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- | ===== research report [x] ===== | + | ===== research report [Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey] ===== |
==== Project Title ==== | ==== Project Title ==== | ||
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//under construction!// | //under construction!// | ||
- | == Initial idea: Plant RPG == | ||
- | The first idea that came to mind when thinking about making a game with plants, was an older one. This idea was documented in our personal wiki as "Plant Simulator RPG": | ||
- | //You play a plant. Gameplay is a combination of level-up-RPGs and Sim City. You manage your resources (soil, air, sun, water) and decide to grow leaves or flowers, longer stems, larger leaves or more of them. If your flowers are attractive enough, the bees may help you multiply. Perhaps players can influence or even design the look of their petals and flowers. | ||
- | Maybe this can be set in a multiplayer environment, | ||
- | Or, as described on our "sell sheet" when pitching ideas in 2007: | + | ==== Context ==== |
- | //Play a plant. Use nutrients from soil and air to grow leaves and flowers. Attract bees and butterflies to grow new plants. And fly on the wings of a butterfly to see the plants of all the other players in a beautiful online garden. | ||
- | Massively multiplayer game where everyone plays a plant. Together you form a gigantic virtual garden. | + | We, the undersigned, Auriea Harvey |
- | With nutrition from the soil and the air, you develop branches or leaves or flowers. If your flowers are big and beautiful, the bees will help you procreate and make the garden even prettier. | + | |
- | You start as a little plant, or a seed even. You grow bigger | + | In our day-to-day artistic practice at Tale of Tales, we research the potential of games as a means to communicate, convey meaning, evoke emotions. We do this by creating games and releasing them to the audience. The themes we choose to work with are highly personal. But we often interpret existing stories such as fairy tales, myths, legends |
+ | The groWorld project required us to work within a team set up by Foam. As such, any ideas and designs needed to be adapted to what the group was capable of and willing to do. This is an unusual way of working for us, as we generally choose our collaborators for very specific tasks within a specific project. But we understand that Foam is interested in process as well as product. And as such, the project also seemed like a psychological experiment where the social interactions between the participants were as much part of the project as the actual artistic output. | ||
- | == Early sketch: growing a plant (July 2008) == | + | At Tale of Tales, we want to awaken the beauty that lays dormant in the interactive medium. We believe the wide field of video games carries the potential of becoming the greatest art form since oil-on-canvas, overshadowing any success of cinema in the previous century, as Western culture' |
- | A first prototype was built based on this idea. | + | |
- | http:// | + | We believe that Foam shares a lot of these sensitivities. The difference in our approach is that FoAM adds to this a social/political agenda. In addition to influencing the feelings of individuals, |
- | http://lib.fo.am/ | + | |
- | // | ||
- | Rain energy can be used for stems and leaves. Sun energy can be used for flowers. | ||
- | Stems, leaves and flowers have different types of buds. Click on them to make them grow. | ||
- | Buds only appear when sufficient energy has been gathered. | ||
- | Leaves speed up the accumulation of sun energy.// | ||
- | The simplification of the natural context (sun and rain for energy) | + | Foam is strongly interested |
- | Disadvantages of this prototype | + | |
- | == The vegetal mind == | ||
- | being a plant, vegetal mind, being inside a plant, inside the seed, guilds | ||
- | A brainstorm discussion of the project lead to several ideas and inspirations. | ||
- | One of the strongest ideas was the desire to create a game in which you feel like a plant, experience life as a plant and perhaps learn from the plant' | ||
- | http://lib.fo.am/ | + | Since the confrontation with an audience is so important for us, distribution of our work is a vital component of our practice. We offer our games as downloadable packages via the internet. But we also actively engage the commercial games industry by selling our games, on popular gaming platforms for instance. We do this in part because we want to create a relative independence from government funding, by earning our own money, and because we hope to establish in a "punk economy" |
- | == Going underground == | ||
- | To solve the problem of feeling like a gardener when directly manipulating plant growth, we came up with the idea of focusing on the roots as the " | ||
- | http://lib.fo.am/ | + | The commercial exploitation of the groWorld game has always been an option, but not a necessity. We can live with that. We think it is good to offer artisanally made software for sale to an audience next to the consumer goods, so they can really think about the difference. But we have also been known to just give things away for free. It feels nice. |
- | == Casual games == | ||
- | We realized that there is already one type of game that is capable of " | + | The field of inquiry for this project, for us, is the research into the evocative potential of interactive media. How can a technological artifact help a person think, experience an emotion, generate ideas, connect to other players? Specifically emotions and ideas that are not generally focused on in interactive entertainment. As such, the work shares some affinity with the games created by thatgamescompany, |
- | Perhaps we could come up with a match-three class mechanic, the outcome | + | |
- | http:// | ||
- | == The hex game == | + | ==== Problem/Aim ==== |
- | When thinking of simple software systems to grow roots in 2D, we stumbled on the hexagonal grid. Hexagons have been a staple for a certain type of strategy games, so it sort of felt right. | + | |
- | We started prototyping a root growing game with hexagons. | + | |
- | The abstract nature of the hexagon shape also connected well to our desire to make a hi-tech underground factory. | + | |
- | http:// | ||
- | == Hex dressed up == | + | The idea was to create |
- | The mindlessness of the early hex prototypes | + | |
- | When Dave introduced us to a way in which textures on a hexagonal grid could be used to represent roots more naturalistically, | + | |
- | http:// | ||
- | == Dave inside the roots in 3D == | + | Games can be used to allow people to experience another reality. |
- | At some point, Dave started working on a 3D version | + | Next to the amusement caused by the whimsical nature of the absurd idea of playing a plant, we were hoping to create |
- | This became | + | |
- | == Tot above ground == | ||
- | While Dave was creating the gameplay underground, | ||
- | We felt that one of the important motivators in the social experience of the game, would be the plant avatars that each players would be growing. So we came up with a system to represent how these plants might look. And how a garden would look comprised of such plants. | ||
- | http:// | + | The idea was to create a single multiplayer prototype that could be released to the public to further inspire the design. |
- | The basic shapes of these plants were based on drawings by Lina and Theun. | ||
- | The concept of our garden was that each player was represent as a basic shape that grew out of the ground surface and was made from the same material (we were imagining white ceramic for the prototype). So plants and world are one. This basic shape would grow according to algorithm that were specific to its species. This growth would happen very slowly. | + | ==== Methods ==== |
- | Next to the basic element that is specific to the species, every plant would be able to grow attachments based on nutrients found by the roots in the soils. This are like leaves and flowers, except that every plant is capable of growing every type of attachment. So the attachments are not species-specific (but they could be location or time specific). | ||
- | When below ground, the player would be playing from his plant' | + | The problem was mostly defined in physical meetings where we discussed the themes of the project, the design of the game and the technology we were going to use. In a second phase, texts, drawings and software were produced by individuals or small groups. During this phase, work results were shared and discussed among the larger group -mostly via a mailing list. One person' |
- | Above ground, | + | |
- | == Ideas for future development == | ||
- | At the end of this phase, we were a bit disappointed that we didn't really have a clear idea of the kind of game that we might want to make. | + | The subject matter |
- | To help get to that point, we would suggest | + | |
- | = It's about the player | + | === The vegetal mind === |
- | The user's experience is more important than the artist' | + | A brainstorm discussion of the project lead to several ideas and inspirations. |
- | All of our ideas should serve only as inspiration. Our focus should always be on how the player feels when interacting with our game. Not on whether or not we are expressing our ideas well. If the game ends up being about something else, that is fine too. We're not making edutainment. | + | One of the strongest |
- | We should take the interesting elements from our prototypes and optimize them. | + | |
- | = Not the kitchen sink = | + | http://lib.fo.am/ |
- | When producing games, trying to implement all ideas is a recipe for failure. | + | |
- | It's important to make choices and to have a reductionist approach to game design and features. Choose one idea and make a game with it. Not necessarily because the others are bad but because you need focus in order to finish something. and our philosophy is " | + | |
- | = What we would keep and throw out = | ||
- | To our mind, the best idea for a game that came out of this phase is a dual game of being in a plantlike mindset when playing (underground), | ||
- | We would remove the concept of plant guilds and the first person perspective. | + | ==== Solution/ |
- | As per above, we don't need any reasons to remove things. Reductionism is the reason. | + | |
- | But the plant guilds feel a bit too anthropomorphic to us. It feels too conscious and may lead to too deliberate strategic gameplay as in a World of Warcraft-like leveling MMO or a sort of "Sim City for plants" | + | |
- | One thing that we feel is missing from the game idea is a feeling of accomplishment for the player, a reason/ | ||
- | Satisfying this desire is somewhat at odds with the vegetal mindset that we're aiming for. Which is why we want to represent this aspect above ground (the human part of the game). | ||
- | the motivation to play would thus be human and consist of showing off your plant, trying to make something pretty and care for the organism that you're creating. | ||
- | = Passive game = | + | The outcome consists of texts, drawings and several prototypes, created by different team members. |
- | passive | + | Our concrete contribution consists of three computer programs: a 2D root growing |
- | ==== Context ==== | ||
+ | === Initial idea: Plant RPG === | ||
+ | The first idea that came to mind when thinking about making a game with plants, was an older one. This idea was documented in our personal wiki as "Plant Simulator RPG": | ||
+ | //You play a plant. Gameplay is a combination of level-up-RPGs and Sim City. You manage your resources (soil, air, sun, water) and decide to grow leaves or flowers, longer stems, larger leaves or more of them. If your flowers are attractive enough, the bees may help you multiply. Perhaps players can influence or even design the look of their petals and flowers. | ||
+ | Maybe this can be set in a multiplayer environment, | ||
- | We, the undersigned, | + | Or, as described |
+ | //Play a plant. Use nutrients from soil and air to grow leaves and flowers. Attract bees and butterflies to grow new plants. And fly on the wings of a butterfly to see the plants of all the other players in a beautiful online garden. | ||
- | In our day-to-day artistic practice at Tale of Tales, we research the potential of games as a means to communicate, | + | Massively multiplayer game where everyone plays a plant. Together you form a gigantic virtual garden. |
+ | With nutrition from the soil and the air, you develop branches or leaves or flowers. If your flowers | ||
- | The groWorld project required us to work within | + | You start as a little plant, or a seed even. You grow bigger and bigger. Then you procreate and you're essentially controlling multiple plants.// |
- | At Tale of Tales, we want to awaken the beauty that lays dormant in the interactive medium. We believe the wide field of videogames carries the potential of becoming the greatest art form since oil-on-canvas, overshadowing any success of cinema in the previous century, as Western culture' | + | === Early sketch: growing a plant (July 2008) === |
+ | A first prototype was built based on this idea. | ||
+ | http:// | ||
- | We believe that Foam shares a lot of these sensitivities. But they add to this a social/political agenda. They seem to be interested in directly affecting changes in society, while our own work takes the long way round by influencing the feelings of individuals. | + | http://lib.fo.am/ |
+ | // | ||
+ | Rain energy can be used for stems and leaves. Sun energy can be used for flowers. | ||
+ | Stems, leaves and flowers have different types of buds. Click on them to make them grow. | ||
+ | Buds only appear when sufficient energy has been gathered. | ||
+ | Leaves speed up the accumulation of sun energy.// | ||
- | Foam is strongly interested | + | The simplification of the natural context (sun and rain for energy) |
+ | Disadvantages of this prototype | ||
- | Since the confrontation with an audience is so important for us, distribution | + | === Going underground === |
+ | To solve the problem | ||
+ | http:// | ||
- | The commercial exploitation of the groWorld game has always been an option, but not a necessity. We can live with that. We think it is good to offer artisanally made software for sale to an audience next to the consumer goods, so they can really think about the difference. But we have also been known to just give things away for free. It feels nice. | + | === Casual games === |
+ | We realized that there is already one type of game that is capable of " | ||
+ | Perhaps we could come up with a match-three class mechanic, the outcome of which would produce a plant. | ||
- | The field of inquiry for this project, for us, is the research into the evocative potential of interactive media. How can a technological artefact help a person think, experience an emotion, generate ideas, connect to other players? Specifically emotions and ideas that are not generally focussed on in interactive entertainment. As such, the work shares some affinity with the games created by thatgamescompany, | + | http://lib.fo.am/ |
+ | === The hex game === | ||
+ | When thinking of simple software systems to grow roots in 2D, we stumbled on the hexagonal grid. Hexagons have been a staple for a certain type of strategy games, so it sort of felt right. | ||
+ | We started prototyping a root growing game with hexagons. | ||
+ | The abstract nature of the hexagon shape also connected well to our desire to make a hi-tech underground factory. | ||
- | ==== Problem/Aim ==== | + | http:// |
+ | === Hex dressed up === | ||
+ | The mindlessness of the early hex prototypes was extremely satisfying for some members of the team, while others found that it too mechanical and distracting. But the lack of aesthetic connection to plants (apart from a vague abstract representation of root growth) felt uncomfortable. | ||
+ | When Dave introduced us to a way in which textures on a hexagonal grid could be used to represent roots more naturalistically, | ||
- | The idea was to create a prototype for a multiplayer game in which everyone plays a plant. This is at once a humorous plan that parodies traditional MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games) as a serious attempt to evoke emotion and stimulate thinking. The groWorld game wants to make the player feel as if they were a plant, and to somehow connect to other players in that state. | + | http:// |
+ | === Plant Eyes in 3D === | ||
+ | At some point, Dave started working on a 3D version of the root growing game. | ||
+ | This became the most detailed gameplay prototype in this phase of the project. | ||
+ | More on Dave's experiments and prototypes: http:// | ||
- | Games can be used to allow people to experience another reality. | + | === Tales above ground === |
- | Next to the amusement caused by the whimsical nature of the absurd idea of playing a plant, we were hoping | + | While Dave was creating |
+ | We felt that one of the important motivators | ||
+ | http:// | ||
- | The idea was to create a single multiplayer prototype that could be released to the public to further inspire the design. | + | The shapes of these plants were inspired by drawings by Lina and Theun (See examples on http://www.flickr.com/ |
+ | The concept of our garden was that each player was represented by a basic shape that grew out of the ground surface and was made from the same material (we were imagining white ceramic for the prototype). So plants and world are one. This basic shape would grow according to algorithms that were specific to its species. But no two players would look exactly the same. This growth would happen very slowly (years). | ||
- | ==== Methods ==== | + | Next to the basic element that is specific to the species, every plant would be able to grow attachments based on nutrients found by the roots in the soil. These are like leaves and flowers, except that every plant is capable of growing every type of attachment. So the attachments are not species-specific (but they could be location or time specific). This kind of growth is faster (seasons). |
+ | When below ground, the player would be playing from his plant' | ||
+ | Above ground, the player gets full control over the camera to roam the garden. | ||
- | The problem was mostly defined in physical meetings where we discussed the themes of the project, the design of the game and the technology we were going to use. In a second phase, texts, drawings and software were produced by individuals or small groups. During this phase, work results were shared and discussed among the larger group -mostly via a mailing list. One person' | ||
+ | ==== Discussion ==== | ||
- | The subject matter of groWorld is vast and complex. The people who make up the production team are strong-willed individuals with diverse skills and talents. Demonstrating our ideas about the project in actual texts, drawing and software seemed more efficient than trying to explain things and discuss them. | ||
+ | We did not succeed in making a single prototype that could be tested on an audience. Instead we created numerous smaller prototypes that can inspire further design. | ||
- | ==== Solution/ | + | The main reason for not creating a single prototype, in our opinion, was the lack of a singular vision and goal. Several people in the team thought that it might be better to test out different ideas in smaller prototypes, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. There were too many voices and too much democracy to get to a single result. If the project wants to result in a single game, it needs a dictator and it needs focus. In our experience, making games independently means reducing their design to the bare minimum. Foam's " |
+ | A team of interesting individuals with an interest in plant-human interactions was assembled for this project. These people came together to explore different ways of interacting with plants (including gaming, but also gardening and storytelling). Our approach is to first establish a solid core idea and then choose a team members for specific tasks. It helps if the person who establishes the idea is experienced in the relevant fields (games technology and interaction design). | ||
- | The outcome consists of texts, drawings and several software applications, | ||
- | Our concrete contribution consists of three computer programs: a 2D root growing game, a 3D avatar demonstration and a 3D garden exploration. | ||
+ | The drawings and prototypes are very interesting and inspiring. The next step is to evaluate them with the purpose of using them to help decide what we don't want in the game. This may require removing some elements that we are all very fond of but that may be too complex to develop (or to hard to achieve a consensus about regarding execution). The end result of this process should be an extremely concise game design that is simply wonderful and beautiful in and of itself. This design needs to be executed. Then, based on that execution, perhaps the previously removed elements can be added. But probably not, since, in our experience, such a prototype tends to inspire new things. | ||
- | ==== Discussion ==== | + | For this plan to work, in our opinion, a single person (or tight small group) needs to get the authority of final say in any design decisions. It is best if this person is also the experience vision holder mentioned above. The other members of the team need to accept this person' |
+ | ==== Ideas for future development ==== | ||
- | We did not succeed in making | + | At the end of this phase, we were a bit disappointed |
- | Instead | + | |
+ | == It's about the player == | ||
+ | The user's experience is more important than the artist' | ||
+ | All of our ideas should serve only as inspiration. Our focus should always be on how the player feels when interacting with our game. Not on whether or not we are expressing our ideas well. If the game ends up being about something else, that is fine too. We're not making edutainment. | ||
+ | We should take the interesting elements from our prototypes and optimize them. | ||
- | The main reason for not achieving | + | == Not the kitchen sink == |
+ | When producing games, trying to implement all ideas is a recipe for failure. | ||
+ | It's important to make choices and to have a reductionist approach to game design | ||
- | There were too many voices | + | == What we would keep and throw out == |
- | Foam may lack the experience or even willingness to produce an actual product. | + | To our mind, the best idea for a game that came out of this phase is a dual game of being in a plantlike mindset when playing (underground) |
- | In our experience, making games independently means reducing their design | + | We would remove the concept of plant guilds and the first person perspective. As per above, we don't need any reasons |
+ | One thing that we feel is missing from the game idea is a feeling of accomplishment for the player, a reason/ | ||
- | A team of interesting individuals | + | == Passive game == |
+ | We're still very fond of an idea that was discussed on several design meetings and that we interpreted on the groWorld list in November 2009 like this: | ||
- | A better approach, in our opinion, | + | // |
+ | You can be " | ||
- | The drawings and prototypes are very interesting and inspiring. The next step is to evaluate them with the purpose of using them to help decide what we don't want in the game. This may require removing some elements that we are all very fond of but that may be too complex to develop (or to hard to achieve a consensus about regarding execution). The end result of this process should be an extremely concise game design that is simply wonderful and beautiful in and of itself. This design needs to be executed. Then, based on that execution, perhaps the previously removed elements | + | In this mode, you only ever deal with your own plant. The multiplayer aspects happen exclusively above ground, |
- | + | ||
- | For this plan to work, a single person (or tight small group) needs to get the authority | + | |
==== Prototypes and screenshots ==== | ==== Prototypes and screenshots ==== |