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The Mission: a sensory playful experience.
Play and Ludic Interaction
Balazs GobelHalfdan Hauch Jensen
Maja Fagerberg RantenLiza Shkirando
Instructors: Simon Niedenthal
Marie Ehrndal
Malmö University, K3, 2013
Table of contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 2
1.1. Research question .............................................................................................................................. 2
2. Research Framework ................................................................................................................................ 3
2.1. Play and Game ................................................................................................................................... 3
2.2. Playful Experience .............................................................................................................................. 3
2.3. Sensing game aesthetics .................................................................................................................... 4
2.3.1. Sense deprivation and sound as a playful investigation ............................................................. 4
2.3.2. Game aesthetics .......................................................................................................................... 4
2.4. Related Work ..................................................................................................................................... 6
2.5. Research Method ............................................................................................................................... 6
3. Design Process .......................................................................................................................................... 8
3.1. Experiments and Prototyping ............................................................................................................ 8
3.1.1. Phase one: Experiments .............................................................................................................. 8
3.1.2. Phase two: Prototyping and concept development ................................................................. 10
3.2. Sensory Experience .......................................................................................................................... 12
3.3. Final Game Concept - The Mission................................................................................................... 13
3.4. User test and Playdays ..................................................................................................................... 16
3.5. Analysis ............................................................................................................................................ 18
4. Reflection and Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 20
4.1. Reflection ......................................................................................................................................... 20
4.2. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 21
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 22
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1. Introduction Playful experience is closely connected to the humans’ sensations and realisation of those sensations. Play triggers laughter, frustration, and excitement through engaging our body in some more or less structured aesthetic experience. What makes a game different from a play has been discussed by many authors (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004; Huizinga, 1949; Caillois, 1962) however in practice those terms can vary dependant on the design, players’ interpretation, and perceived experience. The following project has the sensory experience as a core of the game design process. We explored the area of human senses, sense deprivation, enhancement, and altering to find the openings for a playful interaction. Game mechanics and rules were build on top of the aesthetic qualities of the play. The result of the process was creation of an embodied sensory game played indoors by 4-5 people.
1.1. Research question How can sense deprivation and sound sense stimuli support playful experiences situated between play and game?
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2. Research Framework
2.1. Play and Game In this chapter we define the terms play, game, and playful experience through the classification and terms used by Salen and Zimmerman as it provides relevant fundamentals. Play and game is loosely parallel to ludic activities and game play according to Salen and Zimmerman and playful experience is closely related to what they discuss throughout the Games as the Play of Experience chapter in Rules of Play (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). Using their classification we look at the play-game relationship as games are a subset of play. This is why they claim that play represents many kinds of playful activities: such as children’s imaginative play or animal play that is less structured and there is no predefined goal or quantifiable outcome. In the pursuit of understanding the generalisations of the definition of play by Huizinga (1949), Caillois makes an effort to further define the properties of play in a more concrete level. This is where he introduces the properties of volunteering, improvisation, and role-playing to play. For example, this play-game duality can be identified in some parts as the form of paidia (play) and ludus (game) in Caillois’ research. Paidia relates to joy, improvisation and in a way it is a spontaneous manifestation of the play instinct, that we can find both within the human and animal environment. Ludus, in contrast, is built upon paidia to create order in the play and it is rule-based (Caillois, 1962). We relate our definition of play close to Salen and Zimmerman’s way of stating that “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004:304). They also introduce that play can become transformative at some point. The ‘rigid structure’ of the play can be altered and the rules adjusted. Players can find new ways of keeping the experience challenging and interesting, for example trick their opponents. By using this notion of transformative play we can define its nature as open-ended and imaginative. A more precise definition of games by Salen and Zimmerman is: “A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004:80). According to this definition, games are a system where rules are applied, and there is quantifiable outcome. This way we can define that games are close-ended and might have a limited imaginative property.
2.2. Playful Experience Playful experience in this research context refers to both the game designers’ intention for a specific experience and the players’ actual experience. Caillois has a substantial model defining and classifying players’ experiences in play, suggesting a classification system in Man, Play and Games (Caillois, 1962) that is partly built upon Huizinga’s research. He defines four types of games: agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx. Agon represent competition generally depending on a single feature (eg. speed, endurance), in opposed to the heads-or-tails-like chance in Alea. Mimicry stands for make-believe, focusing on escaping the real world, and becoming someone else where rules are not explicitly the status quo. Most
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relevantly to our research, he introduces ilinx as a label for the games of vertigo, games that are designed to destroy our perception and “inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise ludic mind. [...] it is a question of surrendering to a kind a spasm, seizure or shock which destroys reality with sovereign brusqueness” (Caillois, 1962:138). For example, tightrope or walking blindfolded in a maze are activities that have their main features around ilinx. That the way games are experienced and designed to be experienced, is very different, is not new nor unspoken about. According to Salen and Zimmerman “[...] game designers only indirectly design the player's experience, by directly designing the rules.” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004: 316). Experience arises from play as a player engages with the system. How they engage with that is what they refer to as core mechanic. This is the essential play activity, that is acted out repeatedly during play, and create patterns of behaviour which results in the experience for the players. These experiences always include some kind of sensory input, player output, and internal player cognition (Sutton-Smith, 1986), and these actions make play different from any other sensory experiences.
2.3. Sensing game aesthetics In order to support a playful experience, by designing with focus on ‘sense deprivation’ and ‘sense stimuli’, we need to establish what this means in relation to play and game.
2.3.1. Sense deprivation and sound as a playful investigation The feeling of closing our eyes to help us to focus on a sound detail, or make us more aware of a tactile experience, is a well known experience. Linking gesture and sound is referred to as “the mapping of sound to bodily movements” by Collins (Collins, 2011:41). Coupling actions of a player to sound events is seen in input devices like Wiimote, Xbox Kinect, and real-world music instruments in Guitar Hero. Furthermore, our emotional and neurophysical state can be affected by what we see; if we see pain, we understand this because of our own psychophysiological experience of similar pain. Likewise with sound, when we hear sound, the brain can respond as if it is also experiencing the action that creates the sound (Collins, 2011).
2.3.2. Game aesthetics In order to understand the role of sensory elements in games, it is needed to take a look at the connection between game experience and sensory experiences in the game. “To play a game is to experience the game: to see, touch, hear, smell, and taste the game; to move the body during play, to feel emotions, to communicate and to alter normal patterns of thinking ” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004: 314). To play a game is done through active participation as stated by Salen and Zimmerman: experience is participation (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). As already mentioned they use the definition “Play is free movement within a rigid structure” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004:304) - as a starting point to look at the
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way games build experiences for players. Further they use the three part model: sensory input, player output, and cognitive decision to describe the general structure to understand a player’s experience (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004: 314-315). This creates meaning for the player and this is how a pure sensory experience becomes a play. Rozin states that sensory pleasure and sensory input is tied together and thereby physically localizable - eg the pleasure of good food in your mouth (Rozin, 1999). Rozin lists three types of pleasure: sensory, aesthetic, and accomplishment pleasures. Sensory pleasure is tied to sensory input (physically localizable), aesthetic pleasure is more abstract though still linked to sensory input, and accomplishment pleasures stem from achieving something of value through mastery (Rozin, 1999). Hunicke et al.’s MDA framework (mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics) demonstrate the different perspectives of the designer and the player. By moving between the three levels, conceptualization of dynamic behavior of the game can be made. The designers starting point is mechanics, whereas the player’s experience start with aesthetics which is formulated as “the desirable emotional responses evoked by a player, when she interacts with the game system.” (Hunicke et al., 2004:2). Niedenthal defines three main clusters of existing meaning in game studies research and game design around the term ‘game aesthetics’, defining aesthetics as having to do with; senses, art, and experience. Especially the first and third cluster is interesting in this context since it uses game aesthetics to create a frame of how to understand the connection between the game experience and the sensory elements of the game. In the first cluster Game aesthetics refer to the sensory phenomena that the player encounters in the game. The aesthetics relate to the way a game looks, sounds, and presents itself to the player. It can be visual, aural, haptic, and embodied, and with a focus on sense and perception it “echoes the etymological roots of the word in the Greek aisthesis, which means sensation or perception.” (Niedenthal, 2009:2). According to Niedenthal, linking aesthetics to sensory qualities of games is beneficial as it supports discussion of the way gameplay is rooted in our physical being. The third cluster refer to Game aesthetics as an expression of the game experienced as pleasure, emotion, sociability, formgiving, etc. Here games can be approached as artifacts with the potential to give rise to an aesthetic experience. (Niedenthal, 2009). Further Niedenthal states that game aesthetics is often associated with the effect of the game upon the player (as something that ‘happens’ to a player) as opposed to the means by which the game achieves its power. He argues that in his view, aesthetics is rather something that is performed in the course of play, “[...] a particular kind of pulling out of aesthetic pleasure from the game mechanics through the experience of our bodies” (Niedenthal, 2009:5). This view of aesthetics is interesting in the perspective of a collaborative playful sensory experience. We find this an interesting tool for creating an understanding of if and how the sensory experience constitutes the playful experience through the interaction with the game system and other players.
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2.4. Related Work Sensory engagement is a core element of many games. Starting with such essentials like Hide’n’Seek or Mafia to technologically advanced digital games and interactive installations. It is reasonable to mention here some examples that are relevant to our project in their sensory input/output experience, free exploration, and embodiment. Emotional engagement computer game Dojo (Game Desk, 2012) by Game Desk is aimed to train user’s emotional condition like aggression or anxiety. The game is responsive to the heart rate and galvanic skin response, through the sensors attached to the finger tips, in order to escape from the evil spirits or to accomplish a task given by a game character. Heart rate is not one of the five senses that we usually articulate. It is a more intimate inner sensory experience that people usually do not pay much attention to in everyday life. It is interesting to see how this basic state of a human body becomes extremely important and focused. Chris Woebken’s Animal Superpowers is a work playing with extrasensory perception. It is a series of devices that enables a child to see the world through animal eyes such as an ant or a giraffe. It is based on a Head Mounted Display idea that alters the visual perception of a user. Through free playful experience the objects create a feeling of obtaining one of the animal superpowers. Another interesting aspect of these devices is ‘seeing through your hands’: the cameras with 50x zoom are installed in the hand gears that transfer the image to the head set display, what simulates vision of an ant (Woebken, 2012). Altering and enhancing the senses and deprivation of one sense in favor of another is a unique experience that can be replicated using different means of technology.
2.5. Research Method Our investigation of sense deprivation, sound sense stimuli, and the development of our game concept, is anchored in an explorative design practice-based research. We have worked with sense deprivation and sound sense stimuli as a frame for our exploration. The process were manifested by a series of experiments and prototyping in an iterative process of experiments, prototyping, and reflections. Similar to a programmatic research process; a practice based approach driving by design experimentation, where programs act as a frame for carrying out a series of design experiments (Brandt et al., 2011). In game design, iterative design refer to a play-based design process where design decisions are made based on the experience of playing the game - with an emphasis on playtesting and prototyping (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). We have put ourselves in the role of the player (being the ones experiencing), merging the role of the researcher and the designer, with the role of the player. A focus on experiencing the embodied aesthetic experience through our own bodies, eg. through bodystorming, has been the source of the iterative process of creating the prototypes that lead to the game concept (see figure 1).
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Figure 1. Iterations of the design method The notion of the researcher playing an active part in the process is known in other fields. In ethnography, eg the notion of participant observation where the researcher understands through immersion and participation: “Using embodiment and bodily practices as a means to gain insight requires the researcher to explore the physicality of experience.” (Laurel, 2003: 34). Likewise in performance ethnography as described by Laurel as design improvisation. Here the designer explore a design solution in all sensory and cognitive modalities by performing it (Laurel, 2003). The majority of our exploration is done in a design lab setting as well as the public setting of Malmö Public Library. Our playtests in the library during Malmö Playdays is based on more traditional ethnographic research methods; observation, open interviews and photo documentation.
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3. Design Process The experience that is being created in the current project is on the border between game and play. The design process starts, not from the game mechanics and definition of the rules, but from exploration of the human sensory area and extracting possible playful experiences from this area. The specific concept developed by this project has taken its starting point in exploring the playful potential of sound sensing and sense deprivation. After defining one specific promising sense experience a game structure was build up around it.
3.1. Experiments and Prototyping This project has worked with the concept of enhancing a specific sensing experience by deprivation of senses. With a context of exploring the physical space that surrounds the player, we have explored different ways to balance deprivation and amplification of sensing capabilities, to support the playful experience. The exploration phase can be divided into two phases. In the first phase we have had an initial focus on sound - a playful exploration that lead to the frame about sound sense stimuli and sense deprivation. In the second phase we worked towards narrowing down all of the experiments and experiences towards the concept development and prototyping.
3.1.1. Phase one: Experiments The first phase of our exploration process had sound as the main focus. In this phase we did observations at the library, following by experiments and rapid prototyping in the lab and brought them back to the library. The experiences were performed in iterations and after each experiment we reformulated the frame. The experiments were based around four categories: light and sound, sound through touch, binaural recordings, and sense-changing. Light and sound Working with sound in combination with light was inspired by the atmosphere and the architecture of the library. This resulted in an iteration of rapid prototyping with a focus on navigating by light to sound feedback. We used a webcam to detect light and darkness that would generate a simple soundscape; a pitch would be gradually higher in light and gradually lower in the dark (see figure 2). It worked well as a spatial investigation in the library exploring the sound of the architecture in relation to the natural light. For instance, when walking around the aisles of the library turning towards the edge of a balcony would give a warning pitch, and make you walk in a straight line even with your eyes closed.
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Figure 2. Malmö public library and sound and light experiments This connection of the light level of the surroundings with the sound level was also tested as a collaborative activity. A person with a flashlight was guiding another blindfolded person who could hear the ‘sound’ of the flashlight movements. This version proved to be even more interesting and intrigent to be a team navigating through a space as a joint effort. Binaural recordings The focus on binary recordings occurred from a technological interest about what type of advanced soundscapes we could create through recordings. Before we acquired binaural recorders we did more low tech ‘wizard of oz’ style prototypes. This included talking through a tube, wearing a cardboard box on the head, hearing different recordings, and controlling volume in the left and right ear to sense whether we could determine a spatial sense through sound (see figure 3).
Figure 3. Sound experiments With the recorders we did recordings at the library of place related sounds - the sound of a book falling to the ground and different background noises. And we walked around the library wearing headphones connected to the recorder playing with the different settings. A distance setting became the most promising sense experience that felt like a superpower; the ability to hear what people were talking about from a distance. A side effect of this setting, that turned out to be a great sense experience, was that you would have to be very quiet to hear anything, your own breath would otherwise block the ability to hear anything. Sound through touch With a focus on haptics and sound we did several tests around haptics generating sound. One of the experiments was about the sound of a shape, trying to determine if it is possible to sense a shape only
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by sound. Another way of combining sound and tactile senses was replacing natural sounds with pre recorded ones, touching a surface would be replaced with the sound of nails scratching on chalkboard. Part of our findings with these experiments was that it is hard to make pre recorded sounds fit real lifes speed and movement, and that live sound is a very strong element. Sense-changing The experience with the technical equipment lead to the idea of changing peoples sensory ability by empowering one and weaken another. This is seen with animals, eg a dogs strong sense of smell versus weak vision, or the powerful hearing and bad vision of a bat. Altered vision independently of the sound was another focus of our experiments. We did analogue tests wearing fisheye lenses as glasses which made navigating in a space really challenging. Another experiment used a laptop and a camera to imitate a headgear that could create a fisheye vision, reverse light and darkness, or blur the image (see figure 4). They were all very promising in their ability to create an interesting sensing experience that became playful when the user had to navigate and get a spatial understanding of the surrounding space.
Figure 4. Blurry vision experiments
3.1.2. Phase two: Prototyping and concept development The second phase was characterized by the need to narrow down and work towards a game concept, however it was important to maintain the focus on prototyping. We worked simultaneously with the design of the digital and physical material, the narrative, the details of transforming the experience into a game concept, ideating, bodystorming, and prototyping. We worked around the theme of enhancing senses through restrictions. It was important to find a connection between the reason for being sense deprived and sound sense stimuli. As Chris Woebken with his Animal Superpowers (Woebken, 2008) was enhancing and altering certain senses to simulate extraordinary abilities of the animals, in this project we were inspired by fictional superpowers of the science fiction characters. Also we looked at a new angle at the ‘powers’ of handicapped people who are lacking physical senses but gaining new experiences through use of supportive technology. Graham Pullin used an example of a deaf person that can adjust the volume of the surroundings by adjusting the volume of his hearing aid, and hear what an ordinary person is not able to hear whereas while being at the museum he/she can turn off the volume and enjoy the art in complete silence (Pullin, 2009).
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Paralympic champion Aimee Mullins describes a situation where children when placed in a playful situation turned her severe disability into a superhuman (Mullins, 2009). Ideating on possible game scenarios brought the process to a concrete direction for the further concept development. The idea of connecting one’s breath as a sensory experience and invisibility as a superpower through sacrificing one sense for another seemed to be the most interesting direction to go with. The key elements of this direction was: interesting use of the ‘superpowers’, powerful sensory experience and the balance between playfulness and game. The narrative would be based on an airborne pandemic that made the game somewhat a physicalisation of a video game. However, this storyline was transformed in later iterations. The idea of using player’s breath, a strong connection between physicality and senses, was born from the previous experiments with the sound recorders. Complete vision deprivation became a part of the sensory experience so it was decided to locate the play sessions in a library space that can be darkened: the conference hall Red room. The challenge was to make the game play fit the balance of free explorative play and game, and make it collaborative and not an individual experience. The first step was bodystorming an experience of exploring the acoustics of the space with the game goal of navigating towards specific sounds. With the need to balance the difficulty physical obstacles got introduced together with changing the sound volume and location. Simultaneously we started building a headgear that could block the vision and change the hearing ability to be more focused on the location of the sound. At the same time the audio equipment was mounted in a way that it would amplify the sound of the player’s own breath inside the headgear and detect when the player was breathing. We tested the experience of wearing it ourselves and on test persons (see figure 5).
Figure 5. Building and testing headgear Through the headgear LED the player’s breath would be detected by a web camera, allowing for another part of the experience, that was about surveillance, and made to test a two team gameplay. Another testing focus was the amount of players and what specific sounds to use. To support the game elements and the narrative input controllers for the surveillance team was build (see figure 6), enabling them to change the location of the sounds and inflict a temporary noise - both with the aim of confusing the
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other team. The narrative and the rules were finalized during the process of shaping the technical details.
Figure 6. Building and testing buttons and noise machine
3.2. Sensory Experience The sensory experience we aimed for was based on the experiments we carried out with sense deprivation, and the narrative frame around a harmful airborne element. As described we went with a total blackout of the vision, which allowed for an experience only focused on sensing the sounds and the tactile feedback of physical obstacles. With the headgear as a central element, the connection between altering the sound sensing ability, navigating in the dark, and the focus of the biometric element of breath were brought together. The experience was intended to be somewhat similar to wearing a gas mask. The intent was that the conflict between breathing and completing the game objective would create the playfulness. This was achieved by requiring the players to use their hearing sense to navigate towards sound elements, while their breath also gave sound feedback. We created a situation where the player found themselves in a somewhat claustrophobic feeling of wearing a gas mask in the dark. They had to control the breath while following the maze of physical obstacles in the search for sound elements. Further the sensory experience were supported by the narrative of the mask being necessary due to the harmful airborne element. Based on our experiments we found the combination of the sense deprivation and biometric feedback to be playful elements when related to a navigation objective. When there are more than one player navigating in the maze, it creates a certain degree of collaboration between the players, the feeling of a common goal, and an opportunity to communicate with each other in order to achieve this goal. At the same time other players become a part of a maze, creating more physical obstacles by being there blindfolded. In the following we will describe the details of the specific game structure that were designed together with this sensory experience.
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3.3. Final Game Concept - The Mission With the sensory experience detailed, now we can discuss what tools and technology was used as well as explaining the objectives, outcomes, narrative framework, and the players’ flow of the final game concept. The final concept of the game was named The Mission and was based on the following narrative. Players were secret agents entering an underground military research facility. A chemical rocket was about to launch and they had to press the stopping buttons to prevent that. Additionally, because the rocket was leaking poisonous gas, they had to wear a protective mask. Players with the masks became the Agents, while the rest of the players became the Double agents, whose job was to launch the rocket no matter what. This element of role-playing can be found as mimicry in Caillois’ terminology. The gameplay can be summarized as three players (the Agents) using their hearing sense to navigate towards and switching buttons emitting sounds in a dark ‘Bunker’. While doing this they are wearing a mask amplifying the sound of their own breath making it harder to locate the sounds of the buttons. Meanwhile one or two players (the Double agents), in the ‘Control Room’, are monitoring the positions of the Agents in the Bunker trying to formulate a strategy to prevent them from finding the aforementioned buttons. The means of the Double agents are swapping the location of the sounds and inflicting white noise in the Bunker to confuse the Agents (see figure 7).
Figure 7. Left: Testing at the Bunker after a game session. Right: In the Control Room The actual play session was designed to have at least four players to collaborate with each other. In the Bunker, all lights were turned off and the Agents entered with masks on their heads, which was dedicated for enhancing the sound of their breath and giving details of their whereabouts. Out of the four stop buttons at the Bunker, two emitted a sonar-like sound effect, which is referred back to as ‘active stop buttons’. The Bunker consisted of four outer walls, represented physically by lines of chairs, and a maze was arranged inside by six plywood walls. The Agents in the bunker had to navigate this maze in the dark to find the buttons giving out the sound. This notion of navigation, walking blindfolded in a maze, refers to what Caillois (1962) defines as ilinx.
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The Control Room was visually separated from the Bunker with normal light conditions. The Double Agents could use two tools: the White Noise Machine and a radar map with a four-button panel. By entering a sequence of eight random characters through the White Noise Machine, the Double Agents were able to make white noise on the Bunker as a distraction for the the Agents in the Bunker. The radar map showed a visual representation of the maze and the Agents location and movements inside the Bunker. They also had the option to change the location of the two active stop buttons using the four-button panel restricted to five swaps during the playtime limit (four minutes). Technology-wise the final product had a complex hierarchy. Agents in the Bunker were wearing masks that had a microphone and a microprocessor mounted on it (see figure 8). The microphone transmitted the recorded sounds to both of the Agents’ earphones and the microprocessor, the latter determined if the strength of the received signal (volume level) should light up the LED on top of the mask, hence making it possible to track by the two cameras mounted on the ceiling. The recorder were mounted in front of the Agent’s mouth and the system calibrated to the individual persons breath. This made the Agent’s breath triggering the LED light, enabling the Double Agents in the Control Room to get a visual representation of the Agent on their screen. This was a game mechanic enabling the Agents to stay undetected while holding their breath.
Figure 8. Schematics of the masks.
The two cameras used the LED lights to get the Agents positions and sent these details, through the computer attached to them, to a third computer at the Control Room. These same computers received data whether the location of the active stop buttons (sounds) should be changed. The four buttons in the Bunker were combined with the speakers and were mounted to the walls elements. In the Control Room a computer communicated with the other two laptops in the Bunker. This PC ran two programs simultaneously, outputting each into two different displays. One application was designed
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for using the White Noise Machine, and another one for tracking the Agents’ locations changing an active stop button’s location and other details. The White Noise Machine used a game controller as an input device that was imitating some of the keys on the keyboard, and used those characters to type the sequence. Once all of the eight characters were put in, there was a loud white noise sound in the Bunker. The other application was visualizing the map, with both the walls and stop buttons, receiving location details from the computers in the Bunker and visualizing it in form of blinking red dots. It was also showing the time left from the current play session as well as the amount of active stop button swaps left (starting from five). Connected to this program, there was a microprocessor-controlled panel with four buttons, each responsible for changing the location of an active stop button in the Bunker (see figure 9).
Figure 9. Overview of the technical schematics used at the site There were three possible outcomes of the game. Either the Bunker won by pressing the two active stop buttons, the Control Room by having at least one active stop button at the end of the play session, or neither of them succeeded if there was one stop button pressed that was not active (see appendix, Rules of The Mission). The outcomes resemble a more close-ended nature that we defined as games in the previous chapter about game and play.
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3.4. User test and Playdays Playtesting was taking place at the Malmö public library Playdays event from 11.00 to 16.00 with 8 groups of 4-5 players. The participants were primarily young people between 20 - 35 years old. Here we are going to introduce and reflect on the play experience of the two teams: ‘the Agents’ playing in the darkness of the Bunker and ‘the Double agents’ interacting with the Agents from the Control room. The flow of the play session was very different from each other for both teams; the start, the end of the game, and the sensory experience. Players were first recruited by either one of the game masters, by the volunteers helping at the event, or they came on their own to the place of the briefing (in front of the Bunker). They were given a written description of what their mission would be (see appendix, The brief), 2-3 people were assigned as the Agents and 1-2 as Double agents. After explaining the narrative of the game, the gamemasters put the masks on the three of the players assigned the role of an Agent. In the meanwhile, while still pretending to put masks on the rest the remaining players, the Double agents, were secretly led to the Control room. We will start explaining the experience in the Bunker, followed by what happened in the Control room. The anticipation and mystery created by the narrative and the preparation stage of the game was a strong tool in setting a playful mood and leading people into the game settings. The gamemasters guided the Agents into the Bunker and this was a moment of creating trust, confidence, and playful mood through the physical contact (holding hands or shoulders), and informal talk (see figure 10). This was the first step of the sensory experience of the Agent players, we didn’t anticipate this to be of importance, but since this was our first time playtesting - a lot of unpredictable elements occurred. When all three Agents were gathered in the Bunker the gamemasters gave more detailed instructions to the Agents and they could ask questions to make sure all the rules were clear. However, after playing the game it was clear that some players were confused by the rules, misunderstood some parts of it, or forgot important points. The rules needed to be presented in a more clear and sharp manner.
Figure 10. Briefing the Agents and the maze layout
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The play session started after an audio signal. Each play session was 4 minutes long and an informal follow-up interview took place afterwards. As the game began the Agent players were acting very differently. Most of the them were disoriented and could not distinct where the sounds were coming from. A few were very sharp leading straight towards the active sound. For most of the people the sounds were not directed and they found it hard to locate spatially through hearing. After the first play session we increased the volume level of the sounds to make it easier for the Agents to detect them. The physical movement through the ‘maze’ was also different from person to person. It was hard to navigate an unknown space while being blindfolded. For some Agent players, in combination with the confusion of soundscape, that was a frustrating part that made them stand in one place the whole session. Whereas many Agent players found various strategies: moving slowly and gently exploring every surface, or vise versa walking fast, bumping into the obstacles and trying to accomplish the task within the given time limit. The furniture used for the obstacles was confusing sometimes. A few Agent players could not identify the borders of the maze because it was made of chairs instead of walls. Also, for some people, it was unclear if they should avoid the chairs, move them away, or climb over them. For the Double Agents’ team the play experience was quite different. The experience also depended on whether there were 1 or 2 Double Agents in the Control Room. Their interaction with the button and screen based interface required concentration and strategic thinking while following the movements on the radar. After they were guided to the Control Room the gamemasters gave them more detailed instruction and introduced the radar, the white noise machine and the button control panel. When there was only one Double Agent in the Control room, they tended to use all the button swaps first and then switch to the white noise machine. Only once a Double Agent was constantly switching attention between the buttons and the white noise machine during the game. The strategic thinking and quick decision making was individual and depended on whether a person had gaming or playing background or not. An example of a two-player strategy was based on saving the button swaps and using the white noise effectively. One Double Agent was following the radar and spotting when the Bunker room Agent were too close to the button, while another Double Agent had the white noise machine ready to launch, having decoded all the symbols except the last one. When the Double Agent controlling the radar gave a command to turn on the white noise, the white noise machine operator had to guess only one symbol of the mini-game that only took a couple of seconds. For some Double Agents in the Control room the different outcomes of the game remained unclear. The rules in the brief and the briefing session should be more structured. The end of the game was also slightly unclear for the Agent players. Though they understood the three possible outcomes and what actions lead to what outcome, they did not clearly understand when the game was over and with which result. The audio feedback was rather unclear in itself, e.g. the sound of the rocket launching, was not clear enough, and the game masters had to announce out loud what happened within the end of each play session.
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It is important to mention that the winning rate was approximately 50/50 between the teams of the Agents and the Double Agents what shows that the difficulty level for both teams was designed in balance.
3.5. Analysis Defining game and play has been a red thread through the design process and actual user testing. Observations and interviews with the players bring the discussion back to the sensory experience in the play settings. The play session at the Malmö public library has shown a lot of interesting insights on the use experience in terms of our research focus around how sense deprivation and sound sense stimuli can support playful experiences situated between play and game. According to the players’ feedback and observations, sense deprivation has played an important role in the experience at the Bunker, and was an essential part of the game mechanics. When the play session was done and we started an open discussion, most of the players described their feelings, relation to movements and emotions that they experiences through the play. A game usually lays outside the borders of rational sequence of action, therefore when we connect an element of being blindfolded and an objective (finding a physical object, ie. a button), we create a playful experience and frame the play settings (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). Intentional sense deprivation is playful in itself as it is outside of our normal behaviour and we do it voluntarily (Huizinga, 1949; Caillois, 1965). The embodied interaction between a person moving in the maze and the audio feedback of the buttons made the game more specific in its mechanics but provided slightly different sensory experiences for different Agent players dependent on the personal perception of this interaction. The interviews with them after each play session showed the difference of the sensory focus that determined physical movement. One of the Agent players described the experience as not scary “you just relax and listen”, other people seemed to be more stressed: “I felt that the sounds were further away and it [the maze] felt bigger, I walked into chairs everywhere!” The whole experience is framed as a game, thus participants are ready to perceive it as playful. The playtest showed that players were immersed in the gameplay and showed strong emotions for the sensory experience: “I thought the chairs was meant to be breached - that I should crawl over them. I though the enemies were inside the maze!”. In addition to being perceived as playful, we also found the combination of the sense deprivation and biometric feedback to act as playful elements when related to a navigation objective based on our experiments. By designing for specific sensations (spatial movement, sound and tactile), we have made room for the players to actively choose their level of participation and experience. The game was designed in such a way that the players in the Bunker had to reach a certain goal, but there were no strict prescriptions on how they should move and what actions they should perform. They could decide how they would reach
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the goal within the limits of the game. This level of openness, combined with a strong narrative, can be seen parallel to how Salen and Zimmerman refer to as ludic activities. Our aim was to make a playful experience situated between play and game. As explained above, the experience of the Bunker has a lot of elements of a free play and incorporates senses. It is referring us to the experience of Larp (live action role play) where the players are involved in somewhat a game with its rules and outcomes, while the most important experience of such a game is acting out a role, being playful and live through the open-ended narrative (Jonsson et al., 2006). The Double agents in the Control room were playing in a completely different physical and sensory setting. Their experience can be described more like a game, as there is a quantifiable result, conflict, competition, and strictly defined rules, while the sensory part was excluded here. The game in the Control room, because of its design, would not allow the players perform any free play or personal twist to the flow. The whole interface and the physical setting at the Control room can be compared to an arcade game and was based on figuring out a strategy. The experience of the Control room player is first of all agon, a game of competition, whereas the Bunker is predominantly ilinx. Overall the idea of agon is an important element of the whole system of the Mission as a competition between the two teams.
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4. Reflection and Conclusion
4.1. Reflection Through an iterative design exploration we have designed a sensory experience and framed it as a narrative gameplay. This made room for the players’ input, and for the players to actively participate in a gameplay and have a subjective sensory experience. As such, our use of sense deprivation and sound sense stimuli functioned as a playful experience situated between game and play. By exploring the sensory experience, and developing the gameplay based on experiences felt on our own bodies, we have explored the design solution through senses, aesthetics, and embodiment as opposed to game mechanics and rules. This approach proved to add a great focus on experience in the development of the final game concept and allowed intuition, emotions, and free play to be part of the design process. However, this approach should be combined with playtesting with players unfamiliar of the concept at different stages in the design process. It would be beneficial to receive more objective reflections that are not influenced by our pre-existing knowledge of how the technology, the expected sensory experience or how the game is intended to be played. Using our own sense experience was a great inspiration throughout the process, although the final game concept would have clearly benefited from more playtesting - to shape a better flow of the narrative and the collaborative experience across and internally in the teams. Our lack of playtesting turned the Playdays into a series of playtesting, where we fine-tuned small details in the game. Most interestingly, we found that we succeeded in making an the open-ended play experience in the bunker, that allows play of free exploration and perception. Furthermore, the game became an interesting balance between game and play represented by the two sides: the playful bunker and the strategy game in the control room. The biggest identified issue due to lack of playtesting was that briefing was a bit of a mess, people forgot some rules. The fact that we conducted experiments and prototypes in an iterative manner as an explorative design research, proved to be beneficial in the way we identifies a specific sensory experience that then got further developed into a game structure. Having a wide range of experiments with clear reference to the framing worked as a solid background knowledge helping to balance and understand the opportunities of different sensory elements during the rest of the design process. There is an interesting perspective in the relation between the field of game design and Interaction Design (IxD). IxD designers are concerned with how to create interactive products focusing on the word interaction as the key to making the right products. A big part, perhaps the biggest, is trying to understand how and why people act and react like they do. It seems one of the keys to being a good designer is the ability to anticipate, and therefore design for these reaction/action patterns.
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Salen and Zimmerman (2004) and many other game design scholars turns to Huizinga’s way of defining play in Homo Ludens (Huizinga, 1949) when they themselves have to define what play is. Huizinga states that play is at the very center of what makes us human. He opens his book with the statement that “Play is older than culture” (Huizinga, 1949: 1). By examining various parts of human culture including: art, psychology, language, and war as some of its parts. He argues that play is a central part of being human and exist in various places in human culture (Huizinga, 1949). With that in mind, play seems an important factor in all design, and especially also IxD. This seems to be the case, not only when looking at the human being as being playful, but also when addressing games as interactive systems and comparing the structure of games to a simple model for interactive designs. Salen and Zimmerman state the following about playing games: “Every action results in a change affecting the overall system” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004: 58). Which is very similar to the simple way of thinking of interactive systems design. A user gives input, that alters the state of the system and produces an output, which the user again acts upon. The core mechanics of our game has great potential for further game development. In fact, each of the different mechanics used in the game contain possibility for sensory experience. For example, the mask with its features of controlling your own breath and being controlled through it could be subject of a game on its own (see appendix, Rules of the Mission) - likewise the buttons, the theme of surveillance and the minigame for the noise machine.
4.2. Conclusion Through our exploration of sense deprivation and sound sense stimuli, we have designed a sensory experience and framed it in a game context that supports playful experiences situated between play and game. We have designed a game for sensory experience with an interesting balance between game and play as well as a potential explorative room. We achieved this by finding connections between specific sensations, and their playful abilities in a free-form play context. This made room for each player to freely experience and create meaning through their own perception of the sensory game. Our exploration of the design solution through our own bodies proved to add a great focus on experience and allowed intuition, aesthetics, and free play to be part of the design process. However the final gameplay would have been stronger if we had combined it with playtests with players unfamiliar to the concept at different stages in the design process. The final game concept benefits from our methodological approach, by exploring the playful potential of senses in an explorative practice-based manner. We created a wide range of experiments within the frame, and an understanding of the opportunities of different sensory elements.
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Bibliography Brandt E., Redström J., Eriksen MA. and Binder T. (2011) Xlab,Copenhagen: The Danish Design School Press. Caillois R. (1962) The Definition of Play and The Classification of Games, in: Salen K. and Zimmerman E. eds. (2006) The Game Design Reader, Cambridge: The MIT Press, pp. 122-155. Collins K. (2011) Making Gamers Cry: Mirror Neurons and Embodied Interaction with Game Sound, in Proceedings of the 6th Audio Mostly Conference: A Conference on Interaction with Sound (AM '11), pp. 39-46, New York: ACM. Game Desk (2012) Dojo - an emotional learning game, [Online] Available: http://gamedesk.org/project/dojo [4 Nov 2013]. Huizinga J. (1949) Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hunicke R., LeBlanc M. and Zubek R. (2004) MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, Proceedings of the Challenges in Game AI Workshop, Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Palo Alto: AAAI Press. Jonsson S. et al. (2006) Prosopopeia: experiences from a pervasive Larp, In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCHI international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology (ACE '06), Article 23, New York: ACM. Laurel B. (2003) Design Research. Methods and perspectives, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Mullins A. (2009) My 12 pairs of legs, [Online] Available: http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html [5 Nov 2013]. Niedenthal S. (2009) What we Talk About When We Talk About Game Aesthetics, Digital Games Research Association. [Online] Available: http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-game-aesthetics [21 Oct 2013]. Pullin G. (2009) Design meets disability, Cambridge: The MIT press. Rozin P. (1999) Preadaptation and the puzzles and properties of pleasure, in Kahneman D., Diener E. and Schwarz N. eds. Well being: The foundations of hedonic psychology, pp. 109- 133, New York: Russell Sage. Salen K. and Zimmerman E. (2004) Rules of play: game design fundamentals, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Sutton-Smith B. (1986) Toys as Culture, pp. 69–72., New York: Gardner Press. Woebken C. (2012) Animal superpowers, [Online] Available: http://chriswoebken.com/animalsuperpowers.html [4 Nov 2013].
Appendix
Rules of The Mission Settings: 3-5 players:
2-3 Agents in the Bunker 1-2 Double agents in the Control room
A game master assigns players either to the bunker or to the control room by handing out different written instructions. A game master puts masks on bunker agents and then guides both teams to the assigned rooms. The game starts with an audio signal. The Bunker / Agents Mission: Deactivate two active buttons (emitting sound) during 4 minutes game play. Never press inactive button. Tools and restrictions:
● hold your breath = invisibility for the Double agents ● vision deprived ● navigation by sound ● amplified sound of own breath
The mask The mask amplifies the sound of own breathing, when the bunker agent doesn’t breathe he/she becomes invisible to the radar of the control room agents.
Control room / Double agents Mission: Prevent the bunker agents from deactivating two active buttons. Tools and restrictions: Double agents in the control room prevent agents on the floor from pushing the active buttons by:
● changing the location of the active buttons using the radar tracking and a button panel ● distracting the Agents with the noise using the White Noise Machine
Radar Tracks the bunker agents’ movements and locations of the active buttons. Only active when the Agents breathe. Location of the active buttons can be changed using the 4-button panel (max 5 times) White Noise Machine To emit white noise that distracts the bunker agents, you need to solve a combination of letters and numbers using the interface of the White noise machine.
End conditions: If bunker agents press two active stop buttons, they win If bunker agents do not deactivate two active buttons before time limit, control room agents win. If bunker agents press a non active button, both team loose.
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The Brief
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Recruiting poster
