Devlog 1 - Prolonged

As the first step in our development process, the different members of our team conducted research on different topics, which means we all were able to bring different perspectives to the game when we eventually came together and chose to have amortality as our theme.

I did research on social media, particularly on its pros and cons and how it relates to parasocial relationships, body image and self-esteem. The research I did on body image and self-esteem was definitely the most helpful for the topic we chose out of the other research I did, because a lot of the discourse on amortality is heavily related to the discourse about self-esteem and body image.

Other members of my group also did research on different serious topics including cybersecurity and amortality. Most team members researched amortality, so they were able to more directly contribute to our project with their research, but the couple of other perspectives we've gotten as a team has definitely helped us through the ideation process because it's prevented our game ideas from being too one dimensional.

For this research phase, we had to research the topic we chose individually, and write a paper on that chosen topic. We had to outline the design challenge that was given to us based off of the topics we chose, describe where our research would be coming from, then thoroughly discuss our results. This research has also served as useful documentation for future use throughout the design process, as we can references each team member's paper whenever necessary.