Playing Together -Thoughts on Them & Us Workshop

On Friday we spent a day at the MRL(Mixed Reality Lab) using the Ubisense location technology to explore the potential of game play and interactive experience for a group of people in one internal space.

We looked at how to create the desire to play, at how to make the user interact with both real space and virtual(screen based) space. We wanted to build a dynamic of interaction between the negotiation of real space and how this conflicts with the requirements of the digital space. Where do these distinctions become blurred. This first video shows us playing a simple game on screen of herding virtual objects around on screen.




The second video shows us (the players) trying to get the objects. You can see we are constantly trying to move things on screen but having to be aware of the objects in a lab crowded by chairs tables wires and computers.




We wanted to look at how to encourage group and individual play so we also added the feature of the players on screen appearing to "blob" together when very close creating a sort of visual bond between the players encouraging them to explore their proximity to each other. How close would they want to be to each other? Maybe if there was an incentive they would cooperate as a group.