IGS Proposal

My current plan is to develop a game based around signs. Signs and symbols dictate and heavily influence our lives, and I believe that they do the same in games - and I'm curious how players, often having little way in the realm of tangible fear for ignoring signs, react to them.

I plan to use the newly-made-free Unreal Development Kit to develop a small, lightweight game designed around player interaction with buttons and a small series of levels. The buttons will have instructions; press, do not press, although these will be written differently and there may be other options. The intent is to develop the game in such a fashion that allows me, the developer, to be able to see what choices were made by previous players - how many intentionally pressed "Do Not" buttons, etc. I am also curious what happens to players when systems established in the context of the game (ie, "Do Not Press" buttons suddenly becoming the right choice, and punishing the player with the wrong choice by forcing a restart) become changed and violated; will the continue to play, will they restart, will they quit in frustration?

A heavy aspect of this project will be the tracking of progress; from sketches to final product, I plan to document the process entirely and to make it available online. Part of my interest in this project is in the ease of access of doing so; recently, on RPS, some of the writers recently spoke of how this would revolutionize indie game development - and I want to see how this works, albeit on an anecdotal level.

I would also like to work, on a research-oriented level, on previous sign usage inside of video games. These can be audio as well as visual clues. With any luck, I would be able to actually speak with developers that placed these inside of their games, so that I could ask them how they felt they functioned. A recent, notable example of interesting sign usage is found in Borderlands; in many places, two paths diverge from one another. Rather than inserting directions for the player, often, "EITHER" and "OR" are the two choices, with the most specific being "TROUBLE." I have no idea if EITHER is something similar on each path, or something radically different.