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!