Critique of The Lost Experience
Project information
A paper evaluating a spin-off Augmented Reality Game for fans of the TV show Lost.
I wrote this for my Games Design module, to help inform the design of the game I'm working on with some friends for the same module. This paper analyses and discusses the techniques designers of The Lost Experience used to motivate and encourage players. The paper should be of interest to anyone who's enthusiastic about game design in general and/or ARGs. It's also very easy to read and nicely laid out with graphics and illustrations.
Downloads
- Critique of The Lost Experience as an ARG (PDF, 2.4Mb)
Project blog
Shinobi AR Documentation video
17th February 2008
Today I finished making my video, documenting Shinobi AR, the augmented reality game my friends and I just finished.
Check it out on the Shinobi AR project page.
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Playtesting and Intranet music
12th February 2008
Today SpotJam showed off our prototype game, Shinobi AR. We found that people seemed to enjoy the game, and were pleasantly surprised by the phone technologies we used, but as predicted it didn't really work as well as it should, because of the nature of the playtesting environment: we had to scale the game down a lot so that players could see all the technology we used. Unfortunately this meant making puzzles a lot easier and most players only saw around 20% of all our efforts. Still, we were fairly happy with the test overall.
I've now uploaded the music I wrote for the intranet system of the game. A lot of people have commented to me how they really like the music and how it suits the game. I'm very proud of it. You can check it out for yourself on the music page.
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Shinobi AR - Presentation
11th February 2008
Today my group for Games Design presented our company SpotJam and game Shinobi AR to others on the games module. This marks the official release of Shinobi AR, which before now we were all keeping under wraps.
We all had great fun making the game. My given role was programming, database and sound, but we all did a lot more than just our given roles: acting, websites, story, design, quality assurance etc.
Tomorrow the game will be playtested by our peers.
To find out more about the game and to see the development blog (now unlocked), check out the project description.
| Tags: shinobi, spotjam | Comments (0) |
Testing the game, and the return of Leonard Tate
5th February 2008
ARGH! One week until we release the game.
Well, it's not totally bug-free yet, and some parts of the game need to be smoothened a tad, but it's looking pretty good.
In other news, my buddy in Newcastle, Sean O'Sullivan has agreed to reprise his role of Leonard Tate for the game. Mr Tate may be previously known for his well executed prank on Adam a couple of years ago.
I cannot wait to finish the game and show off our months of hard work to Dan and the other groups. I am a little sad that it's over though, it's been so much fun programming it and making all the videos and sounds.
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Intranet sounds
29th January 2008
Luke has worked miracles to produce the Flash-based Shinobi intranet system. It looks gorgeous and it great fun to use. To add another dimension to it, I've created some sound effects (rollovers, button noises, error codes etc) that work with the background music. So not only does it look fantastic, but it sounds amazing too!
Luke should be very proud of his work. I'm certainly impressed.
| Tags: shinobi, sound, flash | Comments (0) |
Intranet music
23rd January 2008
It's not often I'll say this, but I'm very proud of a piece of music I've just finished writing for Luke's Flash-based intranet. Usually I'm very critical about my music and indeed most of my work, but I'm very happy with this piece. It's designed to be background music, but it's also really nice to listen to outside of the game. It's dark (my speciality!), mysterious, fairly simple, but very effective and also quite addictive.
I promise to upload the piece to my music page once the game has been released. So, it should be up by now, because you're allowed to read this!
| Tags: shinobi, music | Comments (0) |
Mission briefings
16th January 2008
More acting! Ages ago, when this project begin, I made a short briefing video as an enigmatic silhouette for part of a technology demo for the game. It was deliberately ridiculous and shown in a humorous light, but it turns out that the team think we could reuse the character for the actual game. Of course, we'll tone down the character a bit (no stroking an inflatable-dinosaur pet for a start!), but it's the same idea as before. I can't wait for Simon to finish writing the mission briefings so I can start filming!
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Filming the news
12th January 2008
I've just come back from filming the news programme I mentioned in my last post about the Shinobi AR game. I am really enjoying taking part in these videos: I'm no actor, but I put a lot of enthusiasm into it!
Filming today took quite a lot longer than we originally thought. Adam, Sami and I went off to Babbage building to shoot the newscast. Poor Sami kept messing up her lines, but to be honest I wasn't a lot better as I always seemed to get stuck after my first sentence! I'll be saying 'That's right, Samina' in my sleep!
The next step is for Adam to edit the video together and add a hidden link. I'll be supplying some music I wrote for the news theme also.
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Critique uploaded
12th January 2008
I've uploaded a paper I wrote last year on The Lost Experience as an augmented reality game.
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Introducing Martin Lloyd
5th January 2008
Most of us in SpotJam have been given responsibility for the online (and offline?) presences of characters in the game. I've been cast as Martin Lloyd, a dirty activist-type for Greenpeace, whose goal is to make people aware of evidence suggesting Shigeru-Tech are up to no good. He's a great character, with some strong opinions.
So what do I have to do? Well firstly I'm going to make him a website. It will be quite simple and will basically outline his beliefs and evidence. More importantly it will link to another site with an access code for the player. Just for fun, I'll also give him a mySpace account! I think Martin won't really see the 'fun' of social networking sites, but I also think he'll accept it might be good for his cause.
The best thing by far I'll do as Martin Lloyd will be being interviewed as part of a fictional news programme for the game.
I'd better learn my lines!
| Tags: shinobi, spotjam | Comments (0) |
Shinobi code sorted(?)
12th December 2007
After a major rewrite and more communications with MASH, I've finally sorted out the text messaging code. Unfortunately we can't send out a message without first receiving one. Don't ask me why: it's a MASH problem that we have absolutely no control over. It shouldn't be too crippling to our game though.
| Tags: shinobi, php | Comments (0) |
SpotJam pitch
19th November 2007
We pitched our company idea to others on the module today. Unfortunately it didn't go that well. We didn't really engage the audience enough and the marketing stunt confused some people and I believe the rest thought it was crap.
So, no one really knows what we're making yet. So what was the point in the pitch? Well, we now know what to expect from the big presentation at the end of the year.
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'Cafe viral'
11th November 2007
Today was fun - we all met up to film a viral video for our pitch next week. Although we're only going to mention what our company does and not much about the game itself, we want characters from the game to appear to 'hack' our presentation by showing a 'live' video feed from a secret meeting. It's a cool marketing stunt, but I feel it's up to the guys presenting to actually pull it off.
We basically turned a living room into a cafe film set! Luke and I played the Kanji Industries men who were meeting. Simon and Adam were the cameramen and Dan supplied and operated the specialist lighting equipment. Luke and I were dressed up smart in suits, and we also had various props on the table, such as coffee and important documents.
Tomorrow I'm working on overlaying the voices and sound effects. We didn't capture sound today as we can get much better sound in post production. If that makes any sense.
| Tags: shinobi, video | Comments (0) |
Code problems
3rd November 2007
I started the php code for the game a few weeks ago. We need this code to determine where players are in the game and to trigger certain actions for that player (eg. send a text message). I've designed it to be solid as a rock, but that's just wishful thinking really! There are a lot of problems with sending out SMS messages at the moment. I am in discussions with Adam and MASH (the company supplying us with SMS technologies) to try and get this sorted.
That said, the rest of the code and game seems to be coming on quite nicely.
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Naming, roles and wiki
9th October 2007
Our team sat down in the students' union today and briefly planned out our augmented reality game. The theme is going to be spys and industrial espionage. We now have a *very* basic story outline: the player is an agent for the spy agency Shinobi AR. This agency sends the player off to find out particular information from websites, phone calls and real-world locations.
We've decided to call ourselves SpotJam, after we found the domain names were available! Other names we've bought are Shigeru-Tech, Kanji Industries, which we're going to use for the two major organisations within the game.
The primary roles within SpotJam are as follows:
- Simon Grout - Director, Story
- Tom Turton - Programming, Database, Sound
- Luke Chambers - Flash intranet
- Adam Lynch - Branding, websites, SMS consult
- Dan Lake - Branding, websites
Of course, the way these things usually work is that we all do a lot more to contribute. For example, Dan will probably help out with graphics work and marketing; and we'll all come up with ideas every now and then.
We've also created a development wiki to help organise, discuss and present our ideas for the game.
| Tags: shinobi, spotjam | Comments (0) |
Game idea
2nd October 2007
The Games design module this year looks great fun. We have to split up into small teams and design/make a prototype for a game. In February our game will be played and assessed by the other teams as well as Dan, the module leader.
Our team is large in comparison to most: we have five, whereas most teams are three or four. Dan has allowed this, but says we have to make a product that proves we needed more people; otherwise we'll be criticised by the other groups.
We've decided to make an Augmented Reality Game. An ARG is different from traditional video games in that it often merges the game world and the real world, by taking advantage of mainstream communications (internet, phones, advertising) and real-world locations and actors etc.
Dan's encouraged teams to keep their projects secret so for this reason, you won't be able to read this blog until we've released the game or at least announced it. So, if you are reading this, and you haven't hacked my website, our game has been released!
| Tags: shinobi, games | Comments (0) |