My Design process — A Holistic Experience about Empathy.

• Design Goal: mentalization. understanding that other characters have their own motivations, personalities, and beliefs—and working with them.

• Core Loop: engage in tactical rpg combat, encounter teammates refusing commands, investigate motives, accommodate teammates in combat.

• Characters: explicit dialogue and subtle behaviors work in tandem, their struggles are revealed through gameplay, then corroborated textually.

• Narrative Design: mirrors the core loop as an arc. builds up the player’s relationship with compassion on a micro and then a macro scale.

STARWEAVE is a game about understanding the intricacies and nuances of disparate pained individuals, so it was my guiding intention to center everything around its characters. The pain presented is rooted in real world struggles: gender roles, racial stereotypes, discrimination, but the game discusses this matter and pushes its intent that ‘compassion is good’ through the approachability of fiction: understanding that centering a player’s emotional experience and intellectual agency is more effective than a preaching stance.

So the theming is done through layered metaphor. The characters: Dreamer, Troubadour, Blackguard, Lighthouse, and non-player Bird, each emblematize a different flawed coping mechanism when forced into a role. On top of being given stringent titles, the teens are thrust into a cyclical quest, one where they must box themselves into their set purposes to succeed and uphold the world as they know it. Thus, the youth must maintain the status quo.

Dreamer, the player, is designated party leader. The player—who we know arrives to the game an ignorant party—commands the others in Combat according to their corresponding healer, rogue, and supporter designations: naturally forcing them into their roles. To incite challenge to this is the crux of the game: the refusal mechanic. The other characters can elect to not follow their commands. For example, Troubadour is a healer who does not feel confident in his role, but believing he can fake it ‘til he makes it, will force himself to keep going; if an ally has even the smallest paper cut, he will ignore you to go heal them. This expression of individualism sets up a mystery for the player: that’s not proper, why in the world are their teammates doing that?

This dovetails into the Freetalk system, wherein the player chooses to spend a limited amount of time better connecting with a teammate. They reveal their personal beliefs and internal struggles, providing context to their reactive behavior during Combat. The mystery gains answers. Troubadour professes that he doesn’t want to let the others down, and the player can now understand how to accommodate this the next round of Combat.

The player now brings allies to Troubadour and allows him to heal from a safer spot without the pressure to push into danger. Accommodated for, Troubadour reciprocates the player’s compassion by meeting them in the middle: loosening up on his reactive behavior now that they’ve shown compassion. This feedback loop repeats as players also contest with the rest of their teammates, achieving the experience goal over and over again.

Design Considerations for a Development Team.

STARWEAVE is a project with a team of over 60 volunteers. That’s an astronomical quantity of people to guide, unite, and manage. While I have been a Lead or Manager on projects before, this was certainly a much grander scale. I successfully led the team through a combination of means.

Clarity of direction was provided by preparing technical documents such as a comprehensive game macro, milestone roadmap, high-level GDD, color script, art direction deck, audio deck, and world bible—and deepening my own knowledge of crafts such as 3D and V/O when they were lacking prior to the project. A culture of communication and team rapport was established early, both through structuring departmental channels with open door policies and bonding activities. And lastly, embodying the spirit of the game, I made immense efforts to understand where each team member was coming from: their personalities, how they best communicated, their personal goals, and how to provide tools and learning opportunities to make the project a rewarding pursuit for everyone.

Examples of the subsequent Level Specs, Paper Prototypes, and In-Unity Levels the Design team have worked on together.