Multimodal Remediation Project Part 2

Word count: 576

For the last assignment, I decided to make a simple video game. The purpose of

this multimodal piece was to demonstrate the central theme of my family narrative

project in an interesting way. In the family narrative project, I narrated a story of me and

my sister’s learning experiences. When we were learning how to drive and bike, both of

us encountered a bad accident which we crashed into the fences. However, while I did

not remember the detail of my accident and could still drive around, my sister was

terrified and influenced by the previous accident. By comparing our attitudes, I addressed

the importance of moving on because sometimes the negative memories from the past

could easily affect and ruin one’s life. By using the “fence” as a metaphor, I described

that dealing with traumatic memories is like passing through a fence. There are two ways

to choose, which you can either stop in front of the fence or make a turn to avoid it. The

result will be disturbing if you just go straight and crash into the fence.

To reflect the main idea of my family narrative project, I developed a game by

using a coding website, Scratch. In the game, I created a scene in which a young girl tries

to learn biking but encounters some problems. The playing time might vary from ten

seconds to forty seconds, depending on what key do the players choose. By pressing a

specific key, the players could help that little girl make a choice and get distinct results.

This game contained three outcomes, but only one of them represented the ultimate

success. My goal of creating this game was to illustrate the players that if you have the

idea of giving up while you are doing something, the outcome is usually unpleasant. Only

when you stay positive and believe in yourself can you overcome the difficulties.
 However, creating a game was not easy for me. Originally, I planned to only

design two outcomes for my game, but I realized it was too straightforward that my

players could easily predict the results. Hence, I added one more possible outcome to

make it more interesting. This decision increased the difficulty of my project.

Additionally, I struggled with making my characters talk and move. I had to calculate the

time accurately; otherwise, they would talk and step over one another. In order to seek for

some help and solve these problems, I looked up for some coding tutorials and did a few

practices. Since I was not a professional coder, it took me a much longer time to make the

game work.

Overall, my multimodal mediation project included many constraints because I

was not familiar with coding a game. I was worried this game was not long enough, and

there were some tech issues that I could not fix. For example, my players had to press the

designated key twice in order to keep playing the game. Hence, I wrote some instructions

in the note box, helping the players to play the game. Nevertheless, by making this game,

I was glad that I challenged myself and learned a new skill to express my thoughts.

Instead of presenting my main idea directly to the audiences, the production allowed my

audiences to realize the meaning behind of my story by themselves. Through a more

attractive and vivid way, I wanted to convince my audiences about the importance of

staying positive because the attitude really matters.