Author: Joyce Huang

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Summary:

K9 Rescue is a game addressing a modern problem in the style of an old arcade game reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. In the point of view of a dog, you are on a journey to rescue your friends, gather treats, and get back home to your parents.

Inspiration:

My inspiration for this project was the nonprofit organization Korean K9 Rescue. They are based in NYC and focus on banning the dog meat trade in Korea and sending the dogs over to New York for adoption.

Research:

For this project, I primarily used the 2D UFO tutorial from Unity as a guide and reference. I kept the basic idea of a pickup game, but I wanted to expand it by changing the setting to give it more of an adventure feel. 

Process:

I started this project by setting up the environment, props, pickup items, and the player. Then I used the same scripts I made following the UFO tutorial and applied it to the player and pickup items which in this case were the other animals and treats on the map. I did have difficulty and could not get the player to animate the way I wanted it to in terms of gravity.

Visual Documentation:



Stanley Parable Trailer

Stanley Parable is a narrative-driven, interactive storytelling game. The player plays the role of Stanley and at the same time, he does not. You can choose to follow the narrator’s suggestions, or not. The end is not the end.

As the player explores new paths to try to find a way out, they are consciously making different choices each time. Stanley Parable was made to challenge the way major games confine its users to a set of rules and a one-way path.

Contradiction follows contradiction, the rules of how games should work are broken, then broken again. This world was not made for you to understand.

When I first played this game, I followed the narrator’s directions and it led me to the freedom ending. This was all done in less than 10 minutes. Immediately after, I was sent back to the beginning. That’s when I realized that there was something more to this game and perhaps the narrator’s directions were not meant to be followed.

Not Stanley / Real Person Ending

In this ending, you see that the Narrator cannot exist without the Player and the Player cannot exist without the Narrator. When the Player watches Stanley from below, it signifies the player has been removed from the game and so with the player gone, the story does not exist or cannot advance.

The game is not here to fight you; it is inviting you to dance.

Summary:

Verborgen is an educational game intended for all ages. It is set in a fantasy world with different maps where the user is given a list of objects to find. The objective is to help toddlers match objects with their correct terms and essentially build their vocabulary and recognition abilities in real life. Verborgen has many different fields such as the forest, desert, and an urban city. They hope to expand the mind of the individual through a fun game.

Inspiration:

The inspiration for this project was the I SPY series books of my childhood. My teacher in elementary school would bring the class to the library and everyone would gather around the I SPY books to find the objectives together. It was fun and never boring because there were many different books all in different settings. Thinking back on it now, Walter Wick’s works were amazing. While it is a children’s book, it even appears as a photo book as I look back at it now. He built layouts, cityscapes, landscapes, but they were never too literal and had a whimsical charm to them. He also often handmade his props. My objective for this project is the same as Jean Marzollo, the children’s book writer who first approached Wick with the I SPY idea. I want my game to be educational and accessible to all ages. In addition to the visuals, Marzollo made the books fun with her touch of riddles.

Research:

For reference, I used Ray Wenderlich to introduce me to Unity’s interface. I also read the notes and manuals that came with the assets I downloaded.

Process:

Unity reminded me of Android Studio in that you can simply drag-and-drop some elements.

I had experienced some problems trying to set up the terrain. When I created a new object using Create > 3D Object > Terrain, I wasn’t able to apply the dirt material to it. I decided to just use the premade environment and I could add or delete elements of it that I didn’t want. After that, I went to the asset store and found random objects to place into the playing field. I had difficulties using some assets that came with animations.

I also had problems trying to push changes to Github. I set up a new repository through Unity, but not all of the files went through and when I did make changes, it could not detect it and thus I could not push anything.

Visual Documentation:

The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin by William S. Burroughs

Immediately, I was drawn into the passage by the first line. As silly as it sounds, I have never thought of creating a poem by pulling words out of a hat. In school, we were always taught to draft things beforehand which meant that careful planning and thought had to be involved to create a great piece. On the other hand, simply pulling random words goes against this process, but is a very refreshing, experimental idea. While I have seen many poems like this, I have never done it myself because I’m scared of being restricted. What if there is no word in the hat that will be able to describe what I’m feeling or trying to describe? Nonetheless, I think this is a great idea and is a good way to get people engaged in a new activity. As mentioned in the passage, the cut-up method can be applied to other subjects such as games and economic behavior. I think this proves that anyone can get their hands on something new. You don’t have to be good at writing to write a poem or good at gaming to game. I also feel like Burroughs is telling us that the cut-up method is just another way of getting inspiration from other artists and even reworking those pieces. For example, for my final project for the class, I was inspired by the I SPY books of Walter Wick. Perhaps I will take different elements from each book of the series to incorporate into my game.

In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective by Hito Steyerl

Steyerl brings up an interesting perspective, or perhaps attention to a lack of one. How do we see things, in free fall in particular? The horizon line has been used as the point of reference for the longest, but Steyerl argues that it is not stable and things are changing with technology and time. In art, the perspective has never been consistent, especially in contemporary abstract works today. In the first place, I think having one perspective only is silly. Even with resources such as Google maps, I don’t think there is a clear line of where the viewer has to be. The viewer, in fact, is given options. They can choose to view the map in 2D or 3D, and in street view, they can drag their mouse for a whole 360-degree experience. A linear perspective can be restricting. The ideas Steyerl brings will be useful in incorporating into my game to make the setting and layout more attractive for the player experience.

For the final project, I would like to create a game where the user can go into different rooms and settings to find hidden objects. I was inspired by the I SPY book series of my childhood. In each book, there is a list of objects you are supposed to find. Walter Wick is the author and artist responsible for these books. He creates toy models of different settings and photographs them for the book. Sometimes he creates town or cities more inspired by real-life, other times he creates cluttered layouts that make it hard to find the objectives.

This tutorial really helped to introduce me to Unity.

Our time presents a unique opportunity for learning by means of humor – a perceptive or incisive joke can be more meaningful than platitudes lying between two covers (10).

I never thought about how the medium affected the way a message would be perceived until reading McLuhan’s work. When you look at it, the content you receive is entirely the same whether it is delivered electronically or through print. However, each medium creates a different response with the same material. This would have to do with how accessible and interactive it is. Through a newspaper, I can only read. Through an online article, I can do anything from comment, share it, or write to the author immediately.

In terms of the classroom, adding humor to the lesson plan (whether intentionally or not) can make the message more effective. The general procedure is to lecture, assign work, and test, but what if instead of doing a PowerPoint flooded with information and statistics, the professor does everything orally while incorporating personal anecdotes? I have only had two professors in my whole life that relied on themselves and not technology to get their point across. This makes the learning process more personal and engaging. Hearing stories from the professor’s life, the students feel like they can open up to and relate to them more. The added humor makes the information more memorable.

McLuhan’s use of different formats in the book itself is like experimenting with different mediums. When he chooses to repeat a phrase multiple times in a big font, it definitely attracts attention. In one section, the passage is mirrored and filled with typos. Extra effort must be made to decipher it. While this can force someone to study and memorize it, the typos irritated me because I would have to stop frequently to “fix” it in my mind. The flow of reading was disrupted multiple times. In this case, I believe the “medium” was not effective.

“The numerical coding of media and the modular structure of a media object allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation, and access. Thus human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part.” (32)

The new media element of automation by Manovich struck me the most. It draws fear and offense from the idea of not needing human interaction to create art. Many people would criticize it, saying artificial intelligence is not (yet) capable of what humans can do, think, and manipulate, but I would disagree otherwise. As someone who has been exposed to technology and electronic forms of media for the majority of my life, I can see how the “human” can be taken out of the equation. For example, in photography’s earlier stages, settings would have to be manually adjusted according to the amount of light available. It was a constant process of test and trial. Nowadays, one can simply buy a point-and-shoot that eliminates the need to manually adjust altogether. The camera is preprogrammed to use what it sees as the optimal setting. Furthermore, many photo editing softwares including Photoshop have an “auto” feature where it will adjust things such as brightness and curves for you.

While I do acknowledge what is happening, I see automation more as a supplementary tool than a replacement. After all, it is us in the end who programmed these softwares to act in such ways because they were desirable to us at some point in time.