I’m in the group who had the topic of revamping the Hills District. Starting out, I didn’t know too much about the Hill District except that it was a part of Pittsburgh which had been on the economic decline for a while now. After looking into the Hills District a little further, it turns out that this economic decline is due to the Civic Arena being built there, which ultimately cut off ties from surrounding areas. And this led to residents leaving and businesses being closed down. I personally think the Hill District has an interesting history that deserves to be told, and I think part of our group’s plan can be to find a way to tell that movie.

Some ideas I had were maybe to do a small film portion where shots of the Hill District could be taken while audio of our group talking about its history could be going on. We can discuss how it got like that to inform an audience, and explain where we want it to go. It would be a mini-documentary sort of thing. Also, as far as scaling this project out, I think it works well for the topic we have chosen. Part of revamping the Hills District would be a lot of community projects and outreach events and stuff like that, so a potential idea for scaling out would be writing “proposals” to submit to local government to get events approved. These events could actually help in turning around the Hill District.

When I think of the Hill District, I think of crime. I don’t think of the rich history of Jazz and “happenins”, but I think, “well to get to the Strip District, I have to go through this boarded up community that I wouldn’t send my cop-uncle through alone at night.” Type the Hill District into google News, and you you’ll find mixed articles about arrests and celebrating the culture of the Hill district, when it was the vibrant place it was, today. What our group discussed was “revamping the Hill District,” which in itself is an extremely broad idea. The first step to making a place desirable to go to though, is it make it safe. Our team has decided that we would like to build a campaign to ramp up safety in the hill district, starting with safety kiosks. These are just like the one you see in South Oakland, which can be pressed to alert authorities you need help if you feel unsafe. We aim to build a website for this as well as make a video or soundscape, something that drives patrons to the website to feel the need to contribute to this cause. We would use the old artistic appeal of the Hill District, mostly its Jazz scene, as a goal to move towards. But with the modern age, comes modern twists. Maybe the Hill district isn’t a Jazz scene, but the next Hip-Hop, soul, house music, or movie hub. The Hill District has the historic appeal, and I think it could sell itself in that regard, it just needs to be made safe first.

My topic for the group project was about South Oakland. South Oakland is important because it is where all the college students live. Many think that South Oakland is dirty, unsafe, and infested with pests. South Oakland is has also become known as a dirty place. In an article on Pittnews in 2014,  the dirtiness of South Oakland is talked about a lot. For example,  a resident named, Wenger stated stated a problem for the litter is that the trash is “collected on Friday mornings, just after the unofficial beginning of the weekend”. Because most students don’t party until Friday night the trash will again continue to grow on Friday nights and on Saturday nights. In order to prevent this, trash trucks should not pick up the trash until Sunday nights allowing for a cleaner South Oakland.

In order to show how dirty South Oaklands, our group would use Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premiere. We would take videos of South Oakland during the weekends at night or during the day. We would do a before and after comparison, showing what South Oakland should look like and what it looks like at night. Because at night, that is when all the parties begin, one could see just how dirty South Oakland becomes. This is due to all of the parties that are being thrown and all the annoying people littering their beer cans rather than throwing it in the trash.

The topic that our group chose to focus on is South Oakland, and more specifically the issues in South Oakland. Lets be honest, South Oakland as a whole is one large problem but can be broken down into sub problems which are; Slumlord housing, Dirty streets, traffic and Public safety. The traffic issue, which does not heavily affect the lives of college students, is a major headache that a lot of professionals that work in Oakland have to deal with on a daily basis. This issue does make the news, and has caught the eye of many city officials as a major issue. Transportation engineers have started to develop a Oakland Master Plan for 2025 that totally changes how traffic is managed in order to reduce congestion. Many programs like audacity and premiere could be used to create a sense of congestion and claustrophobia to try and illustrate the pain of sitting in Oakland traffic for hours. Another issue, public safety, has made the headlines of pitt newspapers and many people talk about the high number of assaults that are reported from the south o streets. When walking through south Oakland, the amount of litter and damaged belongings on the sides of the streets is appalling. All the people who live in south Oakland complain about it, but there are programs like PMADD and other community services that go around and clean up South Oakland streets. All these issues can be used by video taping the topics and try to use audio tracks to make the audience seem like they really are in south Oakland, experiencing all these issues first hand, in order to raise awareness of all the problems that need to be taken care of.

The first interesting that happened was when the time shifted to 6:00 pm. There was a slight pause in the game. At first, I just assumed that the game was over which would have been a great disappointment. However, the game continued and there was a time shift from saying bye to your mom which was around 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. I felt that I did not have that much choice in the game as most times I would simply just have to click on one option to continue in the game. However, there were also parts in which there were many options that i could choose from such as when there were five options ranging from “Talk to Ryan” to “Go to the Kitchen”. However, after I went through the options, it would loop me back to the same part of the game. So, after that, I did not feel that I had complete control of the game. Due to this, I did not feel like there were to many particular consequential moments.

The color for the choices were a red-ish maroon, while the normal text was simply black. The background music was a bit creepy which I presumed was meant to add to the suspense of the game. I think it was a very good addition to the game as it made certain parts of the game  a bit creepy and added curiosity and suspense to the game.

When playing this game I got a creepy feeling from the beginning because of the use of sound effects. When I got to my friend Megan’s house and saw the scenery, I was validated that this was going to have a haunted feel the entire time. The font of this game did not spark my interest. For it was thin, small and boring in my opinion. It did not shed any positive light on the game and it was almost the main part of it. Even though this game was primarily text-driven the use of sound and image were extremely beneficial in guiding the narrative of the game. What I found interesting was the combination of cartoonish and real images because they were useful in different ways. The cartoon haunted house was a good image to use because it was very limited in design and detail, still allowing the player to imagine what they were reading. The other type of image that came into play was a more real image of the Uncle. When he came in I definitely was frightened for a moment because of his looks comparably to the house. However, this was important to recognize that the authors of this game definitely wanted to allow for creative imagination from the player, but they also intended to show you what the designers creatively imagined for some aspects.

A consequential choice was made at the beginning when I decided whether or not to show friendly emotions or not. I felt that with each “emotionally bland” choice I made I was moved further into the narrative of the story. For example, when I chose to kiss my mom I was taken back a few steps I believe, but when I played a second time and chose to wave goodbye, I was taken into the house. The sound effects were helpful in placing the player inside the spooky house. On the other hand, when I played the game Capri Toots I felt very disconnected from the narrative and scenery of the game. I did not feel like there were as many effects and this harmed the player’s experience of the game. The authors of this game did not make use of the audio and visual aspects like The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo

The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo surprisingly creeped me out a lot. At first, the game seemed normal and the choices were seemingly inconsequential. However, after playing it through a couple of times, I realized that each choice I made had an effect on how weird things got. The first play through I chose all the wrong things. The more I chose to think about the uncle or question my friend about the storm, the more things got strange. For example, when I visited the bathroom, everything seemed really off to my character. The second time I played, I decided to not think about the uncle or question my friend. This choice made the bathroom seem completely normal.  I also ended up surviving longer in the game (well, just a little bit longer).

The one element that I think was incredibly necessary for the creep factor of the game was the sound. Without the sound, the text really would not have the same effect. The sound was incorporated to add suspense. The game doesn’t provide any of the characters’ voices (except, perhaps the uncle’s satanic voice) or any sound effects that didn’t add suspense. As the text added elements that were key to the game and story’s progression, layers of sound were also added. The one sound that both showed both the story’s progression towards midnight and added to my own mounting anxiety was the sound of the clock. Every time it got closer to midnight, I knew something was terrible was going to happen because of the sound of the clock. During my second play of the game, I ended up making it quicker to midnight just so I didn’t have to hear the stroke of each hour. Other examples of sound throughout the game were the uncle knocking on the door, the storm, and the static confusion of the game’s end.

All in all, I found the game to be both mysterious and fun. I’m interested in how different combinations can end up in winning the game, escaping the doom of the sleepover, or figuring out what the heck is actually going on in my friend’s house.