handicap

handicap.

social anxiety as game mechanics

Final Digital Media Research Project | April 2O23

Social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) is one of the most common of all the anxiety disorders. It is increasingly recognised as a prevalent and socially impairing mental disorder. However, it is often underestimated and goes undetected by people and medical practitioners. It is a debilitating condition that has a big impact on a person's ability to perform certain tasks or activities and can cause significant impairment and distress to the individual.

I wanted to make something that would bring attention to this disorder and help other people understand it better.

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Evolution of the project

idea 1 - illustrations

Initial research question - can graphic art make social anxiety more understandable to those who don't have it?

The very first idea I had was to make something that would either involve or would be created using graphic design.

I decided to make a couple of illustrations that would show certain feelings or thoughts of social anxiety the way they feel to the person with the disorder. I had an idea to display them in a room filled with fog/smoke to portray the feeling of impaired 'field of view' that social anxiety can sometimes restrict a person with.

Adding AR

Initial idea was to have the illustrations projected on the walls, but then I came up with an improvement. I decided to add AR that would change the illustration. The idea was to have the illustrations of what a certain situation looks like to other people projected on the wall, but once a person looks at the illustration through their phone it changes slightly - now showing what the same situation feels like to a person with social anxiety disorder.

There were a lot of things I needed to do and to keep track of them I even decided to make a table chart to track my process.

Though I forgot about it quite soon after...

idea 2 - creative coding

However, I did not like the idea enough, it did not give me any excitement and I just wanted to make something that I would enjoy more. After a long while I decided to switch my graphic design angle with creative coding instead. This change made me more excited than my previous idea and gave me new hope for making my project into something I liked.

In search for inspiration, I looked through many different projects done in processing and investigated a few ways I could make my illustrations into interactive art.

Sadly, nothing gave me any ideas for anything interesting that I would want to do and I had to let the idea go.

Panic

I was back at square one and got really distraught that I will likely have to go back and go through with my first idea.

idea 3 - retro games

There was a brief mention of a retro arcade game Snake in class one day and that was all it took for me to finally come up with an idea that made me extremely excited about my project.

New research question - could social anxiety be more understandable or easier to explain if it was put as a handicap in a video game?

Onward

My new idea was to make a simple pixel game (something similar to a 2D Scooby Doo adventure/puzzle game I used to play when I was younger). It would look like a normal video game, but would have random hidden obstacles that would make no sense (e.g., dying from breathing wrong, stepping on something and dying, etc.)

Short on time

The idea was great, and I really liked it, however, it included me making a game from scratch and I unfortunately did not have that kind of a time anymore.

I had to amend my idea once again...

I followed a recommendation to use existing source code and make the game fit my project by modifying the code. The idea now changed to modifying classic arcade games and adding 'handicaps' (e.g., invisible walls or barriers) that would symbolise the disabling side of social anxiety disorder.

The first game I started working on was the same game that inspired this idea - Snake. Once the code was running on my computer I played around with the design, changed all the colours and added a different font.

There were a lot of things I needed to do and to keep track of them I even decided to make a table chart to track my process.

Though I forgot about it quite soon after...

I have also investigated an idea of displaying/projecting the games. Thought I could have three or four games with backgrounds that when put alongside each other would make a full picture/text of something. However, after some time this idea got abandoned.

I started looking for other games (Tetris, Lunar lander, Asteroids) and tried to get them working, but I either did not manage to get them running on my machine or the source code was spread between different files, which was too difficult for me to understand.

I was frustrated but continued to play with Snake in the meantime.

I found another Tetris source code which only had one file and I was able to get it working. Once again I played with the colours and changed the font.

After some playing around with the code I added new colours and blocks.

This led to me coming up with a modification - taking a few squares out of the shapes leaving them with gaps and weird protrusions. This adjustment made the game more difficult and it perfectly fit my idea of a handicap.

I did not have a modification for my Snake game yet, but I had an idea circling around in my head for a while. I made it so every time the snake ate the food and grew, the display size of the playing area would change to either a smaller or bigger than the previous one. This little addition was quite annoying and made the game slightly harder.

Small detail

Snake 'game over' menu text for control buttons (SPACE; ESC) is "louder", both in colour and letter case, than the description of what it does (play; quit).

From my own experience social anxiety sometimes focuses only on certain things leaving other (possibly more important parts) in the background.

I now have two games I am quite proud of, and they give me joy. Both have their own unique obstructions that add an impairment to an otherwise simple and straight forward game.

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I have had social anxiety disorder ever since I can remember. It's a disorder that impacts my daily life and every social situation. I hope that this project can make the disabling aspect of this disorder more understandable to those who don't have it.