My research looks into how temporality in Parenting Simulation Games (PSG) impacts the simulation of kinship. Building off my research, I developed a text-based PSG that explores an alternative way of simulation by incorporating a non-linear topographic time. In classic PSGs, the player takes care of a child by allocating their limited lifetime to different activities to reach specific career and marriage endings. Although extremely time-consuming, it is common for the players to micromanage every moment of their child’s life trajectory to achieve their desired results through the function of saving and restoration. Time as an infrastructure in this circumstance determines a highly teleological simulation of parental care because the more time the players invest in programming the process, the more importance is granted to the endings. To push back this logic in simulation, I developed a Twine-based PSG that incorporates a topological temporality that downplays the achievements of the result and emphasizes on fostering care. In my game, the parent no longer has the power to determine the child’s life but has the power to rebuild the emotional connection between them by recollecting scattered memories. This project allows me to gain perspective as a game developer and thus contribute to my larger research project on the simulation of parent-child kinship.

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