Stray Dog

I came up with the idea of a stray dog because of all the dogs you see in Lubbock. I wanted to tell the story of a stray dog and all the decisions they may have to make during the day. They have all sorts of hardships and challenges that we don’t think about like finding food or water, so I wanted to create a story that forced the player to have to make those decisions. I also did not want to specify the breed of the dog, so the player could picture the dog however they wanted. The want/need idea is essentially a survival take on it. The want of the dog is to be adopted or cared for. The need of the dog is food and water, basically things you need to survive. 

The wants of the dog is to be adopted. That is essentially the ultimate want of a stray dog, and it translates to a pretty powerful desire to be cared for and wanted. I initially thought that the want of the character could be something more creative, but I figured that something simple would work better for the story and the player’s investment into the character. The need of the dog is simple as well. It is all about survival. The kind of survival wild animals think about every day. 

The decisions that the character has to make in the story directly deal with these want/need motivations. You must first decide what to hunt for. This tells us that the decision to hunt is an everyday occurrence for a wild animal. I liked the idea that something so mundane of a decision could mean life or death for a dog. I put the possibility of being adopted into the story as well because I figured that the player should be able to experience that through the eyes of a dog. That is the ultimate good that can happen to a stray dog. I also put in a decision to fight a cat. This is another thing wild animals must go through on an everyday basis, deciding if it is in their interest to fight or run. I liked the idea of putting in a decision that leads to death as well. This contrasts well with the adoption possibility because both are things that could happen in a stray dog’s world. Finally, I wanted to put the possibility of nothing happening, and you stay a stray dog another day. In the real world, this is the most likely outcome, so I wanted to make sure that it was represented in the story. Most stray dogs don’t get adopted, or die in a fight, they just remain on the street, and continue to survive. 

The most difficult part of the story to come up with was making all sorts of endings. It is hard to think of different ways to end a dog’s day, that doesn’t end with sleeping. I had to get creative with the possible endings so that the player could feel like they actually made choices that matter in the world of the game. Ending the game with just two or three endings didn’t feel like enough for me, so I made up more endings  that are possible even if you don’t get them in 3 or 4 tries. Along with endings, tying together the story beats was hard because I had to make it all fit together and form a cohesive narrative, which in this style of storytelling, proves to be harder than I thought. 

Finally, the reason I picked a stray dog to play in my game was that I figured that the reader and player of this, will appreciate what that means, and will probably have seen many in the Lubbock area. I think this will help them to think about what stray dogs’ lives look like on a day to day basis. When we see things everyday, we can often become desensitized and not care, but I wanted to make people think about the life those dogs live, and how different of a life they live compared to dogs that live in our houses with us.