The audio recording of the WITR 89.7 Broadcast
You’re listening to WITR 89.7 on The Underground. My name is Ar, and I would like to talk a little bit today about my time with echoes, a VIP program here at RIT. echoes, for those who do not know, is basically a game studio. We make video games, and it’s pretty rad. So if you want to check it out, our last set of games has fully wrapped up. The “Paths of Change” period is done and so those games are now available on the echoes website. Go play them, they’re pretty awesome. But at the end of that semester, actually, last semester, we started our new phase called “Resonant Voices”. And the last couple of weeks of last semester, we spent doing research for “Resonant Voices”, meaning we reached out to some people around the Rochester area asking if they would like to come and interview with us and tell us what they think about the concept of “Resonant Voices”. And as a result, actually, we got a lot of really valuable information and valuable feedback. And that research has been kind of vital in this new chapter of echoes, especially while we were doing ideation for games and ideation for mechanics and gameplay. And actually, I got the wonderful pleasure of interviewing a couple of people for “Resonant Voices”, which is something I will talk about. And it was really exciting.
I obviously, I love interviewing people. For those who do not know, I go on air like a couple of times a semester and I interview Dr. Sanders. Previously when President Munson was still here, I would interview him as well on air. And it’s just a great way to get to know somebody, a great way to understand them as a person, their values, their opinions. and just what matters to them. It’s a really fantastic way to learn about your community. And that is something that we wanted one of the themes for “Resonant Voices” to be, is obviously it goes hand in hand with community. So we reached out to the community and boy did they have some fantastic things to tell us. So I specifically interviewed two people. The first one was Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp, and the 2nd was Aria Camione Lind, both absolutely wonderful people to talk to. It was such a great experience. And I cannot thank them enough for giving us that time to really learn about them as people and their work and their ideas. The basis of “Resonant Voices” really came from these interviews. We asked all of them a series of questions, but the main one was what they defined as “Resonant Voices” and what they thought of that concept.
So my first interview with Rose, who is a dancer, educator, and activist, became the basis and main foundation for the game that I’m working on now for echoes called Reverb. And so Rose responded about collective voice, movement, collective action, and being socially aware of each other in a very physical sense, because when you are dancing, you have to be very physically aware of the people around you, what they are doing and why. There’s also some level of emotional connection as well so that you can trust each other in the case that things go wrong. Collective voice and collective action to her could have been creative or destructive, because when you are dancing, you are dancing with other people and that is a collective action that is creative. It’s used to spread ideas together in a way that you couldn’t just on your own. Where destruction is concerned and destructive collective action is concerned, things like riots are an example of that as well, as she mentioned, where it’s a collective act of breaking down something that you are unhappy with to show off the message that change needs to happen. So this idea of movement and moving together as a powerful force of collective voice is kind of the main basis of Reverb in that you- So the concept of the game is that you are, you know, a bird and you have a flock of birds that together, you are going through this little world trying to break down glass walls that separate you from each other. The idea is to enforce the idea of community and togetherness and camaraderie with each other in a way, and working together to do something that you couldn’t do on your own and so as you go through these puzzles and levels, your voice alone is not going to be strong enough to break down each wall. You’re going to need help and you’re going to need to work together. A lot of this is based in the player’s movement and the movement of the other birds and being very aware of the physical things that are happening around the player, where you need to be aware of, the birds in your flock, where you are, where the sound you’re making is going to go, who it’s going to, why it’s going to them. So it involves a lot of thought and thinking things out, which is something we really did want to emphasize.
With my second interview with Aria, actually, she, this interview is kind of the one that gave us the name of the game. I’m not funny. Where she refers to collective voice as being this like reverberating effect. Keyword being reverberating for reverb. I’m sorry. But the idea, her idea of “Resonant Voices” was voice that reinforces community needs, so listening to what a community needs, because they will tell you. They will tell you what they are going through and the solutions that would work for them. And it is important that you listen and that you don’t try and force and shove your own solutions onto them because they don’t need people that will speak for them and act for them. They need people that will support them as they speak and act for themselves and that’s another thing that I really wanted to make sure was implemented properly into the game of not, taking over the conversation and being sort of a leader, but instead working together. And so one of the things I did when I was designing NPC birds was I created this one bird called, long legal name, chirp-to-its-own-tune-bird, nickname Tunebird. Tunebird, who will chirp continuously at its own tune, at its own pace, and it just won’t listen to you. It’ll do what it has to do, and you’re going to have to work around it and work alongside it. And that’s there to truly emphasize the not speaking over, but speaking with idea that Aria had. And so another thing that she mentioned was to go where the community is. Join that community, reach out directly. Don’t just wait for them to come to you. If you want to make an impact and you want to make a change, you need to go where that change needs to be made. The way that we thought to implement this best was to have the player flock go to each location and have to help them with their problem first before they could, have others join the flock or be able to move on to a larger and bigger wall and so the idea here is that it’s a team effort to make an impact, which is something that Aria also stressed in her interview. And that team effort comes from the flock’s collective voice, where together, if you all speak, that will be strong enough to break down the barrier standing in between you. In a nutshell, it’s another way to make sure we don’t have the player speaking for others and instead speaking with them is to combine all of their voices.
So things like some other NPC birds that were kind of inspired by this were Tune, so obviously Tunebird, but we also had Ampbird, which is Amplify Bird, and it will hear out what you have to say, what your flock has to say, and it will amplify that to either the glass wall or another party. and share your message louder than you on your own can. In that same vein, we had another bird that I designed called Telephone Bird, aka Telebird. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve given these birds nicknames now, and I keep forcing my team to use them. Whoopsie. But Telebird, which will hear what you have to say and share it just as you have said it, so it will help you reach other people that may not want to listen to you directly, such as the Warybird. Warybird is wary of you. It’s wary of your flock because you guys are outsiders and it’s more willing to listen to its own community than it is to, you know, listen to you without any strings attached. And so things like that we have implemented in an effort to make sure that the player isn’t just the savior of the game and that everyone has an equal say in, every bird has an equal say in how the barrier is, broken down. These interviews really, really were the backbone of a lot of design choices with Reverb. And even though Reverb is still in its early phases of development, it is something that I hope we stick to. And I will work very hard to make sure we stick to it because I think it is a valuable-valuable lesson and a valuable experience for players as well to have to work with and not, you know, ordering people around, like a lot of games do. So that is Reverb. I am very excited to continue working on this game. It has been wonderful. And I do hope that when it is done, people enjoy it. So thank you all for listening to me talk for 12 whole minutes, wow, okay, about a game about little birds.
You’ve been listening to WITR 89.7 on The Underground. I have been your host, Ar, and I will talk to y’all later.