Upon completion I am extremely proud of my game and what it represents. Being the first PC game I have developed Cracked: A Game of Consequences may lack polish, but still strongly demonstrates my concept of a choose you own adventure animal advocacy game. In hindsight an additional semester to work on this particular project would have been extremely beneficial, splitting my time equally between semesters to work on research and development firstly and secondarily on creating the game in Unity with enough time to iron out any imperfections.

I am very proud that I have gained essential knowledge with programs I have not worked with prior to this project and I will certainly continue to nurture these new skills.

Following this project I know that I would like to work with the animal advocacy charities that helped make this possible after university, implementing my media skills within a fantastic cause to educate individuals on how cutting out animal products from their diet can improve health, save the lives of animals and protect the planet.

Play Cracked: A Game of Consequences here

Press Kit and Overview

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The aim of my game has really been cemented as a way of creating transparency between the player and the products they purchase, but also as a unique form of animal rights outreach. Once the game has been played you can no longer accept ignorance of the cruel practices within the egg industry which in turn could ignite change within the individual and introduce them to a cruelty-free lifestyle, making this an exhibition piece that lasts much longer than the minutes spent playing.

Often people can be resistant to the truth behind their food, fully knowing that knowledge means taking responsibility. A challenge with exhibiting my game is getting people to play it who may not want to accept guilt or the emotional response it may provoke and therefore I will be using a challenge approach. This is inspired by an outreach event I saw shared online in which passersby are encouraged to get inside the cube for 3 minutes, without being told of what is going to happen. Inside, a 3-minute long video plays which consists of footage from the animal agriculture industry.
In this street demonstration, on a cloth surrounding a Sukkah frame is written: “Can you survive inside 3 minutes? The Cube Challenge”.
After exiting the Cube, whether it’s at the end of the video or beforehand, activists greet the people coming out and perform outreach about what they saw.

Taking this concept one step further I will be creating my own “cube” in the shape of an egg for participants to enter if they dare face the truth behind their breakfast. Using chicken wire and a sheet, an egg shape will be crafted and scaled to correspond to the space a laying chicken is given on a factory farm. The player will be able to enter the cramped egg to become immersed their new life as a chick in the egg industry as they face the screen in front of them. This will hopefully intrigue potential participants and takes it from a game to an interesting art installation that can be used at outreach events in the future.

A camera will be set up outside for players to give their initial feedback if they feel comfortable, where they will also be debriefed on what they have played, which is essential for any upsetting viewing. Participants will be offered a range of resources if they wish to learn more including egg replacements and information on other animal agriculture sectors.

I will be able to use this feedback in future developments and also understand how successful my project has been in regards of my initial aims and purpose.

Despite Cracked’s development as a playable advocacy documentary I still wanted to add some visual elements to make it feel more like a game including speech windows, a retro UI and pixel art animations throughout.

The purpose of this was not only to pay homage to visual novel games that have inspired this project but also unveil the juxtapose the reality of the egg industry against the idyllic lies sold by the egg and animal agriculture industry in general. Happy Egg, one of the leading sellers of free range eggs has often used imagery of chickens roaming fields freely and riding on the back of the farmers tractor, however the company was exposed in 2010 by Viva! for the poor conditions and animal cruelty on their farms. I wanted players to immediately make the assumption that most consumers do when they purchase eggs – that they had a good life, and then destroy those preconceptions.

One of the greatest issues I faced whilst putting the game together was creating a natural flow between each event so players could experience it in an immersive way. I tried to frame footage in a way that captured the vision of the player, often limiting focus in each scene to the essentials whilst helping to achieve my goal of creating immersion.

After setting my heart on creating my multiple choice narrative game with the Unity Engine, I knew I would have to learn how to use it fairly fast – this proved far simpler with the use of narrative plug ins such as Fungus.
Fungus is a free, open-source plugin developed for the cross-platform engine Unity that enables designers to create their own interactive storytelling projects which puts coding second to the narrative – perfect for new users such as myself. The plug in came with a range of examples of ways it could be used including some interesting visual novels that helped assist my vision when it came to creating from scratch. It is extremely visual in regards of it’s functions, including branching flowcharts to map out my story.

At this point my story lines, choices and essential film footage are ready to be developed in the engine – immediately my game began coming together. Fungus makes dialogue and narrative not only easy to create but allows you to see how the flowchart is operating as the game runs

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I added a selection of hidden characters and dialogue options for a more immersive experience and additional rewards for replaying certain scenes, including even being rescued from the slaughterhouse. It’s important that the game makes a clear point regarding the consequences of the egg industry but a “winning” route may encourage players to play more than once to explore different paths.

I have been experimenting with Game Maker and Unity to weigh up which would work best for my game. Both game development tools offer a variety of visual narrative plug ins which could assist me in creating branching narratives. Although Game Maker is fantastic for simple 2D games, Unity is considered a more professional tool offering arguably the best documentation. It boasts an active and constructive community and access to the thousands of shared assets made available on the Unity store. Most significantly that C# gives it much broader utility and its optimization tools are much more developed making it a more favourable choice for developing my game providing I keep my ambitions as a first time developer realistic.  

After speaking to the filmmakers behind iAnimal they have confirmed permission to use their undercover 360 footage obtained in a chicken barn and slaughterhouse which is ideal for my game; working alongside them I will be able to use their platform to market my game and target a specific audience. I have gathered footage from several other charities at this point to ensure I am not placing my eggs in the same basket and allowing plenty of film to work with to create a coherent and interesting narrative. Using Adobe XD I was able to create a draft text based version of a branching narrative which can be developed upon as my research expands.

This will be used to test my story and the impact it has in it’s most basic form, to ensure it makes sense and that the story connects logically. 
I allowed for a  linear story in which any bad choices could lead to a game over due to the harsh conditions the average factory farmed hen would experience, whilst creating interesting alternative routes. Many of my text elements will be replaced with video and audio to create an immersive experience inspired by iAnimal VR – A narrative will guide the individual through the experience to explain what is happening but much will be left to visual interpretation, making it much harder to reject or remain ignorant of.

This research allowed me to establish a clear purpose to my game: To educate an audience of young adults on where their food comes from a create transparency by presenting this as an engaging choose your own adventure game. Many people are unaware of the conditions egg laying chickens endure on their path from birth to their eventual slaughter. Despite battery cages rendered illegal in the EU, it is still common practice to keep egg laying hens indoor their entire life in “enriched” cages – this replacement assures 20% more space when in reality it is the equivalent of adding a postcards worth of space to their current A4 paper equivalent. Caged hens may usually never experience natural light or fresh air and do not leave their cages until they are taken to slaughter at about 18 months. A study in 2016 found that more than half of the 10 billion eggs produced in the UK – 51 per cent – were laid by hens kept in these kinds of ‘enriched’ cages.

My audience will understand that the animals in these scenarios have very limited choices in comparison to the consumer. With this in mind I will be as objective as I can with my final exhibit which will also act as an animal outreach. 

My concept began quite broad as I contemplated both the focus of the game, which animal’s story would impact the player most, as well as the approach I would take in developing the game.
British farming has always been held in high regards with the use of consumer manipulation and false labelling – I was shocked to discover that many “free range” hens will never see the outdoors and spend their short lives cramped into a large shed. If an opening to the outdoors is available, it is often impossible to get to due to the large quantities of birds in one space – The Lion Quality Code of Practice stipulates one pop-hole per 600 birds to be open for 8 hours daily but farmers have been reported to even bend these regulations. Free range units visited by Viva! in 2015 have revealed birds inside dark, stinking, filthy sheds, the sheds; investigators documented hens who were extremely sick, and dead birds littered the filthy floor.
The egg industry certainly seemed to be a strong option for my game’s narrative. Most individuals understand the slaughter of animals for meat is undeniably cruel, but often avoid the topics of animal products such as milk and eggs in which the animal is forced to produce a product over and over until they are unable, and then slaughtered, making this torturous experience even more abhorrent. In the wild, hens would only lay 20 eggs in a whole year, but on modern-day farms hens are subjected to near constant lighting and fed high protein feed to increase egg production so they produce over 300 eggs a year.

Newborn chicks are more intelligent, alert, and aware of their environment than human toddlers, according to recent scientific studies, however the maceration, suffocation or gassing of day- old chicks is RSPCA approved standard practice in UK hatcheries – in my game the consequence of simply being born as a male will resort in “game over.” In each stage of the chicken’s life they face struggles offered to the player as a choice from the moment they hatch until they are “spent” (unable to lay eggs) and are taken to the slaughterhouse for their indefinite end.

I knew that for a game like this to be effective it must be true to the life of an average egg laying hen within UK animal farms. I reached out to several charities online who provide undercover footage inside farms and slaughterhouses that accurately represent the conditions the animals are kept in and events they are likely to experience – these types of video are captured by employees and welfare officers

as to retain an unbiased view. Animal Equality provided me with their iAnimal project in which they managed to capture 360 footage inside the farms and slaughterhouses of all popular UK “food” animal. They often offer these as VR experiences at vegan outreaches across the country and would be happy to work with me to provide footage for my game.

After much thought and the great responses I had, I decided to use film footage in my game similar to the format of the previously mentioned Bandersnatch multiple choice film, as I feel it will have more impact than an animated approach. The undeniable evidence of cruelty in the egg industry would be hard to ignore and hard hitting, in the same regards as popular animal advocacy documentaries such as The Land of Hope and Glory which shows every stage of the animal agriculture industry in Britain. The game will be as accessible as possible, potentially creating as a web game which could be easily shared and used at vegan outreach events. I will be looking at a few different game engines to see what will be right for my game whilst I write my branching narrative including Unity, RenPy and Game Maker.

The game will include all processes of the egg industry from birth until death

This is the standard life of a hen bred to produce eggs for major supermarkets and retailers across the world. Despite the misconception that UK hens have a much higher level of welfare and standard of life, all of these practices can be seen today.

Birth

Birds used as breeding stock will have their eggs taken away and incubated, usually in a hatchery; it will take approximately 21 days for the chicks to hatch. Newborn chicks are more intelligent, alert, and aware of their environment than human toddlers, according to recent scientific studies. In fact, many traits that were previously thought to be exclusive to human / primate communication, cognition and social behaviour have now been discovered in chickens.

Sexing

The newly hatched chicks are sent to the sexing part of the hatchery via conveyor system where the workers will determine their gender. Female chicks are valuable to the egg industry and will be crated up ready for their trip to rearing facilities and barns. Meanwhile male chicks will be disposed of, holding no value to the egg industry as they cannot lay themselves.Unlike broiler chicken bred for meat, these male chicks will never produce the same amount of meat and are disposed of soon after hatching. There are a few common ways these newly hatched chicks are killed; shred alive in a macerator, gassed, suffocated in plastic containers or ground alive in an auger. The bodies are sometimes used in the production of low grade animal feed and filler. Each one these methods are considered humane by animal welfare regulation.

Pullets

The female chicks are transported to rearing sites, egg farms or placed in rearing facilities at a hatchery before they reach maturity. These young laying hens or “pullets” will have access to large quantities of food to promote growth until they are able to lay eggs at 16 weeks of age. At this stage they are transferred to a laying facility where their eggs can be easily collected. A pecking order is often established at this point, which pullets often seen attacking one another.

Laying

The most efficient housing for egg laying hens are cages to which they will be confined until they’re spent and can no longer lay. Although battery cages are in the process of being eliminated by EU countries including the UK, they are often documented at egg laying facilities, replaced by enriched cages. These enriched cages provide a fraction more space than a battery cage with a nest box and some perching space; these usually house 10 birds.Caged hens will never see natural light and will never leave their cages and never breathe fresh air. The only time they will leave their cage is if they are sick, injured, die prematurely or when they are transported to slaughter. Other housing and laying facilities may consist of multi-tier aviaries, single-tier barn systems, free-range or free-run. However, these constitute a small minority of the housing systems used in overall global egg production. With the only source of light in egg laying facilities being artificial, it would be kept low to minimise hen activity.

Health

These popular caged hen systems come with a range of tragic health problems. Spending the majority of their lives on wire mesh floor will lead to damage on the hens feet, often getting themselves caught and tangled between the sharp wires. Hens have been observed standing on dead bodies of other hens to alleviate the discomfort of standing on a wire mesh floor 24/7. The physical and psychological stress caused by their environment and intensive housing often leads to feather loss and fatal illnesses. The air within these intensive farming sheds are toxic due to the high levels of ammonia from hen feces and urine. It is not uncommon for these gases to cause eye, viral and respiratory infections.

Slaughter

When a hen’s egg supply becomes depleted or in ill health where she can no longer produce, she is considered “spent” and sent to slaughter. This usually occurs somewhere around 78 weeks at a standard factory laying facility. These hens are roughly pulled from their cages, stuffed into crates, loaded onto trucks and taken to slaughter. After hours on the back of the slaughter truck, often without food or water they arrive at their final destination. The most common method of slaughter is live shackling – this is where a worker holds the bird upside down and jams the bird’s legs into a slotted shackle affixed to an overhead conveyor system. This conveyor system transports them to an electrified vat of water which is meant to render them unconscious, but is not 100% effective. Regardless of their level of consciousness they have their throats slit and then to a scalding tank for defeathering – even then they may still be alive due to slaughterhouse inefficiency.

As my narrative brainstorm began to broaden I wondered if my ideas would have a profound effect on the player, even after they have reached the end. It was at an animal vigil that I stumbled upon my game concept.

Vigils are a form of peaceful outreach in which people like myself will gather outside of animal slaughter houses to witness animals as individuals for but a few moments, before they are led to their death . The SAVE Movement, which organises vigils allowing individuals to bear witness to the last moments of an animal’s life, has a Memorandum of Understanding based on the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, fostering a love-based approach to animal compassion. Most of the participants will film and photograph the animals to spread awareness of their suffering, usually on social media platforms – These tactics are often perceived as shocking as we witness the tears in cows eyes and see the chickens who have plucked themselves raw with anxiety, however are simply presenting the sad reality of the animal agriculture industry. We have reached a point where animals are not seen as living beings, but as stock or a commodity and people do not like to think otherwise.

I often leave these events with a heavy heart, feeling hopeless as I realise the animals photographed and made eye contact with that morning would now have been slaughtered. I felt enraged that these animals had no choice whilst humans do, many choosing ignorance over reality, completely unaware of the process of their food – To a degree I wish I had the ability to do just that.
But what if you were to put yourself in their place? To make these decisions that feel so huge to you as an individual, only to be meaningless as you are crushed into the back of a slaughterhouse truck?

I felt this could be expressed through the form of a “choose your adventure” in which your choice as the animal doesn’t matter, but your choices as a player, after you stop playing.

Like many other Netflix users I thoroughly enjoyed Black Mirror’s interactive adventure episode Bandersnatch, captivated by the mix of Charlie Brooker’s dark narratives and the misleading sense of control of each decision you make. Even the choice of Frosties and Sugar Puffs seems insidious in a world where every action has a consequence where you create your own adventure with the limited options given.

Choose your own adventure story books such as the Goosebumps novels consumed much of my childhood with each story formatted so that after a couple of pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to more options, and then to one of many endings following examples from as early as 1979. The original “classic” CYOA series contained 184 titles authored by 30 different writers. The books were set in locations around the globe, in outer space, under the sea and in a number of distinctly imagined fantasy worlds which soon found their way on to PC via early text based adventure games in which you could create your own narrative. Text adventures convey the game’s story through passages of text, revealed to the player in response to typed instructions, many using a simple verb-noun parser to interpret these instructions, allowing the player to interact with objects at a basic level, for example by typing “get key”. These choices would affect your game play and give access to new story lines and quests. In modern games we have seen huge progress in the development of video games and technology, allowing branching narratives to exist in a variety of formats: episodic graphic adventure games.

Choose your own adventure graphic game can witnessed in successful modern examples such as Heavy Rain, Life is Strange and Telltale’s Wolf Among Us in which your choices directly affect the narrative, character interactions and lead to unique endings.

Due to my appreciation and rich history of the format, I felt inspired to recreate such a style for an interesting subject matter, whilst still mixing film footage to give a sense of reality and choices that affect game play. Despite my great ambitions I have no prior experience using game engines.

Last semester I chose script writing as my media discipline, allowing me to expand my knowledge of writing captivating narratives that keeps the reader hooked although in the context of writing for TV, concepts were often limited to a linear structure. It helped me understand that narrative writing is extremely broad across all branches of the industry – why not learn to implement my skills into a playable, interactive game and expand my horizons?

An interesting perspective I feel is a playable situation in which the character does not have free choice or could impact their decisions in reality.

Ideas for game topics that demonstrate the concept of hopelessness or lack of control:
Climate Change – Preventing Global Disaster
Animal Agriculture – Cruelty of factory farming
Refugee Crisis – A mission to safety
Domestic Abuse-Trapped by a partner