This text, like the ones that will follow, will be part of a series on the design of the serious game Migracciones, a video game developed for the Universidad Autónoma Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and that will be about the transit migration over Mexico to the USA.
That said, the following texts will deal more personally with my design process and not so much about migration. The topics that will be covered will include time management, the conceptualization of the video game, or the aesthetics developed, to mention a few.
Towards the conceptualization of the video game: from the physical game to the digital game
It is important to mention that Migracciones is part of a game already made, which was played with real people in a large space occupied by people. The game consisted of a large map on the ground and, using dice, the players advanced each of the squares until they reached the northern border.
For this digital game, the development of this mechanic was taken as a nucleus, but, in addition, an initial component was thought: the narrative. This aspect of the narrative is an element that has been developed from the first sketch and has led to its own development from the realization of a script and a subsequent storyboard.
The reason why a narrative was chosen in addition to the mechanics of advancing through boxes was to have an emotional impact on the player, as seen in the video game Tentación en el Desierto. However, it was thought that that narrative would be told by means of static drawings with a script, as it is developed in the video game Beyond your Window. Also, based on this last video game, it was thought that each of the routes that will be taken it would have a different color as a base; that is to say, that in the west route the characters and scenarios would be green, and on the other side, in the east route, they would be yellow.
The important thing to mention in the first phase of conceptualization is how you want to tell the story, either by aesthetics, narrative, or game mechanics, as in the game Dark Ecology. From having knowledge of how to tell the idea, the development of the video game has to turn under the same concepts, until arriving at the digital prototype where the idea, the mechanics, the aesthetics, and narrative do not change but only improve.
