At this stage I had prototyped and played with the basic emotional goals I had for the game using the dark hexagonal maze. The core interaction showed promise, but it needed work to really do what I wanted it to do. The Unity problems had encouraged a brand new iteration of the game, and it was around this time that while listening to 80's music on youtube I heard ‘Once in a Lifetime' by the Talking Heads. I had heard a bit of the Talking Heads, and I knew the internet talked about them a lot, but this was the first time I'd ever really given them a good listen, and I was amazed. Once in a Lifetime is so simple, but it's incredible in the way it gets across its message. I went into music-study mode and tore it to pieces in my head, and tried to get all the meaning out of it that I could. I'll save an essay on the themes of the song for later, but basically they can be read as something like ‘the existential ticking time bomb of unchecked consumerism and advancing age.' - The Guardian says it better than I can. At this stage of my life, with my experiences, the themes of the song resonated well with me, and I loved the way the song made a social commentary on life, life goals, and how we choose to live.
The song inspired me deeply. I was hit by a need to try and communicate the way the song made me feel, and the messages of the song, through the game. By dwelling on the song and the game, I realised the cells of the maze can represent different parts of life, where we move from one to the next, making decisions as we go, that might lead us to things like beautiful houses and wives like the song talks about. The darkness in other cells of the maze is just like life, there are a lot of unknowns and we can’t see into the future or past with very much clarity. Things are hidden from us, and we can only see what we can see. The more I thought about it, the more I saw possibilities and connections between the song and the game. This brought the game into more of an artistic direction, something new to me, and I loved the idea of exploring this area.
To me, the song is describing a possible existential realisation of someone living ‘the good life;’ the kind of life that movies, TV shows, songs, etc. talk about. Of course, from the perspective of a man, it’s easy to see that this definition of the good life has not really changed since the song was written. People still want a large car, a beautiful house and a beautiful wife, generally willing to put on a suit and let the days go by, all for these end goals. To me, Byrne’s preacher-like lyrics are trying to trigger those striving for this good life to wake up, to ask themselves these questions, and find themselves with the large automobile, beautiful house, and beautiful wife, so that they can have this existential crisis and maybe find more meaning in life. This kind of message is what I wanted to communicate through the game.
To me the chorus gives the full picture of what Byrne is saying our lives are like. If we let the days go by, the water holds us up, we float along and eventually we end up flowing with the water under the rocks and stones, dead and gone. The subject of the song has got the big car, beautiful house and beautiful wife, and by letting the days go by, they reached these goals, without the self-awareness to truly explain why and how they came to be.
The song’s commentary on consumerism and life resonates with me greatly, as my experiences growing up and living abroad have let me see many ways people can live a happy, fulfilled life, in many walks of life. Assuming the end goal for all people is to live a fulfilling life, there is much more to life than cars, houses, and wives, and to me the song is trying to encourage the kind of self-awareness and self-reflection many people need to help them realise this. Despite the almost 40 year gap between the song’s creation and now, it is still incredibly relevant, as consumerism and the good life remain the goals of many, to the detriment of greater society in my opinion.
For the game, I felt instead of water, darkness could be used as the measure of one’s life. The game would work in rounds that would represent one lifetime, with a starting amount of life slowly draining away to 0, and with the cells of the maze still lighting up, but the intensity of that light depending on the amount of life remaining. The existential nature of the song would be represented by the way that players would find themselves in the maze, with the basic goal of achieving the good life. Assuming the subject of Once in a Lifetime would have had a series of decisions they made to reach their good life, I felt it would fit to have players need to make a decision in each cell of the maze, and each decision would lurk in the darkness of the next room like the enemies of the quick-draw prototype.
These decisions would force players to choose yes or no, and would allow them to get a large car, beautiful house, and beautiful wife through their series of answers. I wanted a range of objects and decisions that would make players start to feel uncertain and slightly fearful about the next cell. In a way, like life, if you moved along, you needed to make decisions, but if you really wanted to you could stay in one place forever and die. The need to reach the goals of a good life before their life decayed to 0 would add a rush to the game, an experience I hadn’t intended on, but it was something that fit with the inspiration of the song, and it helped to fix an issue of the old iteration where the game could go on forever and get boring if you got lost in the maze.
In the vein of the song’s somewhat hidden meaning (to some), leaving it up to the listener, I wanted to have a hidden ending to the game, an ending that rewarded the player for going against the grain of what is still considered the be the good life, but more on that later.
I then started to think about the items and situations that the player would have to decide on. The song gave me the basic goal items, but for other things I spent a good amount of time thinking about some of the most influential objects, activities, and attitudes in a person's life, particularly a person of working age, who might be trying to get the good life. While the basis of the song’s commentary on life and consumerism is still valid, there are aspects of modern life that are quite different from the time the song was written, so some of these objects are quite contemporary, to better connect with those playing the game. I’ll describe these things in more detail later.
To work with my plan of a hidden ending, the result of every choice would contribute to the normal good life ending, or the hidden ending, but I saw the need for more granularity. I spent time thinking about each choice, and I developed metrics for measuring various aspects of the player’s choices. These metrics are used to calculate which ending they get, and the description of the lifetime given on the ending screen.
