Fuguo's
Media Space

Week 5: Revised Game Design, and Storyline Update

Mar 2, 2025

Blog series: Bazaar.log (IDM Thesis Project)

After this week's science fair demo and following discussions with professors and classmates, I revised my game design and created a storyline in flowchart form. I also did more research on the milestones of the Internet history and open-source history, and did a case study on the funding mode, operation mode, and governance mode of several successful open-source projects.

Link to updated storyboard
Link to updated UI moodboard and wireframe design

Science Fair Demo Reflection

This week during the Science Fair Demo, I received valuable feedback from professors and peers. Below are my reflections on my work so far.

  • The game content can be more substantial, containing important or interesting historical moments and events that push the Internet and open-source ecosystem forward. The gaming elements can conform with historical styles as well, like grey UI for Web 1.0 era and random pop-up windows for Web 2.0 era in game.
  • The era progression doesn't have to be time-related -- it can also be event-driven. Also, instead of directly printing era name on the screen, my new storyline highlights trends and characteristics of each era in order to emphasize the progression.
  • During the past two weeks, I realized that incremental game might not be the ideal way to showcase my idea. This is because the history of the Internet and open source is messy, and the success of an open-source project cannot be simplified to a single number. Therefore, to increase the information capacity of my game (and also attract users), I need to change my UI and game mechanism. I will further illustrate my ideas in the next section.

Revised Game Design

Since I see the limitations of incremental game form in my storytelling, I decided to pivot from a pure incremental game to a combination of incremental elements and a visual novel. Below is my storyboard (work in progress). Please visit my Miro Board to zoom in and see my updated storyline in details.

Slide 1

Act 1: The Birth of a Hacker (1970s - 1980s). Keywords: network, hacking, UNIX, Free Software Movement.

Slide 2

Act 2: The Rise of Open Source (1990s-2000s). Keywords: IP Wars, browsers, World Wide Web, Internet, open-source.

Slide 3

Act 3: The Age of Centralization (2010s-2020s). Keywords: monopoly, sustainability, funding, governance.

Slide 4

Act 4: The AI Era and Beyond (2020 - Present/Future). Keywords: AI, GenAI, IP Wars, digital ethics.

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I still want to keep the logic of my previous incremental game but will also include more storytelling elements like retrospective UI, text and image content in news, notebook, calendar, and LAN communication panels.

Wireframe of new UI design for storytelling from 1990s to 2000s, resembling a desktop with 1990s-style windows opening.
Wireframe of new UI design for storytelling from 1990s to 2000s, resembling a desktop with 1990s-style windows opening for news reading, work dashboard display (where previous incremental game goes to), personal notebook, calendar (for moving back and forth in game timeline), and LAN communications among protagonist's colleagues and community members.

Resources

I found some useful CSS library from GitHub for a retro-UI design:

Here is an interesting reasearch presented at CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild:

A useful report from Tidelift:

Next Steps

  • Refine storyboard: clarify protagonist's emotion arc, and think about what historical events and details to include.
  • Build the Act 2 before Mid-term demo.