Directed Study Update.

Obviously with the rush to hand in some things get shoved aside I forgot to report back on the Directed Study project. Me and Maxine (The art of Maxine Hunter) had our feedback with Gina Jackson, we didn't have as much as everyone else as we've both been very busy. Here are the slides we showed and the writing along side it with our first initial game idea.

Maxine done the beautiful artwork of the peacock/hen I absolutely adore her style and it is perfect for the posh looking male. I had a go at drawing the peahen and some of the pick up items

Everyone laughed at the name title, which was all I hoped for.

Title - All Cock and No Pea! A game by Hazel Page and Maxine Hunter.

Synopsis - You play as Nabhitha, a Peahen who lives in the grand forests of India. Nabhitha dreams of becoming as beautiful and well respected as Sajit, a strong Peacock who struts about the forest around her like he owns the place! She can't understand why he is always treated better than her, even though he is often rude to the fellow animals around him. One day Nabhitha decides enough is enough and searches around her forest home collecting discarded beautiful peacock tail feathers in the hope that hiding her bland feathers and dull colours will make her as popular and respected as Sajit is.

What the game represents – The game has hidden messages surround the inequality for women in not just the games industry, but in various professions and cultures around the world. It is based off an Aesop’s Fable, The Jay and The Peacock.

The points system of the game is supposed to be flawed, every time you earn points the male character of the game gets double the points you earn stemming from the fact ‘the average woman will earn 19.7 per cent less than the average man per hour.’

In a world where women are treated with less respect than their male counterparts, the idea that the Peahen has to disguise herself with a Peacocks magnificent feathers plays off the fact that a woman has to sacrifice more than a man to fit in a work place (i.e. a woman is often forced with choosing either children or a job, there is not much room for both) or a woman has to sacrifice her female identity to fit into the ‘boys club’

The endless level constantly scrolling with no end and the male Peacock knocking all the feathers off you once you collect so many, represents the glass ceiling. No matter how many points or feathers you get, you can’t get any further, even if you try really hard.

We based the game in India not only because it is the native home of the Peacock, but because of the notorious way the Country treats its female population.

Systems - Android, iOS phones and tablets.

Game type – 2D side scroller.

Sound – The game would sound traditionally Indian to match the theme of the characters and the environment.

Target Audience – Ideally the game would be targeted towards schools for educating gender balance towards children/young adults. The game itself is suitable for any age group and is not only designed to be educational, but to be fun and frustrating as well.

Gameplay - You control a peahen. Your main aim is to collect as many male peacock feathers as possible to decorate yourself with! Your secondary objective is to collect seeds, flowers and lizards to get a high score. Avoid obstacles along the way and watch out for that pesky peacock out to knock your feathers off! 

How the game plays – The level is a continually looping side scroller, items and obstacles are randomly generated but get more difficult the longer the game runs/how many points you have collected. Every so often a Peacock will come from behind the Peahen and knock into you, pushing all your feathers off your back and you have to begin collecting all over again. 

Main controls - finger swiping and poking as directed on screen.

Main obstacles

• Tree stumps
• Rocks
• Sleeping animals
• Big plants

Item Drops

• Seeds (common 20 point)
• Flower (uncommon 15 point)
• Lizards (rare spawn 40)
• Peacock feather (10 point)

Initial feedback was that we should go with the humorousness of the title and make it a little more jokey to play up to it, which I totally agree with, you see a game called all cock and no pea and its hot funny .... you don't play again. also a thing that we could change is to make it have a victory instead of being just a one time thing that you play and realise you can't win. We need to get it to be at least winnable so people feel good about themselves after playing it.

Also Marie-Claire didn't think we should have it set in India, but maybe in a Posh house surrounding to go with the tradition of having Peacocks in the garden to show off, which also goes along with the traditional sense of men in the games industry strutting around like they own the place.

I think the direction we could take it is to make it about a Peahen overcoming her issues and finally accepting who she is and that she doesn't need to change to fit in with the boys.

Definitely food for thought!

Directed Study - Live Brief from Gina Jackson.

Today we were officially given our directed study project (Next Gen Equality) to last us from today for the next three weeks, then we are given our brief for BA6 which I am rather looking forward to especially after having felt so disconnected from BA5.

((INSERT WORD DOC HERE))

For this project I partnered up with Maxine ( http://mhuntergad.tumblr.com/ ) I felt it would be beneficial to do some form of team work to understand what could be in the future as far as working in a group, and I love her work so win win!

First off we started by brainstorming, I had an initial idea from when we first had the briefing based around the concept of being in the boardroom and not having your voice heard. You would operate the game by tapping the screen with your finger/stylus/space-bar and you would have to tap more to make yourself louder, the idea behind it was that no matter how hard you try to get your voice heard .... you could never out-speak the men. However I realised that this idea was a bit too obvious, but also didn't give much to the imagination, it was too realistic and would probably not allow the player to sink into that world without feeling straight away excluded.

The next idea was a joint effort of thinking between myself and Maxine. This was around the idea of the 'Glass Ceiling' that you could progress so much but never reach the top. You start at the bottom of a set of stairs similar to Ghost Busters on NES and make your way to the top each time the scenery gets better and more impressive, when you reach the top you hit an invisible wall, above you you see a business suite and the soles of shoes .... the business suite is a man only zone. However once again it didn't seem unreal enough, like my first idea it felt straight up human and to obvious.

We decided to have our work based around anthropomorphism of some sort, based around the theme of Aesop's Fables. Starting with several notes and brainstorming sessions.Looking through the list of Fables one stuck out to us .... 'the jay and the peacock'.

                                           The Jay and the Peacock

"A jay, who felt that he was a very plain bird, came across a pile of peacock feathers on the ground one day. He gathered up a big bunch and then tied them to his tail.

Very pleased with himself and the way he now looked, he left his friends behind and strutted towards a group of peacocks. But as he grew closer they saw what he had done, and were angry with him, and pecked the peacock feathers off his tail, and sent him away with his tail between his legs!
The jay sadly walked back to his friends, but they weren’'t impressed. In fact they were very annoyed with him! Who did he think he was, pretending to be better than them?

And the moral of the story is that it is not only fine feathers that make fine birds! It is what you are inside that counts."

I love the idea of this Fable, it works really well and gives us a lot of ideas to roll with, the idea is you play a Peahen who collects feathers to be as glorious looking as the ever dominant Peacock. The game-play involves collecting feathers to disguise yourself, collecting seeds to get more points. The trick is that there is a Peacock hidden from view who will always be better than you whenever you collect seeds he gets triple the points you do (playing on the men get more money than women do), every-time you collect feathers the Peacock will come out and knock those feathers off you and you lose points ...

We went with the title "All cock and no pea!" playing off a quote from the old Carry On Henry film, it also works rather well with the game idea, that it is all (pea)cock and no pea(hen). It is a little bit close to being not safe for children but the game is about birds so it has to be seen as that term .... not the other meaning.