Gameplay Design Technical & Narrative Design Programmer
Sustainability Game Jam entry.
Single player serious/applied game to educate the player on the impacts of fast fashion and how businesses may balance profit and sustainability.
Worked as technical and narrative designer to apply the research of our sustainability experts in a form players can easily digest.
Provided skills as a gameplay designer to give choices varying weights and balance financial consequences with narrative ones.
Established the balance between environmental storytelling and dialogue to influence player decisions, and scripted the necessary systems.
Also provided 2D and 3D assets to deliver a solid prototype by the game jam deadline.
As part of the Confetti Sustainability Jam 2021, we had roughly 30 hours to collaborate with our sustainability experts on the topic of fast fashion and design and create an educational game on the consequences of people’s clothing choices.
I and the other designers discussed what our basic concept and thus core gameplay loop should be, and decided that a Narrative, choice focused experience would serve our brief best. As in Dontnod’s Life is Strange, the player is given the responsibility of saving Kate from the brink of suicide, and will likely feel immediate regret should they fail in doing so, but there are also decisions in which the tragedy they will cause is not immediately apparent, and I argued we should focus on this latter style of narrative branching, as very few consider the impact of their shopping choices. However, we did still include short term reactions so the player could immediately immerse themselves in the choices they make, seeing that they truly have an impact on the town the game is set in.
Clothesquences has the player take on the role of the owner of a new fashion company, Promark, and have to build up their factory and business in a profitable but sustainable manner. As the lead narrative designer for the game jam, I was heavily involved in designing the choices and their short and long term impact, using comparable real world events and news articles to inform my creative decisions. With the tight schedule that comes with entering a game jam, I also designed and scripted the narrative systems, utilising databases for the dialogue.
The dotted lines represent the immediate consequences of each choice. On each playable day, the player has the choice to explore local town and speak to its inhabitants and workers to gather information to inform their choice, or they can skip this and immediately make a business decision, similar to the Scales of Conviction mechanic in Square Enix’s Triangle Strategy.
The above flowchart also shows how the business’ monetary situation will fluctuate, as if all the ‘obvious’ ethical options are selected, the player will not have the finances to prevent the final tragedy. Life is not simple, and doing ‘the right thing’ can be costly at times, leaving people in difficult situations should they not leave savings for emergencies. I wanted our project to reflect this, as in real life even the most well meaning people need to find a balance to live within their means, and sometimes that means less ethically sourced clothing or other necessities. Choices can also be complicated and interact with one another, hence why the increase in pollution choices can stack.
More general information on this project can be found by clicking here. The design document is not complete, or organised in a manner which I would prefer on a longer project, but I have left it in this state to showcase what my team and I managed to do in under 30 hours. Other than a few corrected typos, it remains completely unedited, and an accurate reflection of our work speed and ability back in March 2021. The dialogue at the bottom of the document was entirely my own work, no assistance from the rest of the team, though I had input into the majority of this document.
