After further discussion on our sustainability game concepts, there were some areas in which we were assigned the task of diving deeper into the functionality and interactivity of our games: specifically through conflict, freedom, and guidance.
My game concept deals with the idea of the inner-workings of an apartment complex and the relationship between a landlord and their tenants filing maintenance requests left and right. The primary conflict for the player to face would be the weight of juggling so many requests at one time and keeping track of which ones have priority, all the while ensuring that they wouldn't miss any new ones coming in. This conflict would be steady and would not really ever end, except for in breaks between levels, as 1. in an actual apartment complex you would never truly be finished with all the work as a landlord but also 2. in the human body/brain we are definitely never done taking care of or managing ourselves and what's going on around us. The level of conflict in this game would range from moderately high pressure at times when several maintenance requests come in at the same time to fairly low pressure when there are only a couple active requests. There could be lulls in conflict between levels as I mentioned, but essentially you could say that you'd always be able to face more conflict if you kept playing the game.
For the sake of my specific game concept, I feel somewhat strange describing it this way but I wouldn't plan on giving my players too much freedom to venture away from intended activities and goals. Giving players the opportunity to just neglect maintenance requests and go sit in the maintenance closet and watch Youtube videos or eat snacks would result in quite a boring overall game experience, as they would continually be penalized for neglecting their tenants. This goes along with its representation of the body and brain- if you neglect what you need to be healthy, it might end up pushing you toward "game over." There's no nicer way to put that for some cases.
I think that as far as guidance goes, with a concept as simplistic as mine, not much guidance would be required aside from an initial welcome message, maybe congratulating the player on their new position as a landlord. This message could give an overview as to how to handle these maintenance requests as they came in and entail penalties and rewards involved with that. Then once the game actually began, like I said before I wouldn't really give too much freedom to roam for the player, so guidance would be in the form of little information buttons that helped the player understand controls or read about the different tenants or something.
My game concept is rather simple in its form, but complex in its meaning, and I think that keeping the interactivity straightforward and potential for exploration at a minimum would help the message be the main takeaway rather than the complexity of the game itself. The medium is just a way of communicating a real-life, raw concept.
Thanks again for reading.
{Today's mind/heart/soul-healthy challenge: Go buy yourself some flowers and put them in a vase for you to see the rest of the week.}
*MAKE TODAY STORY-WORTHY.*