By Philip Tan Boon Yew
This is a quick-and-dirty little game for the Boston Immigration Jam, held on the 21st and 22nd of August, 2010. What's My Name? is a game about how names are a surprisingly complicated affair. The original idea was to cast the player in the role of an immigration at Ellis Island in the turn of the century. Given the short timeline and the fact that I had to do most of my coding with one hand (holding a baby in the other), the fiction of the game is pretty much non-existent, but most of gameplay I had hoped to implement is here.
In particular, this game contains some of my frustration with the "First/Middle/Last" construction of names in America. While I actually like the terminology of "First Name" and "Last Name", the cultural assumptions that Last Names are inherited from your family and that Middle Names are disposable don't sit well with me. Coming from an Asian culture, where First Names are often surnames and endless variety exists regarding the combination of English and Asian names into a single string, the idea that there is a societally "correct" way to arrange a name makes me uneasy.
I'd much prefer to think of name ordering as one of personal, or at least parental, choice. I dedicate this game to my 2-week-old daughter, Marion Tan Yunhui Clay, whose name was carefully chosen by her parents, societally distinct, semantically rich, and precious.
Akash Thakkar
Darren Torpey
Alex Schwartz
Alvin Phu
Here are the autogenerated names of folks who contributed audio:
Kristen McCullough
leeya shiharo washinton
Michael Hazani
Jeremy Spencer Kennedy
Guybrush Threepwood
David John Bolton
Akash Thakkar
Philip Tan Boon Yew
Tan Lee
© 2010 Philip Tan