Theme: play and audience
Context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhazk_F561M
The Dark Souls series are my favourite video games, at least my most dedicated video games. Interestingly, I did not play the game when it first came out, instead, I played the games when the online community declines to about 1/10th of its original size. There’s a unique gameplay mechanic, almost like what Journey(2012) provides its players. They communication inside of the game is very limited, beside gestures and certain item to greet/ insult other players, most the communication happens online, where the community share useful information: that is twitch/ youtube. I approached this “ds3tube” community about a year ago and participated in their activities for several times. I found it interesting that in a streaming game play, where many views try to invade the broadcaster, and a special relationship is formed through the gameplay as well as the platform used, the roles of host( the one who streams the game) and the invader (viewers) is equal in game but the communication is almost one way that is from the streamer to the viewers, since their voices can be heard through there streaming.
https://www.polygon.com/2015/9/28/9409795/twitch-plays-dark-souls-beaten
In other cases the difference between the streamer and player can be further blurred. In this case, one of the games, Dark Souls, was beaten entirely by viewers from chat. Like voices, their input is direct and took effect instantly.
http://gamestudies.org/1701/articles/anderson
Take a step further, in this study by Sky LaRell Anderson, he concludes that twitch is more a “human live streaming channel” than a game live streaming channel, data shows that it is more focused on human interaction, which means game might be a body for such a audience/ streamer relationship to happen. So my question is, can a game be entirely build upon this relationship of audience/ streamer while it brings the interactivity to an another level?
Method:
The game I thought of is really simple, and it can be played in between two people. All the player need is a phone and a headset, and the other player/ players need a phone to participate. So basically, the game has to happen in a space where both sides know well, say, the two wings of the magi classroom. For the set up, two people with the helmet on sit in different wings.
Players put their helmets on, and start a front camera video chat with each other, they may only look at the image from the other player’s camera, listening to live feedback from each other. The goal of the game is to meet each other at a location, say, the lunch room in between the classroom.
Response:
It seems pretty easy to achieve, but I’m a little bit worn. It is fun to think about the game as a continuous development of the previous “LR Helmet” project, this time, instead of having the image severed from the eye, we severed the host or the subjectiveness of the play as an active person to another player. In this case, the audience is always the one in control, which I hope, better turns out to be a nauseating chaos otherwise it is not gonna provoke any thoughts right?