APD - Week 11

PLAY AND STILLNESS

Context

Method

Through video calls.

Search and find the items around her apartment that would strike a conversation with Clarice!

• Players required to strike conversation with the character (me), while incorporating the objects presented to them within the video call screen.
• They are not allowed to just list all the things that they see, but they must give context as to why they’re talking about it or why the particular object seem to be able to create a conversation. (for e.g. ‘why is there a pink hat on your bed’)
• I will only respond if the trigger word (in this context, one of the objects that I’m thinking of within the video call screen) is mentioned.
• Players have 2 minutes to strike a conversation before it abruptly ends.

While trying to evoke the experience of playing an adventure game / visual novel that requires players to strike a conversation with the character (in this context, me), it creates this tension and awkwardness. Especially because they’re not presented with a programmed character, but a functioning, thinking adult.

Reflection

Initially I took the concept out from the video game world, where usually in Visual Novels or RPG, you (the main character) will encounter NPCs from the game’s world. Approaching it in a point & click adventure game style, I challenged the players to strike a conversation with me, an NPC. In the game world, you would usually be required to click on the clickable (maybe glowing) things, or you would be presented with some options on what you can or can’t ask the NPC. In a sense, it’s a fixed conversation, with fixed answers and results. But in my play, the players are required to come up with their own conversation based on their observation.

Stillness comes into play when the players are observing and searching for objects that they can bring up in a ‘normal’ conversation, while someone watching you intently waiting for you to come up with things to talk about. It creates this tension and awkwardness where I don’t respond to them even if they are striking up conversations, one after the other. I made myself a two-dimensional character, in which, I only have responses through certain words that I hear, and as of the others, I would completely ignore it as it’s not the words that I ‘know’.

I guess it’s also a representation to today’s world especially, where everything happens mostly through video calls. Meetings, catching ups, studies, and so on. Sometimes it’s harder to strike a conversation online as you’re not actually talking in person and you usually stay in the same spot. There are certain silent awkwardness that people tend to avoid. Within the two minutes that I’d given to the players, even when I’m not responding to them, they have to come up with ideas from just looking at my surroundings in order to get me conversing with them. In real life, this mentality would be the same as: “Oh, we’ve only talked for about 10 minutes, what other things can I bring up in order to make this a proper catching up session”. Thus stillness become essential as it plays as the silence  that push people to move along from one thing to another.