To the Moon
It’s a game to challenge people’s sense of control through an interactive method, which differs from people’s general cognition. I also considered some controllers which involve people’s physical movements. A significant finding through this project is that sense of control is not necessary as long as a project gives people a clear sense of what role they should play as a minimum standard. I will further my research and experiment more in this direction for more interactive projects and game design. I hope my prospective study at the postgraduate level would enable me to explore further how to increase players’ participation by touching their emotions.
︎Production Book
I. Concept
Inspired by the project Anti-Drawing Machine, I intended to a game which challenges players’ sense of control. In my game, the player needs to control a spaceship by Arduino 101 (gyroscope) to reach the moving moon as fast as possible and avoid the moving black holes. My game has three levels, at each higher level, there would be more black holes with higher speed. In this way, playing my game should an interactive method which differs from people’s general cognition because it requires the player to shift spatial orientation into plane orientation in their mind for controlling, and the destinations and obstacles all change constantly. Through this project, I want to understand people’s reaction when they first encounter with such an unusual interactive project and how such interaction would be like.
II. Design
At first, I planned to make a snake game which uses a joystick as the controller and uses Processing to make the game interface. In the game, the direction control would be all the opposite to the general way. This was how I considered at the very beginning making my players lose the sense of control while playing it.
However, Professor Cossovich told me that joystick was still a common game controller and when people once understood the operation was just all the opposite, the game would not be challenging anymore. He suggested me to consider some controllers which involve people’s physical movements. Therefore, at last, I chose Arduino 101 as my game controller.
The process of how I decided to use Arduino 101 was also interesting. When I first thought about the physical controllers, I considered gyroscope plus Arduino Uno. Gyroscope is a sensor which can measure and maintain orientation in the spatial dimension and using it to be my game controller should be innovative and challenging because it requires the player to shift spatial orientation into plane orientation in their mind and explore how to operate better by themselves; in this way, it can challenge players’ sense of control while playing my games. Later, when I took “Arduino + gyroscope” as keyword doing research, I found there was Arduino 101 includes the function of gyroscope itself and directly using Arduino 101 would certainly decrease the complexity of my code and the hardware. This was how I decided to choose Arduino 101 at last.
Moreover, I used a spaceship toy to cover Arduino 101 being my controller because it was soft and much more acceptable for players to hold than a naked Arduino board, and the warm orange and grey toy ship also implied which content is controlled by players in my game. I also used the orange and grey as the main colors in the game UI.
The toy ship and the game UI:
Code Editing in Arduino & Processing:
III. Results
During the user testing and IMA show, I found most people would like to play my game and had the desire to pass all three levels despite a lot of failures. The lack of sense of control might frustrate my players in the beginning, but most of them got more passion for conquering this game afterward. It could somehow make the relation between users and the interactive device closer, increasing users’ participation in the project by touching their emotions, even though starting with frustration. I‘m glad many visitors came to the IMA show liked my game.
I learned that the sense of control is not necessary for users to interact with a device or game, only if the project gives them a clear sense of what role they should play in it as a minimum standard. They may try to win their sense of control back afterward or just allow the project to lead them, but either way, generally wouldn’t decrease the interaction between users and the project. This could be a direction worth trying for other interactive projects and all the game designs.
For future improvements, I think I can add a record system, giving players a way to have goals which they want to transcend. Also, adding background music is also a good idea. The BGM can be produced by players’ operation, for example, the players may trigger different tones if they tilt the game in different directions. Buzzer + Arduino or Processing Sound Library can achieve such functions. In this way, the game could be more exciting for players to play and could have more room for them to explore.
The final project was the first time that I enjoyed the fruit of designing a game independently. I learned plenty of valuable experiences in game designing. More importantly, I realized that the happiest moment for me in the whole process was when I saw my players liked to play my game. This would always be one of my goals in my future interactive project designs.