This week we also came up with a leaf mechanic which would cover up the text. This came from a conversation we had about how people with ASD may struggle to fucus when there’s a lot going on, and also how they can struggle to feel engaged in conversations about things they don’t care about.
However, we then had a conflict regarding the mechanic. Nam said that he didn’t believe the mechanic conveyed the narrative and wasn’t well representative of ASD because it was fully reliant on the dialogue. Cindy, Fiona and I disagreed as we believed the experience of trying to form a socially acceptable answer within the timeframe and being afraid of making mistakes that could cause you a friendship does convey the narrative of living with ASD and SAD, and saying they don’t was ridiculous to us even if it’s not conveyed the best was it could be. It was hard for me to understand where this opinion came from since we hadn’t yet done much research and the GDD is made by someone with ASD, so it felt like it was disqualifying that experience, and when I’d bring up anything relating to autism I was met with confusion or was shut down, which made me believe he didn’t really know about ASD.
Even if it wasn’t a very strong mechanic idea on its own, removing the dialogue would fundamentally change the “friend making” part of the gamet that makes you feel the anxiety of “messing up” when talking to a character you want to befriend, turning it into just a puzzle game following a linear direction instead of multiple possible endings. He also brough up that the mechanic of trying to get the NPCs to like you is kind of like a dating simulator, which even though there is definitely similarities between making platonic and romantic connections with people, people with ASD and SAD tend to perform people-pleasing tendencies and experience rejection hypersensitivity dysphoria, making them very afraid of rejection. They will change themselves to not be rejected (which isn’t great, but I was thinking that character development could be explored through the 5-day narrative where the MC would learn they don’t have to change themselves.) and romance has nothing to do with it.
At home, I played around with the artstyle bofore receiving character descriptions. I began working on the Character designs after Cindy wrote detailed descriptions of them on Tuesday, which I was grateful for as it made the process so much smoother for me. I managed to made Tyler and Olivia come to reality by the end of this week, so they’d be ready to input on Monday.
Over the weekend I also began brainstorming some user stories following the class activity where we had already began thinking of some.