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.