This second last trimester of my Games Developing course, our team of 11 is developing a game about Gender Issues.
There has been a lot of misinterpretations of gender in video games, a lot of stereotypes about transgender people which presents a negative image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrvhHc8TFRw
But games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition have represented transgender people in a positive image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd8b3fl6tMY
Our team is developing a game presenting issues of non-binary, transgender, transsexual and different gender people. Our game is to present gender identity positively and the issues people face with their identity. The purpose of our game is to include different gender people, from what I understand of the brief.
So far, we have the basis of the game's story. It starts off with a woman, Jaimie, and her hometown getting destroyed by the 4 mystical dragons. She is driven to seek out these dragons and put an end to their destructive nature. Along the way, people/towns folk belittle her attempt because she is a woman. On her adventure, she meets up with different individuals who see her efforts and want to support her on her journey. These characters include individuals with different gender identities.
Meanwhile, there is a group of white cis males venturing on the same quest to defeat the 4 mystical dragons, but are doing a bad job of it. They are seen as the mighty heroes of this place by all townsfolk and are treated with respect unlike our heroine and their party. The group/party of white cis males are close-minded and see them selves more superior then the other party.
That's the basic description of the story, but over the weeks, the story will develop more.
The game is an open-world RPG, the player able to manage a party of 5(?) and go on various quests. Our message is mainly being presented through the behaviour of the AI (townsfolk), how they interact with the players diverse party.
Originally we we're going to have the player earn the trust of the towns people so they could accept them, but that sent out a bad message that people who have different gender identities have to do favours in order to be accepted, which shouldn't happen.
My role for this project is to design the User Interface (UI) for our game. I'm also doing concepts for items in the game and doing art for item sprites and UI art. This includes:
Basically I'll be documenting and designing UI. I'll be making art assets related to the UI.