The Making of “Wives of Agency” (Progress Update #6?)
I think it would be fun to just combine all my progress updates for Wives of Agency into a single sequence, so consider this the first official progress update for Wives of Agency (the video game prototype).
Progress
So far I’ve been making decent progress. The majority of my content research for this project was completed with the timeline last semester. Now, most of my efforts are scripting the game and choice trees, creating educational features in the game, programming the game, troubleshooting any problems that come up, and finding ways to market it for K-12 audiences.
This week I have made some progress on the physical game, mostly like menu and exposition at the beginning of the game, but so far the game is mostly doing what I want it to do. 
Educational Features
So this is an educational game which means that there’s going to be educational features. Of course the easiest of them is that you play from the perspective of Catherine of Aragon, so you get to strategize about what actions she’ll take to maintain Henry’s affection. The general play order of the game is that each year has three elements for the player to engage with:
- a learning opportunity
- a choice with consequences
- a player stat update.
While I haven’t gotten to these elements yet, there’s a lot of plans in the work. A learning opportunity most years may just be a historical event that you get to read about and play through from Catherine’s perspective, but other years it might include analyzing portraits and illustrations from Tudor history, reading through historical documents and making choices about Catherine’s response to what she reads, or students getting the chance to help influence what Catherine’s speech at the Legatine council is, and how persuasive she is under those circumstances.
Choices with consequences will almost always have three options that students can choose: an option to improve Henry’s Affection, improve Catherine’s English reputation, and improve Catherine’s morale. These stats will determine the end of the story, whether Catherine is divorced, beheaded, dies, or survives.
Each year also includes a player stat update, where the player will be able to see how many Affection, Reputation, and Morale points they have, so they can try to strategize how to improve the stat of their choice.
As previously mentioned, one of the learning opportunities that I think might be interesting to see would be to show portraits of Catherine through time as the years pass by. This would not only immerse students in the passage of time, but also offer them opportunities to explore symbolism in the portraits and compare portraits of Catherine of Aragon compared to other women. For instance, Anne Boleyn is a major figure that shook up Catherine’s royal life, by examining portraits of both women, students can compare their fashions, as an extension of comparing their upbringing and appeal to Henry.
For instance in these two portraits, Anne Boleyn (top) wears a French hood, one that is rounded and worn close the the head, and shows off the front of her hairline. Conversely, Catherine wears what is sometimes referred to as a “gabled hood” due to the hood’s resemblance to a roof. Catherine does not have much hair visible from underneath the hood. By examining some of the differences, along with some context about the upbringing of the women and their religious affinities, the students can begin to see how these women are viewed as opposites of one another.
Challenges
The challenge is time. It’s always time. I’ve only got so much time and I’ve got grand plans, visions, and ambitions. Even though it’s the summer, I’m not even taking much of a lessened responsibility load, I’m still taking this class (accelerated compared to former classes), an internship, and my research job. So making sure that I make progress every week on the video game is going to be crucial to my success on the project.
Because I’m so scrapped for time, I’m also going to forego any visual design that isn’t necessary or very quick to do. That means I’ll be using many placeholder backgrounds, UI, and character sprites. Right now the background is a random illustrated Japanese Tatami mat floor, and the sprite I’m using for Catherine is just one of her portraits that I photo-shopped the background out of. If I had more time, resources, and a team to help me it would look better, but right now it’s function and fun over form.
Next Step
The next step is make more progress. The demo will be Catherine of Aragon, and her marriage lasted 23 years, so if I can script and program five to ten years of gameplay each week, I think I’ll be in a good place.
