Task 2 Reflection -- 1, 2, 3, Escape

Task 2  Reflection -- 1, 2, 3, Escape

RP_1

In RP1, I think I did a good job on designing my character and the setting of my game. For my character, Lady Medusa, I designed her background story by referring to the Greek Myth figure, Medusa’s appearance as well as the ability to turn people into stones. However, I also inputted lots of my creativity into creating her background story. For example, she is a modern princess in a civilized world but drifted by monsters to the savage island, which is an element of time and space travel. As for the game setting, I also used a time travel factor to combine contemporary pop singer Jolin Tsai’s song with my ancient-like character. By using these elements to design my character and the game, I successfully made Lady Medusa and her game easily memorable for the participants. They also tended to be more deeply involved in my task.

However, there were also some shortcomings in my RP1 task design. For example, originally, I planned to add rock, paper, scissors into my game in order to provide it some complexity, but I did expect that if all the people in the computer classroom press the same keys for the same gestural instruction at the same time, some of them would fail to act perform the right gesture due to the software problem in the classroom. Therefore, I cancel it right away during RP1. Moreover, I was also told by the instructor that singing the Chinese song only seemed to be a little bit easy for some international students. This made me start to consider how to make my singing task more complicated in the preparation for RP2.

RP_2

In my task design of RP2, I not only kept the outstanding features of my character, but also add more connection between my character and Jill and Ruby’s since the three characters of ours showed less interaction and connection to each other. For instance, I added some dialogues to our characters to not only highlight their complex relationship  but also make our story more dramatic, interesting, and comprehensive (Medusa and Jack are friends but hate Robinson for his intention to civilize the savage citizens). The following are the dialogues:

M: Visitors, I have to warn you. Men in the civilized world corrupt, and monsters shall rule the world. I believe that you have all seen my lovely dragon, from now on you will see more creatures in your adventure. You will know that men are just tiny pests in this world.

R: Medusa! Stop acting so radical. Your insights are just too shallow, just like Jack. I’ve told you many times, civilizing the savages can make the world of men a melting pot, we can live harmoniously together.  

M: Fuck off, Robinson! I believe that you’ve searched for your beloved friend Friday for a long time. Now I will show you where he is.

((show everyone the statue))

R: What? Friday!!!!! ((sobbing)) I hate you Medusa! I hate you.

M: Anyone who appreciates the civilization comes no good end!

M: Now, visitors, I will show you that being a savage, a friend of the savage creatures is the wisest choice.

J: Yeah, show them your charm also, since you’re the queen of the savages and monsters.

I also added some complexity into the singing part of my game to make it more challenging. In RP2, the participants not only were asked to sing out the song “Medusa” in Mandarin, but also had to type in pin-yin (拼音) in our chatroom. To my surprise, the participants in RP2 were much better at typing the pin-yin than singing independently in Mandarin. But, after few times of my guidance and their practice, they all did a great job on the task. I also heard their laughter when they were discussing how to pronounce the lyrics with each other, which shows their concentration and enthusiasm.

       
    Overall Reflection

        I think it is quite challenging for newbies like us to design stories and games for international students to experience with limited land space and money. However, I also find it really interesting to create our fantastic world filled with our imagination and creativity. We can not only create an avatar who/which we tend to identify with with totally different appearance and gender representation from us in the real world but also build our unique Utopia. In Second Life, everything is possible!