Advanced Play Design
Week 3: Play and Objects
Annotation
RATIONALE:
What I have done this week: For this week’s response of Advanced Play Design, I have created a mini game. This game represents human life and the obsession of man with materialistic objects. As the theme for this week was Play and Objects, I decided to play with the things that surround us and what influences the human life the most. I decided to represent the objects as the things humans chase all life. I chose to represent materialism with the help of money, car, job and house. These are only a few materialistic things which are human wants and what they keep chasing all their life. I decided to use Play as a tinkering method and created a game where we can play with the objects that we consider are essential to life.
The circular game represents the vicious circle of life. In this circle of life, humans chase money, cars, house and jobs. Once they attain everything, they start chasing more. They never settle down to experience happiness, peace and joy. This is what the circular game represents, as in the game when a person attains one thing, he is teleported to the other. As he keeps running in his life, he keeps running into these things and always wants to chase more. This circle never ends.
The still head of a human in the centre of the circular track represents the numbness of humans towards their surroundings and losing themselves in their wants that they start forgetting their needs. Humans remain numb with all these materialistic things around them that they forget the real meaning of life and keep chasing these wants.
Why I have done it this week: When I started to work on this theme, I contemplated about various objects to play with. I also did research and looked at various objects that can be integrated into play. I decided not to work with the common and mainstream objects that we come across each day. I decided to work with human life and the objects that we consider essential to have in life. I have worked with this interpretation of the weekly theme because I felt that for the theme of Play and Objects, I could tinker with the elements that humans feel are essential for a good life. In reality, these elements are only Objects and our life mostly revolves around this. I decided to work with these objects and tinker and play with these to come up with a mini game.
METHOD: In order to create this mini game about life, I decided to work with a human head and a circular track to represent the vicious circle of life. I created and arranged the head and track in Maya. The texturing has also been done in Maya. I iterated the model multiple times as shown in the “documentation of work” PDF attached to this post.
After the creation of the model, I took it to unity. The coding, game creation and rendering has been done in Unity. The video edit has been done in After Effects and Premiere.
CONTEXT: I researched about similar games and works that have been done by people while I was thinking about ideas to create a response for the weekly theme. I came across a few games which directed a person to choose a path they want to choose.
1. I researched about the game, “The Stanley Parable” where you choose your own path and options and that ultimately determines the life path and our choices have certain effects. I got inspired by the game because the game is related to life and lets a person choose what they want.
2. I read about the game, “Conway’s way of life” which is a zero player game and requires no input. This game is about cells where each cell interacts with its neighbours. The cells need each other to either live or die.
REFERENCE: For the creation of this project, I researched about human wants and needs and various psychology articles in order to attain a better understanding of my thoughts. Some of them are linked below:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/psychology-materialism_n_4425982
Music source has been taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIE0PX1uXk
OUTCOME/REFLECTION: I had decided to work on this project because I wanted to tinker and play with the objects/things which are most common form a major part of our lives.
Through the weekly topic of Play and Objects, I wanted to convey materialism and its obsession among humans. Through my research and the creation of this mini game, I wanted to convey a message that life is not about a house, a car or money. Life is about happiness, peace and joy and we must not forget to sit back and experience these. Materialistic objects are only a vicious circle and when we attain them, we crave for more and this loop never ends and never brings us peace and happiness from within. These things might bring short term happiness but long term joy is not hidden in materialistic objects.
This project helped me create this mini game and reflect upon these thoughts that I researched about. This mini game also helped me convey my message.
Downloads:
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Download File: apd-week-3-documentation-of-work.pdf
Download File: week-3.jpg
About This Work
By Samridhi Handa
Email Samridhi Handa
Published On: 24/08/2020