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A monster's hearth: seeing yourself through monsters

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A monster's hearth: seeing yourself through monsters

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Content A Monster’s Hearth
Seeing Yourself Through Monsters
by
Israel Jones
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2022
Copyright 2022 Israel Jones
Acknowledgements
I’d like to acknowledge a number of people who have supported my work.
My faculty advisors, Margaret Moser and Sam Roberts, for their constant support
and feedback.
My external advisor Danny Wynne, for his specialized advice and guidance.
Martzi Campos and Laird Malamed, for their work as the professors for the thesis
course.
The faculty of IMGD, particularly Richard Lemarchand and Tracy Fullerton.
All 15 of my fellow team members, for their constant dedication to this project.
My family for their emotional, and occasionally monetary support that made me feel
secure in making this project.
The IMGD MFA cohort of 2022, for their breadth of perspectives and skill sets that
helped inform the final state of the project.
And thanks to everyone else who has played or and supported this game along the
way.
ii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii
List of Figures iv
Abstract v
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1 Story 1
1.2 Gameplay 1
Chapter 2: Ideation 3
2.1 Theoretical foundations 3
2.2 Prior art 6
2.3 Early stages 14
2.4 The rough experience goals and narrative pillars 15
Chapter 3: Pre-production 17
3.1 Forming a team 17
3.1.1 A quick team breakdown 19
3.2 The narrative pillars 19
Chapter 4: Production 30
Chapter 5: Reflection 32
5.1 Where could our process be improved? 32
5.2 Potential for future work 32
Chapter 6: Conclusion 34
6.1 What were our goals 34
6.2 What did we accomplish 34
6.3 What’s next? 34
Bibliography 36
iii
List of Figures
Fig. 1. Screenshot of Drusilla and a skeleton farming. 1
Fig. 2. Screenshot of Graveyard Keeper by Lazy Bear Studios (2018). 7
Fig. 3. Screenshot of Stardew Valley by ConcernedApe (2016). 8
Fig. 4. Poster for That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime by Fuse (2018). 9
Fig. 5. Screenshot of Atomicrops by Bird Bath Games (2019). 11
Fig. 6. Screenshot of Undertale by Toby Fox (2015). 12
Fig. 7. Banner for Brave Animated Series by Bigcat Studio (2021). 13
Fig. 8. Portrait of Ee, The Nuckelavee. 23
Fig. 9. Portrait of Awita, The Ghoul. 24
iv
Abstract
Monster Haven is a 2D single-player farming and management RPG that
focuses on community building. The game does this in the context of a fantasy
setting, where the player builds and defends a small community of monsters. This
game is meant to explore a fantasy of power and self-suciency for marginalized
groups through the metaphor of monsters.
In this project, I tried to grapple with matters of representation and
community organization, both within the game and within my team working on the
project. I hope that some of my thoughts on both topics can be useful to projects in
the future, beyond just my own, because they are both very dicult, but very
important to making media and influencing change.
v
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Story
A long time ago, Drusilla was a slave to a powerful necromancer. In a battle
with the neighboring kingdoms, both Drusilla and the necromancer died, and
Drusilla fell into a magical concoction which slowly turned her into a lich, a powerful
undead. Now, Drusilla has woken up, newly undead in an abandoned castle and
decides to create a peaceful life for herself in this wasteland. However, mankind,
with its fear, selfishness, and hate, won’t make that easy. Over time, she meets
other monsters who wander on the edges of human society, and they work
together to create a commune and defend themselves against the threat of
encroaching human forces.
1.2 Gameplay
Fig. 1 Drusilla and a skeleton farming.
1
The game loop of Monster Haven revolves around farming to feed the
members of your growing community. Players can till the earth, then plant, water,
and harvest various crops. In addition to the player, members of the community can
be assigned to do tasks, helping to farm, scavenge outside of the castle, cook, or
craft helpful upgrades. At the end of every day, monsters will eat some of whatever
food is available.
Similar to many other life sims and farming games, in Monster Haven the
player can improve their relationship with community members by talking to them,
keeping them well fed, and completing quests for them. Improving your relationship
with a character can provide mechanical benefits (ex. They get a bonus to a certain
type of work), and all characters must be kept happy to do their best work- the less
happy they are, the slower they will work.
The game takes place over 15 in-game days, with story events happening on
specific dates. Human influence in the game is mostly communicated through
these cutscenes, as well as relationship milestone conversations with community
members. The main story is linear, though some dialog near the end will be altered
based on whether the player managed to complete certain quests.
2
Chapter 2: Ideation
2.1 Theoretical foundations
In undergrad, I took two classes which planted the seeds for my thesis. One
was a media studies class on the representation of animals in media. The core
takeaways in this class for me were thinking about the ethics of representation and
considering the ways that animals and non-human characters in media are used as
stand-ins to talk about groups considered “other.” Although the class focused on
fairly “serious” films like The Cove (Psihoyos, 2009) or Project Nim (Marsh, 2011), this
analysis is something that I have brought to media that I enjoy, such as the large
library of Hanna-Barbera cartoons featuring talking animals. In college, my dad had
the nickname “Grape Ape.” What is the implication there, when my father, a tall,
strong, intelligent black man is given a nickname comparing him to a giant naive
gorilla? Was there any meaning behind the connection between a purple “grape”
themed character and the stereotype of black people loving grape soda? Despite
the negative connotations, he identified with it. I identify with it too, to a degree: in
my senior year of undergrad I was Grape Ape for halloween. And why not? Despite
the connotations, Grape Ape is big, strong, and loves to help people, even if they
perceive him as beastly. There is a type of power there.
I was able to pursue this line of thought even more deeply in a class I took
the following semester, about monsters in literature. At the core of this class is
Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses) (Cohen, 1996). The theses that are
most relevant to my project are:
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● Thesis I: The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body,
● Thesis III: The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Di erence, and
● Thesis VI: Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire.
Overall, these theses posit that monsters are purely cultural artifacts, used to
represent the other, and the fear of its power. Monsters are a lens into the values,
fears, prejudices of a society - the abject things that must be destroyed or rejected.
However, they ARE still powerful, and there is a desire in these narratives for the
freedom of the monster, the ability to surpass definitions or limitations. Cohen
states that the realms of monsters
are more than dark regions of uncertain danger: they are also realms
of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. Their monsters serve as
secondary bodies through which the possibilities of other genders,
other sexual practices, and other social customs can be explored.
Hermaphrodites, Amazons, and lascivious cannibals beckon from the
edges of the world, the most distant planets of the galaxy. (Cohen,
1996, p. 18)
A significant number of works show that this sort of romanticization of the monster
is as popular as it has ever been, with many stories very intentionally pushing at
this boundary of the acceptable. Twilight (Meyer, 2011) takes the sexual subtext of
Dracula (Stoke, 1920) and turns it into text, the conflicts inherent in this desire
being front and center in the narrative. X-Men (Kirby & Lee, 1963-2022) over its
nearly 60 year run has dealt heavily with themes of power and monstrosity as a
means of representing the real world’s anti-semitism, racism, ableism and LGBTQ+
4
discrimination. And over the years, classic monster stories such as that of Medusa,
Frankenstein, King Kong, and even The Devil have given way to numerous stories,
films, and art pieces lamenting their sad fates, or celebrating the type of beauty
they could have represented, the power in their uniqueness. Lifetimes of being
beheaded, burned, and damned, over and over, from every angle, in every medium.
Particularly for those who have seen themselves in the monster, experienced their
own su ering, had violence done against them and people like them, often for
reasons outside of their control, how can we not feel sympathetic? King Kong
(Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933) is a particularly potent example, because it is
simultaneously a story where the racism and exoticization in the representation of
the character is easy to see, and one of the reasons many sympathize for the
character, even in the film. King Kong fits narratives of dangerous black men
sexually desiring white women that was prevelant then, and frankly now, and has
led to many unrightful deaths, such as the murder of Emmett Till. King Kong is also
the inspiration for Grape Ape, who I mentioned earlier. I actually like to see Grape
Ape as a reformation of the character, an opportunity to see what could have been.
That is something I myself would like to be able to do with even more monsters.
Video games show the destruction of the monster recreated ad-infinitum
and often separated from their original contexts. Many action games revolve
around mowing down hundreds of seemingly mindless monsters - and plenty of
them have strayed into dicult or outright o ensive spaces when the line between
“monsters” and “the real life struggles monsters represent” are blurred beyond the
point of metaphor. A particular example that sticks out in my mind is the game
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Shadow of War (Forgey, 2017), in which the player mentally dominates and enslaves
orcs to create an army. Various reviews had fairly nuanced takes on the issue;
although the act was horrible, the game also did not shy away from making it feel
horrible. One reviewer simply stopped playing- the game achieved its goal so well
that he no longer felt comfortable embodying the protagonist.
Another notable genre deeply interlinked with the destruction of monsters is
the dungeon crawler, inspired by tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons.
Most dungeon crawlers revolve around delving into “abandoned” fortresses, and
killing and looting all of the (often humanoid) monsters within. Though this
obviously varies, a large number of these games do not provide a narrative context
for the majority of these enemies. The same classical types of monsters I
mentioned before, vampires, gorgons, minotaurs, werewolves, are a form of set
dressing in these games. If Medusa being beheaded once is tragic, how could we
quantify the tragedy of her being beheaded 50 times in a few hours of gameplay?
This question, and many other questions that I had about how and why I saw
monsters as sympathetic, really interested me. As I investigated monsters and
representation, I saw more and more media that gave me bits and pieces of the
answers I was looking for.
2.2 Prior art
A lot of di erent games have influenced my development of my thesis
concept, but the clearest comparables, which have a ected both my thought
process and the way that I think people will see my game, are Graveyard Keeper
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(Lazy Bear Games, 2018), Stardew Valley (Concerned Ape, 2016), That Time I Got
Reincarnated As A Slime (Eight Bit, 2018), Atomicrops (Bird Bath Games, 2019), and
Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015). I also picked up another reference much later in
development that helped me reflect on my project’s approach to the RPG themes,
Brave Animated Series (Bigcat Studio, 2021).
Fig. 2 Graveyard Keeper by Lazy Bear Studios (2018).
Graveyard Keeper was the most immediate inspiration for this project, but
only in a couple of very specific ways. In terms of the overall structure of the
gameplay, Graveyard Keeper is a lot like Stardew Valley (discussed later), with some
more emphasis on foraging and exploration, and a lot less emphasis on
relationships. There are a few quality of life things I like in Graveyard Keeper, but the
most unique and interesting mechanic for me in this game was automation. The
player can create zombies to automate several resource collection tasks, such as
farming or mining, and I thought this was super interesting from a design
perspective; a lot of farming sims have ways to let the player save time on work, but
generally do not give you ways to get direct help from other characters. However,
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the zombies were completely interchangeable, with no personality, had arbitrary
limits to what they could do, and completed their tasks in a way that was
fundamentally di erent from how the player would themselves complete a task. I
was interested in automation for a Stardew-like farming game, but I wanted to look
at it from a di erent angle than Graveyard Keeper. This thought stewed in me for
probably about a year. In the meantime, I kept playing games, reading comics, and
watching anime, many of which also became strong references for the project,
which I will expand upon below.
Fig. 3 Stardew Valley by ConcernedApe (2016).
Stardew Valley is a top down farming simulator, and a very prominent entry
in the genre. It is relaxing, positive, and very homey. Stardew is full of relatable
characters and events that have endeared it to a large audience. There are a lot of
mechanics in Stardew Valley that are similar to my game, by virtue of both games
being farming sims, and Stardew Valley being very well executed. The player grows
plants, raises animals, builds a farm, becomes closer with the community, and many
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more things. I think that the strong positive valence of Stardew makes it a great
inspiration, however there is not as much of a focus on narrative conflict in it as I
would like in my game. There is some trouble under the surface with some other
characters in the town, but the player character themself is totally uncompromised.
The only major ethical choice the player is required to make is whether they will
help revitalize the community naturally, or if they will pay big business to come into
the town to do it. This is a decision the game will give the player forever to make,
and is not really the focus of the experience overall, unlike in my game, where
conflicts with humans are at the core of the narrative. A lot of my core systems are
inspired by Stardew, particularly the farming game loop and the relationship
progression system.
Fig. 4 That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime by Fuse (2018).
For a few years I have been interested in the isekai genre of anime, which are
anime in which a character is sent to another world. A lot of them play up the
fantasy of “what if I was in a video game”, but some definitely take that in di erent
directions. TTIGRAAS is one of my favorite isekais, which focuses on a human who
dies and is reincarnated as a slime in a world inspired by fantasy roleplaying games
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(RPGs). Then, with his special powers, he rallies various populations of monsters to
form a peaceful society. This is somewhat similar to the general structure of my
story, however, the themes as well as a range of details are very di erent. TTIGRAAS
is a fantasy of optimization- it asks the question how much one powerful, mostly
unselfish, and relatively resourceful person could get done if they were able to
humble everyone else into working together. With some exceptions, the main
character faces very little real conflict, commanding large populations unilaterally
with little to no understanding of the individual cultures of these populations. For
what the show is, I believe this is fine. It is not a show you are supposed to take
seriously, you are just supposed to be impressed and entertained by the main
character’s powers, and all of the cool projects they get to do. To quote my brother,
“It’s like watching an RTS[real time strategy game]”.
I wanted to press some of the same buttons with my game in terms of the
satisfaction of success, but I did not want to structure it such that the player is a
savior, safe from danger above the people they are trying to help. I wanted there to
be dicult choices, and problems that could not simply be fixed by the player
having a strong hand. They should be a collaborator, not an overlord.
10
Fig. 5 Atomicrops by Bird Bath Games (2019).
About a year after playing Graveyard Keeper, I played Atomicrops, a fast
paced action farming game, where you have to protect your produce from pests in
a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In most ways, my game, which is meant to be calm
and easy, is very di erent from Atomicrops, which is all about speed, strategy, and
action. In Atomicrops the player has to farm fast, because you yield produce on a
daily basis, and things need to be planted, watered, and most importantly defended
against nightly hordes. To aid you in this task, the player can find farm animals out
in the wastes, which help water, dig, and weed in your garden. Playing Atomicrops
made me remember my interest in automation from Graveyard Keeper! Although
they were so simple, the farm animals had so much personality as they walked
around and did tasks, and I realized that a combination of both automation systems
could be interesting. Eventually this was metabolized into the game’s task
assignment system.
As a final note on this, I will mention that Atomicrops is a very fun and
rewarding game, and as its designer is my external advisor, I will be looking for ways
11
to milk the lessons it teaches to help make my game awesome.
Fig. 6 Undertale by Toby Fox (2015).
Undertale is on this list more because other people have brought it up when
talking about my game, and therefore it is worth comparing and contrasting the
two. Although Undertale is chock full of monsters, and has some interesting things
to say about the monster/human dynamic, the core of the game isn’t about that.
My take is that Undertale is primarily about mercy, forgiveness, friendship, trauma,
and duty. Though monsters have been forced underground, this is a detail that sets
the stage for its worldbuilding more than it is the ethical linchpin of Frisk’s journey.
In fact, in the end the monsters get to just… integrate into society. Which is great for
them.
I wanted my game to be all about dealing with the immediate threats of
oppression and ostracization. It is certainly still about friendship and trauma, but in
the case where the source of your trauma is still facing you down, and your friends
are the others you want to protect from that evil. The player would not be some
outsider coming to restore order and build bridges, the player would be an insider
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who wants to help defend the walls.
Fig. 7 Brave Animated Series by Bigcat Studio (2021).
Brave Animated Series is a later reference I found- it’s an animated series
based on the Taiwanese webcomic Brave Series by Yellow Book. The series takes
place in a world inspired by traditional fantasy role playing games, and interrogates
the relationships between human adventurers and the monsters that they fight.
The show is crude, and a bit janky in its presentation of issues, but it does an
excellent job of presenting the monsters as oppressed and justified in the actions
that they take in self-defense. Frankly, it does everything thematically that I wish
my game did! I want my game to be funnier, crasser, more violent. If I were to
continue work on this project, there are some things I would want to return to,
particularly in regards to the script, to make it embody more of the anger and desire
for power or control that is represented in Brave Animated Series.
To bring it all together, my references represent a wide range of media that
looks at monsters, community building, collaboration, and farming from various
13
angles. All of them have very di erent values they are trying to communicate, but
they have each created interesting worlds, while saying something meaningful
about our own. Using these references, I set forth to create a game that
represented monsters as full people, capable of working together, relying on each
other, and defending themselves against external forces. The contrasting views
presented by these references helped me ensure that I was nuanced, aware of the
state of this conversation in the games space, and mindful of certain pitfalls. I truly
believe that if I were to be missing any one of these references, this game would
not be as rich as it is, if I had made it at all.
2.3 Early stages
The early versions of this project evolved very directly from my experience
with Graveyard Keeper. As I wrote previously, Graveyard Keeper had an automation
system that seemed promising to me, and I loved the idea of a zombie-run farm.
However, the zombies were not really people; they were automatons and poor ones
at that. Beyond that concern, I realized the appeal of the zombie working class was
ultimately not one of a growing, diversified enterprise. It shared more of its
aesthetics with slavery. I want to be clear here- I don’t believe that these were
major or intentional aesthetics, but arguably they are there. In response to this
realization, I started to imagine approaches to a similar system that would look and
feel more like you were helping structure a shared enterprise, rather than being a
taskmaster.
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More and more it seemed like I needed to be making a game about communal
growth, where the individual strengths of each of its members could come together
to make a stronger whole. A farming game was still a strong option to pursue this
goal, as games like Stardew Valley explore similar topics. Farming is also a pursuit
that can really demonstrate the diversity of needs and strengths in a community.
So with this in mind, I started prototyping and crystallizing my experience goals.
2.4 The rough experience goals and narrative pillars
My primary design goal was to demonstrate that we as marginalized people
can reclaim or rewrite narratives that hurt us. Right now many people are calling for
stories where marginalized people can slay dragons, but I wanted to let
marginalized people be dragons. To facilitate this design goal, my experience goals
were the following:
● Players should feel the radical agency and power associated with the
monstrous other.
● The player should experience community, security, and fulfillment.
The plan was to fulfill the first goal by giving each monster abilities and a cool
look that made them interesting, unique, and powerful from the perspective of the
player. I also wanted to structure the narrative such that the player felt like they
and the members of their community were in control of their fates, in spite of their
oppression.
15
To fulfill the second goal, I planned to focus on mechanics and activities that
reinforced community, security, and fulfillment, such as farming, relationship
building, and a task system.
In addition to these experience goals, we also created narrative pillars to
better direct our writing. These will be further discussed section 3.2, as they were
created after the formation of team but they are as follows:
● Growth comes through community organization.
● The dierences between us are what makes the world beautiful and
interesting.
● Violence is at the core of all meaningful political action.
The image of the game in my head at this point was crude and violent, but
full of joy and camaraderie. It had pain, and it had fear, but there was light in the
darkness.
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Chapter 3: Pre-production
My game existed at this point as an idea. However, much like the world I
wanted to create, actually making the game would require bringing together a
diverse group of people, and aligning our purposes. To make a game whose
characters really took a stand, I would have to take a stand, even if I got pushback.
The primary question of my thesis was this: Could I make a game that reflected the
real struggles and hopes of marginalized people through stories of sympathetic
monsters?
3.1 Forming a team
Although building a strong team is important for any project, the realities of
how this project has gone have given me strong opinions about stang for games
that deal with issues of marginalization. You need people you trust, but you also
need people who can have dicult conversations with you, and above all, you want
people who understand the issues, ideally from personal experience. For me, I
wanted to try to make a game that explicitly appealed to a particular demographic,
and was not too concerned with the reception of my game beyond that
demographic, at least in terms of the communication of my themes. I think the
same is true for a lot of art games; if you are making a game for and about black
people, you will be best served by a team of black people. If you are making a game
for and about women, you will be best served by a team of women. If you are
making a game for and about LGBTQ+ people you will be best served by a team of
LGBTQ+ people- the list goes on. Although in specific scenarios it can be helpful to
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have a complete outside perspective, for projects targeting marginalized groups, I
really believe you will be best served having a team with diverse perspectives from
inside that group rather than outside of it. You can only do so much as a creative
director. Having a team that is dense with the types of people you want to
represent in your game means that you can trust the parts of it you don’t make
yourself to be authentic and rich. For instance, I know that in terms of art and
music, another person in my cohort has had a lot of trouble telling a black story in
his game because of issues where certain members of his team did not know how
to represent black people or their culture.
Because I hoped to address an issue that a ects a wide range of
marginalized people, I am quite fortunate that my team is chock full of people who
have meaningful perspectives on marginalization, with identities spanning races,
nationalities, genders, orientations and religions. One of the big things that helped
me on this front was putting my interest in issues of marginalization front and
center in all of my pitches and presentations. There was no need to make the game
palatable to anyone else. And the people who contacted me were great fits! I was
honestly impressed with how much relevant experience people applying to work on
the project had. If anything, looking back this is another place in my process where I
could have even been more extreme, and I have recommended the same thing to
people preparing their theses now who want to talk about minority issues- if you
put at least one thing that is completely unpalatable to those outside of your target
audience front and center, you can simultaneously attract strong candidates and
repel those who won’t build your vision.
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3.1.1 A quick team breakdown
● Director (Israel Jones - Me)
● Producers (Annabell Liao, Harrison Roberts)
● Narrative Team (Collette Quach, Samantha Xiao, Je Young)
● Design Team (Lizby Dingus, Annie Feng, Daniel Franco)
● Engineers (Parnika Sharma, Kevin Zhang)
● Art Team (Jasmin Cortez, Jebby Zhang, DarkBlu9 - external)
● Audio Team (Simon Lee, Jacob Ruttenberg)
● UI/UX Designer (Tiana Bulakul)
3.2 The narrative pillars
Although we had experience goals, I found that after forming the team and
refining the idea we needed more specific direction for what we were saying with
our game. To do this I decided that we needed to decide on a set of narrative pillars,
based on techniques Chris Gardiner used for the game Sunless Skies (Failbetter
Games, 2019). I met with the narrative team and a producer, and we brainstormed a
number of potential pillars, which we then refined to the following three:
● Growth comes through community organization.
● The dierences between us are what makes the world beautiful and
interesting.
● Violence is at the core of all meaningful political action.
It is worth addressing that the third pillar is unlike the others, but it was a
point that I stood by, and defended to my advisors. There were some proposed
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rewordings, reframings. “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” was a
somewhat humorous one, because if those eggs are people then all we’re doing is
dancing around the issue. Since the beginning of the pandemic (though before that
as well), here and abroad, we have seen people struggle against violent, oppressive
regimes. (As I write this Russia has just invaded Ukraine - or more accurately
resumed a long lived campaign to re-occupy their former colony.) However, in the
struggle between oppressors and oppressed, it is very common for the oppressed
to be villainized in a terrible sort of bothsidesism, where anything they do that
might break the law, or cause material damage to their oppressor makes them just
as bad. However, many theorists posit that violence is at the core of most major
political action, especially in the context of modern revolution. In Theory Of Social
And Economic Organization (Weber 1922/1968), German sociologist Max Weber
defines the modern state as existing entirely in relation to violence:
A compulsory political association with continuous organization
(politischer Anstaltsbetrieb) will be called a ‘state’ if and in so far as its
administrative sta successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order. (p.
154)
Based on this definition, revolution would inherently require the legitimizing
of new violence (that of the revolutionaries), and likely the delegitimizing of other
violence (that of the former oppressors). Although Weber’s definition of the state
and the legitimate use of physical force is a commonly used one, it’s important to
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contextualize it with the major schools of thought from the same time about where
states receive that legitimacy:
● Divine right, the belief that rulers receive absolute power from god(s),
which was often used specifically to legitimize monarchies.
● Social contract theory, which is the idea that members of a society
consent, if tacitly, to give up a certain amount of their rights so as to
allow the state to maintain order.
● Rational-legal authority, Weber’s own theory for legitimacy, where the
state is legitimized by people’s belief that it came about in a rational
and legal way.
All of these methods of thought are important to the current Western
political landscape, however social contract theory is one that has been used to
promote non-violence; If the legitimacy of a state comes from the consent of the
governed, then, in the case of oppression, the social contract could be changed, or
the oppressed could revoke their consent. In Wretched of the Earth (Fanon,
1961/1963), when discussing colonialism, Fanon comments on the very common
desire to reach this sort of compromise within the social contract whenever violent
revolution looms:
At the decisive moment, the colonialist bourgeoisie, which up till then
has remained inactive, comes into the field. It introduces that new idea
which is in proper parlance a creation of the colonial situation:
non-violence. In its simplest form this non-violence signifies to the
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intellectual and economic elite of the colonized country that the
bourgeoisie has the same interests as they and that it is therefore
urgent and indispensable to come to terms for the public good.
Non-violence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around a
green baize table, before any regrettable act has been performed or
irreparable gesture made, before any blood has been shed. But if the
masses, without waiting for the chairs to be arranged around the baize
table, listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and
setting fire to buildings, the elite and the nationalist bourgeois parties
will be seen rushing to the colonialists to exclaim, "This is very serious!
We do not know how it will end; we must find a solution—some sort of
compromise."
...
Thus it is that the rear guard of the national struggle, that very party of
people who have never ceased to be on the other side in the fight, find
themselves somersaulted into the van of negotiations and
compromise—precisely because that party has taken very good care
never to break contact with colonialism.” (Fanon, 1961/1963, p. 61-62)
As Fanon emphasizes here, the approach of non-violence and compromise
ultimately works in favor of the colonial force, stymying the e orts of revolutionary
groups and ultimately causing “liberal” political parties to align themselves with the
oppressors. However, the colonizers remain able, and willing, to use force. Malcolm
22
X has many quotations that speak to the topic of violence, the most relevant of
which is short and simple: “Concerning nonviolence: it is criminal to teach a man
not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks,” (X, 1964). I
like to think of myself as a very caring and empathetic person. I don’t like the
thought of su ering, violence, or death, even for those people who hurt me–
therefore I do believe that non-violence is worth striving for. Still, I did not want to
make a game that made minorities neutral receivers of violence. I would be doing a
disservice to the strength of the monster as a symbol if I did not stand by the power
of violence to influence positive change, and therefore the power of the monster to
be a revolutionary.
3.3 Deciding the cast
Making games about diversity is hard. Making games just about identities
that you share is hard by itself, I have seen other projects in this program face
serious or even fatal issues just trying to talk about black experiences. At the same
time, I feel there is so much commonality in my experience as a black person and
the experiences of other marginalized groups, and I wanted to try to make a game
that could really appeal to those commonalities. I wanted to use the monsters in my
game to represent the breadth of issues that monsters can represent in media. I
was able to do a decent amount of this from an art direction perspective, by
pushing for character designs and art that did not fit within the typical RPG style.
The most obvious result of this is the varying body shapes and sizes in the game.
23
The importance of the representation of the body comes back to Cohen’s first
thesis, “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body”:
The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an
embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a
place. The monster's body quite literally incorporates fear, desire,
anxiety, and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an
uncanny independence. The monstrous body is pure culture. (Cohen,
1996, p. 4)
So in line with this, any attempt to address diverse cultural issues would require
diverse bodies. However, ultimately, you can only write what you know. My narrative
team is great, but we have a relatively narrow set of cultural experiences and
knowledge to pull from. Therefore the cast mostly ended up being pulled from the
fairly traditional western stock, with a couple of notable exceptions that I would like
to write a bit about.
24
Fig. 8 Ee, The Nuckelavee.
The Nuckelavee is a fairy from the Orkney islands in Scotland. A skin-less,
horse-like creature, it emerges from the sea every year to generally terrorize the
population, killing crops, livestock, and causing droughts. Although details of its
appearance and behavior vary quite a bit, the unifying feature is that it is horrific.
Beyond an aesthetic appreciation of versions of the Nuckelavee that I had seen, I
felt that the game needed something horrible to truly represent monsterdom.
Although each of us can work to unlearn the prejudices in our worldview, and the
culture around us, monsters embody a culture’s fears, and those include our fears
as well. At times, allying with and understanding the people around us will involve
25
facing something that is, down in our gut, horrible or monstrous. Being able to
recognize where those reactions come from, and move productively past them is
important to grow as an ally and a person.
Fig. 9 Awita, The Ghoul.
The Ghoul is a cannibalistic, shape shifting spirit from Arabic folklore. In
addition to being another example of representing the abject in our game, like the
Nuckelavee, including the Ghoul was also an attempt to undo what I felt was a
harmful artifact of orientalism. The common representation of ghouls in western
media is some combination of zombies, or ghosts or some other graveyard dweller.
However, this interpretation is derived from the famous French translation by
Antoine Galland of One Thousand and One Nights (Galland, 1704-1717), the source of
stories such as Aladdin or Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. However, Galland’s
descriptions of the ghoul, like the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba, are not
translations from the source material, but stories he himself wrote, based on stories
received second hand as well as his own research. (This is a big topic, which you
26
can read more about in Paulo Lemos Horta’s Marvellous Thieves (Horta, 2017).) As a
result, our understanding of ghouls (and jinn, for that matter) share little similarities
to their Arabic roots.
Because we wanted to undo a mistake made by someone in a very similar
position to us (Galland, a non-Arab westerner doing his own research), we wanted
to be very careful in our approach to this. My narrative lead, Colette Quach, and I
both sought and read academic papers from Arabic sources to use as the basis for
our ghoul. We styled the character o the dress of the Bedouin people, who are
credited as the originators of the mythological creature. We also had to work to
avoid stereotypes strongly associated with the designs of middle eastern
characters, particularly women in general. For instance, the veil was originally
translucent, but we realized that making it opaque was much more authentic.
Another reason that our Ghoul, Awita, is an important character is that of our
monsters, she is the most iconic people-eater. Her character was meant to really
embody the third narrative pillar, as a character whose lifestyle fundamentally
relied on violent action against a dangerous oppressor. As we wrote the ending of
the game, it felt like she was the best character to represent strong, armed
resistance, and the way that it is often gawked at. When the community finds their
backs against a wall, she does what she does best, killing (and eating) the villain,
and then dealing with the fallout of that decision.
The adaptation of the Ghoul led me to reflect on more general struggles I
dealt with making the game. I wanted to share something authentic, and new with
my audience, through fantasy and mythology, which I really enjoy. However, as an
27
African American this is dicult. For many of us (specifically those descended from
slaves), there is little cultural mythology to share. Over centuries, they have been
stripped from us, and replaced with symbols more acceptable to our oppressors-
most often Western, Christian symbols. The authentic cultural experience that I
have to o er is alienation, otherness. So I suppose even though I cannot necessarily
do much to expose my audience to a completely new mythology, I can express my
culture authentically by inverting the typical western monsters, showing them the
sympathy I wish this country showed people who look like me.
3.4 Planning the story
Iterating on the story has been a lot of work. Core to the philosophy of this
game is a belief that representation matters, which means the messages of this
game matter. The highest priority of the story was to match the experience goals
and narrative pillars. If the player walked away feeling aligned with our pillars, we
did our job. One of the biggest diculties with this was the ending. Throughout the
game, the community is harassed and attacked by wealthy, human aggressors. How
does that come to an end? Is the community destroyed? Is the enemy destroyed?
Does everyone come together to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya My Lord?”
Ultimately, we wanted an ending that exemplified the third pillar, “Violence is
at the core of all meaningful political action”. In the game, there is unquestionably a
violent oppressive force. It will destroy the player at any cost, so any peaceful
resolution did not seem realistic. We also did not want to end with the community
being destroyed, which only leaves the option of decisive self-defense. Although
28
deciding this simplified some things, it also did move us into a space where we want
to act with nuance, in terms of how we represent and discuss physical violence. We
are still in the process of finalizing this. We want to represent the real benefits of
this type of resistance, while also showing that these are very grave measures to
come to, which can alienate some members of the community.
29
Chapter 4: Production
Much of the production period of this game was relatively uninteresting, on a
theoretical level. As I have written previously, I was very fortunate to have a team
that I trusted, who I was generally consistently aligned with. There were hiccups,
miscommunications, delays, but no more than are typical for any game project.
The one thing that was important to me in production was the way that I
tried to embody the ethics of my game to the best of my ability. Especially during
the pandemic, people have low energy, health emergencies, and general
inconsistencies in their lives. We are making a game about collaborating towards a
common goal, in the face of diverse backgrounds and challenges. I would be a
hypocrite if I did not try to be as ethical in the treatment of my team as I did in the
representation of the characters in my game.
I have had bad experiences on other teams where there was poor
communication, not much grace among the leadership, and thoughtlessness led to
large amounts of content being chucked in ways that seemed very avoidable.
People on those teams felt misused, underappreciated, and like they were working
towards something hopeless. We all just wanted to be done. On this project, I tried
to avoid these things. I talked to every member of the team as often as I could
manage, I had skilled leads who I trusted to help make sure that everyone on the
project feels included and well directed, and I tried to respect the time people spent
on the project. Obviously there were times when we needed to cut, and coming up
on the end of the project there was a fair amount that needed to be significantly
30
edited down. This is a reality of game development, however I did my best to have
people do meaningful work whenever possible. Even things that needed to be
thrown out hopefully contributed to the iterative process as we moved forward to
the final version of the project. I will be the first to admit that I have not been
perfect, but at all times I was transparent with my team, and been open to ways to
improve.
To talk briefly about specific things that went well and some that went poorly,
having producers and leads helped me immensely, taking o a significant
organizational burden. I did not have to lead every team meeting, and there were
other people keeping eyes on the backlog, and thinking about broader things like
testing and marketing. On the other hand, I did not have the game in a state where
people on the team could play it as often as they should have been able to, and that
led to miscommunication and some dips in motivation along the way. I also did a
poor job managing my artists on this project. I was not clear enough with them
about the things that I wanted and when I wanted them, and caused them undue
stress in addition to the pressures in their own lives. I did what I could to remedy
those deficiencies once I realized they existed, and in the little way that I could tried
to make up for them, o ering some compensation to my artists to show they were
appreciated (via food). I think in general I wish I could have done more to show my
team they were appreciated, but it’s admittedly a bit hard when you have a largely
remote, volunteer team.
31
Chapter 5: Reflection
5.1 Where could our process be improved?
In the spirit of respecting the work and time of my team, making a better
backlog, and really using tools like burndown charts better would be a good
improvement to process. This is a boring observation, but the public dilemma of
crunch demonstrates that project management is a meaningful ethical
consideration!
A broader observation on how a project like this could be improved is by the
inclusion of more consultants on the project, as sensitivity readers, diversity
readers, and mythology experts. For characters such as the ghoul, having more
people familiar with the cultural roots, and who are directly a ected by their
representation, can only make the game and its authenticity better.
5.2 Potential for future work
This game fits within the life sim genre, and has a broad cast that are dealt
with somewhat shallowly. The genre has plenty of examples of how to create big,
rich, immersive experiences, beyond the scope of what we were able to do here.
Although I think the story that we want to tell with this game does not work in a
game like Stardew Valley that goes forever, and allows the player to experience
extreme surplus, I do think there is a potential to return to this and extend it a fair
amount, both narratively and systematically. Making a community work is hard, and
we could demonstrate more facets of that.
32
If there is a regret about this game that I would want to correct upon
returning to it, it is the overall tone. Returning to some of my prior art, and
continuing my research into monsters, such as with Barbera Creed’s
Monstrous-Feminine (Creed, 1993), I feel that my game is not crass or grotesque
enough. In her chapter on The Exorcism, Creed discusses the way that the “abject”,
notably blood, vomit, profanity, and violence, prevented in a consistent way with
clear thematic meanings, not only provide a strong message about the power
relationships between the men and women in the film, but are what make the film
attractive to watch (Creed, 1993, p.31-42). I spoke about this earlier, but I also
personally believe that the use of abject, in respect to minority issues, can be a
good way to filter your collaborators (and audience). Though I would still like to
maintain a certain amount of nuance, particularly in regards to violence, I want the
player to be able to get a bit more messy. I want community members who casually
curse each other out. For the characters that represent a drive for violence in the
game, I want more of that, as part of their normal behavior. Like Creed and Cohen
posit, the monster should be something that the player simultaneously desires and
abhors.
33
Chapter 6: Conclusion
6.1 What were our goals
The primary goal of Monster Haven and my thesis process overall was to tell
stories about marginalized people through the metaphor of the sympathetic
monster. I also wanted to create a somewhat system heavy game that simulated
community building and cooperation in a way I did not see in a lot of other farming
games, because those things are very important in solidarity building between
marginalized communities.
6.2 What did we accomplish
We did manage to create a game that told stories reflecting the development
team’s experiences of marginalization and oppression, however to complete the
game within our time frame, the scope of what we were able to do both
mechanically and thematically was reduced. Playtesters still ultimately understood
and related to our characters, so at the very least we were on the right track.
6.3 What’s next?
Although I will be starting a job as an engineer after graduation, I would like
to return to this project eventually. As I mentioned in my reflection, a tone and
pacing overhaul of the game would be an important step, as well as extending the
gameplay. A big part of this, in my opinion, would be getting more external feedback
on the project, particularly from minority creators and experts who could help me
represent a wider range of mythological sources. Overall, I’m very happy with what
34
me and my team managed to complete over the past year, and I think the project as
it stands at the very least demonstrates the promise of this concept.
35
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37

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Asset Metadata

Creator Jones, Israel (author)

Core Title A monster's hearth: seeing yourself through monsters

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/20/2022

Defense Date 04/19/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Farming,Games,interactive,Management,Media,Monsters,OAI-PMH Harvest,otherization,video game,video games

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bilson, Danny (committee chair), Fullerton, Tracy (committee member), Nealan, Andy (committee member)

Creator Email 12izzy3@gmail.com,wizzardjones@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111022420

Unique identifier UC111022420

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