The Re-Imagining of Imagination
So there’s a thing I noticed, It might be just me, but people who never drove a motorcycle had a harder time for about 3 mins figuring out how the game works. One of the goals of my game was to make something completely accessible by a large variety of people, even those who do not like games in general. It’s a fun activity after all, with little elements that make it overtly gamey in any way.
But the Motorcycle theme, even in the sort of double abstraction that my game has seems to have, sort of works out. It’s interesting, considering its an abstraction of a fantasy. It would have been more ‘realistic’ in a way if a Button is used to accelerate. Sure, most motorcycles are accelerated through a rotating handle, some others have small pedals for acceleration. However, one could say the mode of acceleration in a motorcycle resembles more the pressing of a button or the pulling of a switch than the screaming your lungs out.
My Game, therefore, is a re-imagining, of an imaginary mode of driving. Sort of like an Imagine-ception. It does not seek to abstract in an operable form the act of driving a motorcycle. It seeks to abstract the act of Imagining that you are driving a motorcycle. That is kind of fascinating, and the actual reality of it only hit me now.
That’s where the accessibility and the wide appeal comes from, because although not everyone has driven an actual motorcycle, or is capable of doing so, everybody can Imagine that he/she is driving a motorcycle, and the most frequent way where one ‘Plays’ as though he is driving a motor vehicle is by assuming the driving pose and making the characteristic engine sound.
Therefore, as a bonus, here is a video of my Mum, playing Motorshoutist. A person who does not really drive motorcycles, and does not play games. She also does not use computers. She’s done nothing of this before. This is all imaginary to her...