Play

PLAY A Mad Tea-Party

“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles–I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.

“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.

“Exactly so,” said Alice.

ILLUSIONS AND PLAY

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Play allows us to buy into a fiction (like when we see a magic trick): “At any point in the collective activity of play, a point where ‘disbelief ’ or ‘belief ’ can enter.” (Woods 2001: 60). Playing is to act as if, to use role-play as a way to try out behavior in different situations, whether as children or as adults. Play allows us to explore materials which allows us to mix unexpected things and make mistakes.

We learn from these mistakes and take those lessons out of play into real life. When we are in a state of play, we are in an all encompassing mode: “Immersion implies a complete absorption in the activity: ‘in this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence, the primordial quality of play’”. (Huizinga in Woods 2001: 61).

So play is a state where we are in the moment, and this is a quality in interaction design and in the type of enchanting experiences I seek to create.

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enchantment and magic are illusions. The words illusion and delusion come from the latin root ludere which is the same for the word play. As part of my process I explored play and its qualities to gain insight into how can I design enchanting experiences.

To explore these concepts I made a game as a pilot project, AR Hockey, and co-hosted a workshop based on play.

PLAY IS A CORE

HUMAN

VALUE EVEN A CORE MAMMALIAN VALUE –Bing Gordon

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AR Hockey I developed a pilot project based on the table arcade game air hockey to further explore the qualities of play. I wanted to create a playful game that explored the materiality of real surfaces like floors and walls mixed with the immateriality of digital forms, like graphics projected on the floor. I also wanted to explore the use of our body movement and the relationship to our physical space, as well as the interaction between each other.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/CONCEPT

The game I created was a remediation of a remediation: a new version of an arcade game that builds from a situation played in the real world. This game would react to body movement: whenever a player kicked the virtual puck, it would glide on the surface. When it hit 90 degrees (encountering a wall, for instance) it would go up that wall, allowing the player to use their hands to pull it back down, or push it up to the ceiling and make it appear on the opposing wall.

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I created a scoring system and the rules of the game. I tried out different modes: one player, two player and multiple players. I decided to focus on the two player mode to develop the game. There were several iterations during this stage of the process.

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AR HOCKEY R&D

I needed to learn a program that would allow me to create the interactive system that AR Hockey demanded. To do so, I had the help of my external tutors: Peter Hellicar and Joel Gethin Lewis. Together they run Hellicar&Lewis, a creative studio based in London that creates experiences with design and technology that put people in the moment.

I was very fortunate to be able to have them as instructors from this point onwards on my research and projects in this MA. Through online tutorials over video-chat (Skype) they have guided me through the process of transforming the sketches of my projects into working interactive systems.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/VISUAL RESEARCH

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ATer setting up the rules of the game, I researched imagery that had to do with using different surfaces while playing a game. I looked at the way players use their bodies and at current air hockey games in the market.

I looked at the prehispanic game “juego de pelota” as a reference for using other surfaces than the floor, like walls.

The scoring system in “juego de pelota” allowed me to think of a system of my own that included the use of walls.

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As part of my visual references I analyzed games that had to do with friction and gliding using fullbody movement, like curling.

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An example of projecting on surfaces is ‘Contact’, an interactive installation by United Visual Artists.

I discovered iMat, a game in which players explore shapes and patterns projected on the floor.

I found online this proyect called ‘POMOtion interactive floor’. It differs from my concept in the way that they don’t really use the surfaces or the projection in a novel way: it is just the same arcade hockey with new technology in the form of projection mapping.

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Around the time I was doing my research I found this AR Hockey augmented reality demo by PS Vita.

I realized I had an idea that was potentialized in the market. The execution was not truly taking advantage of Air Hockey: the interaction level was reduced just to the use of thumbs, and the video showed graphics that couldn’t be experienced in real life, you’d had to see them hrough the console’s screen.

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For the scoring system and visual language of AR Hockey, I looked up as a reference a game called Circadia.

This smartphone application builds the game from very simple rules, developing into more complex rules for each level. I found the 2D graphics appropriate for the type of game I was creating.

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In my research I came accross Loren Carpenter’s ‘Pong’. This project done in the 70’s used people’s paticipation to decide (through a green or red paddle) if they wanted the on-screen paddes to go up or down.

This was an interactive system based on crowd behaviour and executed in realtime. Innovative at the time, it led me to think about how AR Hockey could function with multiple players.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/PAPER PROTOTYPING

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I started out with paper prototyping testing the game out.

I went through several iterations until I found the way the game worked best with people. ATer developing how it felt like I moved on to explore how it should look like using projected animations on a model.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/MODEL MAKING

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I created a model to test out the use of space in AR Hockey.

To visualize how the game would function I created an animation of the targets and the score changing as the puck hit them. I used two colors to differenciate players and projected the animation on to the model.

I tested this model both in a simulated daylight and night-time conditions, to test out how the graphics would look. This would help me decide the environment for this game.

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ATer testing out AR Hockey on the model I projected the game on real surfaces, testing out texture and light in different rooms. This helped me visualize how the game would be played out in real life. Testing out in real spaces also allowed me to think about the setup (hardware, distances, etc.) that AR Hockey would require when completed.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/PONG

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The logic of AR Hockey is similar to the logic of the arcade game Pong: two opposing paddles and a ball that bounces back and forth. To make my game I would learn how to make Pong myself, and then modify it to the specificities that AR Hockey demands like body tracking, working with projection in real-time, etc.

AR HOCKEY PROCESS/HELLO WORLD: PROCESSING

To make Pong I used Processing, which is an open source programming environment. To get started with Pong I used the Collision default example and built up from that.

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As I made progress in understanding the code, the aesthetics of Pong also improved. I started with a rough version of a ball and paddle, and week after week made adjustmentes to make it look like I envisioned.

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The next stage was to blend real live video from the webcam and use my hand as a paddle. I had to go from the window metaphor of looking into what happens in a screen, to the mirror metaphor of seeing us reflected as well. I had to come to the logic of how to make my hand the paddle. At this point I needed a mini program, so to speak, to deal with the paddle part. This meant taking a problem and slicing it up in smaller pieces, but being aware of how they interconnect in the bigger picture. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this is something that as designers we do quite often (sometimes even unknowingly), so it was a challenge but I could also relate to this way of working.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/INFRARED CAMERA

What designers and artists use to track the participants’ movements in interactive installations is infrared cameras, like CCTV. The way these cameras (or computers) see us is referred to as computer vision. These cameras are very expensive. I needed an infrared camera to work that was affordable, so I had to build my own. I followed tutorials online and advice from my tutors to turn a webcam (PS3 Eye cam) into an infrared camera.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/SEMI COMPLETION

At this stage I had to get Pong and the infrared camera to work together. I needed to find the environment that allowed me to do this. Instead of the PS3 Eye camera I would use Microsoft’s Kinect and instead of working in Processing I needed another programming environment, more powerful to enable me to do the things I required to take AR Hockey into the final stage.

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Some of the setbacks I faced involved programming. I didn’t have the right syntax to run the code. At one point the code got so complex that I ended up with spaguetti code: a tangled structure that could be more simple. I learned at that point that I needed to break it apart by learning what coupling is. I got black screens and blank screens, and I couldn’t figure out the right width and height of the camera feed to superimpose the digital paddles and ball. I had to try different ways to make things work, looking at tutorials online and asking questions on forums.

When I did do something accurate, it felt like a small victory. Small victories helped me move forward. I also tried to see the big picture and use that as motivation when the smaller parts didn’t quite work.

As a graphic designer I was enthusiastic about using a completely new tool that allowed me to do this type of work.

The immediacy of the output made me concentrate on this part of the process. As a result, I didn’t focus enough on the aesthetics of the game. In the previous chapter I addressed the danger of fetishizing the tool itself and I fell into the bias of the immediacy of results this tool provides by not taking enough care of the aesthetic elements of AR Hockey.

For the final stages I needed to build on these reflections to iterate once more and rethink the aesthetic choices of the AR Hockey game.

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AR HOCKEY PROCESS/SETBACKS

Play Workshop With AR Hockey I was working with a game through a playful situation. To understand the experience that results from play further, I cohosted with Maziar Raein a workshop on Play at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. The objective was to show the students how play can help you think in a different way and use this mindset to have an overview of their course.

A group of students from diferent fields of music formed teams to choose diferent activities or “games” from a magic prop table. Each activity had diferent qualities, that resulted in a range of experiences. It was a good opportunity to explore ideas I’ve had so far for my MA project with other people, to test out their appeal and after this workshop I gained more insight into what is it that I want to focus on, having play as a mindset for my overall project. At the end of this section there is a range of experience chart summing up the games the studentts came up with.

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MAKING WORK INTO PLAY

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Even in creative practice, like music, sometimes the routine of playing an instrument every day takes away from experimenting or thinking about their craft in a novel way. Here is where the Play Workshop would help.

This team came up with a “utility belt tool� that would have a mini piano integrated, so you could play on the go.

The participants are trying to come up with a game that is score-based, but without using their hands.

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The students were very clever when coming up with ways to work around the brief ’s constraints. One of them deviced a cup for holding a “make a wish” star. The brief indicated you needed to catch it without using your arms.

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A different team took the props from the Score brief, and deviced a different version of the game the previous team had come up with. They iterated on the rules and came to interesting results like shown on the following images.

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It was very intersting to listen to the participants’ feedback after the workshop wrapped up. It was interesting to hear that at first they didn’t think someone that did not practice an instrument could solve their problems (like feeling stuck), yet the Play Workshop provided a way to look at their issues differently.

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Some games worked better than others. There where two that were not chosen at all: they dealt with the space between people (intimacy) so perhaps this principle was not too appealing to try out with strangers. I realized I wanted to explore the theme of boundaries later on in my research. I found out that the afordance of some of the props lent itself to a more traditional type of game (score) or certain movements. I noticed how participants innovate and make their own tools to enhance, correct or complement the game. I made briefs with keywords relevant for my MA project: surprise, enhancement, etc. Coincidentally, these briefs touched on core concepts of interaction design: usability, virtual/real, role-play and performance.

This insight came after analyzing the types of games the students came up with. Each situation showed a diferent type of experience, from a product-user based interaction, to a performance. I plotted these experiences as a range of experience timeline.

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OUTCOMES

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RANGE OF EXPERIENCE CHART

I created this range of experience chart as an analytical tool for myself. I realized that all the experiences from the Play Workshop fit in a certain spectrum, as mentioned before, going from a more user-product interaction at one end, to a more performative experience, on the other. This tool helped me when I wanted to figure out where I wanted to situate my final piece or the area I find more interesting to work in in my professional practice.

RANGE OF EXPERIENCE CHART FOLDOUT

I situated my AR Hockey project in the range of experience chart. I found out that it fit in the target-oriented (score) spectrum. Then I had an insight: play doesn’t necessarily have to be a game (goal/score). By creating a target oriented game I was developing an experience that could entail being wrong or right; winning or losing.

What I was interested in was creating a playful situation: an enchanting experience, not an interactive design where you could do something wrong. Play as a mindset that is pure present shiTs from the end of user product towards a more expressive/performative situation. I still wanted to work in a situation that involves co-experience (participants) but not completely at the arts end of the spectrum (passive audience). Rather, I’m interested in the audience as performers in a fluent system, that invites reflection on itself aTerwards.

It is important to make a distinction between game and play. When we say game, there are certain qualities conveyed in the type of situation we are referring to. As a designer, it also involves certain processes that difer from the processes you have when you pursue a more explorative type of work. A game usually has a final point, an outcome.

Play, on the other hand, focuses not on the outcome but on the mindset; on play itself. Games convey the use of diferent tools than those requiered to create pure play. I realized that play is not necessarily a game. At this point I came to a crossroads: either I could continue towards the final stage of AR Hockey as the final piece, or I could take the insights I have learned so far and research further into an explorative experience. These insights came near the last semester of the Master’s and time was a factor in this decision. I knew that it would have been more convenient to make play and game indistinguishable and take AR Hockey into its final stage. However, as a designer researching what it really meant to go beyond the window metaphor (screen) and to explore the potentials of it, I made the choice to take the insights I have gained and move forward.

Through AR Hockey and the Play Workshop I realized that people engage more in play when they experience something together. This led me to research participation and to create a situation where working and sharing with others were key elements. n

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PLAY IS NOT A GAME