Composition: Missile Command

When first beginning my task for the Wherefore Art Thou game jam I decided to use Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Blue Mountain as my inspiration. I have attached in the video below a pitch of my game idea about Kandinsky’s belief that the riders in his painting were Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

However as usual when you start with an idea and run with it, I overlooked many facets of my idea. When it came to feedback I was mostly happy as people were interested in the way the game would actually play. However when it came to the ideas behind it which I had taken from Kandinsky for example his ideas behind the colours black and white, I found a problem which was easily fixed but something I didn’t want to have to struggle with. It was brought to my attention that Kandinsky’s Black and White stance may be construed as racist and once I heard that I easily could see how that could happen. Obviously I wouldn’t want anything like that in my game or representing me as a developer. After listening to the rest of the classes pitches I realised I could change the brief to a larger degree than I first thought and decided to come up with an entirely new idea. The second pitch video I created is again below.

I was instructed to heavily lean into the fact that Kandinsky had Synaesthesia which I had planned to play a major role in my game. I also was brought to realise I was subverting the meaning of Missile Command which was previously destruction and using the symbolism of peace which was the circle. I believe this still works as the missiles are still bringingdestruction much like emotions both positive and negative

affects a person internally. I am still fleshing out all of my ideas but am happy with how am imagining the game will play with a symphony of feedback from colour and sound, and I think Kandinsky would be happy with it as well.