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Game Concept Document

Design by Dave TaylorCopyright 2002, Carbon6 Entertainment

ContentsContents

1. Executive Summary2. Features3. Story4. What’s it Like?5. Character Development6. Relationship Management7. Cliques and Quests8. Weekly Calendar9. User Interface10. Multiplayer Support11. Complexity12. Walk-Through: Making Laura13. Walk-Through: Laura’s Bedroom14. Walk-Through: Gatekeeper Mom15. Walk-Through: Homeroom16. Walk-Through: Betty’s True Colors17. Walk-Through: Sarah’s Weakness18. Walk-Through: Awkward First Date19. Combined Team Credits20. Exile Interactive21. Special Thanks

Confidential 4/8/2023

Executive SummaryExecutive Summary

Grace is a simulation game for the Playstation/2 that exposes the popularity contests, social intrigue, and girl bullying recently revealed in the best-selling (and recently film-optioned) books Odd Girl Out and Queen Bees and Wannabes in an interactive experience that features incredibly high-detail environments, beautifully animated characters in an easy-to-use interface. Grace features:

Stunning background and character visuals in a Resident Evil style presentation.

Over 100 clothes and jewelry, each with the ability to dramatically alter relationships.

Over 150 sets. 40 characters throughout school, each with carefully crafted personalities and

goals. 12 cliques, each with special abilities, ranks, and goals. Brand placement of coveted store chains. Music score inspired by female vocalists Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Madonna. 4-player multiplayer support on multiple PS/2’s with the multiplayer or

network adapters.

In Grace, the player raises a girl through the harrowing trials of womanhood, from the beginning of middle school through the end of high school. Grace does not pull punches with female behavior. Incorporating research from girl bullying books Odd Girl Out and Queen Bees and Wannabes in addition to numerous interviews with girls and their experiences particularly in middle school and high school, Grace digs into the dark corners of being a girl: the power plays, the teasing, the manipulation, the slander, and the ruthless competition for popularity and beauty.

Which isn’t to say the player can’t take the higher ground. Intermediate to advanced players will realize the game characters are all attached by a surprisingly effective network and will quickly learn what goes around, comes around. Matchmaking a couple, finding a best friend, tutoring someone, writing poetry and giving gifts to friends and dates are all examples of positive relationship building techniques. Each of the 40 characters in the game responds differently to stimuli, so playing good girl with lead the player to a certain crowd, and playing bad girl will lead the player to another.

In her adventures, she’ll go through a number of issues and trials, including coping with the development breasts, getting her first period, finding a prom date, a best friend, a good clique, a steady, and of course, she’ll have to deal with rival girls. In the process, the player can partake in schooling, training, sports, working, shopping, dating, and partying. Everything makes a difference to her character development and final outcome.


The Grace eye-candy will be elaborate, high detail backgrounds in a Resident Evil style presentation, featuring beautifully modeled and animated women, with particular attention paid to the details of clothing, fat, muscle, hair, facial expressions, and eyes. The user interface is old-school adventure game with highlighted aspects of the world, which can be triggered to bring up menus of context-sensitive actions.

A nice side-benefit of appealing to the world of women is that brands matter. Because Grace takes place in schools and malls amongst other settings, it offers an excellent opportunity to co-market large retail and clothing store brands without sacrificing the artistic integrity of the game.

Because the game is populated by characters who live in different houses, multiplayer is surprisingly straightforward. Other players have their own bedrooms, their own schedules, and their own lives. However, the state of the world is consistent for everyone. This means that quests become a more precious resource that must be shared between players, but more importantly, it means players can collaborate to help each other. For instance, if one character plays a smart poor girl, she can tutor her companion, playing a slow wealthy girl, while her companion buys enough clothes for the both of them. However, a big difference in interacting with human players is that the strength of the relationship is implied, not measured, and of course they do not assign goals to each other.

Grace is targeted to have a Teen rating.


FeaturesFeatures

Grace’s most newsworthy and marketable features will probably be the beautiful graphics and hot topic of girl bullying, but Grace features far more than that:

Stunning background and character visuals in a Resident Evil style presentation.

Elegant, simple user interface that scales in power for experienced players. Engrossing character management with 6 upgradeable attributes. 12 colorful cliques, each with special abilities, secret ranks, and clandestine

missions. Over 100 articles of clothing and jewelry, ranging from preppie to goth to

cheap to expensive, each with the ability to dramatically alter relationships and missions.

Over 150 elaborately modeled and lit sets. 40 fascinating characters throughout school, each with unique personalities

and missions. Addictive 4-person multiplayer support, incorporating both competitive and

cooperative play. Brand placement of coveted store chains and clothing brands. Music score inspired by female vocalists Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Madonna. With over 150 missions requiring an average of 10 minutes each to complete,

the game provides up to 25 hours of quest exploration.


StoryStory

You are a new girl to Highland Park and starting your first day of 6th grade. Highland Park can be a tough place for a new girl, and you’re about to find out how tough. Through the course of middle school and high school, you will have to navigate secret alliances, catty cliques, seething hatreds, loving friendships, and goals both wholesome and otherwise, all while trying to make friends, fit in, and maybe even meet some boys. Only by the end of the game, at your high school graduation, will you know whether you’ve attained the ineffable state of Grace.


What’s it Like?What’s it Like?

Graphically, Grace can be described as an old-school adventure game user input interface of highlightable interfaces within Resident Evil style cinematic backgrounds, and a focus on extremely realistic women, with careful attention to modeling and animation of clothing, fat, musculature, hair, eyes, and facial expressions to compliment convincing, realistic animations that convey emotion. Realistic graphics are key to the game’s marketability.

Game-play is similar to a sinister, zoomed-in Sims: Hot Date without the house building and a much stronger focus on style and navigating social hierarchies.


Character DevelopmentCharacter Development

Character Creation

Like a rich game of Dungeons & Dragons, creating your character is an extremely personal process of deciding how exactly to spend resource points on your player’s charisma, intelligence, fitness, artistry, health, and wealth. How you proceed with this will dramatically shape the character of the game. Though the player can quick-start the game so that these characteristics are all chosen at average values, playing with extremes will generally be more interesting. These are the character attributes:

Physique: Height, breasts, waist, and hips are (unfortunately) important for determining which cliques the player will be able to enter and which boys she can attract. Selecting the player’s race, face, and hair is free but permanent. Physique can only be changed by cosmetic surgery.

Health: Health is a special character trait, unlike the others. Selecting a predisposition to excessive weight gain, anorexia, acne, heart disease, PMS, depression, or body odor will free up resource points to spend in other areas. These conditions can be treated but not cured.

Aristry: This is a single characteristic, which can be developed into musical ability, acting ability, creative writing skills, or painting skills. These can be very useful skills for making and keeping friends, dates, and family without spending money on gifts. Artistry improves with use, including applying make-up and arranging hair.

Wealth: The parents’ wealth offers a huge upper hand when it comes to wardrobe, cosmetic surgery, cars, and tutoring. Parents’ wealth does not change.


Fitness: Fitness dramatically affects the player’s options in high school. Cheerleading, track and field, basketball, dancing, drill team, softball, tennis, volleyball, and aerobics are all options with strong fitness. This can be improved with regular work-outs.

Intelligence: This lets the player get good grades at school with less effort, and she will be able to come up with more effective lies. However, intelligent girls suffer from prejudice and need to seek out intelligent friends. Intelligence improves with lots of study and hanging with smart people.

Charisma: One of the key attributes to surviving the treacherous social web of girls through school is charisma. This is the most important element to determine the player’s potential friends and can have far-reaching effects throughout the game. Charisma improves with constant interaction.


Character Management

After finishing the character creation, those basic attributes will either stay where they are or improve when exercised. Besides those primary attributes, the one major state managed is:

Mood: The most important day-to-day state is mood, which ranges from 0 to 10. A positive mood augments the effects of any of the primary attributes, while a negative mood hurts them. Mood starts out neutral (5) in the morning unless she has PMS and her period has begun.

When mood gets maxed out at 10, the player “powers up.” The next thing she does is guaranteed to work, whether it’s asking a guy out on a date or starting a malicious rumor or lying to

Mom.

Even when not maxed out, mood can alter the effectiveness of any other attribute by up to +-20%.

This is pivotal, because when the player successfully exercises an attribute, that attribute will eventually level up. For instance, intelligence will increase in the process of studying, charisma will increase when complimenting, and both will increase when successfully fibbing.

Some girls will actually be drawn to bad moods, such as the Goth clique and girls that are pre-disposed to abusive friendships. Depending on the intelligence score, the player will receive hints during conversations tipping off behavioral patterns in the people she talks to. See the walkthrough for examples.


Relationship ManagementRelationship Management

Each non-player character (NPC) in the game has a relationship with every other character in the game. All of those relationships are initialized in the disconnected state with the player, but they have initial relationships with each other that are intricate and carefully designed. As the player meets each NPC, her relationship with that NPC is initialized at 5 (neutral). It can swing from 0 to 10, where pure hatred=0 and intense love=10.

Each NPC has a relationship map to every other as they come in contact as well, and changes in a single relationship can have dramatic repercussions throughout the relationship network. For instance, if the player backstabs a popular NPC and that NPC spreads a malicious rumor about the player to all of her friends, several of the player’s important relationships could be sabotaged in a single day. On the flip side of that coin, a popular player could decide to take out the competition for her love interest by spreading a malicious rumor about her competition.

Each NPC is programmed differently and can have very simple or complex internal state and AI. For instance, Luke might be warm to a dumb player at first but cool the relationship over time because of her low intelligence. Sarah’s relationship can be artificially improved by spending money around her, because she’s easily impressed. Betty’s behavior is manipulative, and she will always react very negatively in situations where she’s uncomfortable, such as being in a store where she cannot afford the clothes.Beth might be extremely easy to become good friends with, but after “timing out” over 30 interactions, she will suddenly use her close relationship with the player (or NPC) to her advantage, for instance by sharing secrets with someone in a clique she wants to enter.

Relationship management is so pivotal to the game that every person in the game displays his/her relationship on his sleeve so that the player knows the current state of her relationship with that person. However, the NPC’s relationship with other NPCs is always hidden, and the NPC’s internal state might well be a ticking time-bomb, waiting to melt-down the relationship at a moment’s notice. However, if the player has a friend whose relationship is stronger than 9, the player will be able to see the exact strength of all of her friend’s relationships, which makes friends powerful sources of information, like having scouts in the field of an RTS to dispel the fog of war.


CliquesCliques

Cliques are the key to power in middle school and high school. There are several cliques, most with strict entrance requirements, and being a member of each has dramatically different effects on the player’s goals and abilities. Cliques each have a ranking system. All girls higher in the hierarchy can command girls below them to perform an arbitrary action once a week.

Goths: These dark characters are into misery. To enter this clique, a bad mood and specific wardrobe and make-up is required. Advanced tiers of the clique require that the player have a high intelligence, low charisma, and that she get tattoos and complete quests which destabilize the Populars. The Goths are friends with the Geeks and Thugs. Members of the Goth clique have the power to infect bad mood, which will hurt the target’s relationship with all other girls.

Preppies: These power-hungry girls are focused on finding the right guy and fighting every other girl off, tooth and nail. Like the Goths, they require a strict dress code, and they require high wealth to enter. Higher tiers requires high charisma, and that they complete intelligence gathering missions on the Populars. Preppies are friends with the Populars. Once a week, members of the Preppie clique can offer a free makeover to anyone.

Jocks: These powerful women in basketball and track require shear height and high fitness in order to join. The Jocks, because of their affection for sports, have extensive relationships with boys, particularly the jocks. Ascending in rank is a matter of making it onto the varsity team (lots of daily exercise/training) and having a vast number of relationships with men. The Jocks are friendly with the Cheerleaders and Thugs. Once a week, Jocks can offer free training in any physical activity.

Skaters: The Skaters are grungy and require a specific wardrobe. Make-up is strictly forbidden. Skaters require moderate levels of fitness, charisma, and artistry. Impressive physique must be countered with excessively baggy clothing. Ascending the ranks requires massive skate practice, getting tattoos, and making relationships with girls in the Geek clique. Skaters are friends with the Geeks and Hippies. Once a week, Skaters can imbue coolness that for two days artificially accelerates relationship progress in any interactions.

Geeks: The Geeks have no dress code or make-up code. High intelligence is required to enter this group. The Geeks know the smarter boys, and to raise in rank, the player must get the highest grades in the class and perform elaborate practical jokes on the Populars. Geeks are friends with the Skaters, Goths, and Outcasts. Once a week, Geeks can tutor someone to temporarily improve their intelligence rating for a week.


Outcasts: Charisma and physique must be very low to enter this clique. The only other way in is to have more than 50% of the class in a negative relationship with you. The Outcasts require rescue missions of outcast girls, and sabotage missions against the Populars and Cheerleaders in order to advance in rank. Outcasts are friends with the Geeks. Once a week, Outcasts can threaten lower-ranking Cheerleaders and Populars with a public display of affection to force them to perform the next action.

Cheerleaders: The Cheerleaders require high fitness and a 9 physique to join. Advanced Cheerleaders require constant cheerleading training and campaigning for class officers in addition to plastic surgery. They are friends with the Jocks and Populars. Once a week, Cheerleaders can arrange a date with any boy in school.

Populars: The Populars are an incredibly hard clique to penetrate and extremely difficult to stay in. These are the most popular girls in school. They require high physique, high charisma, and expensive make-up and clothing. Wealth helps compensate for deficiencies. To advance to the top of the Populars, the girl must be voted class royalty each year, and she must go on several difficult relationship destabilization missions to prevent dangerously charismatic girls in rival cliques from gaining popularity. Populars are friends with the Cheerleaders and Preppies. Once a week, Populars can command any girl with a charisma or physique below her own to do the next action requested.

Thugs: The Thugs are the tough girls, the future biker chicks. Make-up is disallowed, and leather clothing is required. Charisma cannot be above 6. Higher ranks require seducing girls into kissing the player, making relationships with the Goths, getting a tattoo, and sabotaging the Cheerleaders. The Thugs are friends with the Goths and Jocks. Once a week, Thugs can threaten any girl with a fitness below 7 to accept the next action.

Hippies: The hippies ban make-up and require a great deal of time hanging out together and going on camping trips. Advancing in rank requires smoking a joint, converting a Preppie to a Hippie, and befriending a Skater. Hippies are friends with the Skaters. Hippies have an intrinsically higher mood.


Weekly CalendarWeekly Calendar

The weekly calendar lays out how much time the character wants to spend doing automated tasks, particularly studying, training, being with friends, dating, and being in school. This allows the player to time-warp (see User Interface) the game to the next interesting event without having to micro-manage each day.

In addition, if the player simply stops controlling the character, she will begin to follow the schedule after a certain timeout.


User InterfaceUser Interface

The camera angle is very much like the cinematic camera angles in Resident Evil, however unlike Resident Evil, Grace does not let the player directly control the character’s movement. Instead, several objects in every scene are highlighted in yellow by an object cursor as it tabs over them using the DPAD. Objects can include radios, phones, computers, doors, hallways, people, amongst many others. Selecting an object with BUTTON.x zooms into that object, or if a door, zooms into the next room. Pressing BUTTON.triangle will take the camera back to its last position.

As a general rule, DPAD tabs the cursor between different interface selections. In the Character Creation screen, these interfaces are character attributes. In the world, interfaces can be her radio, phone, computer, closet, hallway door, another person, a conversation tree or one of many other interfaces. BUTTON.x either goes to a new room or a new interface layer, and BUTTON.triangle backs up one level in the interface. On the character selection screen, BUTTON.x increases an attribute and BUTTON.o decreases the attribute.

Interfaces for each object vary depending on the most efficient and natural interface for that object. For instance, selecting the radio will zoom into the


radio and let the player select two objects, the volume and tuning knobs using the DPAD, and will let the player rotate these knobs with the BUTTON.o and BUTTON.x. However, selecting the telephone will let the player choose from a list of friends in her class to call which she can navigate with the DPAD and select with BUTTON.x. Pressing BUTTON.triangle in either of these interfaces would pull the camera back to her bedroom.

When the player selects on a new room to enter, her character will walk to that room following a path laid out by artists in each room. The walk animations are affected by her mood. Wherever possible, interfaces will try to integrate the player. For instance, the closet interface is most effective if the player sees the proposed clothing modeled on the girl instead of just selecting clothing. However, some interfaces, due to time constraints, will be limited to seeing the object change. For instance, changing the station on the radio doesn’t merit carefully animated hands in the scene turning the tuning and volume knobs.

An object on every screen is the player’s watch, which can be selected like other objects on the screen using the DPAD to change the time-warp rate from minutes to days, weeks, or months by tapping on BUTTON.x and BUTTON.o. Daily, Weekly, and Monthly time-warp can be cancelled by pressing BUTTON.triangle at any time. In daily time-warp, the game plays at an accelerated rate through the girl’s automated tasks in the weekly calendar. In weekly time-warp, the scene stays on her bedroom and only shows brief animations of the player while she’s in her bedroom. In monthly time-warp, the camera is outside the house watching the sun and moon spin wildly through the sky as the player’s bedroom window lights up and dims each day. There is a fourth option on the watch, Reverse. This will play the game backwards at exactly the same time-warp as it was played forward, allowing the player a handy UNDO.

Another object on every screen is the Main Menu icon. Like all other objects, this is selected by tabbing to it with the DPAD and selecting it with BUTTON.x. This takes the player to game options, sound options, save-game, and load-game. The main menu can also be accessed by START.


Multiplayer SupportMultiplayer SupportWith a PS2 Network Adapter or PS2 Multiplayer Adapter, up to 4 people can play at once. All girls will start out knowing each other and can get on the phone or swap e-mail. Gameplay proceeds as normal, except that the players can share clothes, make-up, jewelry, and can tutor or train each other. Players can collaborate to set each other up with friends or dates, or they can go competitive and strive for most popular girl in school while trying to sabotage each other. Because the network bandwidth required is extremely low, when on the phone, girls can communicate via audio over headset, even if they’re only connected via 56k modem. Gamers will want to play in this mode because it affords far more effective collaboration and competition.

Each human player has her own bedroom, so they really are like different characters in the game. However, the main differences in interface and behavior are as follows:

1. Human players do not have a number representing the strength of the player’s relationship with them.

2. Human players may not stick around in the room waiting for the player to talk to them.

3. Time-warping must be agreed upon by all players in the game or can optionally be pre-configured to time-warp at intervals.

4. Human players have optimized interfaces for sharing clothes, jewelry, make-up, and money in addition to a shortcut interface for chatting.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is not geared towards twitch response time when two players are in the room together. Because the player interfaces with the environment, and her character carries out those actions, the only serious fairness/race-condition issues are addressed by the user interface improvements detailed above.

Players can also enter the game with a pre-existing character, potentially putting them at different stages of development. The player’s attributes, possessions, and relationships are all left in tact, but all of the missions are reset at the creation of the game, and each player’s age is accelerated to the greatest common age, with the younger player receiving resource points to improve her character stats to compensate.


ComplexityComplexityWere the game to model all these behaviors in an unbounded way, the game complexity would exceed what is realistic for a two-year development cycle. There are several important ways that the game limits complexity:

1. Only the main character can change her height and proportions.

2. All NPC’s, except for Mom who has one model, have only two models, a middle school model and a high school model.

3. Unlike Resident Evil’s pre-rendered backgrounds, Grace backgrounds are live models, but because the camera paths are pre-determined, transformation, culling, and back-face removal can be pre-calculated, yielding higher detail sets.

4. Many of the NPC conversation animations are shared between riggings.

5. There are no issues with following the character or finding the camera in a tight spot or behind a wall because all paths are explicitly laid out by the set designers. This falls out as a benefit of making the objects in the room the interface instead of controlling the player directly.

6. To limit complexity, each of the 40 characters has a separate AI script. This script contains a set of triggered responses, quests, rewards, starting relationships, and special likes and dislikes. The AI is not designed to handle unforeseen situations, generate sentences on the fly, or demonstrate learned behaviors, and many facets of the AI are inherited from higher classes for cliques and types. The AI is there primarily to bring life to each character, highlighting quality dialogue, offering specific goals to the player, and allowing the player to interact with each NPC as a node in a delicate network of friends.


Walk-Through: Making LauraWalk-Through: Making Laura

1. 1. Player is allocated 30 resource points to spend on 6 attributes. Using the DPAD.up and DPAD.down, the player selects with the BUTTON.x a predisposition to acne for an additional 2 resource points and a predisposition to heart disease to get an additional 2 resource points, giving her 34 points to start with.

2. 2. Again using the DPAD.down and DPAD.up, the player allocates 3 on intelligence by pressing BUTTON.x 3 times, and does likewise to allocate 7 on charisma, 5 on artistry, 4 on fitness,

and 8 on wealth.3. Next, the player selects Physique just as she selects the other attributes, only now a tape

measure will appear by the girl, and will be highlighted. By pressing BUTTON.x and BUTTON.o, she changes her height up and down. Once satisfied, she uses DPAD.up and DPAD.down then uses the exact same process to set her bust, waist, and hip size, each of which highlights a tape measure when selected. The player sees the changes in her figure as these measurements change. 2.5 RP’s are removed for her very small waist, only 1 RP for her small bust, 2 RP for her small height, and 2.5 RP for her very narrow hips. Her overall physique score is 8.

4. The last two selections are for her hair and race, and using the same DPAD/BUTTON.x interface, the player picks brown, wavy hair and Caucasian for her race. These traits will make a difference later when dating and making friends, but they do not have a direct effect on her core attributes and don’t cost any resource points.

5. Lastly, using the DPAD, she tabs to the NAME box and presses BUTTON.x. Using a separate screen with a keypad (classic coin-op high score entry style) that is controlled with the DPAD and BUTTON.x, she enters the name “Laura.”

6. Laura has fairly middle-of-the-road art skill and is mildly uncoordinated, and she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she is rather charming, quite wealthy, and very pretty. The player selects the DONE box with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x to start the game.


Walk-Through: Laura’s BedroomWalk-Through: Laura’s Bedroom

1. The screen goes black, and we start hearing birds chirping followed by a radio alarm going off playing a tune similar to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” The camera goes first person to Laura, and as she wakes up and her eyes crack open like shutters on the screen, the camera pulls away from first-person for a full shot of Laura’s bedroom. Laura automatically heads for the bathroom and starts a shower while the camera and cursor are left in the bedroom. The closet is glowing yellow to indicate that the cursor is resting on it.

2. The player presses BUTTON.x to select the closet, which causes Laura to emerge from the shower with a towel on if she hasn’t already. It walks her to the closet and zooms the view to a clothing selection interface. Because Laura’s wealthy, her few clothes are expensive and conservative. She picks brown pumps, red socks, pink panties, designer jeans, a brown belt, a B-cup silk red bra, and a smart red blouse by browsing through them with the DPAD and pressing BUTTON.x to select them. Normally, each brand of clothes will state which clique it’s compatible with, but because she hasn’t met anyone yet, this information isn’t displayed. She presses BUTTON.triangle to emerge from the closet interface changed into her new clothes.

3. Laura selects her computer with the DPAD and BUTTON.x which zooms the view to her class web site that can be browsed with the DPAD. She spots Luke, who is clearly wealthy from the description of his summer vacation in Nice, selects him with BUTTON.x and has only one option at this time, Introduce, which she selects. She does the same with Betty on the cheerleader team. She exits the computer back to the bedroom interface with BUTTON.triangle.

4. Laura, selects the bathroom door with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x which changes the scene to the bathroom. Here, she selects her jewelry case with the DPAD and BUTTON.x, which zooms into a browsing selection of her jewelry box with a reflection in the mirror of just the body part she’s adorning. With the DPAD, she selects a fine silver chain necklace and a single star earring and puts them on by pressing BUTTON.x then returns to the bathroom interface with BUTTON.triangle. She then DPAD’s to the toilet paper and presses BUTTON.x to pad her bra to fill out the B-cup. Laura selects the make-up box with the DPAD but gets a warning that her mother forbids she wear it until she’s older, but she ignores the warning and applies red lip-stick, blush, and eyeliner using BUTTON.x. After selecting each one, she can rotate through one of several application styles with the DPAD, and she exits this interface with BUTTON.triangle. She doesn’t do a very good job because Laura’s artistry is only 5, and this is her first time putting on make-up, but her artistry skill will get better with time and practice.


Walk-Through: Gatekeeper MomWalk-Through: Gatekeeper Mom1. Laura selects the bedroom door with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x, which leads

down a hall to the living room, where Mom’s classical music, Schuler’s Ave Maria, is playing.

2. In the living room, Laura sees Wealthy Mom, who is essentially the house gatekeeper.3. Without having to select anything, Wealthy Mom immediately gets angry about the

make-up and up pops the overlay text What did I tell you about make-up, young lady? Laura gets pop-up choices appearing around Mom to either Take the make-up off, Charm Mom, or Reason with Mom. As Laura has a high charisma, she chooses to charm Mom with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x.

4. The game illustrates a bar demonstrating how easy it will be to charm the target. Laura’s charisma is high and their relationship is healthy, the bar easily falls in the green area, indicating success as Laura goes through an extremely charming animation. However, Wealthy Mom is individually programmed to get upset every time she’s charmed. Overlay text says, “OK, just this once, Laura,” and the player gets two more lines of overlay text, the first a hint: Does charming Mom make her angry?, and the second a result: Relationship with Mom -1. The –1 relationship cancels out the +1 successful charm, so Laura’s mood does not change. Laura can attempt this again tomorrow morning, but will have more trouble because of her decreased relationship with Mom.

5. Laura has three new pop-up selections, Could you drive me to school?, Seeya- I’m biking to school, and Bye, I’m taking the bus! Laura picks taking the bus, and loses the last hour of her morning.

6. The game transitions to Laura’s homeroom class.


Walk-Through: HomeroomWalk-Through: Homeroom

1. Homeroom in school, half the kids have arrived, sounds of kids talking, laughing, screeching, and shuffling their feet. Laura is standing at the door and starts browsing seats using the DPAD to see who is sitting where.

2. Laura spies Betty, the cheerleader, and sits next to her by selecting the nearby seat with the DPAD and pressing BUTTON.x.

3. Before class starts, Laura has only a few minutes to have conversations. She selects Betty with the DPAD, presses BUTTON.x, and has the conversation options Introduce myself, Did you get my e-mail?, and Compliment her outfit. She selects the second option with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x to ask Betty if she got the e-mail.

4. Overlay text comes up with Betty saying “Yes!” and she follows up with “I love your make-up!” The overlay message comes up, “Relationship with Betty +1,” then “Mood +1”. If Laura were more intelligent, an overlay hint would have also come up after the make-up comment, “She’s making fun of you,” and Laura would have been given the conversation option to call Betty on it.

5. The bell rings and class starts. Betty’s conversation is prematurely cut off. Selecting neighboring classmates now passes notes instead of starting conversations. Betty passes a note to Sarah making fun of Laura’s make-up. Betty’s and Sarah’s relationship improves. Sarah’s and Laura’s relationship gets worse, but Laura hasn’t met her yet, so she doesn’t know this.

6. Laura’s relationship with Betty isn’t strong enough to pass notes to Betty’s neighbors. So Laura selects Betty with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. She can Share a secret, Compliment her outfit, or Compliment her hair, but there are no other options because their relationship is still too weak. She compliments Betty’s hair, and Betty sends a thank you note back to Laura. Betty is programmed to be very sensitive about her hair, so the overlay text informs the player, “Relationship with Betty +2” and “Mood +2”.


Walk-Through: Recess with LukeWalk-Through: Recess with Luke

1. Laura selects her watch with the DPAD, which is a selectable object that is always on-screen. She presses BUTTON.x, and uses the DPAD to select daily time-warp then presses BUTTON.x again. This takes her high-speed through three classes and when it’s time for recess, she hits BUTTON.triangle to pull back to normal time.

2. Recess is outside, and the laughing, giggling, whispering, and screeching is everywhere. Starting recess automatically gives Laura +2 Mood, maxing her out at Mood=10. The player can see her happiness in her animations, and she’s actually glowing because her mood is powered-up.

3. Luke comes on screen and hangs out by the jungle gym. Laura selects him with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. She can Wave, Make eyes at him, or Introduce herself. Laura decides to go for the gold and selects Make eyes at him with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x.

4. Laura’s 7 charisma, small height (Luke is programmed to prefer short girls), and high spirits close the deal. Laura’s mood does not go up because it’s already maxed out. Luke walks to her and introduces himself with overlay text, “Are you Laura? I think you sent me e-mail!”

5. Laura now has the options, “Nope, not me.”, “Hi, I’m Laura. I just wanted to introduce myself,” and “Wow, you’re cuter than your picture!” She selects the third option with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. The game introduces a pop-up giving her the option to use her Mood power-up. She selects OK with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. This assures that the compliment will work and multiplies the relationship/mood effect of the compliment by 2X. The compliment is already extremely flattering and would grant +2 if it worked, so she gets the message “Relationship with Luke +4”, and her mood, instead of returning to a neutral 5, shoots up to 7 again because she would have gotten Mood +1 for the compliment but now reads “Mood +2”.

6. Luke is bowled over by the last compliment because of her maxed-out mood, so after blushing and saying “Thank you! You are, too!”, the player spasmodically presses the DPAD to get the cursor on the “Ask Luke out!” conversation option and mashes BUTTON.x. Luke agrees, and they have a date set for dinner tonight at MacDonnald’s.

7. Absolutely disinterested in the rest of the school day, the player goes back to her watch and time-warps to the end of the school day. The bus drives Laura home, and Mom is there asking “How was your day, honey?” The player selects Mom with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x where she is offered the replies, “OK,” “I met a guy!” and “I made a friend!”. Not yet confident about discussing boys with Mom after this morning’s make-up confrontation, the player opts for “OK,” which garners the reply, “That’s nice, sweetie! Don’t forget to do your homework.” No change in relationship unless Mom picks up on the lie, which she doesn’t, in this case, because Laura’s charisma is too high.

8. Laura selects the hallway that leads to her bedroom using the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x.


Walk-Through: Betty’s True ColorsWalk-Through: Betty’s True Colors

1. Laura’s PC is flashing. She selects it with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. She now has three options, Class Website, Relationship Tree, and Check e-mail. The Check e-mail option is flashing. Laura selects this with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. She has an e-mail from Betty waiting for her. “Hey, Laura! Meet me and my friend Sarah at Johnny Rockets in the mall for ice cream floats at 6pm?”

2. She presses BUTTON.triangle to go back to the bedroom interface, selects the hallway door with the DPAD, presses BUTTON.x and faces Mom.

3. Because it’s after school, Laura’s conversation options with Mom are now more varied and general, “Can you take me to a friend’s house?,” “Can you drive me to the mall?,” “I’m getting teased at school!,” and “Can I have a bigger allowance?” Laura selects the mall with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x. Their relationship isn’t great from this morning, but Laura’s mood is high, so Mom replies, “Sure, honey,” no charm needed.

4. She selects the Johnny Rockets entrance with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x to enter the restaurant and automatically sit next to Betty and Sarah. Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” is playing in the background.

5. Sarah says, “Got a note from Gloria in class saying that Gloria thinks Luke is cute.” The relationships between Sarah, Betty, and Laura improve +1 because Sarah shared a secret, but Laura’s mood dips –2 because of news of the competition.

6. Laura now has these conversation options with Sarah, “Oh, gross! She dated Malcolm!” “I’m going on a date with Luke!,” “Let me see the note,” and “Whatever. Let’s shop.” She chooses the first with the DPAD, which is a lie, and presses BUTTON.x in hopes of spreading a rumor about Gloria. A lie bar appears, just as the charm bar did before, only this time she doesn’t pull it off. Laura’s mood is low, so her charisma and intelligence aren’t enough to pull off the lie. Laura can no longer attempt this lie with Betty and Sarah.

7. Sarah replies, “Oh come off it, you’re just jealous!” and Betty replies, “You are SO jealous!” Betty’s and Sarah’s relationship improves +1, but their relationships with Laura go down -1. Laura’s mood plummets another -2.

8. The player, at a loss, opts to end the conversation and get out. She selects, “Whatever. Let’s shop.” with the DPAD, presses BUTTON.x and then agrees to the pop-up asking whether the player wants to pick up the tab. The player selects OK and presses BUTTON.x. Curiously, this has no effect on her relationship with Betty but improves her relationship with Sarah +2.


Walk-Through: Sarah’s WeaknessWalk-Through: Sarah’s Weakness

1. Starting on the south end of the first floor, Laura can selects the Bebe store entrance with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x.

2. The player selects a clothes rack with an interface very similar to the clothes closet interface, and Laura selects expensive jeans with the DPAD and BUTTON.x.

3. Concerned about her relationship with Betty, the player selects Betty with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x to ask her opinion of the outfit. Betty repies, “Makes your ass look fat.”

4. The player repeats this with several other outfits but gets consistently negative feedback. But one time, as a result of lucking out on her intelligence/charisma roll, Laura gets a hint, “Is Betty jealous?” Finally twigging, she selects the cash register with the DPAD and sees the price tag of $100, then agrees to pay it by pressing BUTTON.x in response to OK. The purchase infuriates Betty, and their relationship drops -3, but Sarah’s and Laura’s relationship improves +2. Sarah clearly loves seeing money spent.

5. The player leaves Bebe and heads to the jewelry stand. Here, Sarah screams “God, those earrings are SO CUTE!”

6. Laura can say, “Sure, if you’re a BOAT looking for an ANCHOR!” “Pretty cool,” or “No, Sarah, those are SUPER CUTE.” Laura chooses the latter. Sarah’s relationship with Laura is now maxed-out at 10.

7. They have 15 more minutes before Mom comes to pick them up, so the player time-warps to the pick-up time with the watch interface.


Walk-Through: Awkward First DateWalk-Through: Awkward First Date

1. In her bedroom, Laura uses the closet to put on her new pants and a white blouse just as she did getting dressed that morning.

2. Her phone is flashing. She selects it with the DPAD and presses BUTTON.x to discover she has voice mail waiting from Luke, “McD’s at 7pm, don’t forget!”.

3. Laura goes to the living room. She again has the same after-school options and again asks to go to the mall. Mom replies, “No, I already took you to the mall today! I’m tired of driving.” A hint displays: “Maybe someone else can drive you!”

4. Laura heads upstairs, calls Sarah, and because of her excellent relationship has the option of, “OH-MY-GOD-SARAH-I-NEED-A-RIDE-SOOOOO-BAD!” Sarah replies, “I’ll do it if you call Betty and tell her you hate me.” Laura selects, “Huh? Deal. Whatever.” She calls Betty and says, “Jeez, did you get a load of those earrings? Barf. Is Sarah blind?” Betty chimes in, “God, she is such a dork.” Laura’s relationship with Betty goes up +2. She hangs up and immediately gets a call from Sarah, “You’re a PEACH. Don’t tell her we’re friends, OK? She’s being weird.” Then, “On my way!”

5. When Laura returns to Mom, she now has the option, “I found something else to do, Mom. Sarah’s Mom is picking me up for dinner.” Mom agrees.

6. At McD’s, she approaches the table and is automatically seated next to Luke. He says, “Damn, those pants are cool.” +2 to mood because it came from a guy, +1 to the relationship.

7. They start a mostly linear small-talk conversation tree. When the conversation tree first allows Laura the option to spread her malicious, “Did you know Gloria was with Malcolm?” she seizes on the opportunity. Luke buys the lie.

8. The date goes smoothly, and they schedule another for Thursday night at the movies.9. When Laura gets home, she gets a voice mail from Betty, “Sorry for how I acted today.

I’m pissed at Sarah. So like… Luke. Call me.” Laura calls Betty and spills all in an effort to improve her relationship with Betty, which does in fact improve +2 by the end of the conversation.


Combined Team Credits

Dave Taylor, Grace Lead DesignerDave brings with him considerable technical and design knowledge born through many years spent programming Doom and Quake at id, financing and designing Abuse at his own company Crack dot Com, debugging and developing the Crusoe processor with computer industry luminaries at Transmeta Corp, and most recently designing and producing Spy Kids 2 for simultaneous release with the movie.

Carbon6

Company Credits: Spy Kids 2 (GBA),American McGee’s Oz (Xbox, in progress)

Principal Credits: Doom (PC),Doom 2 (PC),Quake (PC),Quake 2 (PC),Quake 3 (PC),American McGee’s Alice (PC),Abuse (PC)


Exile Interactive

Company Credits: World Series Baseball (Xbox),World Series Baseball 2K2 (DC),World Series Baseball 2K3 (Xbox, GC, PS2),Toxic Grind (Xbox),MTV Sports: T.J. Lavin’s Ultimate BMX (PS)

Principal Credits: Impossible Creatures (PC),Battlezone: The Red Odyssey (PC),Catalyst Wars (PC),PlanIt Teacher (PC & Mac),PlanIt Parent (PC & Mac),Simpson’s Road Rage,A.I. (based on the Steven Spielberg movie),Homeworld (PC),NHL All-Star Hockey (Sega Saturn),NHL Powerplay ’98 (PC, PS1 & Sega Saturn),NHL Powerplay ’96 (PC, PS1 & Sega Saturn),Pele Soccer (Sega Genesis),Brett Hull Hockey ’95 (SNES & Sega Genesis),Brett Hull Hockey (SNES),Bebe’s Kids (SNES),Dark Summit ,FOX Sports NBA Baskeball 2001,FOX Sports NBA Basketball 2000,ESPN NBA Showtime ,FIFA Soccer 2002,2002 FIFA World Cup ,FIFA Soccer 2001 ,FIFA Soccer World Championship 2000 (Japanese release - EAC first PS2 game) ,FIFA Soccer 2000 ,3D Online Casino ( Dr. Ho’s Casino) ,Excentrique Casino,Flintstone’s Trouble in Bedrock (GBA),Sony BINGO (online)


Exile InteractiveExile Interactive

Finding the right team for a game this bold was no simple matter! Exile Interactive brings many things to the table, including a long track record of making games with spectacular human character animations, a commitment to bringing focus groups into development, and a world class art staff. Perhaps the most important part of the team is Dan Tudge, the President and CEO, who is himself raising a daughter about to enter the 6th grade.

Exile made the following hard-hitting evaluation of the Grace game concept to determine its fit within Exile. Following this section is sample concept art by Exile of the player’s bedroom and several character studies.


Overall design and salability

Pros: Carbon6 has good media exposure, which could potentially translate into increased sales It is a unique game in a genre without much direct competition, which will give us more

flexibility and lower risk Targets the untapped market of female gamers Game would get significant press due to it's content This title has the potential for franchise and internet related spin-offs which could be

extremely lucrative Ability to create and grow character without the frustration of repeated character death

that is prevalent in most RPGs. Low frustration level has been identified as a key component in successful games for females

Girls will be attracted to the shopping, clothes, hairstyles features Worlds and characters will be incredibly lush varied and detailed Character driven Easy game to produce as it deals directly with Exile’s heavy art strengths and Carbon6’s

strength as a designer Thanks to Sims the female market is pumped and just waiting for a great "game for girls" Game concept, design, and art philosophies seem flexible at this point which will

decrease risk Many of the "Cons" around this game can be managed and therefore reduced

Cons: There is no concrete market analysis for this product and as such it is unclear what the

real market potential is for this style of game Being only a PS2 title seems to be the wrong market for females. Quick internet research

indicates the PC may be a better fit or perhaps even both skews Game will require excellent game design to be a success There is no female staff involved in either design or execution of this project Although a “pro” targeting the untapped market of female gamers is also large risk The bullying angle has the potential to be a very negative “vibe” on the game Scope needs to be carefully managed throughout the project or it could easily overrun its

schedule. Carefully attention must be paid to the design of the AI. Those rules will have a

significant impact on whether the game is fun or not. Although aspects of this game can be found in The Sims: Hot Date (relationship

management), Resident Evil (graphics) and Fall Out (AI), there is not a blueprint (FPS, RTS, etc) for the team to follow, making it a much higher risk project.

The design team must have a careful understanding of "Teens" evolving culture or the game might miss its targeted generation. For instance, what is popular in 2002 might not be popular in 2004 - when the game is to be released.


Art

Pros: Easy game to produce as it deals directly with Exile’s artistic strengths as a developer Easy game to artistically visualize The constrained camera philosophy provides the opportunity for us to make a truly

stunning game visually.

Cons

The scope of the game is still wide open which increases risk related to potentially unclear art asset requirements.

Not withstanding the previous point the current scope visually requires an extremely large number of high quality assets required to meet design goals and will be very labour intensive if a brute force approach is applied

Engineering

Pros: Graphics technology requirements are reasonable due to constrained visual style of

game Game suited to existing game engine technology available off the shelf such as

Renderware Mostly indoor sets and controlled camera give us a lot of flexibility in our graphics

technology Flexible in design may reduce risk related to graphics and technology requirements

Cons: The scope of the game is still wide open which increases risk related to potentially

unclear technology requirements.

Feedback as it relates to Exile

Pros: Work with Carbon6 Allows for full independent game production further strengthening us as an organization Opportunity to make a different game (other than sports or extreme sports) This title is not limited to specific “sports season” offering flexibility on project timeline Does not present a direct conflict to our relationship with Blue Shift and may be

complimentary Allows us to develop our entire tools and technology division Share in profits and IP Potential for extensive press coverage Could offer further work though franchise and internet potential Will strengthen companies position in game industry

Cons: Exile is not free to create a tech demo until the new year (unless paid by a publisher) If unsuccessful, this game could put us back at square one


Design Ideas

Grace Specific: Implement a limb texture swapping technology to decrease asset creation and increasing

character variety in the process Get in a Psychiatrist Get in a group of teenage kids to focus test the concept and game Have major events that affects that character is a significant way, such as:

o A friend commits suicide o Parents get divorced o Car accident causes death of friend.

Each Clique should have its own type of music, such as: o Preppies: Top 40 o Skaters: Hip Hop

Looking into allowing characters to develop into hybrid characters, such as a Paladin shares both the traits of a Warrior and Cleric. Adding this element, will allow the more advance players to seek a more challenging path in completing the game.

Look at Westwood's Earth & Beyond character generation system.

Sweeping changes: Consider making this game more appealing to males (a game for boys and girls) to

reduce risk Make it more of a high school parallel universe allowing players to experience a life they

don’t get a school (e.g. a geek getting to be a jock) Make it an online universe Change perspective from adventure type to true 3rd person view like the Sim’s


Special ThanksSpecial Thanks

A very special thank you goes out to the inspiring women who offered tough critiques, constructive criticism, colorful middle school and high school stories, and warm support to improve and refine this game design:

Victoria Arch,Stephanie Carlisi,

Laura DiGirolamo,Leyna Gravitt,

Natalie Graziano,Kristi Kontor,

Grace Chapman McCarty,Suzanna Peters,

Annabelle Ramos,Dr. Sally Raskoff,

Sherry Taylor


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