Devlog 1 choosing the topic

In the first week of deciding the research topic, I chose two topics including both what I am interested in and what I did in my bachelor degree. The first topic is “moral dilemma” in games. It is the very first reason I chose games design as my lifetime career. In Witcher series by CD project RED, I faced so many moral choices which have pros and cons in both sides. Under so many choices I felt like I am more into Geralt of Rivia and the cruel worlds in Witcher. In Bioshock by 2k games, the choice between kill the little sister and save them is still a hard decision to make. In a corrupted world like Rapture, the best decision would be to harvest the little sister to become stronger in every aspect, but humanity is telling you to save them. Those decision making system are charming in Roleplaying games, making it both immersive and impressive.

Another topic is related to my degree in management. I often concentrate more on public policies of a game while playing. Is it acceptable in that situation? Do it have a prototype in real life? What would I do to change the system if I were a designer? But in the following research, I found that this question might be too broad. Almost all games have a decision-making system, while some of them are related to ruling the citizens. If I chose this topic, it must be narrowed down to a more specific question.

Bringing up these topics, I had a discussion with my course leaders and course mates. The moral dilemma is more attractive than the other, but considering the size and content of this module, I could choose this topic as my final major thesis. And the policy making system can be the practice of my academic writing and research.

One major problem of the “policy making system” topic is how to narrow it down as a specific research question. The first version of the question is “How to refer policies and outcomes in video game design”. In that topic, it includes multiple policies and its outcomes, which might lead to a rough conclusion and unrelated case studies. For example, one policy might be about work overtime policy progression while the other might be immigration problems. These study areas are way too broad to discuss under 2500 words limit and are quite easy to lose focus.

After discussing again with Maddy and David, I changed the topic into a more distinct one: policy on child labor. The reason why choosing it is that in one of the case studies, Frostpunk by 11 bit studios have a perfect example of pros and cons in child labor usage. And until today, there are still areas in the world which have serious child labor problems. Children are not getting enough education and leisure time while they are working as an adult. And also with the contrast of different games, I can conclude more on how designers refer policies made by different governments and period of history.

In the end, the research question for my academic writing is how to design a decision-making system in video games learning from child labor: a case study.