Petition-Bear

1. Philosophy
2. Design
3. Team
4. Development
5. Lessons for next time
6. License

1. Philosophy

• Portability & reach: desktop, web (portals, Facebook), mobile (Android, iOS) rather than just “hidden” on greenpeace.org
• Quick to play: 1-5 minutes of gameplay
• 
  Cute drawn animals are the hook/incentive for playing
• Comedy provides the incentive to keep playing
• Emotional relationship:

• Player cares about polar bear (player character) because it is cute and charismatic
• Polar bear cares about signatures and progress bar
• --> Player cares about signatures and progress bar

2. Design

Intro

1. Polar bear is driven from the arctic by oil industry.
2. Bear flees to urban environment.
3. Bear searches trash and finds a petition paper “Save the Arctic”.

Gameplay

On the left, there is one progress bar for the actual petition count and one for the in-game petition count.

Game perspective: You play top-down through a maze of streets and houses, collecting small dots to collect petitions.

Controls: Touch where bear should go to set target.

There might be enemies (oil spills, shell executives (with monies to bribe politicians)). Colliding with enemies might mean game over (bad) or to special dialog (not described below, but should be similar to what comes next).

Reaching big dots on the map leads to dialog mode, where educational one-liners from savethearctic.org appear with bear (player) asking people (or animals) in their doors “would you like to sign my petition?” and reply to people’s “no” or “yes” with violence (unofficial version) or hugs (it’s all right).

Game over

Violent/anti-social behavior leads to a comedic game over screen.

Successful end (getting all the petitions) screen shows time (highscore) and reinforces connection between game and in-game progress bar and real-life progress bar, provides link to scroll. Provides non-annoying “share” links to Facebook/Google+/Twitter/Diaspora.

Dancing bear! (Cuteness)

3. Team

“Ice Pool & Green Consulting”

Iwan Gabovitch <qubodup.net> <qubodup@gmail.com> (Design, audio)

Kirill Krysov <average-artist.deviantart.com> (Design, visual art)

Richard Wepner <facebook.com/richard.wepner> (Design, programming)

4. Development

Prototype being developed in XNA, visuals drawn in Flash, audio edited in Audacity.

Asset list

• Graphics

• Top-down bear walk cycle <opengameart.org/content/polar-bear-idle-and-movement>
• House <opengameart.org/content/drawn-comic-house-144px-square>
• Screens/concepts <opengameart.org/content/polar-bear-game-concept-scenesscreens>

• Music

• Intro screen <opengameart.org/content/wgs-music-37-bite-lip-loops>
• In-game <opengameart.org/content/one>
• Game over <none>
• Win screen <http://opengameart.org/content/mushroom-dance>

• Sounds:

• Bear

• Attack
• Hug?
• “Would you like to sign my petition?” <question>
• Eat petition <chomp>

• Humans

• “No!”
• “Yes!”
• “Blblblbl."

• Leave (close door?)
• Enter dialog (open door?)
• Win screen transition <opengameart.org/content/success-trumpets-and-claps-yo-frankie>

5. Lessons for next time

• During the pitch, accentuate the reach: people who are into cute drawings and/or whack/slapstick humor, who would never care for the cause itself on their own.
• Focus on the player character: the signature helps the player character, rather than an organization.
• Not directly aimed at making people care or think. (Short-term goal)
• Tell about variation plan (different degrees of violence/cuteness for different platforms).
• Tell about distribution plan (Facebook, Newgrounds, Steam(?)).
• Don’t say “maybe” during a pitch

6. License

This text and graphics are licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, as published by Creative Commons.

Ideas can’t be protected, luckily.