Contexts of Practice: Mini group project - create a utopian environment in a game

Block 32
A utopia based video game idea - Research and final idea

For this mini project I have been teamed up with Matteo Roberts, Peter Watton and Stuart Smith and we had to come up with a concept for a game based on Utopia.

There have been quite a few ideas thrown about when trying to come up with the idea of a world similar to the movie Wall-e, where all humans still live on Earth, but are all plugged into machines that provide them with ideal scenarios for their lives. So, each individual can choose what life he or she would like to live, program the machine and live that exact life. There is no interaction between individuals, and there is no physical activity either, they are all static, living an artificial life.

There are robots who maintain the systems, making sure that they are all in working order at any point in time, and if anything breaks, they are capable of entering each individual dream (artificial life), to be able to come up with the right solution to repair it.

Our game will concentrate on this little robot, who is looking after Block 32, a block of flats inhabited by about 40 people, each having their own individual dreams.

In order to recharge its batteries, the robot will enter any of the individual worlds ( the choice is his) and he will have to survice in that environment for 5 minutes without being "wiped out" by the owner of the world. The screen will display Robo's battery life, so it will be very clear when he needs recharging.

Each individual controls his dream / world and is able to "evacuate"any intruder if not happy with him/her. Evacuation can be done by ignoring and hence eliminating from life, or killing.

The story follows Robo, our robot, while he is entering the world of a young girl and falls in love with her. As this develops, he is tempted to enter her world all the time, even when his battery doesn't need charging, and this way he is basically ignoring all other individuals, and maintenance is slacking.
The story gets strange as Robo shouldn't be able to fall in love, him being a robot, however, as this story goes on, through cut scenes, the player finds out that all robots are actually individuals who have not adapted to this way of living (through self induced dreams), so they all have anatomical parts as well as artificial components.

The Utopia created is each individual world. The player will find out that, in fact, Utopia depends on each individual's personality and dreams. Hence, this Utopia can be a pretty world, with sunsets, waterfalls and forests, peaceful and calm environments, while at the same time, Utopia can also mean a nuclear explosion, burning buildings, shooting and dead people.

So, we have decided for each one of us in the group to come up with a character concept and a world that character would live in.

Here are a few drawings I have done when trying to build my "world". I have come up with 2 character concept designs and 2 worlds, and in he end I have decided upon one of each. The character I have decided to pursue, I have drawn in more detail, and the environment chosen is the calm serene one, where my girl would live in.

This was my first character concept, as we were discussing the world to be inhabited by humans and/or robots initially, so drew a girls robot, connecting to a pod. I wasn't too keen to this idea, however, so I then drew the next one.

This is Chloe, my character, who, connected to her pod. is loving in this beautiful world, with waterfalls, rivers, sun and forests. However, as the Q-pid the robot falls in love with her, I have decided to make slightly older, as I thought it to be immoral to have her involved in a love story at such a young age.

This is my idea of a dystopia. I wanted to explore this avenue a little bit. So, a nuclear explosion, buildings burning, and ...weird flat people( I have added the dead person long after I have finished the environment and the proportion is extremely wrong, but the idea is still there:-)) lying dead on the floor, is just my worst nightmare.

This is my initial pencil drawing of a Utopia. This is where I would like to live :-)

I have taken the previous drawing in Photoshop to give it a bit more detail, and I have come up with this, my idea of Utopia, and of course, for this project, Chloe's world.

When researching for this project, I have found a few images for Utopias and Dystopias that, I thought, describe these two concepts perfectly.

This chaotic image symbolises Dystopia, from my point of view, as I don't like chaos at all. Even though I lobe bright colours, and normally, they define bright, happy feelings, in this case, I found them quite disturbing.

Another idea for Dystopia, for me, is this image, which, again, is very chaotic. You don't know where to look, it seems like everything is broken, and somehow, for a strange reason, it gives me the idea of a very loud noise as well...