Game Log 1: EXPERIENCE

Game name: 

PicARsso

Team name:

We are The ARtists and these are roles in our team:

• Manos - Gamemaster/Crafter
  
• Mate - Storyteller/Crafter
• Kamil - Designer/Artist

For assigning the roles we used the empowered participation method - essentially we reflected upon the asked questions in CGJ's sheet and discussed the responsibilities of each role, then picked the roles for ourselves that would make the most of our competences and make the teamwork smooth. Since this is not our first time working together, we know what we're good at, what are our strengths and how to effectively work with each other. We are not that strict with the roles though - we talk a lot about who's doing what and help each other with any tasks if needed, and this approach has worked really well for us in the past.

Artwalk & Game Ideas

As a part of our experience phase, we went on an art walk at ARoS to see the Human Nature Exhibition in order to gain some inspiration. We also used the ideation wheel as a tool to explore different concepts and to help us get started to brainstorm at bit on the game itself. We knew we wanted to narrow it down to the freedom EU value as we want to convey the right every human has to express themselves through art and the Simulation/Senses game type as this would be suitable for an AR application. The ideation wheel setting we decided on after a lot of brainstorming was Freedom - Simulation/Senses - Cultural Aesthetics - Redefining Values/Generations.

During our ARoS art walk we saw a couple of paintings that caught our eye and were a source of inspiration for us. This painting here was revolutionary for many reasons, but one of them was how it used colours, especially the cold colours. When we first saw the painting, it evoked mixed emotions in us, but mainly they were negative - fear, anxiety, distress and uneasiness.

But it made us feel something. It was crazy that such art can actually cause for us to feel such emotions. And that got us thinking...

There's a psychological part to the colour theory, where certain colours can portray different emotions and feelings. What if we could portray those emotions as sounds?

That is how we've come up with our first idea - a game in AR, where you could explore an art walk, but instead of the paintings themselves, the player would get displayed different colours. Each colour would have an assigned emotion to it (like e.g. green noise sounds are perceived as similar to ocean waves or a stream and help people relax) and for each colour the user could press a button that plays a sound related to that emotion. This was our first initial idea for the AR game.

We then got to explore more on the art walk and got an inspiration for our second idea from one of the war paintings there.

It was said by our guide that a lot of artists that painted the battle wars were actually painting them inside of the battle war in itself (which for those times obviously makes sense). Just imagine what emotions they were feeling in that moment and how did their environment affect their art...

That sparked a cool idea in our minds - an idea to create an AR game, where the user would have a canvas and they could paint on it while being immersed in different audio environments. We think about having maybe like 4-5 different audios and see how each of them affects the experience of painting.

We're thinking of audios like intense battle sounds or something as stressful, then maybe something peaceful like nature sounds, then maybe some melancholic piano music that might make the user feel nostalgic, and maybe something more upbeat and energetic. Each environment would create a totally different vibe for the user and we're curious to see how that changes what people will experience during their creation of art.

We think it is a pretty fun idea that checks all of the boxes and requirements for the Cultural Game Jam, but also meets academic requirements, because our AR prototype also answers a research problem, how can auditory modalities affect the experience of creating art.

Our main focus is freedom in expressing yourself through art as cultural heritage. Using cultural heritage as material for games opens possibilities for creating interesting interactive experiences and for our game, we want to explore how the emotional aspects of artistic creation can be experienced in different scenarios. But the tricky part (the one we've experienced ourselves) is - how to actually use this cultural heritage in a game design? What we've thought of is that the art in itself (e.g. paintings) could be interactive and something users could engage with (like our first idea) or that you can use the cultural artifacts as inspiration for game aesthetic. Cultural heritage can also be incorporated by reinterpreting different contexts of art through simulated environments (like our second idea) or by creating spaces where users can actually contribute to the art through their own actions. The key is making users active participants in this cultural heritage rather than just observers of it.