Reflection on "Zip" - The Inspiration

With a strange and uncanny sense of deja vu I look through the snaps I have taken of my portfolio, three and a half years ago, my teacher looked through it in the class I am now sitting in as a mentor, of course I am focused on mentoring the students who haven’t quite turned up yet! The main page is the initial one where I try to describe my whole idea with pictures that serve as my inspiration and quick sketches drawn on the back of a worksheet. All in all, I really enjoyed putting it together but starting off was a challenge as I did not pick a target audience, which is how I learned the importance of having a brief, knowing who you are making it for. Even though this was a personal task for university admissions, I felt that the idea needed focus. This focus was in the form of my intended target audience.

Target audience

As women in games is a decisive, inherent and constant argument in games design, culture, history and marketing, I felt it was important to speak about this through my design, not a no-holds-barred shout against the injustices of female soldiers in nought but battle bras, but a subtle reminder that there are more to women than that. Additionally, young children who are impressionable like moulded play dough can sense when a toy or game is not meant for them. Games can be seen a boys’ toy, without going into a discourse about girls’ games being about animals, cooking and fashion designing, I wanted to create an idea which a girl could play and aspire to be like, a brave, bold and fun character that does not perpetuate female stereotypes but push them aside for more important things. One of my most favourite design moments was creating a mission where she saves her male friend.  Simple as it sounds, it spoke volumes to me when I played as Jade in Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil.

Released in 2003, the game was always marked as a “hidden gem”, however, my brother picked it up for a tenner, I began the game and got stuck, I couldn’t leave the lighthouse which was the safe haven for the orphaned children on the water planet Hillys. Eventually I got outside and took in the tranquil cel-shaded and cute scenery, the characters tottered along the greenery and a floating assistance mech gave me a message about a potential new story: Jade was a journalist. She may not have had an occupation much like the Battlefield characters, but as a journalist, this was an open minded decision to have an investigative, intrigued lead that rooted out injustices.

So as the story goes, the planet has been attacked by aliens who ravage the land and kidnap citizens. The alpha section, the military, had failed to stop the attack. Jade’s uncle, a friendly but abrasive pig, Pej’y, scolds the military for arriving too late. Face to face with the aliens who had kidnapped the children from her shelter, the player sees a ferocious Jade who fights tooth and nail to save them, maternal, moral and right. Years later as I reflected on the game I could see the messages they sent, whether intentional or not, this character was an inspiration for me as a teenager because she was moral, right and fought for the citizens’ rights. That she happened to use a short bo staff, shuriken like disc projectiles and sneaking kick attacks had everything to do with it too!

Reflection on "Zip"

After graduating and becoming an academic mentor, I have had time to reflect on my ideas, my development process and myself, without trying to sound to epic; hindsight is 20/20. I scrolled through my blog and found myself laughing at the content, the quirky designs my team and I had, I made small changes here and there, would have done this or that. This reflection spurred this post, I would like to look back at my portfolio that I used in my university interview, it was an exciting and ambitious time, no deadline, no constraints, just exploring my imagination with a cool as ice character called Zip who would leap off of bookshelves on a book and float to safety, dodging naughty imps and saving a kidnapped teddy bear.

I worked on the portfolio for about 6 weeks during my last year at college, I looked through it with my tutor who mentored and guided me, we spoke about games culture, media and the wider context of things like escapism, feminism and ethnicity in games. I remember struggling to pick an idea to stick with, but this one character I had doodled with on holiday in India, left an impression with me, maybe the heat of the Indian summer seared the little character onto my brain mush. I had designed a world of conspiracy and struggle, a character who was flawed much like us, it was dark and dangerous and felt close to home, but Zip was an escape from that, the design was lighthearted, fun and had scope for so much more. It was not what I had expected to spend my spare time creating, but I enjoyed every moment of it, concocting new ways Zip could escape her enemies and defeat them in nonviolent and often clever ways.

I explored how a female character would be perceived, I made sure not to fall into the pitfalls of over-sexualising the character but to instead give her an edge that made her interesting and unique, although my portfolio idea had no audience, I understood the importance of a female character being a kind of role model, like Jade from Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil, for impressionable young players. I drew out level plans and made sure to play them out on player, I found many flaws and knew that although level design is not my forte, it was exciting to hash and rehash the playing field.

However, after I started university I abandoned her and only now have I realised how bad I feel, after all, she got me into uni.
Alas, here is my reflective and restorative piece on "Zip".