#interact19

[sophielouiselinehan-blog]

Dear Angelica,

Last night I watched the animated virtual reality short film Dear Angelica produced by Oculus Story Studio and felt incredibly moved and hopeful about the form for the first time.

My husband got an Oculus headset at Christmas and I’ve explored a range of games, films and experiences over the past few weeks and have, until now, felt unsatisfied.

While I enjoyed the dystopian workplace short Merger by Keiichi Matsuda I felt that it delivered on a vivid immersive experience but the story lacked emotional depth.

Dear Angelica– a hit at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival - is an incredibly moving emotional portrait of grief.  It’s director and former Pixar artist Sascha Unseld has done a fantastic job of taking you inside the perspective of a woman missing her mother, and exploring the story and emotion in a way only VR can.

I love the painterly visual style of the film and how the narrative is simple and familiar. Unlike in Merger, you’re not constantly asking the film ‘what is this?’ or ‘what’s going on now?’ Instead you’re just in it, going deeper into the beautiful visual experience and human emotion.

And while the interaction is minimal, the ‘screen’ story is immersive and captivating. Dear Angelica doesn’t require your physical cues to progress the story though the narrative features natural pauses that allow you to look around and experience it.

Bravo!

[leiawiththeforce-blog]

Duck it instead of Google it!

I wanted to share the search engine I nowadays use. It’s called DuckDuckGo, and it’s just one of the things you can do to protect your privacy. However, in the era of all the apps, phones, websites, and maps we use I know it’s impossible to hide everything I still believe we can do something.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that protects its users’ privacy by not storing or saving the IP addresses, does not log user information, and uses cookies only when required.  Gabriel Weinberg, the creator of DuckDuckGo, states: "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."

DDG doesn’t do user profiling, and that gives all the same results for every user.  It emphasises returning the best results, rather than the most results, generating those results from over 400 individual sources.

It’s very user-friendly and looks a lot like Google; simple and fast. You can choose your location, web/pictures/videos/news, or time and safe search.

If you are interested, give it a try!

[sheila-interactive-blog]

This sums up where I am at with my individual project!!!

[vegansorceress]

Paper Sail Experience

I chose to experience Paper Sail this week and really enjoyed it. I thought it was extremely interesting and relaxing. It continually amazes me what types of interactive experiences that are available. 

I thought it Paper Sail was definitely better suited for a mobile device than a computer, as mobile devices tend to be more ‘hands on’ and feel more intimate than a computer.

Nothing really happens with this ‘game’ beyond sailing around a little paper boat under a starry night with ethereal music playing in the background. It reminded me slightly of the equivalent to one of those sand boxes with a miniature rake that people put on their desk at the office. It’s a way to relax and tune out from the traditional games with plots and dialogue. 

Overall, I enjoyed experiencing Paper Sail. 

[nastassia-interactive-blog]

My Gaming World

After looking at what kind of games I am interested in and why in my last post it was easy to see what kind of game I should be designing. 

A little bit about the world I am creating this project within....

Subland has been built underneath Edinburgh in 2038 by survivors. Above, the city is overrun by monstrous machines and bio-mechanical people who have lost their minds. The only thing these monsters care about is metal and power - they’ll do anything to get it and return it to The Creator who resides at The Core, deep within Subland. 

Subland consists of three main ‘segments’ that are the biggest and most advanced pockets of civilisation, with a handful of other ‘clusters’ throughout which are smaller camps of people. These are all interlinked by mazes of tunnels built as needed for people to travel around.

In the crumbling of humanity, a new religion formed: Neo-Oculism. Residing below the Royal Observatory, Neo-Oculists are divided into three tiers: seers (general believers), Zeniths (committed followers and helpers) and Eyeless (devoted priestlike sect). They are led by the teachings and prophecies of The Lens. In short, they are watching and studying, waiting for the descension of the God they believe will save them from this technology ruined world and take them to a ‘pure land’. They do not believe in the merging of metal upon flesh as has ‘corrupted’ humanity so all are free of the prosthetics that have become commonplace on people in 2038. 

In this sect of the survivors I want to place the player, giving them three avenues to explore. They will discover what has happened to the world and more importantly, how their role and their decisions will affect the outcome. 

This is part of a larger transmedia project, the novel of which I am working on for major project. This novel follows another aspect of Subland, only scratching the surface of the potential of the Neo-Oculists’ involvement. By integrating a game, it can unlock this part of the world without crossing the other story or interfering with it. It just adds meaning if you chose to experience both which is my understanding of the best use of transmedia (I have been using A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling by Andrea Philips for a deeper understanding and it has been fab, I highly recommend it to anyone doing anything transmedia!)

With all this in mind, I am focusing on platform now. At this point I have chosen PC and more specifically, Steam. I’ll go into the reasons for this in my next post and after this week’s class on platforms that may change my mind or help my reasoning, let’s see! 

[joekourieh]

Using Story as a Reward in Gaming

In thinking about the crucial element of story in contemporary video games, I’ve been considering the method through which story is most effectively delivered. Video games are growing larger and more sophisticated, and so there is more content (some but not all of that being storyline) to lead players through over the many hours they’ll ideally spend in the game world. It seems to me that the most effective style of implementing story into the game is by “rewarding” players with plot as they play the game more. In other words, the more fun they have, the more they get of the main plotline, becoming a positive feedback loop for immersion into the game world. One of my recent favorite big-name examples of this was when I played Far Cry 5 last year. The story was split into three mini-bosses (the main antagonist’s siblings) who governed three sections of the open-world map. The player could travel between the sections at will and basically have a good time – fight bad guys, rescue good guys, and, of course, blow crap up. The clever part was that as you had fun in these three ways, you filled up a meter that would upset the mini-bosses, triggering three main encounters with each culminating in a final showdown. It’s simple, but brilliantly effective: if you build a game world and a set of playing mechanics that are addictive enough, the story can be a punctuation of play, rather than a goal. This is an important distinction from another hated aspect of some contemporary games, the pejoratively named “grind” found in many RPGs, and especially, in my experience, in mobile games. This means doing redundant, repetitive tasks over and over in order to fulfill the necessary criteria to move on in the story, whether by way of an overwhelming challenge or simple roadblock stopping the player from proceeding until they reach a certain level. Smaller-scale but still big-name games like Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Pokemon often do this – “Oops, you can’t come to this city until you’ll finished everything in that one over there.” Why not scale the difficulty level to allow the player to deal with opponents in the order they prefer? This not only feels more immersive but allows for greater replay value. Focus on some way to diversify the experience enough so that a “grind” simply can’t exist, or at least have a story that makes a slight grind worth it. For my own project, I am confident in the latter, but still have details to hammer out for the former. To be continued…

[remember-the-flames-blog]

Interactive Media Project: The First Path

Over the next couple of months I will be developing a project proposal for my module in Interactive Media. There are a wealth of potential paths to go down for this project. So to focus my view, I’ve chosen to work on a concept for a game, since I’ve been a “gamer” for most of my life.

I’ve basically always been a Playstation player. One of my first memories is playing the PS1 version of A Bug’s Life, which connected me to the film in a whole other manner. Browsing my smallish collection of games reminds I played a lot of platformers as a youngster - such as Spyro. I got so many hours out of that game. The world felt so big and exploring areas is definitely something that I still appreciate even today.

Like a lot of high school kids, I had my phase in online gaming, but recent years I have got more into playing single player games that focus on story. Which makes sense considering I am studying screenwriting. Narrative design for games is something that appeals to me and it excites me that I have an opportunity to explore that area during this module.

Recently I have been rather busy, so haven’t played as many games as I would like, but two I’ve enjoyed recently are God of War and Detroit: Become Human. God of War is based on Norse mythology, an area I already had an interest in, so it was fun to have the myths weaved into the story with some changes that kept me on my toes. Detroit: Become Human is a game based around androids becoming sentient. The game utilised story branching, with certain decisions (often made in a split second) affecting the end result of the story. Both these games are action-adventure games, which I feel is the genre I enjoy most - so I hope to develop a concept that reflects this.

In saying that I enjoy abstract, almost surreal works in other forms of art and I plan on exploring a few more abstract games in the coming weeks. I would like to develop a game that forges an emotional connection, in perhaps a slightly more unique manner. But we shall see. Memory is a topic that greatly interests me. What shines brightest? What fades quickest? Small moments. Big moments. Perhaps tying into dementia. Exploring someone’s mind.

I have tendency to get carried away, but I’ll keep working on narrowing down where I want to go with this proposal. Thoughts are beginning to bubble.

[wildcatmac]

Huh?

I’m not very knowledgeable about technology, so doing a module in interactive media as part of my master’s degree is a real challenge. I’ll be blogging every week on the interactive experience specified by my tutors. This week, I explored Seven Deadly Digital Sins (http://sins.nfb.ca/). I didn’t entirely understand the way it was categorised; what’s slothful about spying on your offspring’s search history or social media, for example?

I can relate to the selfie aversion, but I’m not sure the essence of the narrative was envious. I don’t want to put selfies on Facebook either, but that’s because I’m far from photogenic and don’t want to be reminded of that every time I go online to advertise my therapeutic practice or ask questions about my course. The photo I’ve used here is an early selfie. I won’t tell you how long ago it was, but it’s in black and white and my hairstyle looks suspiciously like Marc Bolan’s. (Go ahead and Google Marc Bolan if you’re too young to understand.)

Indeed, the most useful information I gleaned from Seven Deadly Digital Sins is that there’s an app called DeadSocial that facilitates the uploading of photos, videos and audio material and the scheduling of these being posted after one’s death. Well, that’s the kind of morbid shit people enjoy thinking about by the time they’re my age.  I am, however, planning to be around for another thirty or forty years, by which time, I’m hoping, I may be able to order a hologram of myself to follow people around, once I’m dead, and nag them. That’s going to get awkward if my husband remarries, though I haven’t yet decided whether that’s a plus or a minus. Either way, I’m not sure how interactive a future hologram might be, but probably have to assume it won’t be, so that won’t do for my interactive media project. Damn!

Anyway, I wanted to do something involving using my own artwork in alternate reality. After reading a few chapters of Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment by Carolyn Handler Miller, I’ve decided on a massively multiplayer online game (get me!) involving Jungian self-discovery. And optional violence.

I’ve stuck some of my existing work on here to provide a bit of flavour.

[leilas-digital-scrapbook-blog]

One of the biggest confusions in the world of augmented reality is the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality.  Both are earning a lot of media attention and are promising tremendous growth.  So what is the difference between virtual reality vs. augmented reality? What is Virtual Reality? Virtual reality (VR) is an artificial, computer-generated

[spitandscribble-blog]

UNTIL DAWN: Narrative Horror Gaming [released 2015]

I don’t play a lot games but one I did sit and devour was Until Dawn.  The decision making process wasn’t laborious, you could go with your gut (especially seeing as they kept the main killings until you had already gotten to know the characters).  What really appealed to me was that there were actually a few surprises in there! While the story isn’t without fault it was SO entertaining.  HIGH: It was scary in places and surprising- you would be lulled into a false sense of security before fighting for your life or deciding who to saw in half! The acting was decent and the monsters were creepy. LOW: There was a bit of weakness in the female characters they were pretty underdeveloped. The choices you make at “Checkpoints” detracted a bit from the element of surprise. “Do you like clowns or rats?” Really.... ?  Overall it stuck in my mind as an experience I enjoyed a lot so wanted to signpost it here. 

[builtformore]

Mary Garrick with Interact19 Digital Marketing Conference

[sophielouiselinehan-blog]

Project Update: Elfy

This week I’ve been thinking about the business-facing side of my idea for Elfy: an interactive gaming app that helps pre-school children develop empathy through play. 

As Elfy has a specific educational function - to help parents and carers work through specific social skills with young children - it has the potential to get Government Funding to make it accessible to the broadest audience possible.

Earlier this year, the Department for Education announced that families from disadvantaged backgrounds will be given free access to children’s educational apps, encouraging parents to think about how to use children’s screen time constructively, rather than as an easy distraction.

Up to 375 schools and nurseries are being recruited for the projects, run by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Leeds-based education charity SHINE.

This announcement suggests potential for the Department for Education, Education Scotland, the EEF and charities like SHINE to partner on a project like Elfy and fund its development. 

So what’s next? 

[leiawiththeforce-blog]

My Interactive Media Project

Alright. .............. So. My project is. I don’t know. I know some people struggle with the same thing as me that they don’t have a clear picture of what they want to do or what they can do for this project. I have some ideas or topics that I find interesting, but I feel that I’m not either smart enough or I don’t have enough imagination to make the idea something new and different or funny and useful.

I started listing topics and ideas I find interesting;

- Hiking app that connects people interested in hiking.

- Writing app that somehow gives feedback, exercises etc. to writers

- Politics

- An app that has a database so a screenwriter could check if a scene they are writing already exists

- Practise a new accent app (or get rid of your own accent) 

- Brain games

Then I started to think if I have some problems that I want to fix in my life. Many obviously, but I couldn’t connect those problems with new app ideas. There is an app for my issues, not that I really use them because I would need to pay and I don’t want to. Or I would use them if I had money to travel, buy certain products etc. So app for making money :D?

I love dogs. So maybe a dog app? But there are so many of them already. I just don’t know how to make it different.

Anyway, I think I am concentrating on a couple of ideas, and they are; the hiking app, writing ap, and an accent app. Accent one because I think that could be funny! Writing app might be a bit too complicated.

The hiking app would be a mix of Couchsurfing, TripAdvisor and Tinder. You could see the best hiking routes in your area, the weather, the conditions of the routes, how many people are there (using the app) if someone wants to hike together if someone has problems etc. You could upload pictures, have chats, exchange some details.

The writing app you would give feedback, partner up with other writers, do some exercises, read articles, watch videos, chat with people, and publish your texts.

The accent app would be very simple. You choose the language e.g. English and then the accent you want to learn e.g. Texas. Or you could choose an accent you want to get rid of e.g. German accent and it would give you the “problems” that make you sound like you sound and the advice that would make you sound more like you want to sound.

[sheila-interactive-blog]

Playing Games on my phone.

I’m not sure whether we need to write about our experiences from the list of experiences mentioned on Moodle.  But as part of exploring my ideas for individual projects, and games, I have played a couple of games on my phone.  The first one is Sims Freeplay for which I downloaded an App onto my mobile phone.  I spent a few weeks playing Sims Freeplay and enjoyed it. In the mornings, I would send all my created Sims to work.  Then in the evenings after work, I would get them to complete a few tasks that were set like cooking special meals, watching movies, going to the park and talking to interior designers, making enemies with someone in a neighbouring town etc. I did enjoy it but did not really want to waste too much time playing it.  There are options to pay to get more money and VIP points etc., which let you advance to different levels quicker.  We’ll I reached level 22 without paying for any additional features.  Then one day, my phone froze, so I thought I better get rid of it and deleted the app and that was the end of the Sims.  Another game was Merge Dragons.  This was fun where you merge three different objects and build up to different levels and collect different dragons.  This was a good past time, but in the end the game froze on me, so I deleted the app and tried reinstalling it and realised I had lost everything. Oh well never mind, I don’t really miss either Sims Freeplay or Merge Dragons.

[vegansorceress]

Interacting With Interactive Media

It is an interesting concept that interactive media can be without the use of technology. A game amongst friends -- or classmates, as we saw last week, can be a way to interact with the internet of things. Whenever I have thought of interactive media, my mind always goes to tech. But the game exercise was an interesting way to show that this is an incorrect assumption. For my personal project it is about connecting things (homes, restaurants, experiences) through technology. Technology can be wonderful if you are using it. However, when it starts to use you -- that’s where SciFi becomes real life. For example, one thing that has been in the news of late is Elon Musk’s neural lace. Not only do I find this terrifying, but the fact that people are already working on this and Musk is acting like this will be out for the public *soon* -- is kind of jaw-dropping, but shouldn’t be surprising. I personally believe him to have nefarious motives (what could possibly go wrong with implanting the internet into your brain?) But this is a way to literally interact with the internet. If it is implanted into our brain, we would in a sense, be merging with technology.

http://nautil.us/blog/-will-this-neural-lace-brain-implant-help-us-compete-with-ai

[nastassia-interactive-blog]

The Beginning...

It makes sense to me to start with a bit about my current technology/internet standpoint and then where I want to go and what I want to explore. Then I can (hopefully) avoid too many rants and tangents along the journey.

I’m in two minds when it comes to technology. In one sense, the opportunities it brings and the differences it can make to so many people’s lives is amazing. Particularly for my generation and those younger, the prevalence of technology and its capabilities now, provides an escapism that is available to everyone in infinite forms. It’s this escapism that I’m excited about because it gives writer’s so many avenues for storytelling where anything we can imagine can be shared with other people. 

Talking of sharing though, this is where everything gets a bit much. Watching the Seven Deadly Digital Sins summed up the problem: social media. It has infected us all with the ‘too much’ gene where nothing is ever enough and we always want more, share more, take more while no one is really engaging with anyone or anything else on more than a surface level. It’s an all consuming world which I guess for a storyteller can be simultaneously horrifying and exciting. 

Since getting a taste of the games industry and a glimpse of the future for writers in media - an industry that will only grow further, I have developed an interest in different ways technology can tell stories. Learning more about each area of interactive media and the industry will (hopefully) guide me towards my identity as a writer and help me decide where I want to go beyond the course. And we can have fun because if it’s not fun, what’s the point?

Let’s play!