Project Understanding: Schizophrenia/Mental Illness

Design Document
Jillian Parr

Section 2: Table of Contents

1. Title Page 1.1. Game Name 1.2. Copyright Information 1.3. Version Number, author, date 2. Table of Contents Design History Change Log 3. Section I - Game Overview 3.1. Game Concept 3.2. Feature Set 3.3. Genre 3.4. Target Audience 3.5. Game Flow Summary 3.5.1. Look and Feel 3.5.2. Project Scope 3.5.3. Number of locations 3.5.4. Number of levels 3.5.5. Number of NPCs 3.5.6. Number of weapons 3.5.7. Etc. 4. Section II - Gameplay and Mechanics 4.1. Gameplay 4.1.1. Game Progression 4.1.2. Mission/challenge Structure 4.1.3. Puzzle Structure 4.1.4. Objectives What are the objectives of the game? 4.1.5. Play Flow How does the game flow for the game player 4.2. Mechanics What are the rules to the game, both implicit and explicit. This is the model of the universe that the game works under. Think of it as a simulation of a world, how do all the pieces interact? This actually can be a very large section. 4.2.1. Physics How does the physical universe work? 4.2.2. Movement 4.2.2.1. General Movement 4.2.2.2. Other Movement 4.2.3. Objects 4.2.3.1. Picking Up Objects 4.2.3.2. Moving Objects 4.2.4. Actions 4.2.4.1. Switches and Buttons 4.2.4.2. Picking Up, Carrying and Dropping 4.2.4.3. Talking 4.2.4.4. Reading 4.2.5. Combat If there is combat or even conflict, how is this specifically modeled? 2

4.3. Screen Flow 4.3.1. Screen Flow Chart A graphical description of how each screen is related to every other 4.3.2. Screen Descriptions What is the purpose of each screen? 4.3.2.1. Main Menu Screen 4.3.2.2. Options Screen 4.3.2.3. Etc. 4.4. Game Options 4.5. Replaying and Saving 5. Section III Story, Setting and Character 5.1. Story and Narrative 5.1.1. Back story 5.2. Game World 5.2.1. General look and feel of world 5.2.2. Area #1 5.3. Characters 5.3.1. Character #1 5.3.1.1. Back story 5.3.1.2. Personality 5.3.1.3. Look 5.3.1.3.1. Physical characteristics 5.3.1.3.2. Animations 5.3.1.4. Special Abilities 5.3.1.5. Relevance to game story 5.3.1.6. Relationship to other characters 5.3.1.7. Statistics 5.3.2. Character #2 5.3.3. etc. 6. Section IV Levels 6.1. Level #1 6.1.1. Synopsis 6.2. Training Level 7. Section V - Interface 7.1. Visual System 7.1.1. HUD - What controls 7.1.2. Menus 7.1.3. Rendering System 7.1.4. Camera 7.1.5. Lighting Models

Section 3: Change Log

1/30/13: o Taking original document and creating a table of contents, and modifying the layout of the document. o Began to move portions of the documentation into designated sections labeled in table of contents. 2/6/13: o Grammar and structure adjustments in the Game Overview 2/16/13: o Implementation of document outline and formatting. o Mechanics were re-written 2/24/13: o Game Concept was restructured o Project Scope section was written o Gameplay section was established and the majority of it was written. o Movement Section was updated. 3/11/13: o Document Completion. Remaining sections were filled in and table of contents were reformatted.

Section 4: Game Overview

4.1: Game Concept
Project Understanding is a game designed for players to understand the severe mental illness

that is schizophrenia. To branch away from the stereotypical depictions and confusion of the disease, the player will have to experience a social encounter through the perspective of someone outside of the illness, and someone affected by it. Through a series of levels on either side of the different perspectives the player should achieve a solid grasp of the basics of the illness. Learning the symptoms (positive, negative, and cognitive) will also be a major aspect as well as

successfully navigating yourself through social, family, and business situations and interactions. Treatment and control for schizophrenia will stand as a strong learning point. The main objective will be the player understands of this illness, and to break down the stereotypes placed on schizophrenia. The gameplay is fluid and easily comprehended. Project Understanding will be taken as a serious game, yet enthralling. Different levels/stages are prevalent throughout the game. The first type of level will consist of the player interacting through the game as a bystander or witness of the illness, and connect and converse with a NPC who is diagnosed with moderate schizophrenia. The symptoms provided during this time that the player will experience would be Cognitive (very subtle symptoms) which include: poor information understanding, poor decision making, trouble focusing, and problems with short term memory. The Negative symptoms will also be encountered (also subtle and hard to recognize) which include: the flat affect of a flat expression on the persons face and a monotone voice, lack of pleasure in life and ability to carry out tasks or activities, and speaking very little especially when forced to interact with others. With this type of situation this will be considered an easy difficulty. This will be played as a first person view, carrying out a conversation, with a list of different responses that can range through a spectrum of concern, emotion, or even lack thereof. Through the interaction, the player will also be given choices of what the different symptoms are that the other is expressing and how severe it is. There might also be an option to figure out what symptom it is as well. Once the symptoms start to arise, it will be the responsibility of the player to try and keep calm as well as keeping the other person calm. Your job is to attempt to bring them back from the brink of the more severe symptoms, and to gain an understanding of how it is to converse with someone who is affected by schizophrenia. Going from playing the side of a person who is not affected, now comes an example of what it would be like to play as the person who actually did have the illness. This would be almost the exact opposite of the above example. It would be the same as being in the first person view point, yet you, as the player will have to deal with the positive symptoms that arise. These type of symptoms are described as the losing touch with reality and severe symptoms, such as; hallucination, delusions, thought disorders, and movement disorders. Having an interaction with another person will prove to be very difficult. When certain symptoms, such as delusions happen, the sight/ screen will become harder and harder to properly see through and differentiate what is happening with the interaction or scene and what the illness is making the player think. It will go along again with the choices for responses, and again will acknowledging what symptoms are actually happening to the player, but choices will become harder and harder to choose, either with difficulty with controlling and selecting the choice (thought disorders or movement disorders coming into play) or the hallucinations or delusions affecting the player. Your goal here is to try to take control, and try to keep calm while the symptoms are trying to take hold. This type of play is also, mainly actually, to see how exactly hard it is for the person who is afflicted to function while these symptoms are manifesting.

4.2: Feature Set

Single player, interactive dialogue based serious, puzzle-style gameplay, Fact collection/learning aspects, realistic visuals, heavy in confrontations/conflict.

4.3: Genre
Serious gaming and puzzle are the genres that Project Understanding falls into.

4.4: Target Audience

The audience for this game will be a wide range of people; going from people who are not familiar with the illness, who misunderstand what the illness fully is, or people trying to cope with friends or family members who have the illness. This game will provide the player knowledge of what the mental illness is, and what the person who is diagnosed with it, is going through.

4.5: Game Flow Summary

In order to progress in this game, the players must interact with an NPC as either a character who has Schizophrenia, or a character speaking to a NPC that is. To get to the next level, players must be able to select the best choices in either keeping the afflicted calm/not triggering symptoms, or remaining calm themselves. Difficulty levels rise as symptoms from the character with Schizophrenia increase and become more intense. The most severe symptoms will make the interactive dialogue increasingly harder, especially when certain ones affect the players characters vision (while playing as the ill character) and possible hallucinations.

4.6: Look and Feel

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During gameplay, each scene or level will be set up in similar, yet differencing ways. The Players side will be seen through as first person perspective, and engaged into a one on one conversation with the NPC. When something is being said by the NPC, the text will show at the bottom of the screen, and will later display choices for response. For example of reference on this: Mass Effect of Dragon Age. With that example given; the style of this game will also be more realistic, and each scene will apply a personal and intimate atmosphere. However, when certain, more extremely symptoms of Schizophrenia appear, the art style may change depending on the intensity and situation.

4.7: Project Scope

4.7.1Number of locations Each level will have its own location 4.7.2Number of levels The Initial amount of levels, for each perspective side of gameplay will have five, ten in total. The ideal number of levels would be ten per side, or twenty total. 4.7.3Number of NPCs With the initially smaller scope, there will be a different person who you are interacting with during each level. With the larger scope, one person will be used for two different levels. This would make each scope version have 10 different NPCs. 4.7.4Number of weapons There will be no weapons in Project Understanding.

Section 5: Gameplay and Mechanics

5.1: Gameplay
5.1.1Game Progression Playing on either perspective, the game progresses once the player has successfully made it through an interaction, while identifying which responses apply better, and what symptoms are prevalent.

5.1.2Mission/challenge Structure With level progression, difficulty levels increase. Interactive dialogues will produce more and more information, as well as conflict with more intense symptoms displayed and delved into.

5.1.3Puzzle Structure

Puzzles lie in the dialogue, providing different responses and options. Players will have to chose the selection that they find to either fit the best by keeping the inflicted calm, or controlling/understanding symptoms if playing as them. There is also the option that the player can chose the option that will bring out the symptoms. This will shed more light on them, but will either end the level in the players failure, or will ultimately make it much more difficult for the player to complete or beat.

5.1.4Objectives The main objective of this game is to educate the players about this strong and misinterpreted disease. Through each interaction, the goal is to either know how to respond to an afflicted person, or know how to identify/understand (and possibly control) what symptoms arise if you are playing as the afflicted.

5.1.5Play Flow The game flow should be a very natural process. Through progression in the different levels and scenes, the conversations should initially be as fluid as a real world interaction or conversation. Even with awkward or more intense scenes, there will be a natural flow through these interactions as they would be essentially dealt with face to fac.

5.2: Mechanics
5.2.1Physics

Three Major Game Mechanics How to communicate concept and function to the player How the player would interact with the game How the results would be tracked

First Mechanic:

To achieve the goal of having the player understand schizophrenia, half of the gameplay will be through the eyes of someone outside of the illness. The other half will be going through someone affected by schizophrenia. Playing in both perspectives, conversations will be set up in RPG style layout; what the opposite NPC has said will be in a dialogue box at the bottom of the screen. Once the question or statement is said, the different options to choose a response will expand under the dialogue box. This mechanics purpose is to create a personal choice on what the player thinks is the best option. Each option chosen will have a unique outcome.

Second Mechanic: This next major mechanic is implementing the severe symptoms of schizophrenia that are affecting the player, during gameplay of the inflicted character. With symptoms such as hallucination, delusions, thought disorders, and movement disorders affecting the player, it will become increasingly hard to interact with the opposite person in the conversation/dialogue setting. The screen will blur, hallucinations will occur, dramatic color changes will happen, and even the text choices will change what they say, along with certain choices being harder to control and get to.

Third Mechanic: The collection of facts, articles, and examples concerning schizophrenia to help educate the player further, is the next mechanic. Once an encounter is overcome or beaten, one of these vital pieces of information will be gathered. Once players continue to collect, more choices in dialogue settings will open up and help some situations become easier to progress through.

Fourth Mechanic: This mechanic will go into more on the side of playing as someone with schizophrenia. When difficult levels or encounters are overcome, and side information is gathered, this character could be able to receive psychiatric help and/or medication. NOTE: Implementing this mechanic, however, would make the scope of the game itself, a lot larger.
5.2.2Movement 5.2.2.1General Movement

There is no active walking or movement that the players controllers their character in doing so.

5.2.3 Objects

Objects in the game consist of information about the disease, fact sheets, possible doctors notes to collect. There will also be more information unlocked when players collect a certain amount of points.

5.2.3.1 Picking up Objects The object that will be able to be picked up will be the schizophrenia fact sheets

5.2.4

Actions 5.2.4.1.Switches and Buttons Selecting a response during gameplay and conversations will be done with either the mouse or arrow keys, and clicking on it will be done with the left mouse key or the space bar. The player will also be able to look around using WASD. 5.2.4.2.Picking Up, Carrying and Dropping Picking up fact sheets, etc. will be done with the mouse, and selecting it with the left mouse key. 5.2.4.3.Talking Talking will be done by selecting a certain response from the given list at the bottom of the screen, once the NCP has spoken to you.

5.2.5.Combat/Conflict This conflict of this games lies in the encounters of the severe symptoms that will arise. Refer back to Game Concept section for full details on the symptoms and reactions.

5.3 Replaying and Saving

Autosaves should happen after each encounter, or level.

Section III Story, Setting and Character 10

6.2 Story and Narrative - Specific details like scripts and cut scenes may not be in this document
but be in the Story Bible.

Brief Narratives: In the view of the person, unaffected by the illness:

Getting into the game, you see your friend of acquaintance approach you. The conversation begins simply enough. The conversation choices arise, in the described list format. The choices include: Hello, How are you, (small talk options of course), and then the more rude options of: what are you doing, why are you talking to me, etc. Selecting Hello they respond simply with, hi, shying off and becoming very distant. You can see something is bothering them. This is where the stability bar and/wheel appears on the top of the screen corners. Your new choices now go into: is anything wrong, what are you up to, you seem down, etc. Or you can go into the other side of things like, for example, whats wrong with you?. Of course, wanting to be careful on how they react, you select Is anything wrong? They being to aimlessly look around, avoiding eye contact, and fidgeting. From here it is easy to pry into what they are doing and why, yet if you want to keep on the path of respecting them and trying to keep them grounded, you can choose to go into continuing an easy going conversation by selecting things such as small talk or asking if they need anything. Getting further into this, they will even have some action choices to select. For example, if their symptoms escalate, you can try to comfort them, or hold them up if they start to have reactions to the symptoms and begin to collapse, etc. If you are able to win, the person will slowly regress back into their stable state, but if you choose the wrong paths, they will rapidly delve more into their symptoms, and help will have to be called for the person.

In the view of the person affected:

Going into this, a person that your character has met before will suddenly approach you. They seem to immediately get into a conversation. From here, your stability bar and timer wheel will appear, and your conversation options will as well. As they begin the small talk, there will be a choices of calm responses, and the more symptom affect or illness affected ones. Skipping ahead: The person interacting with you seems to have caught on to how you are acting with the symptoms arising. Your vision blurs, colors darken, you do not know what to choose or say. Your options are shaking in the conversation choices, and some are even moving places. You cant figure out how to put the words together and how to make sense of what is happening,

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or if what the other person is saying is actually what they are saying. It seems that more and more people are surrounding you, all eyes are focused on you. From here, it is difficult to calm down. There might be a medication option, implemented, but for now you must gradually have your character realize what the illness is doing. I feel something like this would also be in a more advanced symptom level, so the difficultly will be on the rise the less stable your character becomes.

6.2.4

Game Progression From level to level, encounters will become increasingly risky and challenging. Affected characters will express more severe symptoms and responses will become more difficult to decipher which one(s) are the correct choices. Playing as the affected; this will also prove to be a lot harder, progressively, to be able to control reactions and symptoms.

6.3 Game World

General look and feel of world

6.3.4

The game world will provide every day, differeting public places. For example: A university commons, a library, a mall or retail store, park, etc. The environments will keep along with the visual style of being more realistic.

. Section IV Levels 7.2 Levels The number of levels will go into the size of the scope. (Refer to Scope section) And each level will have their own, realistic/realistically visual location. These locations will provide a sense of being in public, or our in the open of crowds. Levels will consist of the interactive dialogue game play/puzzle style, and will require the player to pass, or beat it for the next level to be accessed. Refer to Game World section as well.

7.3 Training Level

The very first level that players will encounter will be the tutorial, or training level. This level will be set in the environment of a semi-busy sidewalk, outside of a store. This level will first start out as the un-afflicted person, or the person talking to the other who has schizophrenia. The conversation style will be introduced/explained, while the player makes selections of the example options and dialogue pieces. 12

Section V - Interface 8.2.4 HUD The Top left corner, will provide the Stability Bar, which is visually similar to the Health bar that will be in the top Right corner. Both bars will have their respective colors and slight differences in style. In the top middle, there will be a small numerical representation of the players points. The bottom of the screen will be used for the conversation text, as well as the responses.

GUI and Set Up

GUI: For the Use Interface of this particular game, it will differ slightly from what persons view point you are currently playing as, whether it be the character interacting with the other who is inflicted on by the disease, or vise versa. Each character or side will have their own type of health bar, and their own set up for the conversational system. For the unaffected character: For playing on this side of things, for the health bar there will be a stability bar being represented for the opposite person through the conversation play through. Depending on whether you say something that triggers any negative response, or any part of the illness, or selecting the right things and figuring out how to positively connect with the afflicted person, this stability bar will either decrease or increase. This bar will be location near the top of the screen as a classic HP bar would. This bar will also affect the score given at the end of each section or level. Timing will also affect the scoring. Taking too long to answer something will cause the opposite person to react negatively. The stability bar will lower, as well as your points. This will also happen with interrupting the other person. The conversational style will be fairly simple. You will wait for the other person to respond, and once they have said their statement, the quote will appear near the bottom of the screen, and the four to six choices for responses will appear as well. These will show up in a more dynamic way of two or three on the left, and the others on the right. Not in a straight down list. And each response will have their own button or key to press.

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The conversation will be set up in a more dynamic way such as the style Bioware games have it set up, yet it will not be placed on a choice wheel, it will be in a list format but will the spacing and list style of it is above, and not in a straight down list. There will also be the good, neutral, and bad style choices that each one will go along with what are the best/ alright things to say, and what is wrong or inappropriate. For the character with the mental illness: The set up for the GUI will be slightly similar to the above. The stability bar will appear as well, yet this one will be smaller. The person affected by the illness will obviously be aware of when slips happen, yet the person talking will view it differently. There will also be two separate timers: one for when full stability is failing, or even keeping up, and the second one is for when stability is lost, and how long the current symptom will last before it becomes more severe. With their conversational GUI setup, it will be roughly the same as above, yet considering how strongly the symptoms are affecting your character, the words will become blurry, the placement of the choices will change, and even some of the choice will change entirely.

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With the bars for stability and the timer, it could easily be set up in this style. The wheel area on the left could be used as the time, while the bar is used for the stability bar. Score cards? My original plan for now is for an end-of-level scoring card or stats card to display at the end of each situation that is encountered or experience.

8.2.5

Menus Main Menu section will provide the sections of: Start, Continue, Load, Options, and Credits. During play, pausing will be an enabled feature, with a pause menu of: Resume, Quit, Save, and Load.

8.2.6

Camera Player perspective is in first person view point.

Schizophrenia Fact and Information sites: 1. http://www.medicinenet.com/schizophrenia/article.htm 2. http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/schizophrenia/overview.html 3. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml 4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001925/

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