APD - Wk 4 - Play and Place

THEME:

Play and Place

CONTEXT:

This exercise prompted me to think about how a place can make us feel, for example: comfortable (at home with ourselves/others/the environment); alien (like an outsider); trapped; empowered; fearful; pleasantly surprised; etc.

It also made me consider how our different personalities and experiences inform these feelings, so that while one person might feel a place is hostile; another person might find the same place invigorating. Furthermore, objects in these places can hold powerful meaning. Eg. the ceramic mug made by your child or a relative’s own hands; the collar of a now-deceased and beloved pet; or the guitar given to you by an ex lover, or partner.

When we enter a game we bring with us our current mood, plus our personalities, preconceptions and memories of past events. With this in mind I began to ponder the possibilities of letting users design or influence their own place within a VR game. This in itself is not new of course (Minecraft comes to mind).

Reading the book ‘A Theory of Fun for Game Design’ by Raph Koster, I reflected upon “being in the zone” and “flow” in relation to gameplay – this Koster discusses in Chapter 5, which he wraps up by saying:

“Games aren’t stories. Games aren’t about beauty or delight. Games aren’t about jockeying for social status. They stand, in their own right, as something incredibly valuable. Fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure, and that is why games matter.”

Of course he knows games can be stories etc, but what he means is that play goes beyond this.

So if we think of flow as place in a game where we enjoy learning because we’re getting a chance to gain mastery over something, it follows that we would consider people’s different learning styles, as Koster goes on to do in Chapter 6.

“It’s clear that players tend to prefer certain types of games in ways that seem to correspond to their personalities” (p.104).

Therefore I considered play as related to how an individual feels flow - dependent on their personality type (strengths and weaknesses), or style of learning. And I considered place as how an individual feels depending on what that place holds for them on a personal level.

My third consideration was ‘the magic circle’:

 “For games and play experiences a very particular kind of organisation of experience is being required. Within game studies, a concept introduced in Johan Huizinga’s work Homo Ludens (1938/1955) has been established to discuss the boundaries that separate games from the “ordinary life”:

All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. [...] The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged around, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. (Ibid., 10.)”

Mäyrä, Frans & Lankoski, Petri. (2009). Play in Hybrid Reality: Alternative Approaches to Game Design.

My first idea for a VR experience that would incorporate these concepts for this APD exercise, was some sort of room you could decorate by choosing from a menu of furniture and décor. I thought this would potentially make the game more attractive to a broader range of players as they could create a place that matched their moods, personalities and experiences.

However, as this didn’t quite feel playful enough I kept thinking.

Soon I remembered the sharehouses in which my friends and I had lived in Melbourne in my 20s.

Normally, as a tenant, there are so many restrictions on what you can and can’t do in a house. Even sticking a poster to a wall using Bluetac could end up costing you hundreds of dollars worth of bond (the argument being the landlord may have to repaint an entire wall because of a couple of tiny spots where paint had come away). There were one or two rented houses we lived in however, that we knew were going to be demolished upon the expiry of our lease.

Subsequently, we were given the freedom (literally from the landlord) to not only use bluetac or nails to hang up our beloved pictures, but to draw, paint, tear or even smash things as we wished.

And so we spent the months we lived there making murals, graffiti and carvings and, always, we would encourage friends to leave their mark too - knowing that in the end it didn’t matter - soon none of it would exist. This made way for only one thing - the potential for fun. And the penultimate fun was had at the final, farewell ‘demolition party’. These parties, of which I’ve been to a few, combined: first, the potential for “flow” (painting and smashing whatever you liked); second, “the magic circle” (the circle was almost like a mirror you stepped through to find a button labelled “rules” which, to begin play, you turned off); and third, the opportunity to bring to the game whatever emotion or mood you were carrying at the time – and then let it go.

I wanted to include these concepts in my APD game, so I combined the idea of a virtual room in which you could decorate to your tastes and smash to your heart’s content. This promised a cathartic experience (but also a bonding one if it could be multiplayer, or at least observed and shared with others). The idea being - as you smash the things in an ordinary room (and the room itself), you are no longer bound by rules of the ordinary world – rules which are containing your desire for expression of the simplest form – hanging pictures on a wall, or just painting with abandon. If you feel fear to express or paint in your ordinary life, you could do it here. If you are holding onto anger, then you could paint and smash it here to release it. If you feel contained by any rules of any sort, then this could be a safe place to just let go.

To aid ‘flow’, I thought it might be good to build skill into the game slightly too, in that you have the ability to choose to make a mess and smash willy nilly or to strategically/consciously paint, create and also deconstruct. The physical aspect of VR was attractive in that your body would also be part of the experience of throwing objects (which involves skill, but mostly helps with the feeling of ‘properly letting go’ etc).

Other influences for this work were:

'Smash rooms' such as SmashSplash and The Break Room in Melbourne. These are places were people pay about $50 to go into a room for about 15 minutes and smash things like plates, glassware and old TVs to “unleash the fury, destress and re-balance”.

Artists such as Kate McIntosh (Worktable and All Ears) play with the idea of creation and deconstruction. McIntosh’s work questions things like ‘who we are when we’re alone’ and ‘what might it take to change a culture’.

Mandalas: “The mandala's purpose is to help transform ordinary minds into enlightened ones and to assist with healing”.

“The destruction of the mandala serves as a reminder of the impermanence of life.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/customs/mandala.shtml

Sand art and sandcastle-making is pure in-the-moment fun and half the fun is breaking them, as I often find with my own small children.

METHOD

To build the VR experience/game, which I’m calling either ‘Demolition Day’ or ‘Smash It Up’ for now, I used Unity for basically the first time. Though I knew I should prototype, I was enjoying the fun of room-design and decorating, so I spent probably a bit much time on this (plus extra time for learning Unity which was a given). However in the end, spending the extra time in art was great because the experience feels so much more real than it would if it were made of cyiliders and cubes – and given this concept is largely about the feeling, this is not an entirely bad thing. Screen recordings of the making process are below at the end of 'Method'.

Before I started making, I talked to Chis Barker about my concept and went from the idea of a menu of objects/décor to a virtual pile instead (the idea being you could just walk over and pick them up one or two at a time and bring them inside the house/decorate). This was a clever way to make the experience more cathartic. Chris showed me Sketchfab where I could download free photogrammetried objects. He also showed me the Unity Asset Store, which is where I ended up getting all the VR furniture and objects like the smartphone for the room. Sahaj found me Mesh Fragmenter on the asset store which I built into the experience but have not yet got working. If I continue working on it, you will be able to use any object in the room to smash any other object. Both will shatter. Ideally I’d link this to a sound, but this will require some more scripting at a later stage.

I then also found another script/package called Destructible Wall Generator, which I used to construct the walls of the VR room. This I managed on my own but to get them to break using a projectile I had some help from Fabian and Sahaj - thanks!

The moment when we got it working was fantastic. Trying the VR experience for myself – it really was liberating and felt like you really were breaking walls down and throwing smartphones into oblivion.

I used the Occulus Rift. This was great (apart from not being compatible with Mac) because of the way it mimics your finger movement when you hold the controllers (if you point in real life, you point in VR – making it all the more real). When you reach to pick up the ball for example, it feels quite like you are actually doing it and when you throw, it’s just like the real thing. You also have about 1.5 by 2m of space to walk around in.

Tutorials I used:

Unity3D Destructible Wall Generator (Update)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=IjELu_Q01eQ

Mesh Fragmenter Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=72&v=5V_pE4UKMzI

My work-in-progress videos/screen recordings:

Making the room 1: https://youtu.be/OvSo8nsI3k0

Making the room 2: https://youtu.be/L8ZELrBB0Y0

Making the room 3: https://youtu.be/S2yYmWbuj5E

RESPONSE:

Here is video documentation of the VR game Demolition Day/Smash It Up, which is a virtual ‘smash room’. It has the destructable walls being knocked down/breaking when you throw a ball at them. So far it is possible to throw other objects around, or out into oblivion, but their shatter/framentation function is not yet working. This won’t take too long if I spend some time scripting the behaviour. The ability to paint and decorate the room and select items of furniture etc will be developed. Adding sound is still to be developed.

Another thing to develop: I need to the include the insides of objects in photogrammetry (eg smartphone components) so that we can see them come apart when they break. This would be extremely satisfying for the user.