We're Live

Artist Statement:

The obsession I picked was television, especially live TV and dramas. When I categorized my obsessions list, one of the sections was called ‘TV Shows I’ve Made My Dad Watch’ because that time with him is really special to me, and I wanted to honour that through my game.

This piece mainly touches violence against women and the dangerous cycle of power dynamics. With the interactive element, I think there’s always some question of honesty as the player—will you do what’s best for the character(s), or what appeals most to you? And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either position. When we talked about the definition of a game, I jotted down, "The outcome of the game will change depending on choices.” I do think my game made me rethink this idea. Even though there are two different outcomes and choices are important for how you experience my game, in the end I did implement “key nodes.” This is what Nat Mesnard introduced in Branching Infinity. I used this structure because my game is narrative, and I wanted players to be guaranteed certain passages or sequences in order to move the plot along.

I playtested the game mainly in terms of structure and endings. I struggled to figure out the game structure, but I received feedback to simplify the routes to focus on the storyline. That helped me a lot. It was hard to decide whether I wanted the characters to get what they deserved or not. So I came up with five or six different endings, but most were too crazy and didn’t fit the overall message or tone I wanted to convey. I did a focus group (asked three friends) which character should be the target, and they all gave me different opinions. If I had many branches and the opportunity to expand on the story, I would add many more passages, but I think each ending carried a different message, and this one was the most important to me.