The U Word

The U Word is a game made in Twine as a final project for the Chicago Field Studies in the Humanities Spring 2018 class. In it, you explore what remains of an old YouTube vlog series in which Amy Perez, a new hire at one of the biggest game studios, shares her experiences with games, crunch, gaming, and work. The videos have been heavily edited since they were originally posted, so the player must piece together what happened to Amy by reading her original video descriptions, audio transcripts, and later edit notes. The U Word was made to highlight and examine current game development working conditions in reference to the many readings on work we went through over the course of the quarter, and was inspired by the feeling akin to dread that one may feel when they stumble upon a large internet-based event after the fact— much like clicking the link to “Show More Comments “ on a YouTube comment thread, the player knows from the beginning that something went wrong, but not what, or when, or how.