Interactive Story Telling "The Thing From the Future" - Midterm
10.3.2024
Story Building
Written by Danielle Perez
In a group of 3, I randomly choose cards from distinct categories about object features and world elements for our team to use to create a story. The elements of our object were comprised of an object, archetype, attribution, and action. Our thing from the future is a hand held object that takes the form a retail signage as it's archetype. The attribution and action of the object to exist in as part of a collaborative environment and to customize. The two world elements random choose were discipline and exhilaration 10 years from now. Meaning, our thing from the future will live in a world 10 years from now, the society is structure by discipline and they collectively feel exhilaration.
This past week, we meet together to creating the building blocks of our object, world, and characters. Here is the presentation of our story elements:
10.3.2024
Expressing Our Vision
Written by Danielle Perez, Lie Burgess, & Yooji Chae
This past week our group wrote our first draft of the story of Concordia. In our story we set the scene of our world that our device Amity Connects and the characters Adam, his son, East, and the villain Lucuis live in. Here is our first draft our the story:
STORY DESCRIPTION AND MONOLOGUE
ACT1
In 2034,the government outlawed homelessness because the rich got tired of seeing tents in local areas. Business to this opportunity to raise the prices on overthink because more people had entered the workforce to avoid being homeless. The solution is to have the working class forced to work 16 hours a day to pay all bills and fees on time, no one has free time to connect and they have time for sleeping. They are now happy and excited that everyone has shelter and food with this new system that the government put in place. Our main character Adam feels different. Adam wants to be able to relax and spend time with his family. He dreams of spending more time with his sin so that they could form a genuine bond. Adam is a hard working man that owns a shopping mall but is having a hard time keeping the business running. He wants to work less so that he can spend more time with his son and form a better connection. He thinks to himself “I just want to take a break. I feel like I haven't spent time with East in years. I wonder what his interests are now. Am I a good father? Am I doing everything I could be doing as a parent?” Adam comes home late again from a long day of work to see his son already asleep. Adam's solution to his failing mall is to find vendors that can bring in enough profit so that he can work less, allowing him to spend more time with his son.
Despite reaching out to other vendors to replace the current ones, Adam has trouble finding new vendors captivating enough to bring in more people and money. As Adam ends the call from another failed store pitch he pushes the papers off his desk, stands up and yells “ It shouldn't be this hard finding new business. Everyone is selling the same old thing. I need something new, something exciting, something that will entice people!” He calms down and takes a seat as he leans over on the desk with his hands covering his face. Adam's phone begins to ring, he doesn't want to answer out of disappointment. He decides to let the phone ring because he’s tired of having the same conversation with vendors. Lucius (introduce) wants to rent out a store in his mall to open up a revolutionary store centered around building a caring community. Lucius hates the loneliness of everyone's strict lives and though they appear to be happy and excited. He internally believes that he can free everyone with Amity. Busy reading through bids, Adam is unable to pick a call from Lucius, but over hear the voicemail, “Hello Mr. Westfield, I was told by some friends that you’re looking to open a new shop in your mall. I have this new toy that will connect people in a way that's never been done. Call me back when you get the chance, I’m looking forward to discussing my shop with you.”
Adam is hesitant about the meeting with the man on the Voicemail. He looks over at the picture of him and East on his desk and decides to give the man a call back. Adam: “Hello, this is Adam Westfield! Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?” Lucius: My name is Lucius stitch, I'm a toy designer from the town over. Some colleagues of mine said you were looking for a new vendor and I wanted to reach out to schedule a meeting with you.
They have a meeting Introducing the storefront and the device. Lucius presents Amity Connects to Adam and talks about all the different things people can do with it and how it can offer them a sense of freedom outside of their work lives. Adam is desperate for his business to improve, so he ignores some of Lucius' red flags and agrees to open a storefront at his mall.
ACT2
The Amity Connects store front opens and in just a few weeks, Amity connects becomes the talk of the town. Tech gurus are fascinated with the server and its ability to make quick updates and connectivity. This was the largest scale of a server built as a storefront that can only connect to Lucius specific devices. Each person with a device must complete hourly tasks to ensure that Amity is happy and healthy. The store front display of Amity reflects the care everyone is taking. If there’s not enough people playing with amity she gains weight, if the total amount of time spent outside her home is too much then she becomes sad and sleeps too much. There is always a long chain of problems caused if people don't pay attention to the various tasks. The synchronicity and computer power is tested when more people outside of teens and tech guru’s begin buying the device. The fascination has moved from the tech to the emotions and animations of Amity. The people, overwhelmed and tired by the daily boring tasks of going to purposeless and unfulfilling work are finding community and purpose within Amity.
Adam brings East to the mall to show him the new store that just opened and buys him a Amity. Adam see’s this gift as a step in the right direction to building their connection. As time goes on East starts paying more attention to Amity and begins to neglect his responsibilities. East is no longer the boy who cautiously followed the rules. He becomes addicted to caring about Amity like everyone else around him. The effects of his addiction cause him to stop going to school and lock himself in his room. Adam finds out from the school that East has missed several days of school and is failing. Adam realizes the greater affects amity is having on his son. Adam decides to take amity away from East in hopes that he will go back to being responsible and so that they could spend time together. East goes back to school without his amity and gets teased. The other kids shun him and alienate him because he doesn't have an amity. East goes home to tell Adam how not having amity is affecting his life and agrees that amity is changing the behaviors of other people. Adam tries to persuade East that amity is good for the business and that it means that they can just spend more time together and focus on other things.
Adam and East spend more quality time together taking trips, helping with East homework, Building things together, and going on bike rides. This makes Adam very happy and East begins to forget about the feelings he had associated with amity. Adam and East have fully realized that Amity was changing him and is feeling better being back to normal.
ACT3
One night Adam gets a call from the authorities that people have broken into his mall. He drives down to make sure everything is okay just to find out people broke in just to check on the storefront Amity. They wanted to make sure it was alive and okay because their devices died and they no longer had access to it. Adam is questioning the importance of the mall over his family and people's ability to function in society, considering whether he should remove the store. Going to Lucius about his concerns about Amity Connects, he is immediately shut down by him. Lucius reveals that he knew all along that he could manipulate people's ability to control their habits of completing everyday tasks making a fully functioning society. With Amity he turned people’s habits to fully invest in taking care of Amity the unity to keep her going. Fully knowing that he and Adam would benefit immensely by putting this store in. “The people are thrilled and unified Adam! why would you take that away from them?”, says Lucius.
Everyone only has Amity on their minds, it is a group effort to keep her happy and healthy. He begins to question the morality of Amity and fears that his people are losing their ability to be in control of themselves.
Adam begins to feel like he can't escape Amity because he sees it on the news, streets, ads, and etc. When he's seeing these Amity people have a crazed look in their eyes or they're not paying attention they're surroundings. He starts to think about how it's affecting people and questions himself, asking "if he's doing the right thing". He finally makes up his mind and decides to Lucius plugs amity back in and as amity restarts the storefront and hand held devices show a recording of Adam unplugging it. The people in the mall become crazy lunatics and chase Adam down. The crowd surrounds Adam and Lucius comes from behind the angry mob as they part like the Red Sea. The crowd is grateful that he exposed Adam and finds Lucis to be heroic for vowing to bring Amity back to life. Lucis tells Adam he can either leave town or swim with the fishes. Adam decides to move to Massachusetts with his family to find a more functioning society.