Introduction
Hello everyone! We are the Future Forgers! We are a team of 6 graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. We have banded together to create a game focused on depicting an optimistic sustainable future with the working title Ecotopia. One of the main reasons we wanted to create a game like this is that, as a younger generation, we feel concerned about the climate crisis and what that means for the future of the planet. We felt that there was a lack of positive imaginings of our future depicted in media and games and we really wanted to showcase what a sustainable world that has really made an effort to solve climate issues would look like.
The origins of this project go back to early 2022 when the general idea for the game was conceived and the initial team members came on board. We then developed the idea further in order to pitch the game to ETC faculty. After 2 rounds of pitches to faculty and idea iterations during our spring ‘22 semester we officially got accepted as an ETC project semester for the Fall ‘22 semester.
The Team
- Faris Elrayes – Programmer, Game Designer
- Amber Griffith – Narrative and Game Designer, Artist
- Yukti Gupte – Character Artist, Team Art Lead
- Yi-Hsiu (Danny) Huang – Environment Artist
- Hagan Miller – Environment Artist
- Max Cameron – Producer, Sound Designer, Artist
Please visit the “Team” page in the coming weeks for more information about the members of the Future Forgers!
Project Summary
Project Description
Ecotopia is a game set in a hopeful version of our future that will explore ideas in sustainable community development. We are using environment and narrative as tools to draw players into the experience and let them see with their own eyes the possibilities of a better future where many of the UN’s Sustainable Development goals have been met. The player will be able to explore a contained rooftop community garden and converse with several distinct characters as part of a narrative that will pull them through the environment. We will be using tactics from the recent IGDA Climate SIG’s “Environmental Game Design Playbook” to help guide our design. The end goal will be to have our project submitted to game festivals as well as the IGDA Climate SIG’s game database. To learn more about the IGDA Climate follow this link to their website.
The game will be built in Unity and will have the player moving through a 3D environment controlling a character in first-person. Currently, the gameplay consists of exploring the environment, talking to characters, and completing tasks for them. We are also including an environmental puzzle involving moving solar panels in relation to planter beds to create an agrovoltaic system, a system that increases the efficiency of solar panels as well as improves the conditions for growth for plants.
Current Story and Structure
Here is the story overview as written by our narrative designer, Amber:
“Ecotopia follows the story of Mirri as she recounts the multigenerational journey her family took to make a positive and lasting change in the world. Observe as the community comes to life with each step Mirri takes to create a more sustainable environment. Set in 21st century Pittsburgh, explore the social progress that came to be throughout Mirri’s lifetime and the community projects inspired by her family’s initiative. Experience the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of community development and explore the possibilities of what an eco-friendly future can be!”
The current iteration of the story has a prologue and interstitials that feature Mirri recalling her life’s work in the community garden to her family. In between will be 3 chapters that take place in different sections of the rooftop in 3 different time periods: Recent past, near future, and far future. The player will move through the sections of the roof as the story progresses.
Solarpunk Inspiration
The main inspiration for our project is a literary and aesthetic subgenre called Solarpunk. Solarpunk worlds are optimistic and at times utopian, imagining a better, sustainable world where human civilization works in harmony with nature. To learn more about it you can read this Solarpunk Manifesto: https://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/
Work Over the Summer
The benefit of being an accepted ETC pitch project is that we have known what our project was going to be all summer. With that in mind, we decided to take advantage of the extra time to get a head start on some pre-production aspects of our experience.
Scenario Planning
Using futurist scenario planning techniques that were suggested to us by our consultant Keith Webster, we planned out the world of our game. We used a Miro board to achieve this. There is a lot of info covered on the board and our game is unlikely to cover everything there in detail but it will be useful to guide future decisions in regards to story and environment.
A few aspects of the world we tried to identify in our planning include the stakeholders in the world, the location where it will take place (we chose Pittsburgh), and some environmental and social issues. Pictured below is a section from our Miro board.
Software Skeleton of Project
Faris, our programmer, created a short skeleton of the project. This includes a build that demonstrates dialogue systems, choices with persistent environmental features, NPC navigation, scene management, persistent save/load systems, and blockouts for some menus.
Defining Our Roles
Before the semester began we had a meeting to decide team responsibilities and roles. To help with this process we created a RACI chart with different aspects of the project listed. Degrees of responsibility and involvement were then decided using the key below.
Responsible: Who is actually responsible for doing the actual work for the project task.
Accountable: Who is accountable for the success of the task and is the decision-maker. Typically the project manager.
Consulted: Who needs to be consulted for details and additional info on requirements. Typically the person (or team) to be consulted will be the subject matter expert.
Informed: Who needs to be kept informed of major updates. Typically senior leadership.
First Week
Housekeeping
While we had a little bit of a head start because of our work over the summer, there were still some items of business that the team had to take care of in the first week to get us settled.
- We set our core hours, the hours when all of the team members would be together and working on the project.
- We contacted the excellent IT team here at the ETC to get some equipment needed for the semester, primarily drawing tablets for the art team
- We also ordered some decorations for the project room. We stuck with a more natural theme, ordering some fake ivy and lighting to try and transform the room a bit into a Solarpunk space
Meeting with Advisors and Faculty
On Wednesday of this week, we sat down with our faculty advisors to update them on our work done over the summer, get some feedback on future plans, and schedule our weekly meetings. We also discussed a brief overview of the structure of the game (depicted below). While they had some questions about sight-lines between the sections of the rooftop that depict different time periods, they ultimately liked the choice to structure it this way. It shows the changes over time and can help with scoping of the game.
On Friday the team spoke with faculty member Ralph Vituccio and showed him the first draft of the story. He was positive about our ideas and was glad we weren’t making a dystopian game saying that our optimistic view makes our game unique. Ralph teaches a futurism class here at CMU so he’s very interested in seeing how it will all pan out. Being that he is into futurism, one of the major questions we had for him was about the timeframe our game is set in. Originally we had our game spanning further into the 21st century to around 2070. We were curious if we shrank the time periods to end in 2045 and if that would still allow us to have some aspect of creative freedom when it came to depicting futurist technologies. He said that shouldn’t be a problem if we wanted to use our imaginations a little when it came to the depiction of the world. Overall it was a productive meeting and it was nice to touch base with a person like Ralph who is interested in storytelling as well as futurism.
Visual Concepts and References
Our environment artists Hagan and Danny pulled together some visual references for our environment. For environments, we are also utilizing DALL-E AI image generation to rapidly prototype our concept art. Below is one reference pulled from the internet as a reference while the other was created with AI. In the coming weeks Yukti, our character artist, will be putting together some character concepts as well.
Asset List
We created an initial prioritized asset list based on our story, gameplay, and initial environment ideas. This includes environment assets, character assets, and 2D/UI elements.
Solar Panel Puzzle Prototype
Faris has begun to put together a prototype of our gameplay puzzle meant for the second chapter of our game. It is still early days but we hope to highlight some media of it here on the blog in the coming weeks.
Planning for the Future
Next Week
For week 2 we have a few things planned.
- Meetings with faculty as well Keith Webster who we have consulted with in the past about the futurist aspects of our game
- The creation of concept art for characters and the environment
- Whiteboxing of the environment
- Continued work and iteration on our story
- Continued work on the solar panel gameplay segment
- Creating a composition box for a playtesting workshop at the ETC
- Prepping for quarters presentations that will take place on week 3
Looking Further Ahead
We also did some planning that spans further into the future. Some of these major milestones include major iterations on our gameplay and story (including a first draft script), playtests ( the first of which will hopefully be at the end of week 3), and starting work on our characters and environment. The image below is our planning timeline.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates from the Future Forgers team!
-Max