page_title: Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher / Development / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Screenshot from Socrates Jones
context_page_description: Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher is an educational point-and-click browser game and visual novel that was developed by a group of students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and released on Kongregate. The eponymous player character Socrates Jones debates historical philosophers to unravel the nature of morality. The game was inspired by Ace Attorney, from which it borrows a number of core mechanics.
context_section_description: Fallon and Valeria Reznitskaya became the game's primary developers. Early in the development phase, the design team noted that while Ace Attorney's inventory takes the form of concrete evidence, Pro Philosopher would rely on abstract ideas. Early development introduced a mechanic called the "idea cloud" that would simulate the pulling of ideas from thin air but these concepts were restricted because they would be limited by the programmers' work. They decided to simplify gameplay by simulating the Socratic method, in which the same critical thinking questions could be asked of each statement to break them down.
  The designers noted during playtesting that there were alternative solutions to some of their puzzles. For instance, in the first round, the salesman comically argues that "deer steal our jobs", which the player is meant to counteract by asking for backing. Some players, however, presented the idea that "Deer live in the woods", arguing that they could not steal human jobs due to their location. The designers said this was a valid move and wrote into the game a customized response to it. One important game mechanic is the ad hominem attack "Your face is ugly", which always fails in-game and was designed to teach players that this type of argument is unhelpful and flawed. The game was designed to be more flexible and interactive than a book or film presentation of such philosophical debates.
caption: Playtesting allowed the designers to identify correct solutions they had overlooked.
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