Asexuality game project?

[Dexter James]

I was thinking (which is always dangerous) that it'd be cool to develop a game about Asexuality.

A while back I did some tutorials for Unity game development software.
https://unity3d.com/learn

I've also spent a large portion of the last 2 years coding in c# for a company whilst on placement from university

I have no game concept at the moment (It'd have to be something that people would want to play of course) but if we have a group of people willing to help:

- coders/developers,

- digital artists,

- story/script team,

- project manager.

then I think we could make a fairly decent 2D / simple 3D game.

I know there are a lot of talented creative people on here, so it might be nice to work together on something

If there is interest, and we can get an initial Idea together, I don't mind planning and managing the project, unless there is someone else who wants to do that bit.

Would any of you like to be involved? Do you have any ideas? What do you think?

Dexter.

[Mezzo Forte]

I can't make any promises about commitment or quality, especially because I have fairly limited composition experience and even less experience writing more tonal stuff, but depending on how many pieces you need written, I might be able to whip up a small soundtrack. The only things in the way are stuff like how I'm also supposed to be composing for a friend's game as well (and made no progress with it) and have only written for acoustic instruments that I lack the equipment to properly record, so I have no clue how I'll do with electronic sounds.

I'm also knee deep in other compositional projects that I'm trying to throw together in case I decide to legitimately study comp in grad school, which means that I can't give any definite answers. However, I have an incredibly deep love of games as art and what basic things I've come to understand about game design fascinate me.

I guess some of the questions that need to be asked are things like:

What kind of story do you want to tell? Is there going to be an overarching narrative about an asexual character? Is this going to be a simpler edutainment game with no major characters at all? How do you want to inform the audience about your subject matter and how can you make the game itself compelling? What genre of game is best suited to explore asexuality in the way that you intend to? Is information about asexuality going to factor into gameplay and plot or just one of the two? Are we going to assume that the protagonist is going to be asexual if you have one? Is this game intended to inform about asexuality or is it going to be simply inspired by the essence of the orientation? How grounded in reality will this game be? Will the setting be more fantasy, or modern, sci-fi, or perhaps incorporate fantastic elements into an otherwise mundane/modern setting?

I could probably keep asking questions, but I'll try not to get too obnoxious since it's just food for thought. With a limited amount of people, something simple is probably best, and if you choose to explore asexuality in a more narrative-based manner, then there's always genres like visual novel, text adventure, point n' click adventure, or an RPG.

However, I'm going to guess that if the game gets developed, what exactly it will be is entirely dependent on the skills of your dev team. If you don't have a writer, then a visual novel sort of game will be incredibly difficult to pull off. Without an artist or animator, the game will need to be functional with incredibly simple and basic art. Without programmers, we may need to make something that requires as little complicated coding as possible. It's hard to say, and I'm just rambling at this point.

It would be nice to see a game come together through an online effort! If 4-chan could make a solid game that got a ton of praise, then maybe AVEN would have a shot too?

[eched]

Well I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to help at all, but I would love to see this happen. As for a game idea well...

We've all seen the game where you are the hero and you have to save the princess. Maybe the game could be a tribute to the old school side scrolling games like that while at the same time mocking them. IE. It's like a super Mario game, only the princess is replaced with a piece of cake and when you get to the end of the level and get your slice of cake a random fact about asexuality can pop up. Each level would end with another hunk of cake and another fact. Maybe as a main attack item you could get a card deck and toss ace cards at people. I don't know who the enemy characters could be, but something along this line would be fun.

[Quinoa]

This is a really cool idea! I don't think I have the skills to help, but I just want to say this immediately reminded me of this game about what it's like to be transgender.

[littlepersonparadox]

I like the idea. Dangerous thing about trying to parody mario: flappy bird got sued over using a similar design lay out ect. You would have to change it enough to avoid getting sued yourself, if you go that route. I hope to help out any way I can. I only finished my first year of a computer programming though and I still have another 3 semesters to go.

[eched]

I think you could change it up a lot. I was just using Mario as an example, but countless games have you saving a princess. It's a very common gimmick that could be put on its head.

As for more ideas, I'm not sure.

Maybe a different idea for a game could be what they do in Japan. IE. A dating simulator. The idea would be in the game you are told by all your friends and 'the world' you should hook up and start dating. The game plays out as a reg dating sim, but as it develops your character starts to realize that he/she is different and then it slowly morths into a game of the character exploring themself. It could end with mulitiple endings depending on how you go through the game.

IE. Ends with the character being aromantic, or heteroromantic ect.

[Mezzo Forte]

I think you could change it up a lot. I was just using Mario as an example, but countless games have you saving a princess. It's a very common gimmick that could be put on its head.

As for more ideas, I'm not sure.

Maybe a different idea for a game could be what they do in Japan. IE. A dating simulator. The idea would be in the game you are told by all your friends and 'the world' you should hook up and start dating. The game plays out as a reg dating sim, but as it develops your character starts to realize that he/she is different and then it slowly morths into a game of the character exploring themself. It could end with mulitiple endings depending on how you go through the game.

IE. Ends with the character being aromantic, or heteroromantic ect.

I was thinking visual novel type games are very simple to program, and dating sims seem to be the most direct genre for bringing up things like asexuality and differing romantic orientations. 4chan's Katawa Shoujo was pretty acclaimed as a dating sim that explored characters with disability without letting said disabilities define them (I can't speak for it personally though because I never played it. Apparently, you can turn the sex scenes off though, so that's a nice plus).

Hell, in a dating sim, you could even insert a fellow (but closeted) asexual into the mix, and it offers ways to explore romantic and nonromantic interactions with an entire cast of characters as a focal point to the game. There could be decisions to be made about coming out at different stages in the game to different characters.

(Oh, and if you really wanted to, you could insert Hatoful Boyfriend "Bad Boy's Love (Hurtful Boyfriend) Route" sort of sheer insanity, but somehow, I don't think a lot of people will want to sneak something like that in.)

[TheNomment]

I would love for this to happen. I've always been interested in game design, but sadly I haven't learn any coding (I'm just 14.)

I was on a competitive writing team, and I'm a fairly decent artist (not the greatest, not the worst.)

I'll be happy to help out with the story, and some designs for characters and places.

Sadly, that's all I can offer.

[littlepersonparadox]

There are some good ideas for the game. The dating sim idea sounds good. I think we need to come up with a ruff story outline and figure out what the narrivitve or narrivitves would be. Basically if there is a multi ending plot line lime the mock dateing you could do a functional flow chart on Visio of the basic outlines. There is also the platform to consider. It might be easier to get people to try the game if it was a web-based one then you can send people the link to the website, and they can just play it rather than trying to promote/sell a app to a game most people will only play a couple times. So the language(s) might be JavaScript, PHP and XML? I know it's a bit early to discuss this, and we should probably work out story lines and design first. Then discuss the platform and pseudo code.

[eched]

Well, for storylines, I think for the dating sim it would be really cool to put the dating game on its head and also to at the same time emphasize how hard socializing can be when you don't know your orientation or you are trying to be something you're not.

Let's say in the game there are four characters that your character could 'date'. Depending on who you pick at the start of the game it will send you down a different relationship path. One where by the end you would turn out to be aromantic, one heteroromantic, one grey-asexual, and one panromantic. Just picking ones off the top of my head.

Anyways, you pick one of the four people to date. The game 'starts' and you are on the 'date' and the goal of the evening is to fall madly in love which is how you win the game. If you picked the heteroromantic the person you date is really sexual and pressures you, if you pick the aromantic, the person is WAY to lovy dovy and is all over you relationship wise. No matter what you pick to say, or how you try to make the date go well, it is always a bust. At the 'end' of the game it tells you that you've lost and says that you will never fall in love like everyone else. Basically you can't win and the game bashes you for it. It asks you if you want to play again, in which case you go into a loop with the original character you picked to date, this will of course bring you back to the you lost! screen. It also asks if you want to quit the game.

If you pick quit the game it's actually symbolic, because it means quit this rigged 'dating' game and start playing the actual game! Clicking quit the game results in your character deciding to figure out their sexuality before dating any longer. They find out if they are aromantic, heteroromantic, ect. Which leads your characters to fix the relationships with the characters they were dating.

If you were aromantic the girl/guy you were dating decides to be just friends(or maybe if you respond to them differently you could become snuggle buddies. :) )

If you are heteroromantic your ending could be to try out compromising, but you are really open with them, or maybe you could end up in an open relationship. Once again this would vary depending on how you respond to the person.

Ect. IE. each relationship ends on a positive note and each one could go over the different types of relationships an ace could form. There ya go!

[Mezzo Forte]

As a big nerd when it comes to the concept of Mechanics as Metaphor, I really dig the idea of putting a "quit" option in there, especially if the sequence becomes obscenely frustrating, like where literally every dialogue option rubs the person the wrong way or conveys that this isn't going to work out, no matter what you do. (If that was all there was to the game, it would be pretty frustrating though, so I guess it depends on the statement you wish to make. Maybe if you want to have someone "quit" the contrived dating scene for a more organic one, "quitting" could be a way to progress to the real game with more organic interactions and characters that embraces the identities more positively.)

Admittedly, it'd be a little strange to make the orientation change with each character you decide to woo unless there is an organic way to make the dialogue to sway the player toward the one that matches the orientation they're trying to role play as. (Maybe the Aro route begins with the character seeming to just want an amazing bromance or something, and things turn to shit when romance comes into the picture.) It'd complicate the writing a ton, but maybe depending on what the character says could push them more toward certain orientations, and each orientation offers a different type of ending with a certain character, with some more successful than others. It would probably reduce the number of endings and branching paths to a much more reasonable number to go with your idea of "different character path = different protagonist orientation".

I think the tricky part is going to be making the player naturally empathize with the asexual character. Since we're dealing with a more visual novel style, the 'gameplay' will likely be too simplistic to help, so it will probably need to be aesthetic-driven. Maybe the sexualized imagery will have something disturbing and off to it, or maybe all the characters will be simplified stick figures or something with no distinctly sexualized or attractive characteristics so that the player doesn't physically see what's so sexy that all the in-game characters seem to see. Maybe there needs to be a separate sexual language unique to the game that makes the player feel particularly alien and lost in a society that they otherwise understand in most aspects. All food for thought, but I'd argue that having the person playing the game find any of the characters sexually attractive may create a serious dissonance between the player experience and what the game is meant to convey.

PS For some reason, my mind went to a title like "An Ace of Ambiguous Suit" for a title or subtitle the game, since the "suit" or romantic orientation is figured out as the story progresses, though the title is generally one of the last things to consider.

[Sir_Lord_Brit]

I think some kind of asexual dating sim could work, provided it doesn't come across as mocking or insincere. I'd love to help with the projects but I have no video game creation skills to speak of :/

[eched]

Ya, I was also thinking if someone might find a character sexy it would bust the game. I thought that maybe if all the characters you picked could be made animal like, that might be cool, but then I remembered that's an actual fetish for some people so that went out the window. :)

It's for sure important, but it's also very unclear what is the proper way to go about it.

[Sir_Lord_Brit]

Also, list of things you'd need to work out besides what's already been mentioned;

-Would it be voice acted?

-if so, who would do it?

-How would you go about collaborating the efforts of everyone, especially since most people live all around the world?

-Who is the target demographic?

-How do we present it in a way which doesn't seem condescending to asexuali or sexual people?

Hope this helped a little!

[Dexter James]

It's great to see so many people contributing their ideas.

I thought I'd try and summarise some of the key things that people have suggested into some broad categories (If you feel I've missed something please say)

I've also tried to summarise people's skills where they have mentioned them.

This does not represent any form of commitment at this stage - only a summary of potential skills available

I have ascribed names to ideas only so that it is easier to find the original post in context. I'm not trying to attribute credit for certain ideas.

I would rather stick mainly to the mechanics of the game myself, but all the ideas certainly sound possible. I would however shy away from voice actors, as I feel they can make a game sound pretty lame unless done well. They also make things harder to do in multiple languages if we want to go down that route.

There are certainly a lot of practicalities to consider with any group project.

First steps

- Generate a concept (which anyone [and hopefully many people] can contribute to)

- is it going to be a platform game, a story telling game similar to dis4ia, a

- Get a project team together (what skills do we have)

- Find a project space (somewhere where the project team can share work/files/builds)

- Decide on a game style (art, music, mechanics)

- Plan the overall story/gameplay/user experience

- Decide on a first stage of development (first level or section depending on game type)

- Get commitments from project team

- Create first level or stage

- Ask the whole of AVEN for constructive feedback

Please note that I don't intent the "project space" to be secretive or closed off from the rest of AVEN - merely a place that is more suited to the needs of a group project.

In fact it would be really useful to have people that are members of the project team but who aren't necessarily coders, writers, artists, or musicians in order to offer criticism and direction along the way.

We could also provide periodic updates on this thread to update the community as a whole with progress and to get feedback.

Music

[Musette]

Coding

Dexter

Story

TheNomment

Artwork

TheNomment

Concepts

eched - platform game with cake

Quinoa - Dis4ia game

eched, Musette,littlemissparadox - Dating sim

Gameplay Features

Musette - mechanics as metaphor (fake quit button)

- separate sexual language

eched - non-human characters

Languages/platforms

Dexter - Unity (can publish to web, app, PC etc very easily)

Littlemissparadox - JavaScript, PHP, XML

Titles

Musette - "An Ace of Ambiguous Suit"

Other Important Thoughts

Sir_Lord_Brit - Not condecending to anyone, target demographic

Musette - empathise with asexual character(s)

Educate (either in the gameplay itself or in "fact messages" as the game progresses)

[Mezzo Forte]

When it comes to preventing as many people as possible from being sexually attracted to the characters, my mind when straight to Hatoful Boyfriend (where all the characters are birds that are not anthropomorphized at all; their stills are real pictures of birds) and Thomas Was Alone, where every character is some form of rectangle with the aesthetic variation established by differing dimensions and color.

I will admit though, maybe "more animalistic" characteristics don't have to fit what is typically sexualized, even if it's a risky path because of that. Maybe everyone is depicted with the mouth shape of a bulldog with an intense underbite, or have small beady eyes and gigantic noses to directly contrast most anime styles. Trying to prevent the player from finding any of the characters attractive, all while still trying to make the art compelling might be one of the more difficult tasks, and we may need to convince some sexual people to act as game testers so we can try to make sure that we cover as many bases as possible.

I guess the aesthetic design is also somewhat dependent on how much you want the player to feel indifferent or repulsed when it comes to the prospect of sex. I imagine that more abstract images would make the player indifferent while something that is more concretely what isn't considered attractive might illicit a more repulsed response.

The writer(s) will most likely have the busiest job because of how vital (and abundant) narrative is for a game like this, especially if one person is not only working out the overall story paths, but also needs to write all the dialogue and consider what each dialogue option would do to sway you toward one ending or another. The other jobs might not involve quite as much legwork though, even if every design aspect will come with challenges of its own. The concept/design art might be tricky getting the correct aesthetic for the game to work, but once a concept is finalized, it's mostly a matter of putting together a bunch of character frames and background images. However, we do need to eventually decide if these stills are going to be animated at all (a la the occasional eye blinking and occasional expressive body gestures from the Ace Attorney games), because that might open up a whole other can of worms. I can't speak for the coding job, though I have a programming friend who mentioned that visual novel games wouldn't be as difficult to program for compared to other genres.ot might help to have someone experienced with GUIs too, though the programmers could just add that to their work. Depending on size, we may even need someone to take a sort of management position and actively communicate with the entire team to prevent awful miscommunications eating up valuable time and progress, but we probably won't hit the size where that would be vital.

If I were to write music for the game, I would need to communicate enough with the writer to know how many themes to write (ie will it be better to have music specific to a setting or write character themes? How often should the music change in a dialogue to punctuate a change in tone or subject matter?) and working with the artist could also be useful so that I can have a fairly complete image while writing the music to ensure that it doesn't unintentionally become dissonant with any element of the game (ie: say the writer writes a circus scene where something bad happens and I don't know whether to make the music foreboding or incredibly innocent. The art might sway me me way or the other, though I'm not opposed to letting my music shape how the artist chooses to depict things either.)

I wouldn't recommend voice acting though because Silent text > Bad voice acting just by merit of being completely unobtrusive. If anyone still wants voices, we could always mimic games like Persona 4 and throw in audible gestures here and there like a chuckle or sigh and a small greeting like "hey" or "what's up?" which will depend on the individual, but that's a peripheral feature at best and you'd need to make sure that everyone doing the voice acting uses the same quality microphone with as little background noise as possible, so even that would become complicated quickly.

[eched]

I say we keep away from making sex look to repulsive. Like, a lot of the people that play the game might be sexuals in mixed relationships trying to understand their partner better. So we don't want the game to outright say sex is repulsive. It's for sure a tricky line to walk. Maybe a disclamer at the start of the game saying that all asexual people are different and this is a specific view point would help.

I'm actually starting to like the stick figure idea because with that you could make the entire art style go along with that and as such it would seem natural. Anyone here see the TV show Sticking Around? Picture a game made in that art style with characters looking like that! That way it would be eye catching and artistic, while at the same time not being 'sexy' by accident.

[littlepersonparadox]

I think the stick figure idea is the best way to work around the most prevalent art design problem at the moment. Text based would make things smoother and we don't have to worry about voices and recordings ect. I like the working title. Game testing with serials is a good idea and see what they think. For sharing info something like google docs/drive can work but only if everyone has/uses a gmail account so there's a snag. Some way to survey people can be survey monkey. We can do a series of surves and I already have a survey monkey account so I can set that up, for when we need it. I can send everyone the link to fill out the survey and start a post with the survey here on aven.

[Dexter James]

I remember I used to visit a page a long time ago with loads of stickmen movies.

http://www.stickpage.com/

Then I think another way you could go for simple characters is shapes.

For example the triangle cartoons on this page:

http://miriamdobson.wordpress.com/page/2/

[Sir_Lord_Brit]

Have we decided on a distribution method? Also how will the game be advertised?

[Dexter James]

I think its got to be online, or possibly a mobile app to get a decent audience.

As for advertising, I think writing to blogs would be good. Maybe game review websites, game hosting websites?

[Mezzo Forte]

Oh man, all my memories of stickpage just came flooding back to me the instant I clicked that link!

But yeah, I could see going for a more sex neutral image would be better than pushing a more extreme "make these characters downright ugly" option, and stick figures are pretty ambiguous sorts. Even if they weren't completely stick figures, an incredibly simplified character design will definitely work in our favor. There's still the question of how simplified the background art should be though. I agree with Eched's sentiments that simplified background art will probably keep the aesthetic most unified and focused, though I think we will have more freedom to detail the backgrounds more as needed so that it still feels stylized and nuanced instead of coming off as lazy and rushed.

As far as distribution method is concerned, I think there is still some debate about whether to build the game on the Unity Engine or something else, but I presume that it will be browser-friendly. If we can't submit it to a site like NewGrounds, I presume that making a site with information about the game, a link to play on the browser, and a download link would be a good way to go about it. I presume it will be a PC game (what it runs on is probably going to depend on the programmers, but I'm guessing that if its browser-friendly, it should work on multiple operating systems.) I'm assuming that the game is going to be free, but we we could always put a donation box for some sort of relevant NPO or Charity, like maybe The Trevor Project or something if you want to encourage paying for the download in a way that isn't for profit.

There is no discussion about advertisement yet, but I presume that unless we get an advertising budget, we will need to rely on word-of-mouth (and maybe have one of us try to convince Hot Pepper Gaming to do a fire sale of the game, though I don't know their policies for that). I think the advertising methods might enter the discussion further down the line, but it never hurts to give it some thought, especially if anyone pokes their head in who has experience advertising small projects like this.

[eched]

Here's an important question we haven't asked yet. What's going to be the gender of our hero character and what is going to be the genders of the characters that they could 'date' in the dating sim?

If we do the dialog proper we could make the main character unspecific. Like whenever you say something it just says Me beside your line of dialog and you don't see yourself, but we would have to have genders for the people your character goes out with. I'm thinking a good mix of guys and girls(maybe also a none binary person).

If we are doing the dating sim idea we should start coming up with character ideas.

[TheNomment]

I saw I was put in writer (I sorta want everyone's input), and art design positions while I was away, and I do think the stick figure drawings are a good way to go, and the story would need most work on, but I would like everyone to be happy with it. Usually I create characters, time and place, then main plot line. What I was thinking was maybe having a option of choosing which gender you want to be, but I know how tedious it would be to create that, because I've dabbled with some game coding. I was thinking for the main character to be gender neutral, so we could have it a bit easier, but that's just my opinion. After that, we would have to think about the main character's personality. Then, after the main character, we need to think of how many options/people the main character would date. Then, we would have to go through the same process we did with the main character. So if I could get some ideas on how many people we want the main character to date, then, an idea for a setting, that would be great. (I know I'm not going to write the game's story alone, even though I was positioned to.)

[eched]

Well, considering that there are so many different kinds of romantic orientations and such, and if we go with the idea that each character you could date results in you being a different orientation, there should be a good number and each one should be very different.

Also going with the idea that each character you 'date' being the opposite of the orientation you end up being(cause that would make the date go bad and lead to the You Lost! screen) it kind of makes the characters a bit more easy to write. So....

Character for aromantic storyline(the person you date if you become aromanic) IE is symbolic of the exact opposite of aromantic: Meet Lisa Beach! Lisa is a dreamer that just wants to fall madly in love. Every Halloween she dresses as a different Disney Princess and she knows every Disney film word for word. She often day dreams about falling madly in love with her very own prince charming. Sadly though, her dream love life hasn't happened yet. She's been with three guys and they all ran the other way when she started talking about tying the knot. Granted she always brings it up on the first date, but it's important to find out how a guy feels about that kind of stuff. She doesn't mean to be pushy, she just wants people to know what she wants. And what she wants is to be in LOVE!!!

But there might still be hope because she just got asked out by a mysterious figure. Yahoo! Lisa is smart and outgoing, but very childish and gets mad with ease. She tends to take things far to personally and if you don't like Disney she will kill you. I'm not exaggerating here!

:)

Edit: I might as well have my name added to the writer position. I'm having a lot of fun with this. :)

[TheNomment]

That's a good idea, but which romantic orientations will we use? Maybe the most common?

[eched]

Well, since the main character might very well have an unclear gender, then that would mean if you see your hero character as a guy and they 'date' a girl and turn out to be romantic then they would be heteroromantic. If you saw them as a girl and you 'date' a girl then they would be homoromantic. This simplifies things a bit cause then we can just have a romantic path in general. Just have the main character come out as an asexual that is romantic.

I also think it would be good to do a panromantic(or bi-romantic) character to kind of round things out. Maybe in that plotline you go out with a girl that you find very cute and are attracted to, but then you meet their unbelievably hot brother! But yet when he comes onto you and tries to make out with you, it just feels so awkward. A romantic triangle with an ace! :)

As for the fourth I think we should do a grey-asexual character cause that really rounds everything out(well a fetish ace in there too would REALLY round things out but that would likely make the game to adult and very hard to write). I'm not sure how that plotline would go.

I think grey-romantic would be pretty tricky to write so maybe we could just mention it in the aromantic plotline.

These are all the main ones that I think would work well. Any other ideas are welcome of course.

[TheNomment]

Now since we have some of our options, we will have to set up a setting... The setting can effect what the characters jobs would be if they are adults, or what school the characters would go to if they were teens.

[eched]

The way I see it we have kind of two options. Either A: The characters are all in high school. IE. Just getting to know your orientation for the first time, everyone else is dating in high school.

Or B: The characters are all in their mid twenties and are in the work world. IE. Our main 'lead' character clicks into the fact that he/she is single and nobody else seems to be. Feels like they should get around to dating like everyone else is.

Both of these are different forms of pressure. I know I fell into the B category myself big time. I think either would lend itself well to the game.

Just to make it simple I think it goes without saying that it would take place in present time. Sorry guys, no fighting dragons. :(

[TheNomment]

Or we could have option b with some scenes of when they first came to asexuality (option a), and it can show what it's like to come out in school with the things that people say to us then, and maybe another option is (I'm not sure if you already said this) they could go out with someone who isn't asexual (this is where we would need input from sexuals dating asexuals) and have to explain it to them. Either way, I think we show have a segment where it shows an asexual coming out.