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kahnivore edited this page May 15, 2023 · 39 revisions

Core Concept

A large part of the motivation for this project was to conduct a personal experiment around the way I engage with technology, to learn things I could've learned years ago but didn't feel I could, and to be more intentional in the future around what technology I choose to use. It's a reminder that I can investigate whatever I don't know and that I have an impact (if only very small) on the shape of future technologies.

Title

The Undernet feels like the perfect title for this game. The idea of what is 'underneath' the internet, or any piece of technology is interesting to me. What is the internet made of? If a document is its body, what are its bones? This can be very easily demonstrated with a simple website by viewing its source code. I've been thinking more and more about the idea of code as translation: the web interface (or any interface) could be viewed as a translation of the code that underlies it. As with any translation, meaning is carried through from one to the other, and imbued in it - culture. In this configuration, the technology we use is significant; as well as the way we write code. What then does it mean to use propriety software owned by large corporations? What does it mean to have Chat GPT write code?

Software

It felt important to me to go back to basics with this. I'd never made a website before and I wanted to understand the building blocks before I looked into using/adding any other tools/libraries that are commonly used today. This kind of 'vanilla' JavaScript, HTML and CSS, the internet trifecta, felt like the right choice as an allusion to the early web which is thematically relevant to the content of the game. Perhaps more importantly, there was something empowering about doing it this way, deliberately, piece by piece.

Code

My resultant code is messy and not cleverly written which I appreciate to some degree because it demonstrates that one doesn't need to be able to write perfect code for something to exist or function. Nevertheless, I would like to edit it to be able to store state to 'save' progress on refresh, which will require some restructuring. This feels important because the nature of encouraging players to edit the document means that the game is easy to break. I would also like to edit the code stylistically, to include some story elements, or at least 'flavor' to the code seeing as though I'm encouraging people to look at it.

Why Firefox?

I added an alert at the start of the game that asks players to switch to using Firefox browser if they aren't already doing so. I chose Firefox because it is open-source and well documented. The game might actually work in other browsers but I haven't tested it, somewhat intentionally. Making this choice feels in keeping with the theoretical underpinning of the project.

Why a wiki?

Using a wiki to document the project felt like the neatest possible option. The project is already being housed in and deployed from Github, and every Github repository comes with a wiki - which means that all the different components of the project are now contained. Wikis are also editable enabling me to keep this documentation up-to-date with any revisions I might make on the game. Lastly, there's something funny and almost satirical about making a wiki for a tiny game - but, there's a huge argument for thorough documentation in the realm of open-source software - so this choice feels like it adds substance to the project as a whole.

Accessibility

I wanted this game to feel somewhat like an early internet puzzle game without really being one. This game is really about empowering individuals to engage with technology and so it aims to be accessible to people who aren't developers and who don't necessarily play a lot of puzzle games (or many games at all). A lot of puzzle games pride themselves in being really difficult - but I wanted to guide the user through the experience as explicitly as possible to demonstrate both that these tools exist and that anyone technically has access to them and the capacity to engage with them. I don't think I've necessarily achieved this (yet) - I still need to add a lot of hints and do more user-testing to properly realize this, but that's the intention anyway. Hints are provided in the console panel, which in the game is referred to as Clippy's Brain.

Clippy's Brain

Clippy was an early feature of Microsoft Office - an intelligent user interface designed to help users navigate the software. There were many different faces of office assistants but Clippy is the most commonly remembered because it was the default. Users hated Clippy for being annoying and unhelpful - and Microsoft used this fact to advertise Windows XP, in which the office assistant feature was no longer set to be on by default. They made a 3-part series of anti-Clippy Flash animations, almost as if they weren't responsible for creating Clippy. I decided to have the console panel be referred to as Clippy's Brain - i.e. a module or microchip installed in Clippy allow her to provide assistance, removing the responsibility from Clippy and putting it back on the corporation. I wanted this separation to be a subtle reference to how big corporations can enforce that someone play a unsavory role in order to survive - and then allude to the effects of that by showing Clippy's character being in a bad way. It also meant that I could over-provide hints - tonally being annoying and persistent is in keeping with the character.

Narrative

The narrative is broken down in more detail in the walkthrough section, but basically I wanted it to be light and entertaining to provide motivation to continue the play experience and to contrast the more serious subject matter. I also wanted to show that the characters were more aware of their plight than we might've assumed at the beginning and are fighting back against the system, to reinforce the idea of empowerment. I also (and this is not very explicit) decided to represent Clippy as a trans woman and the Internet Explorer as non-binary, because, on some level, why wouldn't they be. In the current wave of anti-trans legislation and propaganda it feels important for anything I make to have at least some kind of trans agenda; and trans people in particular could benefit from individual empowerment with regards to technology, especially in the realms of security and managing safe networks for community organizing.

Art Style

The ASCII art provided a conceptually relevant aesthetic for the game. The raw text is stored in code itself which is more basic than storing images or generating anything using a third-party platform. It's also stylistically reminiscent of the time when Clippy and the Internet Explorer were relevant. A portion of the art was created by me but a few pieces were taken from https://ascii.co.uk/ which is a collection of ASCII art by various artists. I didn't feel it was necessary to focus on getting good at ASCII art when there's already so much great content that already exists. I would of course like to request permission from the artists to use their art if this project were to be showcased in any kind of exhibit, although I'm not completely sure how to go about that. Perhaps in that eventuality I could find a way to get in contact or else create replacements. For the meantime they're kind of spiritual placeholders within a student project that is definitely not going to be making any money.

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