So, I may have blogged about this a little before spring break — but since so much has changed in that time, let’s pretend I didn’t and start all over again. Sheesh, I’ve been bad about documenting this semester. New leaf begins: NOW!
I’m working with Adam and Scott on creating a game based on social interactions. This game would likely involve 15-20 players (as it requires physical devices and we can only make so many), where players are awarded points for being around other players with higher point values and penalized for being around players with lower point scores — essentially, a study of “being cool” in social situations (in game format).
The devices we’re creating are essentially small pendants that house a microcontroller setup, a wireless communication device and a numerical readout display (probably four digits). Players would be given the devices, and then told to go talk to other players, with the only hard rule being that the player with the highest score at the end of the game wins. The game will really get going when players start to become less conscious of their interactions with people and go about their usual business.We’re still working out the math and rules of what exactly happens when an interaction occurs, but the most basic idea is that when two players come within what we’d consider “talking distance” (about three feet apart or less), each player would receive points, and their displays would reflect this. Interactions involving multiple players at once are weighted as exponentially more valuable. The deeper rules would involve all scores going up or down around a bell curve, but that’s a bit deeper than we may have time to do before semester’s end. The interaction data is then going to be collected by a base station each time the unit passes within range, and graphed out on a screen in the lounge, likely featuring top players, their scores, and possibly a bit about who they’ve been connecting to (though that opens a whole other door of issues which we may do well to avoid).
For the Designing for Constraints side of things, there’s a LOT to work with here. I think to start out, I’m looking to make a Flash mockup for the physical interaction side of our game (so that we can see if people actually understand and can make use of the devices and the data), and in our case this is probably going to work best if I can create objects that can be dragged around the screen. My plan at the moment is to create both a fake physical mockup of the device (that probably won’t actually work, but will look the part) and a Flash mockup of the gameplay so that we can test both on users and make the necessary adjustments to our devices and to the game ruleset. As with any game, people are probably only going to play this game if it’s easy to understand and generally fun to play, and the latter is going to require a lot of testing to get right, I’m sure.
So far, the early mockup looks like this (outside, and then with hidden walls):
This was all inspired heavily by some of the passively multiplayer games we’d seen online (like this and this and then this one here), as well as a lot that Adam and I had gleaned from SXSW. Part of that included that games need to be enjoyable to play, or people won’t do so. I realize that should be a “well, duh” kind of statement, but it wasn’t until that was discussed, at length, by Dennis Crowley and Kevin Slavin at a SXSW panel that it really sunk in all the way. Also, inspired by that same panel, was the value of statistics and how good data can often inspire competition — as Dennis was saying at one point, just having data collected from a pedometer leads to a friendly competition, as you see if you can go a bit further than your friends, take the stairs to get a few extra steps, etc. I feel the same way about Last*FM, as I find myself often listening to just one more song by a certain artist or two to boost the count one way or the other — I just can’t help it!
Anyhoo, so there’s a TON of work still to do, but we’re working away madly. More updates to follow shortly.
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