Week 2

Hey everyone!

So this is our devlog for week 2. This week, we had a couple meetings, and actually found a second, totally new way of looking at and prototyping this project! Moving forward, we're gonna be playtesting both of our prototypes - our devlog last week outlined that process, and our new prototyping process- something closer to prototyping an installation. It's still mostly done in the tabletop RPG style, but it's meant to simulate the experience of being forced to make choices based off of gender - a system that's invisibly put into place by what we're dubbing "society" - whether that means being consciously enforced by actors within that system (and whether they're doing it malevolently or not), or by collective external and internal judgements. We're trying to make that "system" more visible - the way how no matter how complicit you are, or how unconscious of it you are, that you are in it, and that you are more importantly constantly affected by it (ant the people who try to fight that system in any way, shape, or form are most affected most negatively).

It's kind of strange - taking the explicit gender-ed-ness out of a game about gender, but we're hoping that by metaphor, whether that's done by shapes or colors, that our point comes across. In fact, that's part of what we're testing this week- does our experience goal of making the struggles of people who fall outside the traditional gender binary known to cis people, and having trans people (as a blanket term) feel seen by this game - work with this type of metaphor.

As an excerpt from the rule set of one of this week's prototypes: "the game does not end ... In fact, this leads to the central tenet of the game - the game is never over ... The system that they’ve 'bought into' or 'rejected' stays in place and torments the player, no matter what they decide, no matter how they try to escape." This game is about doors - representing any type of  separation between genders - bathrooms, community spaces, teams, clothing, etc. The player exists outside of this system of separation from the beginning, but are required to engage with, to "buy into" this system if they wish to "progress." The truth is, there is no out for the actor in the system, unless the system itself is dismantled. Attempts to change the gendered system while attempting to maintain the gender binary are moot, and our prototype enforces that. At every attempt to move on within the system, the goalposts are moved, and therefore the actor stays within the system that the GMs have set up -  and yes you read that right, GMs. This is a game designed for a single player, and two GMs. The player is small, ganged up on. They're running against an invisible system, doors that talk to, silently judge, heckle, have disdain for, and conspire against the player. 

This is following a vein that I've explored in previous projects: a type of anti-game. The point is not for the player to have fun - in fact, the point is for the player to feel uncomfortable, harassed. No matter how you engage with the system, you're being put up against invisible, somehow agreed on criteria that no one should be able to judge you for, yet, your judgement is all to often present, and these doors that you attempt to pass through make that visible to the player. "Who are you? Are you blue enough, red enough to pass through these doors? A blue-ly person would never do something  so... red-ly. I don't think you belong here," and on the flip-side "Oh goodness, I fear that you have too much of a blue-like personality. I understand that you have some red in you, but its a bit... flimsy. I don't think you belong here."

Your rejection is constant, your shame immeasurable, and your captors unrelenting. Where do you belong if not here? If this room that you are trapped in is not yours, then where do you go? Do you have to change yourself to be acceptable, if your existence does not harm anyone?

Those are our questions.

Thanks for reading,

Team Shapely