TRYING TO MAKE A POST-APOCALYPTIC DEBT-COLLECTING SANDBOX
I’m really fond of game jams, prototyping and experimenting. I truly believe that the best way of learning how to make games is to just make games, and to fail as much as you can. In this aspect, Fear Syndicate Thesis, our game for Ludum Dare 33, has been a great learning experience.
The theme this time was “You are the Monster”, and the idea behind our entry was to make a post-apocalyptic debt-collecting sandbox. Don’t ask me why, but on paper, chasing helpless people, beating them and dragging them through the dirt with your rope looked like fun at the moment. After all, the theme was to make the player experience the role of the monster, and this activity seemed quite monstrous to me.
We worked frantically to fit everything we could inside this over-scoped game, we felt confident, and hell, we got the world-travelling, narrative system, action, economy… a lot of stuff done and ready in just the first 2 days. And then the last day came: content creation. I had a story ready about a guy who starts working for a syndicate which rules over a dried lake: whoever wanted to start a business in that land had to ask for this syndicate’s permission and couldn’t refuse their funding. The main character’s sister could not keep up to the debt payment, so the syndicate took her husband as a slave until they could repay the debt. This was the initial setting for the game, so the idea was that you’d start collecting debts for a good cause, but in the process you would harm a lot of people and, in the end, when you manage to pay your brother-in-law’s debt, you’d go back home to find the house burnt to the ground and your family hanged with a blood graffiti reading: MONSTER. But then I made the first mission.
IS VIOLENCE NOT FUN?
This first mission was about looking for some people who built a church, the world was big, so you started wandering and talking with NPCs that gave you hints to find this church: “I think this church is south from here”, “It’s a normal house with a tiny cross on the door”, “I heard they all wear purple”… following this leads, you arrived to the church, and started chasing them and beating them to the ground while they dropped money and blood. It wasn’t fun. It made me feel bad. I learned that violence without challenge, without an opposing force, is not fun, is the opposite of fun. At least, if you’re not that kind of player who enjoys beating random pedestrians on Grand Theft Auto.
I tried to look for a way to make it fun, but there wasn’t enough time to add challenge, enemies or to substantially fix the horror behind this gameplay. For the first time ever on a Ludum Dare, I said to my friends that I was sorry to waste their work in art and music: I decided to give up, I wasn’t going to submit this. So I tweeted about giving up. However, as part of the magic of Ludum Dare, some people replied encouraging us to finish. Just submit! That’s the philosophy behind Ludum Dare! They were damn right. Game jams are meant to experiment, to learn and to have fun.
FAIL BETTER
So, at this point there were only 6 hours left. What can I do with all of this that could be relevant? This game makes me feel bad, how can I avoid that? Couldn’t get anywhere and the clock was ticking, so I finally faced the question of why should I avoid this game making you feel bad. Then decided to convert it to a “poem about violence”. In less than 6 hours, I mixed all the assets mindlessly in an attempt to create pointless entertainment around violence just to lead the player to the reflexion that violence implies deeper things than just hitting and killing things. I wanted to share what I experienced developing the empty fun behind violence without opposition. I also used the opportunity to experiment with Game Maker Studio and played with the camera, coloring, scaling and other things to represent how the main character loses his shit as you keep obeying the syndicate for no apparent reason. The final result is quite bad, but Fear Syndicate Thesis taught me far more things than other game jams with which I was satisfied. I learned about fun, about myself and to not fear failure again. We should all fail more often, and game jams are the perfect environment for that!
There’s a lot of wisdom hidden in closure. So, please, my fellow game developers, finish your games.