WARNING: A spate of recent magazine articles blame gaming for the increased divorce rates of young couples, leaving behind a host of “World Of Warcraft widows.” We the manufacturers take no responsibility if Custody shatters your happy home. (You have 3-D waiting at home yet here you are dallying with our 2-D flirtations. Bastard. ) But at least, while you master its strategies, Custody provides real insight into the effects of separation and divorce upon a vulnerable child.
Through the eyes of a twelve year old child, the melodrama of divorce and jockeying for custody appear as crayon sketches marked by confusion, helplessness, blame, hope, memories, and fragile intimacies. Our child tries to navigate a new world riddled with new and shifting boundaries. A crude map takes shaped whose territories are both metaphors and solid rooms of depressed real estate.
Our design draws off research in the psycho-dynamics of divorcing families. Be attentive to the way your movement --and stillness-- ripple through this world. You are walking through a landscape half awake and half childhood-nightmare, beware the bad mojo. Opportunities and ideas present themselves, pregnant with both promises and perils.
A 48 hour game jam is a lot like a Vegas wedding capped off by a drive-through window divorce complete with a side order of fries. Custody is the child we leave behind; hoping you can help her adjust and invite her into your home. Success has a thousand parents while failure is an orphan.