Inclusive Game Design – game proposal

For next week I intend to develop the following game in Flash for the kids at Seton.

Inclusive Tamagotchi Game Design Proposal

Introduction

The Tamagotchi game consists of some sort of a virtual pet that requires the user to interact with it in order to keep it happy, entertained or sometimes alive. The user can feed it, pet it, play with it and do anything else the pet allows it to do.

The idea for an Inclusive Tamagotchi pet is that with a simple switch, the users can interact with the virtual pet in a simple and effective manner. The game would be simplified so that the pet never dies and that a single interaction with it produces great and very visible results.

The game will allow the OT to create separate Tamagotchis for each kid so that each kid has their own pet and that the interaction with the pet is a cumulative experience and does not have to be rest each time the game starts. The kids will be able to customize the Tamagotchi’s color and even look and feel.

Objectives

For the kids at Seton, I believe such a game could achieve the following objectives:
• Create a connection between a physical object and the on-screen pet
• Demonstrate causality of action/reaction
• Give the kids something they will feel that they own and that grows with them
• Stimulate the curiosity for computer games
• Have fun!

Proposal

The game will be built using Flash and will use a keyboard emulator to enable the connection of any switch to control the game.
A settings menu will be presented at the start with the list of existing Tamagotchi pets created and the option to create a new one.
Within a Tamagotchi, you can customize its character (3 different pets available) and the general color scheme of the pet and the environment in which he lives in.
The Tamagotchi will always be moving on the screen attempting to grab the user’s attention.
The interactions with the Tamagotchi will be limited to eating, playing, and resting. An on screen button for each option will be presented using the scanning method for selection. Alternatively, the user could be presented with three switches – each representing one of the actions.
Points will be awarded for every interaction the user has with the Tamagotchi. The “age” of the Tamagotchi will also be maintained so that the users can compare which Tamagotchi has been played with for the longest time.

Inclusive Game Design – very simple game

Starting to work on a game for children… a simple tamagochi where the character (a dog) on-screen asks to be petted… a real stuffed animal with switches will then know if the child has petted the right place.
Click HERE to see the first version to test the code and switch… press any key on the keyboar to make it bark and move its mouth 🙂
Now I have to add switches to the rest of the stuffed animal and create a more interesting (and pretty for that matter) dog on screen which will to be petted and point to where it wants to be petted.

Helvetica

Went to see a great documentary yesterday called “Helvetica” – yes – the FONT!!
It looks at the ubiquity of this font in today’s world – or at least the Western world – why some designers love it, some are “over” it, but mostly how it came about (Linotype, Switzerland – 1950’s – most readable font) and how the advent of computers made it even more widespread (it is the default font for computers).
There were many amazingly beautiful still shots all through the movie illustrating Helvetica around the world.
Worth checking out not only from a design point of view but also in terms of niche markets, trends, changes in society, and even cognitive psychology – why the hell does the eye like Helvetica more than other fonts?
And by the way – this is not Helvetica 🙂

Happiness

For Computers for the Rest of You we had to read “Happiness In Everyday Life: The Uses of Experience Sampling” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeremy Hunter.

For me the most interesting aspect of this paper is to show how smart nature is. Basically our bodies trigger happiness in us when we are socializing and doing activities that are not stressful but require us to think and use our abilities – from that we see that nature is basically tricking us into finding a partner and evolving into something better by giving us a “cookie” when we are doing such activities. Another interesting finding of the study was that those who actually spent time studying or reading, which bring on lower levels of happiness, report a higher than average level of happiness when doing sports or socializing proving the concept that you cannot know true happiness if you’ve never experienced true sadness.
The second part of our homework was to think of the logging project we want to work on. I am thinking of the following:

  • One illusion I have is that I am a very active person when I am awake and when I sleep I am motionless. To test that I want to use an accelerometer to see how much of my day is actually producing movement. I would use the Nokia accelerometer coupled with a bluetooth equipped cell phone to record and log the information. I would attach the accelerometer to a hat to include class room time as active time – if it was in my pocket the accelerometer would be still. I am also interested in measuring how much I move around at night while sleeping.
  • Another illusion we have is that pictures represent more than what is actually framed. I want to enhance that illusion by recording the gps location, the ambient sound during the time I am taking pictures as well as record what music I was listening to during that moment. This will add some context about the framed object, its surroundings as well as the photographer’s mood. I intend to do this by coupling a GPS, a sound recorder and my iPod/iPhone to the camera. The click of a picture should trigger the GPS for a reading, record ambient sound for 30 seconds and log the name and artist of the song that is playing on my iPod. Some more about this idea here.

    • Inclusive Pong – version 1

    So the new Pong is almost ready – have to figure out some mouseButton bugs… right now you can only adjust the settings of the game OR play it…
    To see the adjust settings game click HERE.
    To play the game without adjustments, click HERE.
    Will post the final version soon.
    As per the documentation I included, here are some features I still need to include:

    • Allow user to change color of background
    • Allow user to change color of text elements
    • Include a color-blind mode – gray scale applied to the entire game
    • Allow user to adjust the speed of the ball
    • Allow user to adjust the speed of the enemy
    • Allow user to play with the keyboard