Monkey Story Download Pc
Sheron Kernan
Making of Counterfeit Monkey, Part 2, is about the themes and story. Part 1 discussed puzzle and toy design. As before, this is spoilerific, so please do play before reading, if you are inclined to do so.
It took most of the initial drafting period to uncover what this story was about. Some of the very first puzzles included the idea of a heist from a highly-protected official building, so the idea that the protagonist was a criminal or revolutionary and the state was heavily policed was part of the initial premise. This helped explain why letter manipulation tools might be restricted. But to start with, I was thinking the game was just going to be a fun puzzle romp.
I started working in earnest on this game in 2008. Since that time, the US has undergone two presidential elections; for months, the Occupy Seattle protests filled a city block just a short stroll from my apartment; and the successes and failures of the Arab Spring were constantly in the news. These experiences introduced more serious themes into what was initially a purely silly game.
But the language mechanic, and the two-people-in-one-body premise, also drew me more and more towards exploring issues of democracy and justice. In the first draft, this was mostly touched on with object descriptions and references that hinted at the difficulty of coming to compromises about morally charged positions, and the function of language in creating and reinforcing consensus.
At the very beginning, I originally written the epilogue so that the player was able to split Alex and Andra. At some point I decided their split should fail. Then for a while I implemented the game so that the last move was to try to gel yourself and have it not work, ending on the horrible revelation that things had gone wrong.
But that was obviously unsatisfying. It left a lot of open questions: why did this happen? is there any chance of reversing it? was there a puzzle I screwed up, that would have let this end differently? is this a cliffhanger? are there going to be sequels?
So I decided that the most satisfactory thing from the point of view of plot would be to move the fusion discovery back into the scene of combat with Atlantida. That would put a new, surprising and (I hoped) narratively resonant element into the combat scene.
The other thing I did was talk the whole business over, a lot, with those of my testers who were up for it. Graham spent such a lot of time listening to me talk through the Oracle Project/portcullis sequence, and suggesting options, that he probably deserves a co-writing credit on that part of the game.
Once the ending was tightened up, I went back through the earlier portions of the game to lay the groundwork for it. I took out the anonymous holiday traffic that had motivated the car puzzle, and instead put in protesters. I added the traffic circle sequence to lay in the concept of the civic unrest and teach the player how a gel rifle worked. Lena went from being just a somewhat absent-minded hippie-ish character to a secret revolutionary.
Some of the situation of mid-ranking Bureau officers is implied in the one who shows up during the traffic circle scene, who is being instructed to handle an out-of-control situation without having any appropriate tools for the job. If the player wants, he can harrass this officer in an unnecessarily sadistic way, and the internal monologue is written to suggest that Alex very much enjoys doing so. None of that excuses the brutality of the officer calling down a DP tank strike on an entire civilian crowd.
The throughline-first approach was a huge deal in allowing me to create the quality of story I wanted to. I feel a lot better about the solidity and implementation depth of the endgame than I did with either City of Secrets or Savoir-Faire, and I also felt that I had a better chance to establish the stakes of that final confrontation.
I even recently caught myself saying this exact phrase after someone asked me why we do certain things at my company. I replied with: "Well, we've always done it that way." And in this moment, I felt the stupidity of my answer. I couldn't fully justify what I just said.
Sure, sometimes it can be a legit answer. Tradition isn't anything other than "Because we've always done it that way." There is some kind of peace in consistency, keeping it the same and doing it the way it always has been done. We're creatures of habit, after all.
But I'm beginning to think these seven words are what's wrong with pretty much everything. Just because we've always done it like this doesn't mean it's the best way of doing it. We've become a slave to rituals when we have no idea where they originate from.
1. Start with a room containing five monkeys. In the room, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. You don't need to wait long and a monkey will go to the stairs and start climbing towards the banana.
4. Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be punished.
6. Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
Now of course, this study is supposed to be a metaphor for humans. We live in times of complex structures, both organizational and political. And in many cases, we justify specific behavior with: "It's always been done that way."
Not many of us question WHY, and even fewer of us try to challenge the status quo. Because all we know is that we're not allowed to go close to the stairs and eat the banana. We don't know why, but we conform to these unspoken rules.
Having learned "the rules" we accept them without witnessing any personal experience that either confirms or denies the existence of them. In the end, we become resistant to change simply by submitting ourselves to unjustifiable rules.
It's of course OK to follow protocol if there is a particular reason behind it, but if the reason is simply "Because we've always done it that way," there might be a huge flaw in the system that no one is aware of.
After a short period, the fish finally came to rest. Oh, there was an occasional twitch. But the monkey ensured the fish, with his gentle stroke and secure grip, that he was still caring for it. Eventually, the fish quieted down completely as did the storm. And the monkey came down from the tree to lay the fish back where he had found it on the beach. He scurried back to the top of the tree, and looking down at the peaceful fish lying in the sand, the monkey knew he had helped the creature and rejoiced at his efforts.
A man catches a monkey in a trap. All the animals that the monkey has tricked think he has tricked his last. But the monkey keeps on laughing. The Tiger and the Bear want to find out why the monkey thinks everything is funny. As a bonus, we read another story from our recent writing competition. Sponsored by Athletic Greens.
A little girl is sick and the doctors says the only medicine that can cure her comes from the tears of the tigress. The Monkey promises to trick the Tigress into giving up some tears. Will his tricks succeed? Dedicated to Hallie in New York.
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A number of years ago, when living in Ukraine, I decided to send my older daughter to a local kindergarten for a few weeks of summer school. I wanted her to become immersed in the local language and culture and to discover the hard yet rewarding work of learning to understand, adapt and connect.
Seth Godin speaks often about how the shifts in our world mandate a different approach to how we teach, learn and relate. It's not enough to instruct a child or young adult in how to follow directions. Machines can do that - and they can increasingly replace us in that endeavor. Says Godin, "The mission [of school] used to be to create homogenized, obedient, satisfied workers and pliant, eager consumers. No longer." He goes on to write that we need to teach children to lead and solve interesting problems.
When we teach a child to make good decisions, we benefit from a lifetime of good decisions. When we teach a child to love to learn, the amount of learning will become limitless. When we teach a child to deal with a changing world, she will never become obsolete. When we are brave enough to teach a child to question authority, even ours, we insulate ourselves from those who would use their authority to work against each of us. And when we give students the desire to make things, even choices, we create a world filled with makers."
Tomorrow's workers must be makers. So we need to color outside the lines in our current approach to education. That means more immersion in new experiences and problem solving and fewer monkey drawings. More active engagement and less rote repetition. The increasing connectiveness and competitiveness of our world will demand it.
(As a personal aside, I feel so strongly about this as a mother and employer that I recently changed jobs to commit myself to contributing to the solution. Last week, I joined ePals as incoming CEO to make the work of better serving students my full time endeavor.)
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