Scott Swearingen (Design); Scott Denison (Design); Ben Schroeder (CSE); J Eisenmann (CSE); Kyoung Swearingen (Design); Matt Lewis (Design); Norah Zuniga Shaw (Dance); Chris Summers (Dance), Alan Price (Design); Isla Hansen (Art); Alex Oliszewski (Theater); Oded Huberman (Dance); Sarah Lawler (Design). Demo Location: Motion Lab (room 350). Digital + Physical Games
PROVOCATION
This project involves development of a framework that explores, discovers, and questions the intersection of physical and virtual presence within the context of games. While ‘play’ offers the individual an opportunity to learn about themselves and others, ‘games’ provide the necessary structure to make our choices meaningful and give weight to our capacity for empathy. Furthermore, by integrating physical and virtual presence in this framework, we can streamline our ability to abstract relationships within a given system, and hence, one another.
MAKING
A playable prototype of a two-player game using Kinect/ Processing and Unity. Players cooperate to navigate a scrolling landscape, dodging or otherwise moving around emerging obstacles, barriers, and projectiles.
REFLECTION
We created this in a week during our Human Technologies Pop-Up intensive. There was never a time throughout the week that we were worried about having a deliverable. Keeping the mechanics simple and having a really small design footprint helped us stay agile, and made development easy to pick up and put down. Investment was also key. We wrangled faculty, students, and staff for their ideas, and bounced our own off them for hourly sanity-checks.