The Spy

A visual novel game, The Spy utilizes autoethnography to inspire its story settings and themes, drawing on aspects of my identity and past to (re)create a storytelling graphical adventure game. The game illustrates themes of transgression, disruption, oppression, and liberation in queered identities intertwined with processes of disclosure through each of its three main game parts (ACTs). It serves as the game prototype accompanying my research in the graduate thesis project titled: Slaying Fiction / Disruption and transgression in Queered Game Identities. The Spy was exhibited from April 4th to April 6th, 2024, alongside other projects from the master's program Digital Futures at OCAD U, in the event Creative Disruptions - Digital Futures Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2024.

The narrative of The Spy follows two protagonists, The Child and The Spy, each exploring reality and fictional scenarios, respectively. It builds a narrative interplay between biography, allegory, fact, and fiction, serving as a basis for exploring the The Child's identity.

While creating The Spy , I designed my own autoethnographic process (click here). I recorded my biographical data in seven parts. Then, each part was written in three different styles, intended at turning my reality into fiction. First, a historical narrative of the events, then a blend of reality and fiction using the former as foundation, and finally one-liners made purely of fiction distilled from the previous steps.

The results of both facts and fiction from this process would be used in different parts of the game's development and its narrative. The  fiction components employ metaphors, feelings, thoughts, songs, and mythos to craft imaginative game scenarios, settings, objects, characters, and interactions. Interactions and narrative themes manifest through: soliloquies, object-oriented ontology, no-good endings, exploration/discovery, no-agency choices, and environmental storytelling.

During the exhibition, a cassette recorder and four cassettes were placed containing directors' commentary for each of the game acts that compose the game, and one containing songs that I listened to during my fiction writing process. Players were encouraged to listen to any of the cassettes after the play experience.