University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The Other Half

(USC Thesis Other)

The Other Half

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content The Other Half
By
Shiwei Yan
Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
May 11, 2018

Table of Contents
The Other Half ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Works Cited .............................................................................................................................................. 12

Yan 3

The Other Half
The Other Half is my Master of Fine Art Thesis Project at University of Southern
California’s Interactive Media and Games Division. It pretends to be a dark fantasy action RPG,
but slowly reveals itself to be a psychological allegory about self-hatred from a perpetrator of
sexual assault, his fight against personal demons, and his process of eventually taking
responsibility and performing self-forgiveness. In this post mortem, I will describe my process
through the idea of praxis by breaking it down into theory, execution, and reflection.
Throughout my time at USC, I’ve discovered a seemingly conflicting dichotomy of the
current state of the games medium. On one hand, as designers and artists, we are driven to create
works of art and literature, ones that have meaning and persuasive impact upon the audience.
However, these works, with their high barriers of entry, fail to reach people who initially
disagree with many of the points of the works and thus would actually benefit from such
persuasion in the first place, and so these works end up falling into the same echo chamber
audience. On the other hand, games in the commercial space are monetarily viable and thus can
be constantly produced and are accessible to a wide range of audiences through its entertainment
value, but they tend to appeal to lower common denominators and thus fail to leave any
meaningful impact on the audience, and are therefore dismissed as a waste of time. However, I
propose a solution that could create a fertile middle ground to bridge these seemingly conflicting
ideologies.
My proposal is to create what I call a Cultural Trojan Horse. These pieces of work,
through marketing and presentation, initially pretend to be standard mainstream entertainment.
However, once the audience is ramped into being invested in the work and their attentions are
captured, it subversively and smoothly transitions to be about a much more meaningful topic.

Yan 4

This will hopefully have both the commercial viability and the larger audience base of
entertainment, while maining the persuasive and meaningful nature of art and literature.
Throughout history, many other mediums already have versions of this that are highly
successful. For example, in anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion pretends to be a normal mecha
anime, but transitions to a postmodern deconstruction of the dysfunctionality of human
relationship. In literature, Lolita draws readers in with beautiful flowery descriptions and then
slowly feeds in toxic mentalities of child sexual abuse. There are also a few games as of recent
that does this too, such as Nier Automata uses combat mechanics to examine human’s desire for
conflict, but this is still a fresh space for the games medium to explore.
Now why does my game have to talk about sexual assault? And specifically, why look at
the lead-up and aftermath of one particular sexual assault instance, from the perspective of the
perpetrator? For one, sexual assault is a widespread problem, and in the case of men sexually
assaulting women, it is actually a men’s problem, so I wish to address it from the men’s side to
the men’s side. What causes it to happen? What are the rationales and the cultural problems that
enables it? What can one do after committing it? Only by starting dialogue about this can we
start to understand the problem better to solve it. To achieve this, the game does not aim to
normalize, rationalize, or demonize those who commit sexual assault. Instead I propose for us to
humanize it. Only by treating sexual assault as the actions of normal human beings can we start
to tackle this complex problem.
Because of this theme, this game could immediately be shunned by the target audience I
want to impact the most: males age eighteen to thirty-four. However, by presenting itself as a
normal looking game, The Other Half aims to smoothly and discretely invite men into the
dialogue through a safer, more allegorical space. By wrapping the true message in an action-

Yan 5

adventure sugarcoat, they will not suspect a thing until the revelation hits, at which point they
hopefully are too invested to bail. Very few games tackle this subject matter earnestly, and none
of them are aimed at men or are they commercially viable. The Other Half doesn’t alienate its
main target audience because in addition to sugarcoating the game, I will humanize the offender,
for that is who he really is.
In order to further my theory, I looked at a few examples which helped me execute my
idea. I drew most of my inspirations from mediums that aren’t games, for other mediums are
more ahead in terms of having examples that do this well already.
The first piece of work is the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. It pretends to be a mecha
anime about teenagers in giant robots fighting aliens, but slowly deconstructs itself into an
analysis on the human condition and the flaws of inter-human relationships. Neon Genesis
Evangelion is a monumental work in my life, showing how a piece of art can market itself as
entertainment, and once players are hooked in, break them with gut-punching deeper messages. I
too want to create a piece of work that pretends to be standard entertainment, and then move on
to change how the audience view the world.
My second reference is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It is a a story about someone who
clearly did something unethical, but because it is told from his perspective, and he is irrationally
elegant with his beautiful descriptions, this unreliable narrator shows us the danger and
complexity of this topic.
My third reference is The Glow Pt 2 by The Microphones. This concept album journeys
the singer’s struggle through a dysfunctional relationship, which he explains via appeals to
nature’s power and existentialism. The album contrasts brilliant moments of soft intimacy with

Yan 6

seething hatred, creating an emotional rollercoaster of raw emotions and honest vulnerability to
tell the story of a personal struggle.
My final reference is the game Silent Hill 2. It deals with sexual repression and
punishment, although for some reason the game demonizes female sexuality when it deals with a
men’s repressed sexuality. We aim to do better than this.
My first step of my design process was to define my experience goals. First, I want to
have the players excavate for the truth. This is expanded upon by Ian Bogost, who says that “the
relationship of player to game is like that of the archaeologist to the ruin. A game is a remnant of
something fashioned and disposed by its creator. When we play, we excavate.” (Bogost). I want
to communicate that it’s best to accept the truth and move forward, rather than getting stuck on
punishments because of the past, or even ignoring the existence of issues to begin with. My
second experience goal is to contrast the feelings of intimacy and violence, and how the two
forms an unholy and corrupted union that is sexual violence. My third experience goal is to give
players the feeling of “savage elegance”, which I define as the desire to be stylishly superior to
all foes as to crush them into oblivion, as a means of cleansing the self. Finally, I want to trap the
players in a cold and frozen hell, alone, dealing with the trauma of the past.
As for my design goals for myself, I aim to model this game as a metaphor for two chair
therapy in Gestalt Psychology. Here, after performing a regrettable action, a patient switches
back and forth between two empty chairs, taking on the roles of the perpetrator and the self-
punisher, and through dialogues with themself, combine the fractured parts of one’s personality
and thus achieving self-forgiveness.
In terms of execution, the narrative of the game needs to hide its core intention initially,
and slowly transitions to be about sexual assault. It hides this all behind a standard dark fantasy

Yan 7

narrative of hero tropes and demons. The core combat of the game of killing demons provide the
violence, while Daniel’s narrations in flashbacks provide warm, intimate nostalgia. As the player
progresses, it starts to become clearer than the flashbacks do not take place in the fantasy world,
but rather in a contemporary world, creating deliberate dissonance with the game’s medieval
setting, thereby laying the foundation to the player that something is feeling very wrong. This
combined with the fact that the player, despite constantly going up the mountain, repeatedly
circles back to the same town, tells players that there is something not literal about this world.
This culminates in what I call the Rave Scene of my game, where Daniel’s actions are laid bare.
Here, his originally intimate narrations are combined with the not beautiful but horrific imagery
of the enemies in phallic shapes celebrating his assault. This moment marks the point where
intimacy and violence creates an unholy union, and thereby marking the final nail in the coffin of
the transition from a seemingly standard fantasy game to a discussion on sexual assault.
The systems of the game also complement and add to my experience goals. First, the
player’s main form of interaction is a three-hundred-sixty-degrees controlled flame. This extreme
freedom of movement allows players to create and adapt their own combat style, and the direct
interactions create a visceral feel which asks the players to precisely penetrate and eviscerate
enemies to destroy them. Players getting to know the enemies patterns and contours fits into both
a feeling of sexual unease and feeds into the theme of having an intimate dialogue of getting to
know someone else, or in this case, Daniel’s self. Also, every time the flame destroys an enemy
part, the player is given health back. This symbolizes the small sense of warmth and
accomplishment from self punishment, and creates within players a savage incentive to brutalize
the enemy, even those that are static and defenseless. The flame represents the flames of warmth
of self punishment, and to finish the game, the player must give up that mechanic to symbolize

Yan 8

the end of self punishment and moving on to deal with the problem as a human being, rather than
escapism through an inner fantasy.
To complement the flame mechanic, the player’s tool, is the player’s problem: the
enemies. The enemies are designed to be deeply phallic, representing the demonized male
sexuality. The game’s final message is that Daniel must get over that, and that’s why the demons
talk and ends up with you meeting Daniel who is a human not a demon. In terms of interactions,
this is not a twitchy game, and instead rewards positioning, spacing, and memorizing enemy
attack patterns over reaction speed. This also feeds into the idea of dialogue and getting to know
the self intimately. This is achieved by giving enemies powerful but telegraphed attacks with
enough time for the player to avoid them, Hence players are rewarded by patience and
observation rather than flailing about. Also, each enemy must be dealt with specifically. This is
done by having spores grow on their bodies, the player must hit those with flame, tracing their
controus. Because of this constraint, random flailing is punished. The enemies also have a
dynamic difficulty adjustment system in place, where they don’t get stronger. Instead they get
smarter, as the player progresses through the game, based on how well the player is doing. This
forces the player to constantly adapt, as a dialogue should. And when enemies manage to kill the
player, the player goes down, but gets back up with no health and surrounded by demons. This
symbolizes that the demons and the player character are two halves of the same being, and shows
the demons’ desire to reunite and become one with the player also, and their inability to kill the
player. This mirrors the game’s ending where the player is informed that they are incapable of
killing the demons either. This is because we are incapable of killing a part of ourselves, and
instead we must work with it to resolve problems, rather than violently repress.

Yan 9

I would like to take this moment to address why the narration system works well in this
combat oriented game, and doesn’t suffer the interactive and narrative issues of other games.
First, this game does not remove any player mechanics during narrations, so it can keep player
interest high by retaining interaction. Second, despite not much the player can interact with other
than walking around, upping both visual and audio intensity engages the player and provide a
safe and intimate haven as break from the cold and hostile world. Third, narration areas are
stretched out to the timing of the narrations, so even if just walking around, players feel a sense
of progress and getting something done.
Also given that this is a narrative game, I want the story to be available to people who are
not willing to deal with the mechanical difficulty of the game. However, I must still retain
dramatic tension of the combat since that is a core experience goal. The solution is to implement
a narrative difficulty setting. This simplifies combat, and is selectable at any time during the
game, after presented at the beginning. This mode does two things. First it lowers the importance
of player accuracy. Second it makes the player incapable of dying. But despite players cannot
die, the dramatic tension remains, as combat still feels visceral and painful.
The final system is the inventory and economic system. The player has a total of eight
slots for items, and needs to drop existing items if wanting to pick up new ones. The items for
players to pick up involves armor from Carleton, healing medicines from Annalise, and herbs for
planting back at Annalise’s clinic. The player has to balance their inventory to account for these,
as typical of role playing games. However, the truth is, the herbs will never lead to any long term
game effect, and all armor’s statistics have no gameplay impact either. Annalise’s garden serves
only to be a bonding experience between the player and Annalise, culminating in Carleton giving
the player the choice to burn it down. Carleton’s armor not helping the player serves three

Yan 10

purposes. First, it’s there so that the game can pretend to be a standard RPG. Second, it makes
Carleton more relevant on each town pass. Third, his armor symbolizes the lies of
rationalization, where our defense mechanisms seemingly provide benefits when they just hinder
us. In fact, through flesh-walls with required flesh keys that must be picked up and cannot be
dropped, the player will eventually be forced to discard all their inventory, and thus defense
mechanisms, to face the truth raw at the end of the game.
Throughout development, one of the biggest issues I’ve ran into was how exactly do I
talk about this game. In order to prove my theory of Cultural Trojan Horse to work, it’s best for
me to have the audience go into the game blind without knowing the true intentions of the game.
However, presenting the game as a generic dark fantasy game will not get any traction or
attention at all in a marketing sense. Finding the balance between what can be said and not be
said, be able to tease people’s curious appetite just enough without revealing too much, was a
true challenge. The final settlement is that this is a dark fantasy game, but with contemporary
world elements blending in, and the experience is a disonnent blend of violence and intimacy,
play to find out why. But this is still not interesting enough and is still getting iterated upon.
In terms of playtesting, I’ve found balancing the message of the game to be delicate one.
Even the use of a word, and tone of the voice acting, can have massive impact on the audience.
This is due to sexual assault being a delicate topic and people bringing in their different biases
when analyzing it. This makes it difficult for the game to be subtle without being misinterpreted.
This results in some instances of heavy handedness in the game instead of relying on metaphors
as the rest of the game does, which I have eventually came to terms with.
One common criticism the game has gotten is that it does not present enough of
Annalise’s viewpoint. After much deliberation, my response is that unfortunately it is not this

Yan 11

game’s place to represent her viewpoint. The whole game is told from Daniel’s perspective, and
thus the game is incapable of presenting her viewpoint without bias. There is also no place in the
game to fit this in without coming off as didactic. I will stress that I believe that stories of victims
of sexual assault must be told, but unfortunately it is not the place of this game to do so, as the
whole game takes place inside his head, and the story ends when he realizes he must get out of
his own punishment and face reality. It aims to present a story for men, and hopefully we can
address the issues that lead men to incorrect behavior.

Yan 12

Works Cited
Bogost, Ian. “Play With Us” Ian Bogost. Ian Bogost, 15 Mar. 2010. Web. 16 Mar. 2018.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

The Palimpsest project: producing a cultural shift to enable a systematic shift

PDF

One little change: exploring relationship abuse in a virtual reality narrative

PDF

The Toymaker’s Bequest: a defense of narrative‐centric game design

PDF

Exit

PDF

Palimpsest: shifting the culture of computing

PDF

Good Girl VR: straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment

PDF

Notes from the creator: designing a world for transmedia expression & engagement

PDF

Light at the End of the Tunnels: level design and its relationship to a spectrum of fear

PDF

Super Opera Squad

PDF

BeachcomberVR: inspiring exploration: concepts in the production of a virtual reality game

PDF

Wetware: designing for a contemporary dilemma

PDF

The Star Wanderer

PDF

The Death Mask: a study in interactive mystery

PDF

Last Martelé: a virtual reality approach to analogic violin performance

PDF

Parallel: authorial intent in a self-reflective narrative game

PDF

Ascension: an analysis of game design for speech recognition system usage and spatialized audio for virtual reality

PDF

Stepstone Island

PDF

The future of games and health: towards responsible interaction design

PDF

Bottles

PDF

Building interpersonal trust through digital games

Asset Metadata

Creator Yan, Shiwei (author)

Core Title The Other Half

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/10/2018

Defense Date 05/11/2018

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

Tag game,OAI-PMH Harvest,video

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member), Watson, Jeff (committee member)

Creator Email fdu5526@gmail.com,shiweiya@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-4828

Unique identifier UC11671933

Identifier etd-YanShiwei-6194.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-4828 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-YanShiwei-6194.pdf

Dmrecord 4828

Document Type Thesis

Rights Yan, Shiwei

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA