Game Log 2: PLAY

Refined Game Idea + Conceptualisation Methods

After our visit at Filmbyen, we have refined our second idea and decided what we're going to go with in the end. This was our initial idea for the AR game:

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.

The initial concept still stays the same, but we have decided to focus a little bit more on the gameplay side of it, so that our AR 'game' is not only about drawing on the canvas, but is actually a game, and a cool one to play as well.

Let's imagine we have two players: first user and second user, which both make up a team.

• First user puts the headset on and starts the game. Then the initial idea - he has to draw something (predetermined by the app) on the canvas while being immersed in different audio environments. What we're left with is a couple of drawings, each being made in a different audio environment.  
• Second user then has to guess what the drawings are and also what audios were playing during these drawings.

How many points will the team get is based on the difficulty of the guessed drawing in itself. The first user can pick something to draw with the difficulty of the drawing being easy, medium or hard, where each difficulty has different weights for the points:

• Easy - 1 point,
• Medium - 1.5 points,
• Hard - 2 points. 

For an example:

1. First user draws an easy drawing -> second user correctly guesses the drawing (1 point) and the audio environment (1 point),
2. First user draws a medium drawing -> second user correctly guesses the drawing (1.5 point) but not the audio (0 points),
3. First user draws a hard drawing -> second user incorrectly guesses the drawing (0 points) but guesses the audio (2 points).

• In the end, the team scores 5.5 points / 12 points.

Another refinement we made to make our game more AR, is that the first user is not gonna draw on a virtual canvas, but on a physical one. He's going to use the Logitech MX Ink, with which he's going to interact with the canvas in real life (or maybe a different physical surface - we'll see), but the drawing will take place in AR.

The whole aim of the game is not only to see how different audio environments shape the process of creating art, but also to earn as much points as possible and to be at the top of the leaderboard.

In order to conceptualise our idea we've created a collage based on the Culture + Value + Game Collage method.

We've also used a 6-8-5 method to conceptualise on the game screens as well as the AR interactions themselves.

Expert Council

On Friday we visited ARoS once again, where we had to present our game idea to the expert council. We presented our game collage and enacted how the game interactions would look like. Turns out the experts were not really delighted with the game...

The overall idea was fine, one of the experts even said someone has done a similar concept for the game jam in the past and she's really excited to see how our project will turn out. Gameplay was also okay, they even said we could implement some additional features regarding the audios and feelings the users might experience for the drawings - e.g. make the canvas shake or implement some flashing lights. They weren't so sure about the integration of the cultural heritage and our EU value in our game.

One expert said that the EU value we're pursuing (freedom) is kind of superficial in our game, since we're imposing and telling the user what he has to draw. Even though the user has freedom to choose one of the options, we agreed this isn't the freedom the users should have, according to the provided definition:

Freedom: In the European context, freedom involves protecting individual liberties, ensuring people can express themselves, make choices, and participate in society without unwarranted restrictions.

One comment was also made regarding the cultural heritage - it should be stronger, we need to improve it and ideally revisit the ARoS exhibition. Right now there's no connection between the artworks at ARoS and our AR game. 

There was also one comment regarding the title of our game, PicARsso. One expert said that there is no connection between Picasso and our game (and that we do not use his paintings), which we found kind of odd. We think the name is fitting, as Picasso was an artist and main idea of our game is indeed around drawing, and it's more of a symbolic meaning with a playful manner, rather than literal.

We found it pretty challenging to refine our 'refined' game idea, because at the same time we need to incorporate two things:

• We want to ensure that people are free to express themselves, express themselves through art (so better EU value),
  
• We need to have a strong argument why did we choose the cultural heritage as a game making material (better cultural heritage).

One expert said that we should consider choosing some artworks, which ultimately would become the cultural heritage in our game. And that pretty much helped us in finalising our game.

Final Game Idea

First user will be presented with a set of 3 paintings from ARoS from the Human Nature exhibition. They'll choose one painting that will be an inspiration for them and then they will draw their own drawing based on that painting, while being immersed in one of several audio environments. The user will go through 3 'levels' (scenes), each level having their own set of paintings and different audio playing throughout the experience of drawing.

After first user is done, they pass the headset to second user, who views the drawings and has to guess for each level:

1. What painting inspired the drawing,
2. What audio was playing during the drawing.

So overall we're gonna have 3 sets of paintings, where each set has a common theme, so that we won't show polar opposites in one set (like e.g. a war painting and a nature painting together - then it will be too easy to guess the inspiration for the drawing). We're gonna have a different audio for each drawing experience, 3 in total, but we are gonna give the second user 4-5 audio options available to make the guessing part more challenging.

Another thing that has also changed is our difficulty system. Since we're giving users the right to draw anything they want (but related to the painting) and give them the freedom to express themselves, difficulty is not connected to the drawing anymore but to the time users will have to do the drawing, as follows:

• Easy - 1:30 minute,
• Medium - 1 minute,
• Hard - 30 seconds.

The scoring system still stays the same though - easy awarding 1 point, medium 1.5 points and hard 2 points for each correct answer. 

Now the gameplay part of our game is not 'guess the drawing', but more 'guess the painting' that inspired the drawing. That way we can incorporate the cultural heritage aspect more in our game, as well as the freedom value since the users now have the option to draw anything and can fully express themselves through art.

After all of that feedback, we've made some changes to our collage to fully and truthfully represent our final game idea.