The MIX Archives
by Swathi Sambasivam, Nyusha Impolski, Jet Vellinga and Chros Wang
Abstract
The MIX Archives is an investigative narrative game about conspiracy theories and online radicalization. Browse through news articles from some credible and some not-so-credible sources and share them with your growing following… but beware, your clicks have consequences.
Trailer:
Play the Game:
The Original Prototype had two different pages for top news and serachable news, this was later collapsed into one page for ease of player access
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Main aims of the news page:
- Flooded with ads that become increasingly unhinged.
- Inspired by the cluttered news websites that constantly ask you to subscribe
- I tried to keep the colour palette away from conventional social media colours to give MIX Archives a distinct feel.
NewsPage
Different News organisations have different styles on their paper, with distinct colours, fonts and ideology.
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The ones already read and shared have the share symbol on them.
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The share button was kept simple
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The You might like section has posts that are similar to the ones you have shared, but they slowly radicalize you.
Articles
Each page has the following
- Title and text
- Name of newspaper
- Date
- Icon to share and favourite
- Image related to the article
- Blocked off subscription button
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This was in keeping with the websites brand but we decided to move to the website acting like a curator of news.
We decided to go for a more sleek Newspaper-style
Breaking News
The images were treated with filters to achieve a consistent style in the game.
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They contain all the same information as the articles.
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Navigation
Originally, you could press the button at the bottom of an article to open the quick share / favourite.
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Once we decided favourite was no longer a game mechanic, it was changed to a simple share button.
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The original task manager acted similarly to the menu on an iPhone, it is moveable across the scene with some placeholder art for each section of the game.
We added a TaskBar that stays on the screen as you scroll instead of a moveable taskbar, this also worked for the best because we needed the players to engage with the breaking news and not miss it by accident so we added an easy access breaking news to the taskbar
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Navigation takes you to:
Newspage
Mix Archives (Social Media page)
Chat
Social Media Page
The social media page changes when you are overthrown as a mod, but this remained fairly the same in the final.
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This page is where all the articles you share get comments and engagement.
Other people can also post on your page, and as your posts get radicalized so does the community that surrounds you.
Notifications/ Messaging
Notification and messaging were done using Leantween, they appear from the sides of the screen.
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Our chat function essentially works like a cut scene so there is a fast-forward button to keep things moving
