So it has in fact been a while since I’ve been blogging here, but I do have some new content to update with. During the yearlong Game Development Workshop project, my group members and I have developed a game known as Medium Rare. I have been updating you all on this in both the team blog and this space as well. Since I am in fact a 4th year student at this school, I am currently enrolled in a course named “Special Topics in Game Development & Entrepreneurship” yea, you’re probably wondering what it’s all about since it’s a pretty vague course title. In this class our main focus of study was Serious Games. This is in fact a topic I’ve explored in an earlier class with Dr. Kapralos.
Here’s a bit of history, two years ago when I was enrolled in “Computer Graphics” now being taught by Dr. Hogue and called something else, I was in fact assigned to develop a serious game that would be able to teach and entertain individuals interested and currently diagnosed with Diabetes. We learned the various techniques to developing a serious game and eventually came up with a Maze style game. The game was called “Defeating Diabetes”. The player would go through the maze with a limited amount of spaces, representing their sugar level. On the maze, there were also objects that the player could pick up on their way through the maze that would increase their sugar level, such as juice, meat, fruits and other types of foods. Each item had its own value of health that it would give you, and the player would have to make it to the end while maintaining its balance.
Here's a little screenshot of it, keep in mind this is from 2 years ago where we were being taught completely different stuff. This is made entirely from OpenGL and C++....not even any Maya Models:
What’s my point? Well I’m basically going to talk about the design aspect of a serious game. Our current game that we are required to create for this class is a serious game that is audio oriented and mainly for the visually impaired…aka blind. The game is called sound maze…here’s a picture of the main menu:
You’re probably wondering why it looks all flashy and graphic. During our study of this special topics course, we learned that in order to develop a successful serious game, it is important for developers to both capture the player’s attention and educate them at the same time. Most critics would claim that serious games and simulations are not really considered games at all, but really just multimedia tools used for digital based learning. Is this necessarily true? By developing our game the Sound Maze, I have in fact learned many things about the visually impaired and about sound in general… first let me explain the game.
The game plays in first person as the player proceeds through a maze based on the sounds emitted from different objects. There are floor switches at certain points in the maze that the player must step on in order to open doors within the maze, and also a final goal sphere that emits a sound to guide the user to the finish. If anyone was in Dr. Kapralos’s class today you may have seen our demonstration. We used many different sound effects, one being the main background song that was playing. Some other sounds include Beeps and tones of various pitches that would inform the player of where a switch is and also once a switch was activated. There were collision sounds depicting whether or not the player was touching a wall or had collided into a wall also. This game should be played with headphones in order to experience the 3D sound. The game should also be played with your eyes closed, which we did in fact playtest with.
Upon play testing, I got cocky thinking I could half ass the maze simply because I knew which directions to go since I made the level. Was NOT as easy as I thought, I ended up getting lost several times because I was just trying to rush through it. Most players will find the maze somewhat difficult, though we do have different mazes that cater to different age demographics. I soon discovered that in order to get through this maze I would in fact have to take my time. Once I restarted from the beginning, I found it difficult to focus on the beeping noises of the switch, though I did know which direction it was coming from… so I decided to hug the walls to the left and proceed. I would have to stop once I collided with a corner. I slowly moved up and heard the beeping noise get louder. Several minutes later I reached my first switch and heard the satisfying tone. Seconds later, I heard another beep noise and ventured over to find that one… this process repeated until eventually I heard the goal sphere, there was a significant difference in the sound that it emitted, but it seemed SO far away. I did eventually complete the level, properly, with my vision blocked.
By being both the player and the developer, I learned first that being visually impaired does not prevent you from playing and enjoying video games. Just because a game is considered a serious game or an educational game it does not mean it can’t be fun or challenging. The gameplay that we created was in fact effective, because once I realized I did not know what I was doing, I eventually had to think and pretend I was actually blind in order to get to the escape. I think a blind person can in fact use these skills in their everyday lives. In our presentation today we did in fact compare our game to a real life scenario of a traffic light. Imagine a blind person waiting to cross an intersection, nowadays we actually do have those beeping countdowns that let the visually impaired hear when it is safe to go. In that scenario, the individual would hear background sounds of traffic and people talking, walking and doing whatever they please. The skills that have been taken from our came can be applied here since they would be focusing on the sound of the traffic stop… Yes I know it’s a very large comparison… what generally makes a serious game good, is the fact that there is balance between both effectiveness and fun. Making a game about a traffic intersection does in fact sound quite boring right? Generally we would have to make the game look amazing in order to really capture the player’s attention, this was really difficult because our players would have no sight. I think the whole fun factor differentiates this from being a serious game rather than a simulation.
The sound maze is actually pretty cool if anyone is actually interested in trying it. We do have to polish it up a little bit for the coming due date. Tweet/Facebook/E-mail me if any of you would want to try it out. I will upload pictures of the game very shortly… but it won’t really show much since you’re supposed to be blind. :P
I will also be uploading my Demo Reel on this blog so check it out, I definitely need to add more to it, any thoughts and feedback would be great.
This will probably be my last blog post for the year, if you’ve been following this at all thanks a lot, I assume we will be blogging again next year! Here’s to a good summer. See you again in September.
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