Note: Until completion, my thesis project documentation is mostly contained within NYU networks. This post is designed to provide some current project information to family, peers, and resources outside of the NYU community.
Last updated: April 16 2019ο»Ώ
Since starting my thesis project earlier this year, I have completed a Beta of the project (a game) which you can play here:
Give it a try! A single play-through takes ~5 minutes.
Thesis Statement
So what’s this project all about? Here is a blurb for context:
While we gladly recount "It's not about the destination, its about the journey", the results-based culture we live in often encourages the opposite.
Despite our professed disdain for rigid procedures and bureaucracy, we find ourselves entrenched in economic and social systems that enforce behavioral compliance to protocol.
This project is an online game and network that reframes and challenges the results-driven behavior imposed by modern constructs of control such as order, classification, and hierarchy.
Prior to ITP I was member of one of the largest results-based cultures in the world - the financial institution system.
My overall experience and practice within "the machine" (and with machines) gave me the opportunity to examine and re-examine both the benefits and drawbacks of the mindset.
I find the benefits of such a mindset are already well-represented - justifying their existence like an anti-rational meme - but the drawbacks are often ignored. With this project I hope to create one more "thing" helps expose them to others.
Project Status
The current title of the thesis project is North Central Positronics – a name I borrow from Stephen King’s Dark Tower book series.
As mentioned above, I have completed a beta of the game. Developer documentation about this prototype can be found on my GitHub here, code for the previous prototype can be found here.
The presentation below gives some more detail about the project and its goals:
Research & Inspiration
For further context, consider this essay which summarizes some of my thoughts on the topic, and the following media which has informed my project in one way or another:
Games
Film & TV
- The Matrix & Animatrix Series
- The 100 (TV series)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
Books & Articles
- A Thousand Plateaus
- The White Album (Didion)
- The Master Switch (Tim Wu)
- The Machine Stops
- Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization
- Game Design as Narrative Architecture
- Why Adventure Games Suck
- Rethinking Convergence Culture
- The Private Eye
- Ender’s Game
- Ready Player One
- The Dark Tower Series
- Super Sad True Love Story