Moving Parts

Moving Parts is a two-player hybrid physical/video pinball game in which variations in game rules elicit different social interactions between the players. Developed as my thesis project at ITP, it was an experiment in uncovering connections between game mechanics, social relationships, and player experience. I presented the game at the 2009 SIGGRAPH Sandbox Video Game Symposium; the paper from that is here.

Moving Parts consists of a wooden table with players stationed at opposite ends. A digital pinball game is projected onto the tabletop, and players control ball launch and flippers with physical controls.

At the start of the game, players can choose one of four variations—competitive, cooperative, synchronized, and multiball. In each version, players score points by hitting bumpers arranged on the table, progress through levels by hitting each bumper at least once, and, as in typical pinball, use the flippers to keep the ball in play for as long as possible. The rule variations affect whether the score is individual (competitive and multiball) or shared (cooperative and synchronized), and in the synchronized version players share control of all the flippers.

In addition to my usual interest in playing with the boundaries between physical and digital interfaces, all of this was a somewhat arcane way to watch how people play games together, and how changing the way a game works changes how people relate to each other. The game was iterated and play-tested over a couple of months on the ITP floor, and was more extensively play-tested at the 2008 Spring Show.

I was mostly able to collect anecdotes and make some tentative generalizations—some obvious things like ‘players tend to talk more when the game requires less focused concentration,’ but some less obvious, like ‘players tend to talk and laugh more when competing, while they apologize and appear more anxious when cooperating.’ Overall, it illustrated that game mechanics and rules do affect how people socially interact with each other in the context of the game, and not necessarily in simple ways. (Delving into more specifics of how that all works is of course a longer-term prospect.)

The Three Houses

an alternate reality game for two players

The Three Houses is a highly immersive game designed for two players. It was played once in the winter of 2007. Developers and puppet masters included Michael Dory, Leah Gilliam, Kate Hartman, Adam Parrish, Ruth Sergel, Adam Simon, Daniel Soltis, Scott Varland, and Kyveli Vezani.

The game took place over a weekend in the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Through solving verbal and physical puzzles and searching for hidden items, players uncovered aspects of their own and New York's history and decided how to respond to the developing story. Game elements included communication via email, phone, and letter; physical artifacts (including flowers and magic boxes); and live performance.

In addition to presenting a story, the game moved players through different relationships with each other and with the game itself. The players were initially led to believe that they were playing alone, and then that they were playing in opposition to each other. By talking outside of the clearly defined game activities, the players forged an alliance and ultimately abandoned the puppet masters' instructions (and supervision) and sought the game's conclusion together.

Rumpelstiltskin: an Artefactual Performance

developed with Adam Simon

This is as head-achingly academic as I've ever gotten. Rumpelstiltskin is a two-player, gesture-based video game in which players unknowingly act out a pantomime of the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin."

The game is built on a small stage, and players progress through the game by following screen prompts to perform various gestures. Each gesture, however, is part of a choreography, and (theoretically) by successfully playing the game the players also perform a story.













This game was a response to some topics I'd been thinking about that year -- boundaries between play and performance, and between intentional and incidental movements; social interactions within a game and between players and non-players; boundaries of public and private in the context of physical movement. I decided to take a head-on approach and throw all of it together into one monstrosity (while also having some fun with using Processing for color tracking).











I don't think it ever resulted in a coherent performance (in part because the story we chose was too complex), but it was a good avenue for looking at some of those topics--from performativity to how well people translate visual cues into body movements--in a writ-large context.

It was performed at the 2007 ITP Winter Show.