That’s not a banana. That’s my jump button
Docent(en)
Niki Smit (Monobanda)
Language spoken
English
Introduction
We interact with the virtual world through buttons or touchscreen. We jump by pressing a button, we save a princess by swiping our finger across a screen.
While effective, this is also boring as hell! Our physical actions have the potential to tell powerfull stories, or convey clever subtext. Our sense of touch yearns for input. Pushing a button with your thumb is the most boring way to save a virtual world, so let’s change that, shall we.In this module we are going to use the various new interfaces to control our games. And in the process, transform what those games are about! Performance art meets interaction design. Physical prototyping meets gameplay design.
Summary
In the four available lessons we willl do the following things.
Create Literacy: I wil devote some time to talking about about the basics of ‘gameplay’. What is it, how do we create a clear goal, empower the player and reward them. I will give examples of games that operate in the physical space and talk about what we want to achieve: An interactieve experience where players use the space around them, their own body, or various textures to control a existing videogame.Brainstorming sessions: We will use various brainstorming formats to explore and document every wild idea.Introducing Makey Makey. We will start learning Makey Makey to turn our ideas into working protoypes.Finished work: Working towards a well defined, working performance/interactive/spatial experience that can accommodate and entertain players without the maker having to explain it beforehand! Depending on the class size we will work in teams or alone.
Goals
You get ntroduced into rapid prototyping. Finding the quickest, most logical, but also most elegant way to get your idea across to other people.
Critical thinking about gamedesign for people in a spatial and physical setting.At the end of this module you will have discussed various ideas on how to get people motivated to perform centrain actions.
You will have made an interactive intestallation that other people can play. You can use makey makey to change the world around you.
Planning
Week 1. Creating literacy. I will talk aboout gamedesign and show various examples of gaming in the physical world.
Week 2. Brainstorming. Think. Defend, write down, discuss give feedback to each other. Together we’ll create a big pool of ideas to pull from.
Week 3. Diving into makey Makey. Choosing one idea to work on.
Week 4. Turning your idea into a compact, working prototype that can be enjoyed by others.
Tuition type
Classical instructions
Group discussions
Independent research
Rapid physical prototyping. Making.
For who?
Everybody that is interested in transforming the physical world around us into a game.
References
Costs & requirements
Material costs of your choosing. Go big or stay small. It’s up to you.