APD_Week8_Play&Body_Kory

Theme:

Play and Body

The human body consists of various sensory organs. Such as eyes for vision, ears for hearing, and nose for the smell. When people lose certain sensory signals to do a certain activity. That activity will be more challenging. And the challenges could bring fun to players. The gameplay I designed is related to the human sensory system.

Method:

I used a hands-on approach to designing this gameplay, I tried different games with my friends. Different rules are designed for different games. For example, two people operate a certain game at the same time. But both players will be blocked from some physical senses and functions. Player 1 needs to wear a blindfold to block the visual when the player is playing. At the same time, player 1 needs to listen carefully to the instructions and descriptions from player 2 to make correct operations that promote the progress of the game. Player 2 cannot touch the operation buttons. However, player 2 needs to control player 1 to play the game through voice commands. If it feels too difficult or too easy, the Player can adjust the difficulty by opening or blocking some senses. In the process, I can experience the joy brought by the difficulty and challenge and the joy brought by the cooperation.

Context:

Pacific Rim is a story movie about controlling mecha and fighting monsters. A mech requires two pilots to operate at the same time. When they are linked to the mech, their senses are synchronized with the mech. My original idea came from this movie set. From this setting, I was thinking about how the senses of two people are synchronized into one body. And whether there will be many difficulties in the process of cooperation. So I started trying to co-operate a game with my friends. We found a lot of fun during the experiment.

Reflection:

I've found that the human senses and gameplay are strongly correlated. Players experience happiness because different senses receive different stimuli, which combine to produce different chemical reactions in the brain. The way to have fun by blocking the senses is simple. But the design approach to enhancing the sensory effect is complex. So future development can try to design some different new gameplay by improving and inputting senses. For example, VR changes the input signal of people's eyes to make games more interesting.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZiGfjHhGso