jackhealybct

[jackhealybct]

Documentation

Here I have the documentation I have made of tasks I was involved with throughout the project.

When writing the script, I based it off of story points that we had decided in one of our early concept meetings.

http://bit.ly/anautscript

This is a link to a pdf of the script that I wrote using Celtx.

For narrative testing, I used a Twine interactive story that I was able to host temporarily that people could play through, before answering a questionnaire.

One of the dialogue paths I created in Yarn, taken from my script, that was then used with Yarnspinner to make the dialogue compatible with Unity.

When we planned to use Motion capture for our animations, we went and captured some footage based on the actions our characters would take. I was one of the team members that helped with the motion capture filming.

I also cleaned a significant amount of the motion capture data in Cortex.

I used Adobe Photoshop to iterate and work on a logo for one of the main story points I wrote, the New Beira Trading Company (NBTC). I wanted to create a subtly sinister but corporate looking logo suitable for the early to mid 20th century. With input from peers and teammates, I was able to develop something that I felt was beginning to embody the NBTC quite well.

I used Adobe Premiere in order to put together the videos of the gameplay from New Caledonia.

[jackhealybct]

Studio IV - Aeronautica, My Input - Index

My testing Narrative playtest #1: https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/188055329098/first-narrative-playtest Narrative playtest #2:  https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/188055354423/second-narrative-playtest

My tasks throughout the project: Writing: https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/188574472528/writing-a-story-to-tell Testing: https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/188598781008/testing Documentation: https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/188651467748/documentation

[jackhealybct]

Testing

A role I took on for the majority of the project was user-testing different aspects of Aeronautica for external feedback.

This started early on, within the first weeks with organising user testing for the story narrative. These are detailed in my narrative playtest blogs.

After the narrative testing, I made sure to regularly informally test with peers for insight and understanding. Notably, this was important for our boat. The boat proved challenging to get it behaving correctly and one of the main problems was our lack of experience with boats. To help with trying to fix this we had people try driving the boat and sought advice from those with experience with small boats. This proved invaluable for insight as to how we could improve the boat to make it behave more accurate to a real boat, which was mostly up to how it behaves when turning. 

The consistency of this playtesting did also expose that there was a relationship between how realistic we managed to make the boat and the water buoyancy, and how people would get motion sickness. This has been something we have kept in mind, and intend to do some extensive testing as we continue the production of Aeronautica.

I also had a period of bulk testing in New Caledonia where I was able to have a large number of users test the demo we had put together. Most of my testing tasks since New Caledonia have revolved around collating and presenting the information as well as working with members of the group to use it in bettering Aeronautica.

[jackhealybct]

Writing a Story to Tell

My first role in our Aeronautica project was to write a narrative that the players would follow for one of the two vertical slices that we had intended to create. While we were developing our idea we, as a team, decided on the main points that we wanted the players to engage with in order to understand the core gameplay loop. I then took these story points and made a script that linked them together as well as gave specifics to the world, such as descriptions of the environment, and characters that would help to guide the player.

I was comfortable writing a script thanks to my experience in high school, which is what influenced my choice of software. Celtx is a browser-based pre-production software that makes it easy to create well-formatted scripts. My understanding was that it was primarily for film or television, however, when I opened the website I discovered that there was a newly released mode for game scripts. While mostly this was the same format as film, it had a few extremely useful features for game development. One of which was a window that allowed me to have the story points as separate scenes to work on, and have a flow chart between them. Another was an intuitive option writing screen that allowed for very effective dialogue option writing. Lastly, there was a play mode, that put the script into something of an interactive story format. These were very effective for laying out the script in a way that was appropriate to the medium.

Celtx script and map view.

Celtx interactive dialogue writing UI.

Celtx playthrough mode.

I then tested the script (see narrative testing blogs and testing role blog) and adjusted it based on the feedback. After this, the script served as a reference point for the rest of the project.

I think that it was very effective for collating the story and having a point of reference for all our other components. However, something I learned using celtx is the importance of finding effective ways to distribute information when working in a group project. While the script itself was effective and would have been useful for other members of the group, I felt that it was underutilised. I think this could have been fixed had it been distributed more effectively or more obviously to the other members of the group.

[jackhealybct]

Second Narrative Playtest

After implementing feedback from the limited user testing of the first narrative tests, as well as internal testing from members of the group, I used Twinery.org, a web-browser based, interactive storytelling platform to create a very effective low fidelity way to deliver the story to testers. I also created a google form for testers to fill in with feedback, both qualitative and quantitative, after completing the narrative test.

This turned out to be much more effective for gathering information, as it not only was much easier to distribute to more testers, it also meant that individual tests did not require nearly as much time for me to run through with people. From these tests we were able to gather that we were on the right track for creating an interest in the plot and to give the audience questions as to where certain narrative points would go, as  is our intention with the narrative-based vertical slice, as well as to start understanding how the setting we are creating is being received. However, there was also obvious limitations thanks to the format. Since it was text-only there was confusion around some elements of how the setting and flow would actually feel. Also, because of the lack of visual aid, the dream sequence at the beginning caused testers to be very confused with the relevance of the events of the dream sequence. This identified to us that it is very important that we create visual identities that are both unique to certain elements, such as a visual component to the dream sequence to make it dreamlike, as well as generally recognizable, such as having a fisherman character wear a fisherman's style of clothes.

Here are the responses to the questionnaire: Narrative Response Questionnaire (Responses)

[jackhealybct]

First Narrative Playtest

In the first week of working on the project, we decided to begin our testing as early as possible. In order to test how the narrative would be received for our first vertical slice, we decided it would be best to get user feedback.

In order to do this, I put together a simple version of the narrative to sit down with peers and step them through it, describing their settings and narrative events. From these playtest I was able to gather some of the elements of the narrative that did and did not, namely how some of the flow of the narrative and how it would feel gameplay was slowed down by having the player start inside a home, rather than on the beach, already on the way to the boat. I also learned that it would be important to clarify in the dialogue and actions that the player is supposed to be getting the boat. One tester mentioned that having to give up one thing to get another seemed like a decision that should be made by the player. The whole recordings are here: Oral Narrative Playtest #1 Oral Narrative Playtest #2

This testing was overall very inefficient for the amount of information gathered from each playtest. I only used this test twice because it was more than 40 minutes for each test. While there was potential for some very effective feedback, from the tests that I had done there was nowhere near enough new information or tangible evidence to be able to justify the time sunk into each test. It also felt as though the test could not do the medium justice, as it was very low interactivity between the tester and the story, and the interactivity was very limited. The illusion of interactivity and choice in the way the narrative was being delivered meant a misleading and seemingly distracting experience was being tested. Because of this and how time-consuming this was turning out to be, I decided to find a new method to deliver narrative user testing.

[jackhealybct]

A Chat with Charles

Yesterday we were fortunate enough that Charles happened upon us while we were having a group meeting and after we explained our project he was able to provide us with a wealth of insight and reference material. Plenty to think about and work from in order to ensure our project works out well.

First of all, Charles mentioned some of the first games that popped into his head while we were explaining it, first of which was Spore.

Spore has an iteration process to it that involves customising an organism with various structural elements necessary for survival, and then sending it out to interact with ecosystems, before customising it again and again and sending it out again and again in order to progress. This gameplay is similar to what we want to achieve with our vehicle iteration process, and it will be very important to look to Spore so that we can see what did and did not work with this procedural iteration that puts the design of something so pivotal to gameplay in the hands of the players.

Next Charles mentioned Enter the Gungeon. Enter the Gungeon takes bullets and guns and uses it for pretty much every single element of the game. HUD, Characters, Environment, and Gameplay are all stylised after bullets or guns. This creates a complete and consistent aesthetic as everything has a central focus to build from. Charles brought this up to point out to us the importance of having this central theme and style to build around. This is a crucial thing for us to remember especially as we work in our own roles, as this could easily lead to large discrepancies between the style of the art and the writing or sound for example. While intentionally having a schism between the styling of elements of a piece of media can serve to send a message, and this might be something to consider, we have to remember to be thinking about whether or not our components fit together coherently.

The third point that was something for us to think about that would help us with keeping our consistent theme, would be to hark back to the MDA aesthetics for play and choose two to really focus on. We chose Sensation, Discovery, and Narrative when we first looked at these aesthetics and this brought us back to remembering to use these, but also to be quite strict with them to avoid our theme gettings tangled up in a mess of aesthetics. An example Charles told us to look at was Doki Doki literature club, which is instead a Narrative focus aesthetic, as the story is the only focus of the game, with the gameplay being very secondary, consisting almost entirely of a single button press to progress. If we contrast how games like Doki Doki play and what players feel when playing it, with how Aeronautica is supposed to play and players feel, then we can get a sense of how best to apply and articulate our aesthetics.

Finally, a really important part for us to consider, and more importantly articulate, is the conceptual and contextual reasons for having the game in VR. We need to make sure to rationalise using VR in the context of the specific experience we want players to have.

[jackhealybct]

Here Max goes into more detail about the specific graphic design process.

Creating a Corporate Experience

Game feel is a big part of experiential design, especially so in the case of designing an interactive room. We wanted to portray ourselves as a Machiavellian megacorporation named “Aethos Corp” to create a foreboding atmosphere to prime participants before entering our installation on the night of Open Studio.

To do so, I began designing a brand for Aethos Corp. First, I started with a logo. We bounced some ideas back and forth in our Discord server. You can see our developments in the image below.

Initially, in 1, I was trying to go down a path similar to the design of the megacorporations in Mirror’s Edge. James thought the text looked too book-ish, and I agreed, it wasn’t quite what we were going for. I tried some abstract layering in images 2-4 for inspiration. In 5, the analogy of squares inside squares for the simulation was made. 7 added a better font. 8 was an attempt to make the visual design of the logo simpler, more suitable for a corporation as their logo should be easily made out at a glance. In 9 I tried some of the overlaying stuff I was doing before, as a sort of glitch-esque look, but that wasn’t what we were going for in the end. Marked in red outline are designs Jack made and in green, those by Ben. With 11, Jack was on the right track. 13 was nice too, but it was too reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed’s Abstergo. 14 looked like a play button - no go. In the end we thought that 11 looked right, but needed a final pass to make it a bit better, so I made the lines of shape thinner and added some appropriate typography. 

By building a narrative of corporate malevolence, this will allow us to prime participants before entering our installation, which will help us to communicate our ideas around simulation theory. We will put posters up of us outside where we exhibit the intro to the project, where once interested, we will escort participants into the meeting room to begin playing.

[jackhealybct]

ctec607 - Process Documentation Index

Starting Up:                  https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/183107125723/starting-up

Discussion:           https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/183235445813/discussion

Working Together:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/183414102148/working-together

Simulating the Simulator:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/183421844618/simulating-the-simulator

The Second Playtest:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/183736965708/the-second-playtest

A wonderful Serial breakfast:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/184044517483/a-wonderful-serial-breakfast

Narrative Testing:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/184674813753/narrative-testing

Pressing my buttons:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185550849233/pressing-my-buttons

Fortune and Favour:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185558491068/fortune-and-favour

Sold to the lady in the red dress:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185573159208/sold-to-the-lady-in-the-red-dress

Peanut Butter:            https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185574664268/peanut-butter

Stay in line:           https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185600468543/stay-in-line

A Brightly Shining Star:           https://jackhealybct.tumblr.com/post/185603462458/a-brightly-shining-star

[jackhealybct]

A Brightly Shining Star

A large part of our mindset when designing and creating the project was to focus more on functionality than longevity since our project overall has been focused on the actual reactions and responses of the participants who engage at open studio than having the installation itself be a product. As a product of course, the installation had a large number of the features broken or inconsistent once we tried running it again later on.

We ran into some technical trouble with my servo mechanism that held the book at the end of open studio evening, and we were unsure if it was going to be a permanent issue or not. We tried again to run the project through on the following Monday for some of the BCT students that had missed out on giving the installation a go. It turned out the book servo had been pretty much destroyed by supporting the weight of the book and no longer had a proper connection to be able to be controlled. This, along with a range of other technical issues to do with the programming, meant that we could no longer run the game through. This was our intention for the installation to be immortalised on the night and exist in documentation and player response, however, it was a shame that there were so many who wanted to try it that could not give it a go. While we managed to get everything almost entirely functional for open studio, there was almost no future proofing, and this really showed. I think that doing this project again, or another project with this same style of existing solely on the night, I would consider using methods that would allow for quick and easy repairs for a couple of times so that the project could potentially be run a few times for a couple of hours each. This would help to get a much large number of responses than we could get on Open studio night as well since this would allow us to show it to much more people, and potentially be able to demo functional versions if there were industry professionals who were not there on open studio night.

My feeling on it overall is that while it is a shame that we weren’t able to show as many people as were interested, we achieved what we set out to do and even though that meant the project was not as long lasting as it might have been, we achieved a temporary version of exactly what we were going for. Knowing what we know now it may be much easier to create this project or a similar one longer lasting, which gives me hope for the potential for futures projects in this style.

[jackhealybct]

Stay in line

After all of our preparation we of course eventually reached our open studio night and presented our project to as many people as we could. Despite some issues faced during and prior to open studio, I felt that we had a successful night with some great feedback and opportunities to learn.

My role during open studio ended up being one of the front-men maintaining “selling” people on the project and managing the queue since we could only have one person or group at a time and this meant that as people wanted to try it we had to have them wait for a while. This was posing a problem since wait times very quickly stacked up and we did not want people to have to be milling about in the reception area we had set up, away from all of the other studio works. After a while of making it work or having people patiently wait, we started using a texting queue system. Ben proposed that we take people’s numbers and have them peruse the other projects and that we would give them a text when it was time to have them run through. This ended up working much better and by the end of the night, we had a very effective system. Despite this working out, I think that there was definitely room for improvement in how we operated this system. It was given a low priority compared to the actual project, which meant that as a casualty of time pressure we did not end up being able to invest the necessary time into figuring out a good queue system. While I don’t think this seriously detracted from anything, it is something that I noted could have done with some better preparation for the sake of having things run smoothly.

That being said I think that having to have a queue really improved the mystery and mythos that surrounded our project to those seeing all the posters. I felt it created this type of exclusivity that further added to immersing people in this idea that they were users testing a company’s product. It was, however, a double-edged sword. This exclusivity and queue system meant that we couldn’t show off our work and the effort we had put in to anywhere near as many people as I would have liked. We had an idea for a screen that could show people who weren’t interested in having to sit through the whole experience what was happening, but due to the allocation of space and running out of time and resources to get together these presentational luxuries we weren’t able to do so, meaning that it was only the 13 people or groups that got to play through that really got to see what was involved.

One of the things that seemed to really add to the mystery for participants before they went in were the waivers. In the interest of making sure that people were okay to be recorded for our documentation and that they were not photosensitive or likely to have problems of anxiety or paranoia due to what we were talking about, we drew up and made waivers that participants had to sign in order to be able to enter. This idea, however, that they had to sign a waiver, a document often associated with danger, really seemed to heighten the feeling of intrigue and add to the mythos that we were creating.

These problems aside we received some excellent feedback and the only things that I would change in future projects of a similar style would be in smoothing out the queue system and in making people that didn’t want to invest so much time able to have some look at the what we had done. I was very much happy with what we ended up with and even more so on the open studio night when people would finish up in the room and come back out to the “reception” desk we had set up and congratulate and compliment our work.

I received good feedback about mine and Ben’s marketing and pitching that we did at the reception, which at the time was really good to hear both as a personal compliment but also in the understanding that we were contributing to the immersion and desire within people to try out the project.

[jackhealybct]

Peanut Butter

As was inevitable we faced some crunch when it came to the Open Studio day and week preceding. Despite the feelings of other members of the group, I would argue that we had relatively consistent and effective time management for the project overall. I felt at most points as though a majority of work was being done to be productive towards what we were to present. However, some unavoidable commitments and some setbacks here and there meant that the crunch came on.

The project had the majority of its functionality implemented without us having to invest too much time outside of what we normally would do week to week, however, it was getting the last pieces of functionality and the cleaning and presenting of the space that put time pressures on us.

We did not manage to get the UE4 build quite to the state that I would have liked, as we still had some quite relevant bugs, but that was the nature of some of the elements, such as the portals which seem to have posed technical challenges for the team doing the construction of the UE4 side of the project. The portals provided a vital and very potent element of the level layout, especially in the non-Euclidean section, although I can’t help but feel as though some of the portals outside of this area could have been replaced with different level layout in order to streamline the process. As this was not my working area I don’t realistically know enough about the workflow to know if this would have made a meaningful difference, but the portals sometimes appeared to be complicating things. My crunch came in making sure that the physical installation elements were made and working. Admittedly I think that my time management was lacking when it came to prioritising elements of the installation, as I noticed a handful of times that I would be focusing on making things passable but not very consistent and moving on. I think that I would have benefited from getting things done as I was working on them, to try and avoid as much of the time wasted by getting back into the head space of the different things I was working on. Moving off of something helped when I was stuck and needed to come back, but some things I started doing almost to procrastinate what was in front of me. I managed to get the physical puzzle elements we wanted in and functional, but I can’t help but feel like I could have been much more efficient and could have spent time making elements such as the book servo able to last longer.

The LED strip lighting setup

Hard drive cage and hard drives that made up the hard drive puzzle

While time management is an important skill, it is one that I am still coming to terms with. This project, and especially the crunch in the final week of it, really helped me to better understand managing my time by throwing me into a higher workload than I had been used to, with higher expectations and the understanding of harsher consequences for failure as this was primarily a third-year project.

[jackhealybct]

Sold to the lady in the red dress

Creating Aethos corp. was about making more than just a fake company to make our project deeper or cooler, it was about creating something to contextualise and sell the project we were putting together and a large part of that was in the graphic design and marketing done mainly by Max.

Max headed the charge on the graphic design and marketing, but in some of my moments of procrastination or spare time I took the opportunity to offer my titbits of advice, provide an external look at some of the design, and even tried my hand at some of the graphic design. This was partially out of interest in helping the project but also in helping lay the groundwork for me to start building skills in some of these elements.

One of the best parts about helping where I could within my limited capacity, was seeing the aesthetic and the idea of Aethos coming to life. I was talking to a Graphic Design major and they said that “good graphic design makes a company” and I could not feel that more than when I saw some of the posters come together.

There was a real surge of drive instilled within me to make this work and make it work well once I saw our logo, name, and oh so corporate monochromatic colours come together. At the time it gave a much more coherent feel to what we were building narrative-wise, and continued feedback, especially on Open Studio night, maintained that feeling that what we had formulated as a group, and what Max had sold to the public with flyers and posters was very much the narrative we wanted.

I remember at the beginning of the project feeling as though the graphic design element was going to be very low priority and imagined that when we got to our inevitable crunch point that it might even be scrapped. This was a mindset that only changed as I started to realise how it would come together, and the important role that it would play. I felt that we may have benefitted from some more user testing of the logos and name to get a better sense of what was really showing what we were going for, and in future projects, I intend to put a bit more time into this type of information gathering when creating logos and aesthetics. In order to be able to get a message across, especially in the limited time we have in Open Studio, a lot of groundwork has to be done before you even open your mouth at your installation. The opening conversation is between the viewer and the work itself as they are stepping up. While we were not able to have this be the case with the work itself at Open Studio, we were able to achieve that somewhat with the posters Max had created that were in the foyer, especially since it featured Stuart’s “Ratman” character with black tape over his eyes.

The logo designed by myself and Max in the door to the room

The posters in the foyer designed and edited by Max

Overall the graphic design and “marketing” played a much more vital role than I had anticipated and taught me the sheer importance it can have in bundling up a package into a consumer-friendly and presentable way.

[jackhealybct]

Fortune and Favour

A large proportion of my time in the last couple of weeks before open studio was spent creating the elements of our physical installation. This was mainly focused around getting our puzzles, that would be used to interact with the game, functional. Despite testing eating up a lot of very important time, it paid off. With some lucky circumstances and resourceful use of what we had acquired, we managed to cobble together a relatively successful physical installation.

I needed to create a mechanism for dropping the key to a puzzle, and a book that would hold one of the hard drives and fall at a point in the installation.

The key mechanism was going to pose a series of problems, as we were brainstorming how to construct a box that it could fit into and look in place with our aesthetic. While we were discussing what the box could be made from, I couldn’t but think that it seemed excessive to create a whole box or to repurpose something professionally made. While it may have worked well within our aesthetic, I felt that it would take up much more time and require all sorts of resources that would be stretching myself and anyone else that was going to assist much further than need be. In an effort to circumvent this I looked around at what we had already accrued for testing. I found an old copy paper box that James had put together as a paper prototype that I suggested, however, it had large holes cut into it and hot glue all around it making it look horrible if it were to go in the installation. However, as chance would have it, James had brought in another copy paper box that we had been using for storage, which ended up being an excellent size and extremely convenient for holding the key mechanism as well as storing the Arduino that would go on the cabinet. It fit in well with being in the office space that we had created and ended up being a much more efficient way of putting the key mechanism in something that we hoped that players would not think to look in. The decision to not burn valuable time on creating something entirely, and instead to use resources readily available, ended up being fortunate for our time management. The testing that was required in order to get the key mechanism working chewed up a lot of time since it had to be precise and work consistently because of the role it played in the participants' experience. While it may have appeared that bit more professional to have a custom made or specially designed box for this part, I decided at the time that it was much more important to have functionality with what we had that could fit in.

The book was straight forward in hollowing it out with a craft knife, and while I was doing wiring and coding for the Arduino Max and Kelvin made the level that would hold the book in place before dropping it. The learning moment out of the book experience was in obtaining the book itself. Max had circulated notes and talked to the group for a few weeks about looking around for expendable books at all the group members’ homes, to no avail. We then decided to check out a book store and see if they had anything suitable for a cheap price. We went to a second-hand bookstore and asked the attendant If there was anything big enough to fit the hard drive, and not but a few minutes later she handed us a book that not only looked perfect, it was the right size, and since it was in a pile to be thrown out she gave it to us for free. While there was nothing ground-breaking or new to reflect on from this situation, I cannot help but mention it out of the sheer amazing convenience that we happened upon. One might think that this was the product of a computer program or simulation the way it occurred.

[jackhealybct]

Pressing my buttons

One of the main elements of our physical installation is our hard drive puzzles, where we have a hard drive cage from a desktop pc, and some old e-waste hard drives that serve as keys, somewhat disguised as being objects that users plug in with data on it. I ran into issues early on within creating this system and learned some lessons while overcoming this challenge.

When deciding to use the hard drive we decided from the get-go to use them as physical keys rather than to actually have users plug them in and have the game read data from them. This was for a couple of main reasons. Technically, it would pose a much larger challenge both in terms of coding and construction. While we were prepared to put large amounts of effort into all aspects of this project, we felt as though this would consume time that could be better spent getting a wider breadth of physical elements for the user to interact with. We also felt as though the difference between the two may not be so apparent for users to warrant the time and effort, and may even distract from the philosophical element to a more technical display element.

So to create this I went about setting up a series of buttons on a plate at the back of the hard drive cage. Since we wanted all hard drives to be able to activate their effect in any slot, so as to avoid players becoming unstuck if they put a hard drive in a random slot, I set up a grid of buttons with rows pertaining to a particular hard drive.

A drawn diagram of the complicated layout of the buttons.

Early prototype button grid, the hard drives did not get as far as the buttons to be able to press them, and the height of the buttons was inconsistent because of using hot glue, which also did not hold very well.

My original plan of buttons fell through, however, when the hard drives would not press the buttons when they were too far away or would cause the plate to fall out, or stop the hard drives clicking in properly when they were too close. Circumventing this would mean spending much more time on building specific pieces, and with the time pressures, I was starting to feel overwhelmed. However, advice from Krishna and Zane Kelbrick helped me to realise a much better alternative. Instead of using tactile Arduino buttons I changed tactics and used tin foil attached to the hard drives to close a circuit, making the hard drive itself behave like a button. This was much more effective and could be much more customisable in easy and convenient ways. My main point of learning from this was listening to the advice of others and seeking external input before giving up or becoming overwhelmed. I often personally run into the issue of wanting to figure out how to do something without needing assistance from others, however, this experience really helped me to learn the importance of being able to reach out, especially when I am working in an area I may not be completely comfortable with yet. Zane was also able to point out that my inclusion of external pull-down resistors was viciously overcomplicating my wiring. 

From this point onward I did ask more questions of others when creating the physical installation props. I think of all of the time spent on this project, this moment was one of the most potent moments of personal learning and development when it comes to project work. I hope to be able to retain this lesson for the future and to be able to pass this forward for others.

[jackhealybct]

Dropping Eaves

My Idea One day I was sitting on the train on my commute and as per usual people watching and listening. This provoked me to think about what causes this kind of thing and is it something that interests people outside of just filling time on the train? Is the curiosity of what goes on in other people’s lives basis enough for a game? And furthermore, what are the repercussions for people noticing you listening to them or paying attention to them, as this stranger, considered to be a rude, nosey thing to do. From here I started dreaming up my prototype for a game based around eavesdropping on peoples conversations and the reactions they may have. I started looking around and was surprised by how little I could actually find on this phenomena. There was an article about a woman who shared as much interest as me in listening to strangers, but nothing about why or what causes it. However, I came across a couple of related videos that talked about conversations and a quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson was what clarified for me the basis for this interest in random peoples lives. “...people are ridiculously interesting, and everyone has their own characteristic experience that is actually unique, and so if you have a real conversation with someone and they tell you what is unique about their experience the probability that you can learn something from that, well its certain that you can.” (Peterson, 2018). This helped me to articulate this sensation that I was trying to invoke. Everyone lives their own life with their own values and experiences and it means that the amount that can be gleaned or the worlds that can be explored even just listening in to the day to day of random strangers is a relevant and interesting topic I wanted to explore. I personally find curiosity to be one of the most potent and defining traits of humanity. We have so many questions that we seek to answer every single day. As a species, we will seek these questions far and wide as well, which leads to amazing discoveries, fantastical development, and gorgeous art. My dad has told me from a young age that he believes that as long as we have dreamt it, we will do it. For people it is not a matter of if we will do something, it is a matter of when we will do it. This is described by our imagination, but it is driven by our curiosity. I think no more strange then, is to be curious of each other, and curious about our own mentalities. The strangest part of being human is that we have more than 7 billion different people, and we will likely never know even up to a single percent of them all. This means that it almost makes perfect sense to want to listen in to as many different strangers conversations when you have nothing else to do. Try and interact with as many alien lives in this short and sweet time we have to meet them.

In Context of Play There is a large discrepancy between listening in to the musings and conversations of strangers and using gameplay mechanics to listen to what dialogue has been written. The purpose of testing out this prototype was to begin seeing how something like eavesdropping can be gamified. Once it is a video game then it is an accessible way to look at both how people interact with it in a safe, contained way where they won’t be worried about being rude. Furthermore, I think it can contribute to game making, especially in world building. One of the greatest assets in building a city is that you can put hundreds of people in it. People that are capable of telling the player hundreds of things about the world they are entering. I think that eavesdropping and ambient dialogue is a criminally under-realised method of delivering information in a natural and potentially quite enticing way. Games have started exploring this, and I think with more and more technically powerful systems, more and more systemic dialogue options will be able to create fascinating and potent experiences thanks to the dialogue between two random stranger AIs. Play is such an engaging method of exploration and experimentation, that it would be fantastic to find ever bigger and better ways to explore society and the human condition through play.

[jackhealybct]

Creation

Pillars Awareness: People have to be aware of something to be able to start thinking about it. Something has to be brought to the attention of the players and users that makes them realise that something is uncanny. Things like very clearly defined teams that don’t normally exist in public spaces or things like water guns and other props that would be otherwise out of place make people realise something is offbeat. Ludic Recognition: Then people have to be made aware that whatever is out of the ordinary, it is out of the ordinary to induce play. It is an activity that is fun, it is an activity that is lighthearted. In a public space, this is a very relevant aspect because the awareness can bring attention to something out of the ordinary, which might unsettle or turn away people, as the unknown or uncanny can be daunting and dangerous especially in public. Invitation: Finally, people have to be invited in to play. Just the existence of rules and conventions that break the mold is not enough to have people engage, people have to be enticed, or brought into it. It has to be an invitation so that people know that they are wanted within this space. Most importantly they have to be wanted in the play and they have to want to be in it. Play is a fun activity and the absolute polarising counter to fun is compulsory activity. You can never be made to play because to be in a state of play is to be engaging in an activity with an express purpose to have fun.

Practice Creativity Cleese and Price put together some very different lists of things to consider when trying to be creative and output work, however, they boil down to some fairly similar core ideas.  First up, allocating time regularly to work on your creative projects. Whether it be to come up with them, or progress with them, if they aren’t given time of day, they will not come around. Secondly, to be social with your creation and creativity. Staying within your own bubble will only ever lead to circles of diminishing productiveness, and you will likely never improve very much. Instead, opting to work alongside others to come up with creative solutions, and to get creative criticism from others that can take a removed look at your work will let you get the wide and wonderful scopes of all the different people that can have all ranges of inputs. Next, give yourself breaks and moments. You will likely never come up with perfection straight away, and to sit there and whittle away at something endlessly is hopeless. You are far better off creating, then giving yourself a moment and a breather to step away, assess, rest, and then come back with fresh eyes and mind. Finally, don’t do things dull. Cleese pitched this as humour, where Price pitched it as creating what you love. Either way, I think these come across as doing things in an environment where you aren’t letting your soul gets sucked away by the grind. Rather, creating should be about letting humour, fun, and productivity take over into doing in order to really create things that are worthwhile.

Prototyping I think one of the most relevant things that show up from Blow and Gray et al. is that prototyping needs to be a quick and iterative process. While it can be frustrating to keep shooting darlings, if something is not working out after a week, then it is time to move on. Even then if something is working after a week, then not necessarily to keep working on it, so much as take it to the next step. Prototyping rapidly also needs to focus on what the game does not how it looks. No polishing turds, and no letting good ideas become bogged down in aesthetics and themes before they can really come to fruition