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".