Artist References
BLAST THEORY – I’D HIDE YOU
“Can we trigger that uncanny thrill that you feel when you see a webcam for the first time and experience a portal into another part of the world that seems – at that moment – to be yours and yours alone?”
– Blast Theory on I’d Hide You
I’d Hide You is a game developed by Blast Theory where players online direct 3 hosts on the ground to guide these hosts to catch each other on film. Each host has a camera that streams what they see and hear live, and the objective of the online players is to guide the host of their choice towards other hosts. When other hosts are caught on their live feed, online players press a button in order to catch these opponent hosts onscreen and score points. Online players are allowed to guide these hosts to ask pedestrians or passers by questions. Online players can also hop from one livestream to another to change the host that they are taking the perspective of.
IDLE is similar to I’d Hide You in how the game operates. Online players are allowed to hop from one livestream to another in order to gain different perspectives and achieve a goal, which, in IDLE’s case, is to find all the keys. It puts the online players’ thoughts and intents into fruition through the actions of the host, and thus the outcome of the game is decided by the online participants. IDLE attempts to bring its audience into it’s world, and, similar to I’d Hide You, wants the audience to be co-participants, bringing them into another world that is both immersive and entertaining.
An interesting aspect to note to this game is that you get to observe and be a part of each individual host’s character and personality. Marcos Dias, a lecturer of Media Studies in Maynooth University, Ireland, observed and posted in his personal blog that while following a host named Matt, he was given a tour of the city of Manchester along with vocal commentary. Matt, at one point during the game, sits down in a kebab shop and begins commenting on the shop’s choice of music. He also distributes cards with information regarding the game to other patrons of the shop.
Such is an interesting aspect of the game which involves the very personal input of the host himself. More often than not in mentioning DIWO art we tend to focus on how the audience can become co participants in this art form that we forget that the host himself is also a participant; the most important participant at that. Matt demonstrates very clearly how his personality and choices in the game can affect the viewing and playing experience of the audience. By stopping at the kebab shop to eat and commenting on the shop’s choice of music, the playing experience of the audience is very adversely altered; some players may not be too interested in such an encounter and may choose to switch to other hosts for a more competitive and exciting experience, while others who are interested in such an aspect of the game stay, observe, listen to and even chat with Matt regarding his stay in the store.
We originally intended to incorporate this personal aspect of DIWO into project IDLE as well. One of our ideas was to tell the participants that the host was getting tired and feeling faint due to the presence of smoke in the gameplay. He/she would then proceed to take a rest first, thus stalling the game and not allowing the game to progress. Such an idea was generated in order to add a more personal touch to the game so that the viewers understand that the host is struggling in the game and to add a more realistic touch to the suffering and difficulty of the situation presented to the protagonists of the game. This also adds an incentive for the online players to play more efficiently and have a sense of urgency in attempting to completing the game. However, due to the lack of time that the participants already faced in completing the game we decided not to go through with such a lengthy section of the project. Kai Ting did, however, at some point in the game, sit down on a chair claiming she was tired to the audience and basically refuse to do anything to allow for the game to progress. Such an input can be paralleled with Matt’s input in I’d Hide You.
Dias also mentions in his blog that two of the most interesting aspects of the game are the random screenshots they got from the streets of Manchester and the interactions between audiences of the game. He paralleled the gameplay to cruising along the streets in Grand Theft Auto, except that the gameplay wasn’t generated by algorithms.
Project IDLE is also similar to I’d Hide You in this aspect as audiences are able to interact and communicate with one another in the comments section. Some audiences began giving input that wasn’t relevant to the game in an attempt to communicate with the host herself. Alvin, a friend of ours who was a player in the game, commented that he was leaving now because he has a class to catch, and wishes good luck to the host. While irrelevant and not contributive to the progression of the game, it added a personal and playful touch to the experience for the audience. It made the game less robotic; if the comments were all only about the progression of the game and not so much of discussion or personal conversation, the level of interaction in the gameplay itself would feel very low and thus it loses some of the essence of DIWO art. Our inclusion of riddles in the clues themselves were also aimed at providing opportunities for the audience to discuss and interact with each other.
Screenshots of the game were also taken, and, while not as scenic as the streets of Manchester, also allowed for participants to be able to keep a permanent memory of such a game.
BLAST THEORY – UNCLE ROY ALL AROUND YOU
“[Uncle Roy All Around You] investigates some of the social changes brought about by ubiquitous mobile devices, persistent access to a network and location aware technologies.”
– Blast Theory on Uncle Roy All Around You
Uncle Roy All Around You is an online based game which requires online players who are gathered at an office to control and direct several street players who are on the actual street to look for a person named Uncle Roy. They operate under a time limit and are allowed to communicate with other online players but not with the street players. When the online players do eventually find Uncle Roy, the end to the game takes a more meaningful twist that plays on the concept of online security.
IDLE borrows the aspect of cooperation and teamwork from Uncle Roy All Around You. Both games require online players to cooperate with one another to achieve a mutual goal. Both games also operate on the premise of having an online player and a street player. Together, these two players must gather sufficient information to be able to win the game.
An intended outcome of the game Uncle Roy All Around You, according to artist Steve Benford, was to make the audience feel uncomfortable. The audience are presented with a thought provoking question “Can you trust a stranger?”, and a lot of the gameplay in the subsequent parts of the game involve making the audience feel uncomfortable in order to challenge them in their beliefs of online security. Segments included things such as asking the player for their address.
A particular audience who emailed their experience of Uncle Roy All Around You documented that the experience was ‘paranoia inducing’, and that there was only a limited amount of guidance provided, which was just sufficient to allow the players to get where they were supposed to go in order to maximise the impact of the experience.
Similar to Uncle Roy All Around You, we attempted to induce paranoia and fear into the audience by the inclusion of feeling giddiness as the game time progressed. Such a feature was an attempt to allow the audience to feel urgency in completing the game.
Regarding the amount of guidance given to the audience, we also made the game easier to complete by expanding the range of their commands so that the search for the clues or the key itself was easier. For example, if the audience were to say “search in the jacket”, we would search every pocket of the jacket even though we originally intended for the audience to be more specific and wanted to prompt “which part of the jacket should I search?” This allowed for a smoother gameplay experience in order for us to be better able to point players in the right direction and avoid frustration.
Also similar to Uncle Roy All Around You, our gameplay also revolved around a fixed narrative, which was that the house was burning down and that we needed to find the keys to escape. The opposite of this can be observed in I’d Hide You, where a more combat, player vs player kind of gameplay can be observed. In that case, there is no backline narrative where the game is supposed to progress, and the game is simply based on a time or score limit.
Brainstorming for our game
When thinking of a location of our game we came to a roadstop due to the amount of locations that we deemed unavailable to us without having to break any rules; most commercial locations would not allow for us to be able to film our project in their workspaces due to the obstruction to their businesses that they would face. Furthermore, we required a large setting where there would be places we would be able to hide our clues and our keys for the players to find. These places would have to be simple enough so as to not appear overwhelming to the players, yet complex enough so that the players don’t find the game too easy or boring.
At the end of the day, we settled for IKEA with the most promising prospects for our project.
Looking for the location
Having settled with IKEA, we had to find 4 favourable rooms for the conduct of our experiment that preferably were not too far away from each other yet at the same time they had to be secluded enough so that we would not be spotted out by staff.
After our test run we concluded that our clues, being on white paper, were not visible enough for the players. Most of IKEA’s furniture revolved around a modern and sleek look that was mostly white and brown in colour, and white paper was too difficult to be spotted under these circumstances. We thus decided to change the clues and keys to yellow paper instead in hopes that it would be more visible for the players playing the game.
Also, commands given by players were incoherent and unclear. Due to the lack of rules that were in place, there was a lot of spam or redundant comments in the comment section that led to a very messy search. We thus decided to implement clearer rules and regulations and guidelines for how the game should be played in order for a better gameplay experience.