The defining moment of my second game, “Grounds for Concern” came while reading Ian Bogost’s “Persuasive Games.” In the book, Bogost puts forward a theory of procedural rhetoric, where arguments are made and absorbed through a process of doing, performing, and going through a procedure. The best example I can think of comes from a game called “JFK Reloaded.” In the game, players are asked to become the fateful assassin, standing in the window of the schoolbook depository with rifle clutched in hand. As JFK’s motorcade drives by, you’re asked to try and recreate the assassination as closely as possible to the reported events of history. Passable graphics and a realistic physics engine makes this goal possible (if not exactly easy). The game makers claim that the game was intended to show that the reports of the Warren Commission could have actually happened that way. In reality, the game is so incredibly difficult, that it simultaneously casts doubt on whether Oswald could have gotten those shots. Rather than becoming a failure, the game actually highlights the complex effectiveness of procedural rhetoric. What ever you take away from playing the game, it’s clear to me that stepping into Oswald’s virtual shoes is a lot more effective then simply reading about the controversy.

Armed with the idea of making a game based on procedural rhetoric, I started to think about what procedures I could highlight in virtual form and what kinds of arguments they could make. Outside of academia, I’ve held a number of barista jobs in a great number of local cafes. I love everything about working in cafes, especially the process of making the perfect espresso beverage. And although I’ve been known to go to Starbucks and other corporate cafes on more than one occasion, my heart still belongs to the local café and I worry that Starbucks patrons don’t get the full café experience as I know it. So I set out to make a game where the player would be asked to use virtual equivalents of the café counter and make a number of beverages. I hoped to show that a lot of work and process goes into making those drinks and not every café goes the simple pushbutton route of Starbucks. There’s an art and process to drink construction and I wanted to give the player that experience as much as possible. Simultaneously, the game’s narrative would involve a Starbucks (or Buckucks in my game world) about to open across the street from the café you’re working in. Hopefully I could capture some of the anxiety and fear that local café owners and employees go through as the giant of corporate coffee descends upon them.

I went straight to work. I knew that I needed to get the drink construction working first, so I gathered a number of pictures based on café equipment. I knew from previous Flash experience that all the moving parts would need to be separate images, so I spent an ungodly amount of time in Photoshop breaking images apart. I needed: an espresso grinder, an espresso machine, two separate levers to attach to the machine, two portafilters, a milk steaming pitcher, and the actual containers to catch the espresso shots. Each piece needed the background removed in Photoshop and had to be resized to scale. Once I had the pieces ready (easily a four to five hour process), I was ready to start building the work area in Flash. Assembling the layout became a process of procedural rhetoric for myself. What was the best way to layout the game scene so that it felt realistic but also worked in a 2D space? After finding a satisfying layout, the real challenge still loomed ahead of me. How would I make the drink creation work? This is where things got ugly.

 

Continue