Year 1 Addendum

Context

This semester-long project pushed me to explore the narrative of a believable, speculative future scenario tied to a topic under my interests. Being an aspirant video game designer, which I had not fully realized yet, my brain drifted to the future of video gaming.

Had COVID-19 not plunged that year into a limiting lockdown, my class's final submission would have demanded a physical prototype from each of us. Alas, a digital product will have to suffice. Whether it is a technical blueprint, a graphic advertisement, a 3D model, or anything digitally demonstrative, everything would be accepted so long as it told the appropriate story.

Final submission

Drawing inspiration from my last assignment's chosen timeline, I created the tech giant Gamemaster Incorporated. As the name suggests, the company primarily focuses on the development of video game hardware and miscellaneous assistive devices. It is the dominating engineering-gaming company in the 2060s; a future where humans were approaching the age of cybernetics for entertainment and hedonistic purposes. It is a protopia where things are getting better than yesterday yet not to the point of utopia. Technological advancements are reinforced alongside human rights & ethics in self-experimentation and alteration.

The logo context puts the 'tech giant' into 'Gamemaster'; the robot mascot is an anthropomorphic symbol in video game technology. I made the icon with 3 separate color palettes. One of my tutors on Discord found the 1st palette to be more appealing to the eye. They liked the color contrasts of the robot mascot and controller.

When designing the GameChip, what I had in mind was how risky the procedure will be and how compatible the organic brain is to metallic scrap. The theme of the assignment started with a future about isolation and human interaction, before discussions with my tutors and personal research persuaded me to also consider researching the human desire for pleasure, escapism, and dopamine.

The world has yet to gain complete access to the virtual world, so I imagine what'd it be like - being able to place your mind into an artificial world where the previous rules of our reality become null. The main focus was HOW? Not even I know that, but it'd be an opportunity to explore my own kind's key traits when it comes to keeping oneself from infinite boredom. Would people impale a thousand copper rods into their hippocampi just to walk or talk inside a computer program? Would you? It may not be absurd to say they would. Enthusiastically.

Personal thoughts

Context

The main goal of this assignment was to develop a simple interactive experience (programmed) that seeks to inform the 'user' on how they can play a role in changing the status quo of a researched statistic.

In this assignment, I was meant to cooperate with another classmate; one would code an interactively educational program and the other would develop an art style to accommodate it. This did not come to pass when mine went AWOL due to familial matters, prompting my tutor to separate us and complete our assignments by our half-and-half roles. My role before? The programmer. And not a skillful or fast learner over the course of this elective.

Final submission

My final submission revolves around the concept of intergenerational trauma in the context of New Zealand's Māori populace and their colonial history.

The interactive program functions as follows: when you hover your mouse over one of these tendrils' weak points, they will rupture and expose the tubes’ weak spots. Upon mouse departure, however, the tendril layers will regenerate back to its original state. This interaction was designed to symbolize the difficulty of alleviating trauma as well as the impossibility of removing it entirely.

The color green can mean wealth and prosperity, yet it also represents poison and sickness. The irony of the situation is intentional - a population of Maori are plagued by intergenerational trauma which makes them unwilling to work. Living off of the government's Maori privileged funding, the minority does not attempt to actively solve its poverty status, rather starting small-scale protests to demand "Pakeha retribution".

Unable to make peace with their pasts, not even receiving much empathy or assistance, the Māori willingly remain jobless, and their economic status will never exceed what they now receive from the government. A permanent solution is not the key to solving the issue. Sometimes all the Māori needed are a leg up back to the pre-New Zealand Wars days; getting rights back was just the first part.

Personal thoughts