The development process overall

Crystal and I want to make a game about women, but “women” are too big and they are facing different problems from countries to countries. Trying to represent all women seems too arbitrary, so we decide to focus on our lives. 

Both Crystal and I are Chinese. We are from a country where women could “hold up half of the sky.” Most of us still can, but no one wants us to do anymore. From TV shows to job interviews, I notice that people think home is the place for women. Knowing that I’m not allowed to “hold up the sky” is what makes me create this game with Crystal. 

Starting from “trivial” things in our life, we find a pattern of women’s lives and decide the following features are the most important in our game:

• The character must have no control
   In this game, the character must move in a way she can’t control. No matter what she does, men think she does it from them. In everyday life, a woman can dress up for herself, but she has to take those unpleasant sights. She will also be blamed for that beauty if she is hurt by a man. 

• The character and the player is not the same
  This feature is easy to understand if you are a man. You aren’t one of us at the first place. If you are a girl, you might have the feeling that you are observing like a man when you look at other women or check yourself in a mirror. “Is the V-neck too low?” “Does it make me look like a whore?” “People might see my bra from it…”
   The character is a woman, but the player is something less. 
  
  
• This goal of the character isn’t the goal of the player
  The player wants to win but the character wants to leave. I want to escape from the rules for women, and I hope all women who have the same thought can escape. However, people want us to stay for stability. 
  
• Lesbians and Bisexual girls!!
  Crystal and I think this is important for our game. We are not very familiar with both communities, because they are almost invisible in China. We tried our best to reach out to people from those communities and also did research. If we have time. we probably going to develop this part more. 

What went right

I think this game did the job we want it to do. Although it will be better if we have more time, I feel the graphics pass our message successfully. I’m glad Crystal and I can find a way to present our thoughts without using a bunch of words.

What went wrong

Our rope turned totally wrong in the first week. Crystal and I spent a lot of time debugging. This process has taken us too much time, so in the end, we are a little rush on everything. However, debug is fun! I guess if we want to do something special, that struggle is something we have to go through. 

Lessons Learned 

Probably because this the topic I’m interested in, I was so happy that Crystal wants to create this game with me, and at the same time, I put too much pressure on myself. Coding is more my part when we created this game. When I find out the rope didn’t work, I search for plan B instead of calming down and debugging. 

Future Development

There is a lot of things we are trying to do. The most important thing I think we need to put more time into is deeper research on the lesbian and bisexual community. Right now I feel the story for them is too plat. I think we really need to pay more attention to that part in the future.