Methodology Blog 001: Speed Dating and Other Shenanigans
Shock! Horror! Today’s class opens up with speed dating! It sure forced me to open up, though I won’t deny downing half a can of energy drink in an anxious panic may have also affected me. Immediately after we move on to discussing our brief; to make a proposal and prototype for a “playful” and “interactive” piece of work that will benefit a New Zealand community in a positive way, as a group.
We then individually came up with ideas for an interactive work. Firstly we came up with 8 ideas for an urban playground.
I barely managed to squeeze out 8 ideas in the rough 3m,30s time limit.
Highlights include:
Open Air Lounge // Live Chatroom
The idea was to create a wide open social space for strangers to relax and for shyer individuals to break the ice over text chat that’s displayed to the whole area on a projector. Of course, such a space would require adequate moderation to remove trolls/creeps to create a safe and comfortable space.
Virtual Paint Projection
Self-expression through virtual graffiti. Gotta make sure nobody draws dicks ofc.
Lights and Musical Play
Music is great and expressive! Who needs words when you can express yourself by smashing buttons and making sounds? Responsive lights would also make for a visual lights and a great feedback experience.
Then we narrowed in on a core idea and created 8 permutations of it. I chose to focus on Lights and Musical Play
Light Puzzles
Playing enough destiny makes you hungry for raid-like experiences but its social spaces also show us what good activated spaces can be like. Mixing puzzle challenges into a social space would encourage people to interact with it and each other.
Instruments to Abstraction
A series of instruments would be placed around a central light display. Different instruments would affect the lights in different ways and come together to create a symphony of light and sound. The biggest challenge would be making everything sound good no matter how terrible the players are, as well as making the instruments easy to pick up by anyone.
Laser Instruments!
Mess with light to create sounds. Cool right?
Touch Sensitive Floor
An open space with a touch sensitive floor, connected to a projected display and speakers. The display and music would change depending on the number of people on the floor and how they were moving (i.e running, walking, standing, jumping, etc.).
After a quick lunch break we got into groups of three and messed around with the rules of Tic Tac Toe.
To begin, we messed with the math of the game. Anything relating to numbers was fair game. Our first course of action was to make the play space 5x5 instead of 3x3, and to give each player three moves per turn. They would have to line up 5 tiles to win.
This ended unsuccessfully. We’d created an even more stalemate-loving game than the initial version (I didn’t think it was possible either). Next we made it so players only had 2 moves per turn and that they only had to line up 3 tiles.
This was also terrible. The player who played first always won on their next turn. To counter this, we made it so the players had to connect 4 tiles.
Turns out we were only delaying the inevitable, as the player who went first always had a huge advantage.
Next, we got to toy with the action-based rules, while leaving the math of the game in place. Our goal was to move the focus away form the center, so we made a rule that players cannot claim the center tile first. This forced an even more rigid stalemate, so we made special tiles with a special rule: If a player claims one, they also claim the other in the same turn.
Once again it tipped the advantage massively in favor of the player who goes first. Finally, we created counters, and gave each player four. This meant that they had to move one counter once all four were placed down.
We ended up in a stalemate with players moving the pieces around in circles till the end of time. Unfortunately, our time was cut before we could further these ideas. I wonder if we could create a balanced and competitive game by giving the player agency over when they place and remove their counters?
In all it feels good to be back. Despite the 8am and 9am starts on Monday and Tuesday I felt really good at the end of the week. I enjoyed this class in particular because everything was very hands on, despite us talking about theory and our brief for the whole time, I was never bored. I look forward to more of this in the coming weeks.
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