Week 3

Last Week's Playtest

Although we planned on testing both of our prototypes, we had put so much more effort into the door one, we decided to just focus on that one, and only test the other one if the door one didn't work. Robin GMed as the blue door, Tyler GMed as the red door, and our friend Nick was the player. Before starting, we didn't give him any information other than he was in a room and his job was to leave the room. In addition to the drawings of the red door and the blue door, we had laid out about ten cards with abstract drawings each with purple, blue, and red. 

The first thing Nick tried was to go through the red door, but Tyler (playing as the red door) said, "No, you can't come through—you don't even have a card." So, Nick picked up one of the cards and tried again. Tyler told him it wasn't red enough. So, he tried the blue door, and Robin told him it wasn't blue enough. He then tried the doors with different cards, but still had no luck. At this point, Nick was stumped. He said he felt discouraged and like he wanted to just give up. Finally, he realized he could erase part of the cards to make them only contain blue or red. He tried the red door again, but Tyler wouldn't let him through, pointing to a tiny spec of blue in the corner of the card that Nick had missed when erasing. So, he erased that, and Tyler finally let him through. At that point, we rotated the notebook, to reveal that now Nick was just in a new room with two new doors. This is where we ended the playtest.

After the game, Nick explained what the experience felt like to him. He said it was hard to go through emotionally. He felt as though he had been ganged upon and made to feel stupid. He expressed this frustration during the game by drawing a hand giving the finger on one of the cards and a "let me out mother fucker" on another card.  We were delighted to see that our game exceeded our expectations in terms of emotional impact, but it did highlight the need for approaching the experience with greater care. Per Nick's suggestion, we will need to give players a trigger warning beforehand and make sure to let them have some idea of what they're in for.

In addition to the pre-game brief, we also realized how this game could be seen just as easily as a metaphor for race and the challenges people of color face navigating a culture dominated by white supremacy. In abstract, we inadvertently created a game about discrimination and privilege in general than one that just applies to gender. At the moment, we're not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, this could be positive, giving our game even more relevance and adaptability. On the other hand, perhaps it dilutes our original intent of solely simulating the experience of being misgendered. Hopefully, we can get insightful feedback on this subject from our peers and professor.

Another aspect we're considering is how to add more players. One idea we've had is to add "privileged" players which are able to easily pass through the doors without being hassled. We think this might help increase awareness of players' privileges outside of the game as well as increase the discomfort felt by the player who is hassled. We will try this in our next playtest.