Dev Log 1 - Conducting Research For Game Design

Hello everyone, this is my first devlog for the Gamficiation assignment. 

This week we were tasked with researching one of a few topics in order to gather information to create a resonant game. The topic I choose for this was Artificial Intelligence as it's something that's continuously been a hot topic in the games industry. However my research didn't really end up taking me down the route I thought it would and I ended up reading a lot about AI sentience instead.

The first thing most people would probably think about with this topic is some sort of doomsday scenario where AI kills us all, but all the research I found wasn't anything related to that, usually mocking that idea. Most of it instead focused on the ethical treatment of a sentient AI which I found to be a more interesting topic anyways. The whole ethical dilemma around whether or not a sentient AI should be treated with respect is definitely a well explored topic in fiction but I feel that just goes to show that it's a fascinating topic.

Weirdly enough though with most of the game ideas I come up with, it all feels like they're allegories for something else instead. What I mean by this is in a lot of contexts you could replace AI with animals or other humans and the message often still sticks. For example one idea I had was around overworking an AI, causing it stress or pain, which is something that could potentially happen in the future, but is already happening with regular human workers all the time. I think this kind of dual meaning might end up making whatever game I end up pitching more interesting, so I feel like I'll stick with it.