Custom assets are nearly done. Working on events and the like within the game and otherwise improving things from Arrival, and the first 30 minutes or so of game is done (assuming you walk into every room and interact with things arbitrarily like I have in playtesting) with the one exception being the library.
There are still some things I need to do, like make sure you can't leave when there's nothing to leave to, and that filling out of the library with some additional lore, but things are coming together.
If anyone has any thoughts about Arrival, I'd love to hear them. Even if you hate it, at least I know some of you have downloaded and tried it.
If you're into reading philosophical design ramblings, I have plenty of those, too, so lets get into some of that. I was talking about the general design and story themes for the game with my roommate, and I came across a couple of realizations.
Before we get into those realizations, some context. I take issue with capitalism, especially the hyper-capitalist mentality of the US. It has merits and flaws, like any economy, and I recognize that rapid adoption of a different model would cause more harm than good as people tried to resist or manipulate the transition. However, capitalism as it currently exists feels to me like less of an economy and more of a means for those with resources to gather more resources through the work of those that stand to benefit significantly less by earning their own resources in the process of gathering resources on behalf of the person who already has significant resources. In short, rich people buy poor people through employment. Wage slavery.
I have personal experience in this from two different angles. One as the person who couldn't afford to seek ways to improve my life because my resources were so limited that it was all I could do to keep living paycheck to paycheck, and one as middle management that helped ensure that the company was making as much profit as possible through the manipulation of the human resource. I was good at my job and started at the ground level, so I did everything I could to keep the employees in my charge happy, but every single ounce of training I received to that end turned people into numbers and I hated it.
With that in mind, we come to the world of Maids & Masters. In this world, there are three types of people. Masters, who are given access to Contracts, a kind of magic that they channel from the Headstone which serves as the centerpiece of their Estate. Servants, who come into the employ of Masters through Contracts, and in so doing gain access to a second type of magic called Theurgy in exchange for devoting their lives to the whims of their Master. The last are the Uncommon Folk, people who live in the wilds between Estates that have no magic and are beholden to none save their own chosen society.
The Folk, despite being no less intelligent or capable than Masters or Servants, are generally looked down upon as uncultured and uneducated savages that would only serve as a drain on Estates were a Master to accept them without a Contract to make them into Servants. Not all Masters think this way, and some have even created Pacts of Accord, which supply those Masters with goods and services through the Folk that they otherwise cannot get from other Estates. The Folk are otherwise content to live in their small ramshackle homes and hunt the beasts of the wilds and harvest their communal gardens for food. The Folk are also the only group to practice religion and believe in a power higher than themselves (there are exceptions to this, but that's a post for another day).
Theurgy, the magic wielded by Servants, grants a large range of different effects. Some Servants become exceptionally strong, fast, or tough to the point of being superhuman. Others gain power over the mind, able to dull senses, slow opponents, and charm people into doing things they might otherwise never consider. Some are able to weaponize their sexuality, able to achieve all of this by swaying their hips, fluttering their eyelashes, or revealing their body. Nearly all servants, regardless of how Theurgy manifests for them, gain the meager power of prestidigitation - magical party tricks that can be used to produce lights or clean objects with a word or gesture. Though extremely rare, some servants display Theurgy in extreme ways, able to call down and dismiss lightning storms or hurricanes at will, or launch bolts of pure energy from their hands.
For all the power of their Servants, Masters receive no such endowments. Many have tried over the years, but the only abilities their power grants them is their Contracts, and issuing Orders to those subject to a Contract. They are otherwise entirely mundane and average, but most are so caught up in their own hubris that they see the religion of the Uncommon Folk as ridiculous, because surely there is no greater power in the world than the economic might that Masters are able to wield through their Contracts. Many Masters twist this power for their own purposes in subtle or cruel ways, such as stripping their Servants of their personality and replacing it with a new one, or making them into sex slaves, or making it impossible to refuse Orders instead of the Order only being a compulsion.
Those of you who are adept at reading between the lines have probably already drawn the connection for yourselves, but I did this unintentionally as I was building the world prior to starting development on Arrival. I didn't connect the dots until after I said some of this out loud.
The Uncommon Folk are a metaphor for the unemployed or those not traditionally employed (such as farmers, workers in the gig economy, people who can't work and live off government programs, survivalists that choose to leave society to live off the land, religious communities like the Amish, etc.). Masters are the corporate elite, and Servants are their employees. Those in power only have it because of an old system that put them there by way of luck and nepotism, or by marrying into it. Those not in power have little to no way to change their circumstances should they have a desire to. Those that have no power and are happy with their situation are seen as strange outsiders and shunned.
This may not be universally true of the real world, but I believe there are plenty of examples. It's definitely true in the world of Maids & Masters. There is nothing preventing the Uncommon Folk (or another Master, or even the Servants of another Estate) from ousting a Master and removing them from power save their Servants. A Master without Servants is no Master at all. A Servant, on the other hand, keeps their Theurgy regardless of who holds the Writ for their Pact of Servitude. This makes them as feared as they are desired, as a significantly powerful Servant can single-handedly topple everything a Master has built. This has happened in the history of the game, both in the ancient past and as the catalyst that led to the situation of our main character and began his story.
The metaphor feels especially poignant as we come out of the pandemic, and we start to hear ridiculous things like "we need to cut support so people are forced return to work" and "we as a business deserve employees, and people should be made to work for us." Within the game, I already had antagonists in mind that would represent these aspects without fully realizing I had made them to be such a metaphor.
So I may be using Maids & Masters as a platform for me to process my thoughts on the subject of unfair economic practices and culturally-enforced hypocrisy and false dichotomy. Whoops.
(I'm not sorry.)
And if you're still here, you're handsome and/or beautiful. I appreciate you. Here's a sneak peek at the first thing you see when you hit New Game.
