As I mentioned earlier, I am taking steps to completely reconsider my domains of interest. After doing some soul searching and real zoolander like questioning, I have focused my research on water. Why water? Well for starters, it is something that I am passionate about, growing up in a surfing community, water is something that I came in touch with in a very real way. Water is something that has heightened my relationships with my neighbors and distanced me from others. However, water is something that plays a role in everyone's life. It is a necessity. Water is also one of the most deeply problematic environmental and political issues of our time.
In The Post American World, Fareed Zakaria wrote about this issue. He said,
"... our ability to manage and conserve water is not growing nearly as fast as our consumption of it. World population tripled in the twentieth century, but water consumption increased sixfold. Americans use more than four hundred liters of water a day to drink, cook, and clean themselves. People in poorer countries today are lucky to get forty, but as they get richer, their rising demands will cause greater stress. Violent clashes over water have already broken out in Africa and the Middle East. Historically, populations have moved to find water; if water sources dry up in the future, tens of millions of people will be forced to start moving." Zakaria, Fareed. The Post American World, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2008),30.
And so I am pushing forward. I am returning in essence to a lot of the core issues of my initial game concept, however with the intent of creating more of a heartfelt narrative- like my later prototypes.
