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Hello I’m Kate Potts Co-author of Lighthearted and I want to talk a little about how I used my master in psychology to focus the game’s mechanics on how we experience emotions and personal growth. (thread)
Kurt came to me asking about Pultchik’s emotions color wheel. I explained that Pultchik’s framework for emotions takes our 8 basic emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, and disgust and helps organize them. /2
From these core emotions we can organize more complicated emotions life rage, vigilance, ecstasy, admiration, terror, amazement, grief, and loathing. It was this organization of emotions that helped us determine how emotions would fit into the world of Lighthearted. /3
Understanding how important it is for a person to be calm and in control of themselves, is why we decided to place Green (Peaceful) at the center of our characters emotional spectrum, with the extremes moving out on the opposite ends of the spectrum on either side. /4
The emotional spectrum was an important addition to the game for me because it focuses the game, not only how the characters approach actions, but how the characters feel about those actions. /5
Characters in the game are expected to grow out of the childish college freshmen they start as, and grow into young adults through their experiences, decisions, and struggles. The cliques they start with come with down sides just as much as they do benefits. /6
This is how society has seen them, so far, in their lives and if they want to change that image of themselves they will have to work to gain self-actualization, and the game will reward them for that. /7
We called those decision points Malfunctions and they are tied to the fight, flight, or freeze instincts. This instinct is our body's natural response to fear and stress. When developing the Malfunctions I looked at how each one would match one of these responses. /8
Some of them may not be too obvious, but in a stressful situation a rude comment can be a flight response or bottling up your emotions can be a freeze response. Each Clique has a unique set of Malfunctions that guide them through their own coming of age story. /9
Some of them may not be too obvious, but in a stressful situation a rude comment can be a flight response or bottling up your emotions can be a freeze response. Each Clique has a unique set of Malfunctions that guide them through their own coming of age story. /10
@kurtpotts and I have worked together to write a game that draws on more than just one aspect of who the character is. In that, I feel like we have created a game that explores a new side of who the characters are and how they grow. /11
If you would like to learn more check out our Kickstarter at http://lighthearted.games /end
