Sea of Paint - A Narrative-driven Game on AI and Big Data
November, 2024 | Narrative Game Critical AI, Text-to-image
A Screenshot of Sea of Paint
This is my ongoing speculative fiction game project Sea of Paint. The game is set in a sci-fi setting where a technology called the Sea, as analog to Big Data, becomes an ever-present part of the world, that is able to record and remember everything. And the Machine, as analog to AI, is able to conjure up “spirits” from the Sea.
The game is set between a conversation between a Machine operator and a “spirit”, where the operator seeks to generate images that capture the spirit’s life. The game explores the issues and concerns around contemporary data-driven AI technologies through both its narrative and gameplay, including questions around tech-mediated humanity and the socio-political questions that might raise around AI tech.
Much of character-building and writing is informed by actual research on the issue, including labor conditions, extractive dynamics and corporatism. These socially critical perspectives are embedded within the sci-fi setting and the dialogues between the two main characters. Early playtesters reported discomfort because of the underlying power dynamics that dictates their interactions.
We also want to include real stories of people marginalized by the development of these AI technologies. Several characters in the game are data workers, inspired by many actual studies and reports on real-life data workers.
This game was first envisioned as a game that brings criticality to text-to-image modality, realized in a paper exploring the aesthetic and phenomenological implication of creating through text-to-image. The game has a text-to-image interaction without using generative AI models. The player uses text to extract and compose images both for gameplay purposes and creativities.
The game’s design is also entangled with my larger approach to non-ludo-centric game design. Simply put, I define ludo-centric design as mainly focusing on the design of game mechanics and rules, with a game’s narrative and audiovisuals as fixed and peripheral. By making a narrative game with text-to-image, I wish to explore how narrative and visual design decisions can be deeply informative and entangled with interactive design. We have written a paper, currently submitted for review, on how the game’s design is non-ludo-centric.