DEVLOG 01

Team A-Mortal
We are team A-mortal, a group of Game Design students who chose "Amortality" as our topic for a design challenge. There are multiple definitions for amortality, the one we chose to focus on is: "a creature or entity that does not age or experience the effects of time, but is not necessarily invulnerable or indestructible". Knowing this, all of the research that has been conducted is hypothetical so we have plenty of room for imagination. The goal for this challenge is to create a game that accurately depicts amortality, and the effects it could have on a person's life. Our team is mainly art focused but our members are not afraid to step outside of our comfort zones and take on other roles.

Research
The group was tasked with conducting research from a list of topics and narrowing interest down to one topic. We each researched amortality separately in order to conceptualize it individually before bringing into a group setting. Below are some of the topics surrounding amortality that we researched. 

• Transhumanist Movement
• Consequences of Amortality
• Current Perception of Amortality

Takeaways
The main takeaway we got from our research is that for such a niche topic as amortality there are actually lots of definitions and sub-topics within it. From ignoring your age, to not aging, or never being alive in the first place, there are lots of different interpretations of amortality. This research helped us narrow down amortality into a more specific focus of "amortal beings are only immune to the effects of aging and disease. They will still be able to die to catastrophic damage to their bodies." (Anthony Butler 2022). Another takeaway is that as medicine advances there is starting to be a discussion on the ethics of amortality. Who would get amortality, would it lead to over population, would we stop being human, and should we even seek it all?

Next Steps

1. One Page Pitch Doc
2. Determine Roles
3. Ideate & Refine Current ideas
4. Prototyping

Conclusion
Now that we have a firm grasp of what amortality is, we're now ready to tackle this design challenge. Amortality has been done in fantasy and science fiction before in other mediums but it'll be interesting to see how we can convey the idea of amortality through game mechanics and design.