Physical Pong... moving forward

Just to make the idea more compelling and the experience more enjoyable, we thought that the power-ups (or else "pows") will be triggered by the players themeselves, instead of appearing randomly from the system. This will involve more physical effort; specifically, each player will be "armed" with a plunger gun which she will have to use to shoot down a set of targets, positioned in the middle of the distance between players. Each trarget will correspond to a pow which will appear on the side of the player who managed to shoot this target first. The player will have to use her body to move her paddle near the pow and by using another gesture (e.g. jump up) "grab" the pow and acquire the extra functionality that it represents (e.g., enlarge her paddle). The targets will be common for both players, which means that the player who is more spot-on will get more pows than her opponent.

Some pows will provide the player with extra options which will have to use other body gestures to be taken advantage of. For example, the paddle would be temporarily armed with a freezer gun; the player will have to use a special gesture to activate the gun and aim at the opponent's paddle on screen. If she manages to hit him, his paddle will freeze for a few seconds and eventually gain advantage at this point of the game. Just to make things more complicated (and amusing) the player could unfreeze his paddle by performing a strange and funny combinaiton of body gestures!

Similar implementations

One of the suggestions was to project the image with the action on the floor between the two players. However, this limits the available distance between the two players, who would have to be close enough (otherwise the projector will have to be placed too high to achieve a 20-25ft pong field). Consequently, small body moves could suffice for controlling the paddles (an example implementation is included below), a fact that contradicts with our initial design idea to have the players literally run up and down to keep the virtual ball in the field. Additionally, there are no other movements whatsoever that are demanded from the player to control the paddle and affect gameplay (e.g., strech her hands to enlarge the paddle).

Another similar small-scale implementation in which players use some kind of rolling footstool to shift left-right, was developed as a digital art installation in New York. Once more, it has the fundamental differences that we mentioned before.

A probably more closely related implementation is the one used during a Japanese game, where there are two players on each side and are making the kind of "blatant" body gestures that we have in mind for our design idea. They have solved the big projection problem using a large floor-mounted LED screen, instead of a top-down projected image.

These implementations are probably an incentive to look for more innocative design ideas, which maybe related, or not, with our physical polng idea. More on this on the next post...

Ideas for class projects...

No1: Physical pong!

Collaborative open-space game for two participants.


Two players will be able to enjoy a pong game by acting as paddles! This popular ATARI game will be revived 40 years after its original debute, but this time the players will control the paddles using their body and hands. The players will stand opposite each other in a distance 20-25ft and they will have to move left and right trying to prevent the virtual ball from passing behind them. They will monitor the gameplay and the ball's movement through a large screen projected on a surface on their side. Gameplay will be augmented by virtual bonuses (or "power-ups") which will appear in various positions; getting a power-up will provide extra functionality like paddle enlargement, ball speed decrease, etc. We believe that the experience will be highly enjoyable and addictive for the participants and the spectators alike.

No2: Full-body hangman!
Hangman played using body gestures.


The popular game hangman is reinvented using full-body gestures. The player has an avatar representation in a virtual world and can select each letter using specific body parts (e.g., the letter 'U' selected with the right ankle). Every time a wrong selection is made a body part is removed from the avatar (e.g., right leg) and added to the gallows. The 'orphan' letters are reassigned to new body parts, which the player has then to use to select them. This will result in some very weird body gestures and eventually highly amusing gameplay. The game can also be played in collaborative or competitive mode.

No3: Brain training games!
Physical games for practicing the human brain.


A combination of games for honing different aspects of the brain, like attention, speed, flexibility, memory, and problem solving. The collection of mini-games takes the ancient Greek proverb "healthy mind in a healthy body" into a whole new dimension. Physical body gestures, which demand synchronization with images and sounds, are used to control the responses in a series of exercises that are designed to improve the brain's operation. These cognitive training sessions will be based on related scientific research in the field, and are inspired by Luminosity.