of squares at the screen and they\u2019ll look\u00a0amazing.<\/p>\n

I was terribly unprepared.<\/em> Like I said, I spent the first day getting the basic systems to work when I could have done that in less\u00a0than ~6 hours had I prepared beforehand. There were many common patterns that arose as I wrote the game that I should have noticed, too.\u00a0I also went in without any clue as to how I was gonna get music in. I play the piano, so I know how to compose decent (or so I think) music,\u00a0but I\u2019m not familiar enough with any tools to create a song in such a short amount of time.<\/p>\n

What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n

I actually finished it in 48 hours.<\/em> I created a list<\/a>\u00a0of things that I needed to\u00a0implement and kept a pretty steady pace on day one. On day two I was sort of tired and the work wasn\u2019t that interesting to me anymore,\u00a0so I took a bit longer to get things done, but I managed to keep on keeping on (however slowly) and finished it. Also, my original idea\u00a0and what the game actually turned out to be were pretty close to each other. Some details were different, but overall I didn\u2019t compromise\u00a0anything like I usually do (i.e. if something is harder to implement than I originally thought I\u2019ll change the feature a bit so it\u2019s easier\u00a0to code).<\/p>\n

Given that people said they felt bad while playing it, I\u2019d say that the theme was handled pretty well. I also really liked using the\u00a0sepia shader to differentiate between game and real life. It created a decent mood whenever you\u2019re in-game. If I had a bit more experience I\u00a0could have tried a more video-gamey shader, but the one I used did the work pretty well, so I guess it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was definitely a really good experience. I wanna continue participating as long as I\u2019m ALIVE! Just the fact that there are\u00a0so many games there are super duper a lot better than what I could possibly hope to create one day gives me enough motivation to keep trying\u00a0to improve myself. It also reminded me how much deadlines help with getting stuff done!<\/p>","time":"December 21st, 2012 3:06 pm","title":"Video Games Cause Mass Shootings \u2013 Post Mortem","title_was_empty":false}