APD Week4 -PLAY and PLACE theme

Theme

PLAY and PLACE

Context

When the term “PLACE” came to my mind, the first idea popped out was the game I always had when I was a kid: Seek and Hide. I guess to many of us, finding a place to hide and the journey of finding hiding friends based on hints and traces,  provoke excitement and bring back nostalgia. 

But since we grow up along with the development of technology getting involved in many aspects, there is not that much joy playing the kid’s game around I notice. Thus, I think of the idea of making a “treasure” hunting game to find the hidden objects (could be things or people)  that use AR Scan technique as the main key to navigate and solve the puzzles.

Method

Using an AR Scan Application that resembles Spark AR. When the images are scanned, they will reveal a specific loop video or animation to provide extra information to seekers/ players..

Response

Spending more time inside my flat gives me at least one good thing: I get more time to get along with my flatmate and somehow we find a way to collaborate with each other. When I was struggling with the alternative to execute my idea of this game, I happened to see the AR application that my friend has been working on and that helped to strengthen my concept about this game. 

This is the application  (looks nothing more like a camera app) that allows users to see a specific information through moving images/ video when they scan a picture. I call it AR SCan since it does not have a name yet, but the platform is quite similar to AR Scan, whose simpler interface makes it more approachable to users.

At first, I simply thought of the Hide and Seek basic rule for the game, where a player will find the others location based on the traces left behind. However, to make the game more complex with a higher chance of interaction, players have stickers or images that they can put around to guide/mislead seekers to the wrong destination or to eliminate the others. If the seeker has a limited chance to scan the images or the stickers, they will see a short video or animation, whether they can decide to trust or ignore.  After I notice how useful the given information can be, I believe the platform can be applied to treasure hunting games, which work based on similar information trading interactions.

I run a test on the app with one image printed out and put on the wall, then I need to upload a video on the app and wait for it to be ready. It takes a bit long to process the video, so that would make it a bit inconvenient for players to leave trace marks. It seems to work after a while and I notice that it seems pretty boring without sounds. But to think of sound as a given information is another page, which for now I just want to focus on the visual, since playing Hide and Seek means “Silence” to me.

Reflection

I was not familiar with the idea of using AR Application before, so this was a chance for me to explore something new and unusual. I had more fun playing with this idea than I expected, which I hope that the game can bring back some good moments to people as they find the memories they thought they lost long ago.