Checkmate
Design 2330 Visualizations SP22
Jorie Capper
Changing the narrative of the classic game of chess is a delicate balance; to alter the narrative and make it your own, while enabling the pieces to remain recognizable to the common viewer. By implementing split joints my partner, Kayla Goins, and I were able to create stable and durable chess pieces that convey a narrative of class relations, without compromising the relations between the pieces and their familiarity.
Research
To ensure we had an understanding of the game and how the average person experiences the gameplay, my partner and I played two games of chess. Kayla is a beginner at chess, so using a digital chessboard was beneficial, as it shows the possible places a piece can move when selected. I researched the history of chess and how it has developed throughout history, and how these changes affected the pieces and the gameplay.
Exercises
To establish a working relationship between partners, Kayla and I worked together to draw silhouettes of an object of our choice, and then used the silhouettes created together to form a three dimensional form of the silhouettes using split joints. The relationship between pieces of an object and how they come together to create a whole form in space is very fun to experiment with. Two dimensional to three dimensional translation can be challenging but very fascinating, and I look forward to exploring it further.
Concept Statement
Every game has a narrative. By shifting the narrative of chess to represent our modern-day issues, the story transforms from kings battling for land and gold to a battle between the classes, the lower fighting the upper for rights and living conditions. Chess is war and among the two opponents, one always wins. The hierarchy that consists in the pieces themselves is brought into the spotlight, highlighting the hierarchy within society itself. One side is small and weak while another is solid, tall, and strong. The differences of proportion sizes of the pieces display the distinction of who is the consistent winner and who is the consistent loser. The small pieces are colorful and diverse, representing the wide variety of people in the lower class, while the big pieces are black and white, showing the continuity within the group that makes up the upper class. In addition to creating our own narrative, we will be adding in the element of time to the gameplay. By shifting the goal from checkmate to taking as many of the opponent as you can in a limited amount of time, gameplay can be made simpler and help just focus on what each piece can do, instead of strategies employed after understanding the pieces. This makes the game more accessible to players of all levels of experience.
Iterations
Drawing inspiration from the harsh skyscrapers associated with the upper class, I played with maintaining the hints in structure that show how a piece moves, while making each piece imitate motifs from the life of the top one percent, such as being “#1,” having the biggest building, and experimenting with leisure space travel.
Production
After testing the stability of my forms with cardstock prototypes, I proceeded to test the material tolerance, to adjust the sizes of my split joints to fit the final material of chipboard and cardstock. After reaching the right sizing, I used the laser cutter to create clean cut chess pieces of my designs. Due to humidity, the tolerance shifted during production, which led to sanding the split joints of my pieces to ensure a correct fit. Understanding the way materials work and how that can be used in the favor of the design is vital. Before sanding my split joints, I left them in a dry space so they would shrink, allowing me to sand and assemble my pieces before they expanded once more, which created a snug fit and eliminated my need for glue in most pieces.
Final
Accounting for gameplay in addition to aesthetic, durability, and practicality changed the angle from which I approached this design. Not only did I focus on our narrative, I focused on the pieces themselves and how the player can recognize them in relation to their movements while playing a game. My pieces are stable and durable, ensuring constant use will not be discouraged. This project was very different, but it opened my mind to approaches outside my comfort zone, which expands my capabilities and willingness to experiment with uncomfortable ideas.