Visceral Intense Gaming of Opposing Realms (VIGOR*)

The suggested design is comprised of two individuals playing against each other on two different displays. Each player will inhabit a virtual world in which there is going to be a view to his opponent's world. This view will be controlled by the body gestures of the other player, who will be able to expand or collapse the view in order to assist or hinder the opponent in accomplishing his goals. Both players will be involved in a quest-style game, in which they will have collect items through the "keyhole" view of their opponent's world.

Innovation and novelty in our design stems from the fact that gameplay is tightly related to your oppponent's body and actions, also satisfying the four components of the Wheel of Joy, which contributes to the "coolness" factor, as defined by Karen Holtzblatt[1]. Hence, our game leverages a sense of accomplishment commonly felt in competitive games; the social character of the game and the fact that you play through someone else's body will definitely foster intense connection; gamers will undoubtedly find the whole experience as providing them with the identity of an avid gamer; and the sensation deriving from the physical movements and actions with immediate impact on both environments will hopefully be high.

[1] Karen Holtzblatt. What makes things cool? Intentional design for innovation. In interactions, pp. 40-47, November-December 2011.

*  1. Physical or mental strength, energy, or force. 2. Strong feeling; enthusiasm or intensity [Definitions from the online "Free Dictionary" by Farlex].

Testing and more brainstorming

I started working on my idea and experimenting with the Kinect and how I could make a "hole" of a shillouette. I did not manage to do exactly this, but I don't even know if it would be meaningful to try and interact through such an irregular shape, as someone's figure. Instead, I created a rectangle "window" which was adjustable depending on the user's posture. More specifically, I made the width relative to the distance between the user's hands and the height between his left foot and the head. I experimented with different scale factors and managed to come up with an acceptable size. I then made the window move left and right according to the position of the player in space; adding movement in the Z axis, although I don't know if that is going to be useful in my case. Finally, I added movement of the window view according to body movement, so that it really seems that moving left-right does not only shift the window on a fixed location in the second world. The result of these experimentations is illustrated in this brief video.

 

While developing this work, I was brainstorimg on possible gaming scenarios. The most prominent ideas and questions that came out are presented below. Initially, I figured that trying to play a game through someone's moving body (or body-controlled window) would be almost impossible. That's why I assumed that the alteration between two different game modes should take place. Initially, the players will try to shoot each other with some kind of non-lethal weapon (e.g., plastic balls). When a (window of a) player gets hit the window freezes and the "shooter" can approach and have a closer, more thorough view through the window. If the view allows he can aim and pickup bonus items that he has to collect to finish the game. He could also shift his body left or right to change the view angle within the window; at this point his movement is not propagated to the other player's screen (i.e.,the view controlled by his body is idle). After a predefined time, the normal game mode resumes and they start aiming each other again.

Some questions that arise from this scenario are the following:

• How easy or difficult would it be to shoot while moving to avoid enemy fire?
• Should there be any form of navigation in the environment, or just shifting motions?
• What degree of engagement can such a repetitive process involve?
• What other ideas/extras can make the game more interesting and novel?

Thinking about the last two questions, made me come up with some additional gaming features. The first one has to do with the time a player remains "frozen" after being hit. Instead of having a strictly predefined time period, that player could perform a specific repetative -funny- gesture (e.g., move his right leg up and down 20 times) to accelerate the freezing time! This gesture would be different every time and would provide an unpredictable factor for the player "looting" his environment. Another add-on could be providing different environments, like game levels, in which the players are playing. The complexity of those worlds (i.e., having obstacles, or moving enemies) in addition to the adaptable distance between the players, could greatly leverage playability. Also, shooting could be performed with a body gesture too instead of a different control device. If this gesture was, for example, stretching the hands wide open it would have the added benefit of forcing players to enlarge their window in their opponent's environement.

Questions that came up after thinking about these ideas are:

• Do the levels provide enough motivation to keep playing?
• Does a seperate gaming device (e.g., a Wii remote) provide an added benefit or just diminishes the naturalness of the interaction?
• Is the variation offered by the repetitive "unfreezing" actions more of a burden to the player's fatigue, than a significant aid to game play?

Some other issues that I have been thinking about have to do with the setup of the physical environment, technical issues, and how all these affect gameplay. More specifically, I am concerned about the following:

• Should the players be physically located in the same space?
• If yes, should they use the same Kinect device and play on a PC splitting its output into two monitors? (hmm... probably not - collision danger!)
• What happens if they get out of the camera's field of view? (could they "hide" and shoot from there or should there be physical obstacles preventing this?)

Finally, some final concerns have to do with the innovation and novelty part of the design:

• Is the suggested game just another shoot 'em up with an insignifficant new feature?
• Does the shoot-freeze-loot sequence constitute a compromise to the true potential of the game?
• Would the design make more sense for a collaborative game, or will that diminish its novelty?