Contextual & Theoretical Studies and Virtual Spaces
So after wrapping up are previous 2 projects and after a week break for reading and watching plenty of youtube. we now have 2 new projects to get on with.
Contextual & Theoretical Studies
For Contextual & Theoretical Studies we have started to look deeper into the state of the art and what is currently presently being adopted into the industry. by looking at papers and articles submitted on sites like ACM Digital Library & Research Gate. I will be writing an essay for this unit “A portfolio of writing that connects practise with theory and research and demonstrates a clear understanding of the key themes addressed in the unit lectures 1,600 words” as these last couple of weeks I had a number of ideas that I would love to write about in my essay these being.
- VR overlays and multiprogram communication in VR and VRm minigames/metagames
- Will the wider adoption of VR by the public lead to less effective VR in therapy How much experience with VR effects bias influence.
- Does increase detail in games lower the development of imagination
- Anonymity how it changes behaviour and if it differs in VR
- 2nd persons place in VR narrative and perspective position
I narrowed my decision down to idea 1 and 5 as the other seemed to be more objective research-based questions that would be better explored in technical papers. I leaning more towards writing about the 2nd person as I have already thought intensively about this beforehand after playing “Moss” about a year ago. as much as overlay games like Portable Farm interest me there aren’t many examples outside of that game and its a rather new concept that I would prefer to revisit later where I want to get 2nd person out of the way as there is a lot of variety in VR perspective.
Virtual Space
somethings I take seriously but rarely is it myself and my work. So I might have to work with a few loopholes when creating my serious VR interactive experience for my Virtual Spaces unit.
I started to surround myself with serious topics to try and spark some inspiration tracking creating the Padlet above to try to figure out my approach 1st watching some Vice documentaries on world affairs and issues. I then realised although it is imperative that these issues be explored, Billy Beeson aged 22 is not that person and even after just reading about these issues a smidge I’m already emotionally exhausted.
So looking elsewhere Wendover productions had a lot of inspiring videos on the world environment and economics. I had a brief time working as a bin guy over one summer an exuberance that has made me think about waste and where it ends up. however, coming up with a serious and engaging way to dispose of trash altho plausible seemed unlikely. It could be fun in an arcade genre where you cleaning up a beach or working a recycling plant conveyer belt in order to build up points multipliers to reach s new high score.
Then after looking into social and personal issues through the lens of Healthy Gamer. gg I tried a different approach looking at serious games and the kind of interactions I would like to create. In the hopes of using game design and mechanics to tell the story. Dwelling on things like the polarisation of thought and the enforcement of extreme opinion. It would be possible to address these through game mechanics alone and wouldn’t need to be heavy-handed in its message, where you could teach the player through the game mechanics alone where the goal is to balance two extremes and avoid the extremes of 2 outcomes. I like the idea of creating a game with only a loose state or a game the lends itself to speedrunning.