Contextual statement

Contextual statement

There is a parasite fungus called the Cordyceps Unilaterus that can take over an insect into moving and acting the way the fungus wants. The insect on the other hand thinks it is moving and acting the way it wants to and is not aware that this fungus is having control over it. My work lies within the 'digital' having the same impact as the fungus and us being the insect. My work allows the participant to get sucked into this digital media only to be shocked with feeling that they have been manipulated into doing something that they are not aware of and outside of the digital space they are used to, much like the way the fungus takes over an insect.

The way the person is to feel manipulated is from a virus hacking into their email account and contact real people from another digital source. This is all granted from the person's continuous use of a specific digital media source.

The purpose of allowing this feeling of manipulation from using a type of digital media is to give an understanding on how we already allow the digital in our lives to impact us from large amounts of  consumption. If you have a Facebook account with a few friends you could easily have one of those friends request for you to try an online game or look at an online article. What this can do is have the digital invest in your 'real' life, for what would be an absurd amount of time to which has now become normal. This is all done from the persons desire to complete a personal specific goal. Whether it is first the courtesy of filling out the request of the friend or the curiosity of what it is the friend has been interested in enough to ask the person to be a part of.

My work uses an email request from a known contact to draw the person into the game. This could easily be from a different digital media such as Facebook or Twitter. The contents of the email will be both stating that by the person playing the game it will have beneficial outcomes for both the contact and the person. This will not be effective for all receiving the email (just as the Cordyceps fungus will not infect all insects) and is aimed for people with a larger use of an unproductive digital media.

My work uses a game as its digital media source. After the person accepts the contact's request they will be brought to a game of unsolved puzzles. For the person to be further intrigued and to have a larger desire to continue playing, it has been stated by M Osman there is a higher chance of with a specific goal for the person to achieve. The game uses 3 well known face card images and mixes their body shapes. These card faces are well known especially within the gaming context. This unnatural use of the card faces will be what the person desires to fix, similar to most card games involving a sorting of colours or numbers.

The way to which the person will solve these puzzles will be from using a hand tool to control a non player character. The purpose of not having a player character is to distance the person from being in the game and to see the person as separate from the character rather than them being transported into another world that is separate from the 'real' . On each ring there is a puzzle that represents each stage of hacking the email account, the character responds to these puzzles by morphing into only what is required to help solve each one. This character is taken from the many traits of the crow from Native American mythology. The crow can transform into any being it sees as necessary to get what it wants.

Learning

About my learning goal: My goal changed once I understood that I was in a 7 person group. My goal is to keep the to my idea I had at the beginning of my project because it is this idea that I have always been interested in and is what made me join the absurdity within metaphors project in the first place. My idea was to show this control over the player and have them feel a final revelation at the end that they have been controlled by the game character.

I think I have kept with my idea but not as specific as what I stated before. I haven't kept to this thought of being controlled by the character but still framed it around this final realisation that the player has been deceived into doing something they did not know was happening. I still see this link between my original research work (especially the parasite taking over a insect which is tricked by its senses to do something harmful to itself).

As for how my concept is, I see that it has developed overtime with slight changes to what makes it less recognisable to how it was stated 10 weeks ago. With elements of absurdity in the metaphors my project is more about the unabsurd of the digital impact rather than the actual absurd of the meaning behind solving the puzzles. I see that framing it around this digital infiltration on the real still needs more support if its to be recognisable for the player to see after experiencing it. The context to which my work fits only works once I was able to find similar discussions to how I feel about the digital space having this deceiving impact to our real world.

I also understand that the priority of my work is lacking quite a bit. for instance I focused on some aspects of the game that was not needed for my presentation and I felt that the quality of my presentation was affected because of not so important coding problems spent instead of displaying my work in a professional manner.

Anyway here is my presentation talk to help clarify my work:

My project is about the unseen absurdity of the digital and us and how the digital space has slowly come into our real world space and impacted us. My project is based on looking at that digital space and showing it in a context or way that makes it have the impact on our real world that it normally would not.

With us now spending so much time staring at a screen whether it be the phone, laptop or television it has become apparent that we see it for being normal to spend this much time and effort on this digital space.  

What my project does is allow a person to use a specific digital media source and have it manipulate them with real world impacts in parallel to the unabsurd time use the digital has already taken from the person.

My project starts by pulling a person into a game via personal email by one of his or her own trusted contacts. The email states in a friendly manner that the person can come play this game of which the contact has already tried. It comes with the free voucher code that is required upon entering. This is similar to what you might get on Facebook. For my game it is in a physical space in the studio but would be more realistic to just play online. I will however also have an online version to play.

When the player comes and plays the game they will enter their voucher code to which they will be brought into this digital game. Upon entering the player can do a multiple of things one of which is to zoom out to the full scale of this world like puzzle.  This puzzle is what will be the key to the player’s goal as I have found from research about the importance of having this goal for the player to accomplish.

This ring puzzle uses the image of 3 of the card faces all being hearts. The use of these were not only something most people are familiar with and can feel some want to put it the way that they are used to but also to represent the common use of cards which is sorting them into an order. Games like solitaire or even poker are based around finding a match out of the cards. Now this puzzle by itself is simple enough and so I have included 3 smaller ones, one for each ring to give that bit of challenge and also to bring more meaning to the ‘real’ act that is happening which I will explain soon.

Now for the player to be identified as their own character and rather not a character on screen I have no player character but a tool which is a hand that they can use to move around this digital character on the puzzle. Now this character is what is required to move the puzzle pieces and will transform into only what is needed at the time to get through the world. It starts out as a ball that carries weight to push down the buttons, a dog that picks up newspaper to deliver to letterboxes. The player will do what it can to have control over it, like prodding it or intimidating it. Now once the player is able to figure out how the character needs to be used and what needs to be done to compete them the character will slide onto the next level to solve that ring.

When the world puzzle is solved and the character reaches the middle it will be revealed the true purpose of this game and this character. The whole thing has been designed to gain the information from the player to get into their own email account and send that same email they received to all the contacts. How the game does this is by each ring puzzle representing a part of the hacking method. The first ring is about gaining the password, the second is about gathering the contacts information and the third is about getting the character to send the emails. This is revealed by the background fading from black to white as well as the world becoming black and white with each ring completion to reveal a terminal code based hacking in the background with all the information. The player is left there to be in shock and can only watch as this digital media invades their ‘real’ space.

I have absurdity within my metaphorical game by giving this player the false sense of hope that they will find meaning to their persistence in completing the puzzles and fixing the card faces. I see it, as being more absurd by it causing a real impact outside of the digital, which we think as not being absurd lifestyles for having a large intake of daily digital consumption.

Contradictions

Something I am concerned about is someone seeing a contradiction in my project.

One thing I have noticed is I am both trying to display the game in this manipulative way for the player to think it is just a game, and also show the character as being the parasite sucking the life out of the world. This is difficult because not only am I making the world look darker as the character progresses but also how traditional notions of games have a system to tell the player what is right and what isn't (like having a colour code with green as pass and red as fail).

The buttons that are green when correct and grey when not.

The puzzles on each ring are what prevents the digital character to progress so they should be full of colour and a part of the world when not solved and death like when they have been. If I show them as not solved with colour the player should recognise that they need to do the opposite to solve it. I will look for feedback from others to see how well they pick it up for my final decision.

For the other problem I have decided that what the player is focusing on will be the part that looks colourful and like everything is fine while the outer solved part is to be what is black and grey like it is dying. So the area around the character will be fine but the part before that will not.

The outer ring which is solved is desaturated and out of focus.

Die Hard 3

Over the weekend I tried to incorporate the third puzzle into the third ring. After some thought and understanding of how these blocks would work with the consideration to the rotation of the world I realised that there were too many variables that created a lot of complications.

Die Hard 3 water riddle
http://onthesetofnewyork.com/locations/diehard3/diehard25.jpg

So with more brainstorming I started to remember a riddle in Die Hard 3 that used water jugs. As Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson run around New York, they get to a riddle with a 3 gallon and a 5 gallon jugs. Using both of them they have to make 4 gallon out of the fountain water to defuse a bomb. Here is the explanation and solution. I see this as an interesting puzzle that is not too hard and can be easily coded into my game. I want to make it though not on jugs if water but passageways into the end of the puzzle as if to get the final confirmation of the emails being sent.

I went around asking other students for ideas for the second puzzle as it was still causing me trouble as to what I could use in relation to the gaining contacts of the email hacking part. After some help from Jenny Ko I am now creating a puzzle based on putting colours together. I will have coloured letterboxes and scattered coloured newspapers around the ring to which the player will use the character to pick them up and put in the letterboxes of the same colour. I think this works well as a representation of gaining the information from the emails.

I will go back to using a dog like figure as the creature being a maildog. 

I see that these puzzles are beginning to have complexity that is not required or even understood by the viewer. I think they need to step back and have just the simple explanation to their purpose and allow the audience to take as much meaning from them as they want. This is something I will work on for my contextual statement.

References

How to Solve the Water Jug Riddle from Die Hard 3: 9 steps. (n.d.). Retrieved October 14, 2012, from http://www.wikihow.com/Solve-the-Water-Jug-Riddle-from-Die-Hard-3

McTiernan, J. (1995). Die Hard: With a Vengeance. Action, Crime, Thriller.

Puzzle work

I have been working on the game puzzles over the week and created a quick schedule to have them finished by next week Wednesday. This should give me enough time to practice my presentation for next Friday. The purpose of the puzzles is not only for there to be some challenge for the player to experience throughout the game but to also represent the player's own self hack into their email address. This is why I want each ring puzzle to represent the stages of the hacking.

Starting with the first ring I have made a simple cryptic password which requires the character to change 8 symbols by standing on them until they are all the right symbol. I chose this as the first puzzle because not only is it an easy first puzzle but also gives the perception of the player giving their password to the character for their emails.

Rush Hour board game.
http://onuruludag.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/rush.jpg

I want the third puzzle to represent the player's confirmation to send the emails to all the contacts. This is why after looking at a few puzzle examples I will make something similar to this game Gridlock which is the online version of the original board game Rush Hour. With the character as the block that needs to get through, the player will move the blocks out of the way allowing the character to finally send the emails.

I am still deciding on what the second puzzle should be and  hoping from working on the first and third one I will get some better ideas.

References

Corwin Derkatch. (n.d.). grid lock. Retrieved from http://gprime.net/game.php/gridlock

Rush Hour. (2012, September 6).Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rush_Hour_(board_game)&oldid=505398782

Rush Hour. (n.d.).BoardGameGeek. Retrieved October 6, 2012, from http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5082

How to play a video game

Over the weekend I read the book "How To Play A Video Game" by Pippin Barr. I want to be able to talk about the video game relationship between the player and the character and identify how it is viewed in my project. I am also looking for research of what it means for the player to be playing video games in the first place (from their perspective of what impact the game can have).

What this book discusses is the decisions, experience and impact video games can have for a person. What was important to me was how it talked about the choices the player has when playing. The choice of performing as the game was designed to such as missions and objectives, or playing which is doing anything you want to do that you can in the game. When the player chooses to perform they will make their player character act from instructions they get from the game. The player has a goal and will perform to complete that goal, when this happens the game has control over the player which is brought onto their player character.

How to play video games

This type of performance I feel still separates the virtual space and the real is spoken in a virtual context. It has the player play as their virtual self. What I am doing is having no player character and trying to identify the player and the character separately. In my game the player identifies that the character is a tool that they need to use them to get through these rings and complete the puzzle. The player is performing and by doing so is pushing the game character. As the player wants to solve the ring puzzle they expect a meaning for putting the pieces right. Their perception is to only see the virtual space as having the impact and by the end of it can switch off the machine and not think about it again. The players impact is not only a deceitful one but one that interferes with their real personal space without that impact to the character. Games are usually with purpose for completion. My game does not create that virtual purpose but gives a very literal real one.

References

Awa Press Non-Fiction Publishing New Zealand : How to Play a Video Game. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2012, from http://www.awapress.com/products/published/books/TheGingerSeries/howtoplayavideogame