100% Human

Future Dystopia | 3D Stealth Game

Imagine our civilization 20 years from now. Things have either collapsed beyond repair or life has become a harmonious dream. Through some crazy combination of wormholes and string theory, you have the opportunity to create a piece of information that will be sent back to the current population.

What does your imagined future look, sound, and feel like?  What message would you transmit to the current population from the future?

Ideation: Imagine a Eugenics dystopia

storytelling

Imagine what if we have totally cracked the secret of genes in the future? Maybe we will use it to generate perfect offsprings. What perfect meaning are higher intelligence, faster learning speed, healthier mental and physical conditions?

Because of this, our social system will change totally. It will become a military-constructed society. Everyone will be a vitro, so marriage will no longer exist. The government decides whether you can have a baby or not based on your personal genes and social contributions. Nature-borns are not allowed. When a woman gets pregnant accidentally, she will compulsively accept an abortion.  If someone is allowed to have a baby, he/she will be distributed a good-matched sperm or an egg as well as a set of good genes such as high intelligence and a strong body. Although every baby is using the same set of good genes, it will show differently after birth. Those babies who can not reach the common standard will be eliminated in one month.

The main character is a male scientist who does gene research in the laboratory. He gets permission to have his own daughter. Usually, parents are not allowed to see their baby before the final gene report comes out, but the scientist has access due to his work. He accidentally sees his daughter’s serial number appearing on the “watch list”. Her gene index is only 20% now.

Although people at that time don’t have much family concept, the scientist doesn’t want her to be killed. According to his recent research, if he has other sets of good genes, he can inject them into his daughter to improve her index. He decides to steal them. There will be armed soldiers there guarding those genes. He must get them instead of being caught by the guards. Every time the scientist puts one more good gene into his daughter’s body, the index on the gene testing machine will increase a little. His goal is to recreate a 100% human.

Finally, he succeeds. The girl passes the examination. Then, all the children will be uniformly educated, as parts of the state apparatus. They won’t see their parent often. In some sense, they are raised as “functional replicants”. Of course, the scientist never tells his daughter the story. Since she gets more good genes than others, she grows much more superior than her peers. Meanwhile, she is also more arrogant than others. She becomes the leader of gene supremacists in the end.

The message is sent by her. In her description, the future is a utopia. All humans are perfect, there will not be any deceases, crimes, or racial discriminations. She wants us to accelerate the gene research and carry out the principle of Eugenics because if we do so at present, their elimination work will be much easier.

It is an ironic ending but I think we can make our own judgment.

Storyboard

physical prototype and timeline

High-fi Prototype

Based on my story, I build a 3D stealth game using Unity. The main character is the scientist whose mission is to steal genes from the warehouse without being killed by robot guards and then inject them into his daughter’s body.

In the first version, I put some basic props into the scene and create some simple functions. The players can walk, run, jump and use the mouse to change perspective. The winning condition is to get genes from the warehouse and go back to the nursery room, interact with a certain tube. 

If the player is spotted by the guard, the game ends. I put one guard in the gene warehouse as the enemy. The biggest problem is the AI guard is rather “stupid”, it will sometimes go through models.

Also, because I haven’t put any background information into it, the player had a hard time knowing the purpose. The certain object player needs to interact with is not clear.

Then I iterate the game, using different scripts to control the guards. If they see the players, they will shoot and the alarm system will turn on. The Player has health, the shooting damage is related to the distance between the player and the guard. I also put one more guard in the scene to improve difficulty. And there are more props in the scene to tell the background information.

I changed the color of certain objects the player needs to interact with. The player can interact with some objects to see the detail. These are the narrative part and also as the instruction for what you need to do. Also, put background music into it to create an intense atmosphere.

Here is the game playing process (success)

The successful ending of the game is ironic, the scientist saved his daughter but she then became the leader of Eugenics. The message is sent by her, Lady S. She describes the future as a utopian world and encourages current people to keep developing DNA technology. I create a news webpage to show her message.

Although she describes a utopia world, my real concept is to criticize on this kind of Eugenics and show a dystopia.