A primarily sound-driven game developed to accompany an interactive game design talk called Playing Along, by Yann Seznec and Dr Niall Moody. Playing Along was a talk focusing on the way small changes to a game can have a sometimes outsized impact on the experience of playing that game.ShoutFight! comprises the main interactive element of the talk, and is designed in a modular fashion so that different elements can be gradually added to demonstrate this principle as the talk progresses.The Playing Along talk and ShoutFight! game have been presented at 2 events to date: The BFI Video Games Day 2018; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.Continue Edinburgh 2018, University of Edinburgh Business School

Moody, Niall

Seznec, Yann-Loic

English

Abertay Research Portal

design documentDocument author: Dr Niall MoodyThis document discusses the design and development of ShoutFight!, a sound-driven game developed together with an interactive talk called Playing Along, by Dr. Niall Moody and Yann Seznec.AbstractPhotographs of ShoutFight!ScreenshotsPlaying Along was an interactive game design talk about the impact small changes can have on the experience of playing a game.The talk discussed physical games and sports, and incorporated ShoutFight! as an interactive demonstration of the principles we covered.Playing AlongWe had 2 main aims in developing ShoutFight! and Playing Along:1. To explore how to integrate games and play into a lecture format, involving audience interaction.2. To explore the design of videogames intended to be played by a large group of people.Research QuestionsSIMON SAYSAN EXAMPLEThe core idea behind the talk is that small changes to a game can have sometimes outsized effects on the experience of playing that game.We use the folkgame Simon Says as our first example.Simon Says is a game that is played throughout the world, but with subtle regional differences. Differences such as the name of the game...Simon Says(trans.: All birds fly high)The rules for Alle Vögel fliegen hoch are almost identical to Simon Says.The game leader makes statements like “All birds fly high”; “All planes fly high”; “All pigs fly high”, and the players have to jump for every true statement. If they jump for a false statement, they are out of the game.Alle Vögel fliegen hochFor myself and Yann, the changes Alle Vögel fliegen hoch makes to the Simon Says formula are minimal, but significant.While the phrase “Simon says” is fairly neutral and not necessarily suggestive of anything in particular, the phrase “All birds fly high”has something of a poetic quality.Such a title, coupled with the action of the players jumping on true statements, almost suggests a longing on the part of the players, a desire to join those birds in the sky.Small but significant changesTo demonstrate this concept of small changes having a significant impact on the experience of playing a game, we developed a videogame (ShoutFight!) around a series of variations on Simon Says.As the talk progresses, we step through these variations, playing the game with our audience.Demonstrating this in practiceBUTTON FIGHTVARIATION #1We started with the simplest version of Simon Says we could think of:2 players are given a button to press, and instructed by the screen to press or release it. When players do what they are told, their score increases.At the end of 30 seconds, the player with the highest score is the winner.Button FightThis particular variation on Simon Says is not particularly interesting or enjoyable to play. It does, however, give us a starting point to build from.From here we moved on to talk about what we could do to modify and improve the game.Our first modification:> Players have to press the button only using their nose.Simple beginningsSTRING FIGHTVARIATION #2Buttons are a very digital input device, with little margin for error. For our next variation we moved to using a modified Gametrak interface.This gave players analogue input in the form of a string that they had to either pull or release, gaining points for following instructions accurately.Again, the player with the highest score at the end of 30 seconds is the winner.String FightWith this variation, the amount of force players are exerting on the string is visualised on screen, and there is a slowly rising threshold on screen that they have to cross when instructed to pull.This made for a more interesting physical interaction than the button variation, but was still not particularly exciting.Modification:> Players have to pull the string with their teeth.Analogue inputSHOUT FIGHTVARIATION #3For our third variation we kept the analogue input but moved from pulling a string to alternately shouting and whispering into a microphone.The screen gives each player a word and instructions to either shout or whisper that word. Coupled with the rising threshold from String Fight, the game requires progressively more effort (and volume) as time goes on.Shout FightAn interesting element in this variation is the words the players are instructed to shout/whisper. While players are told to shout specific words, the software does not actually do any speech detection; it only registers the volume of the microphone’s audio.We do not reveal this to the audience until we have played a number of variations of Shout Fight. Some have guessed while playing, but so far every audience has followed the instructions and shouted/whispered the words they were told to.Speech detection?As the software does not run any speech detection, it would work as well with wordless screaming as it does with shouting words.Shouting words gives us 2 benefits however:1. Novelty. As adults, we do not get many opportunities to shout “Underpants!” in a crowded room.2. Shouting specific words tends to be less tiring than wordless screaming.Why shout specific words?Due to the nature of its input device, Shout Fight provided us with more opportunity for modifications than the previous variations.Modifications:> 2 teams of 2 players.> 2 teams of 3 players, with one member from each team positioned at the opposing team’s microphone to act as a saboteur.Shout Fight modificationsJUICEVARIATION #4We used the final variation (or series of variations) as an opportunity to talk about some of the tools specific to videogames which allow us to modify the player’s experience of playing a game, without necessarily changing the rules or goal of the game.This is where we talk about videogame Juice.JuiceJuice (alternately referred to as Game Feel) is a term used to describe the various elements videogame designers can manipulate to alter how it feels to play a game, without necessarily altering what the player is doing (their actions, their goals).It primarily refers to audiovisual design, though haptics (via rumble motors) do play a part too.What is Juice?A big part of videogame Juice is about making the virtual feel physical, giving the sense that the player’s actions have weight, momentum, impact.This is done through careful use of animation, sound, and screenshake.Done well, Juice can make games feel alive and tangible, and makes simple interactions enjoyable in and of themselves.Why Juice?For this final variation, we split the entire audience into 2 teams to play the shouting variant, and as the game progresses we gradually introduce more elements of juice:1. Detailed Graphics2. Particle Effects3. Animation4. Sound FX5. ScreenshakeJuice in ShoutFight!ShoutFight!’s 6 Stages of Juice:No Juice Detailed Graphics Particle EffectsAnimationSound FXScreenshakeFootage of ShoutFight! finale at the BFI Video Games Day 2018 (click to play)Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_dxBcPV3xYLooking back to our first research question, on how to incorporate games and play into a lecture format, the most successful (and, I think, significant) element of the talk was the structure we developed.The approach of starting with a simple game and iteratively modifying it, while at the same time gradually involving more and more audience members, was a very effective way of demonstrating the impact of small changes in game design.While Playing Along starts similarly to any other talk, it builds over the course of 45 minutes to an energetic, raucous finale, by which point everyone in the room is on their feet and yelling.Reflections: StructureWhile the incorporation of a section on Juice works well thematically with the rest of the talk, the implementation is a bit unusual.Usually when we talk about Juice we are talking about elements with a direct connection to the player’s input (button press, joystick movement, etc.).The nature of the audio input in ShoutFight!, however, means that there’s not much Juice directly tied to the player’s (audio) input. It’s instead largely focused on the game’s UI elements.Without that direct connection, there’s a question of whether the Juice is as effective as it might be.Reflections: JuiceSome things that could potentially enhance the players’ connection with the game:1. Animation, particles and screenshake to better emphasize when the players are shouting. Shouting is an intense physical experience; the game should reflect that.2. Some form of animation to emphasize when the players stop shouting. Your immediate physical response after shouting for a while is to take a breath. If the game emphasized this moment with sound and visuals it could potentially create a powerful physical connection to the game.Reflections: JuiceDesigning a videogame to be played in a physical space with a large number of people poses a number of challenges. Some of the primary challenges include:• Facilitation: Explaining the rules of the game to an audience with varying degrees of game literacy.• Technical: A large audience potentially means a large number of inputs, requiring a complicated technical solution.Reflections: Designing for an audienceWith regards facilitation, the fact that ShoutFight! is incorporated into a talk about the design of the game itself solved the problem for us. In order to talk about our game design choices we had to explain the game in a very structured fashion.On the technical side, we intentionally steered away from complicated solutions in favour of lower-tech, more robust inputs. Microphone input in particular was a very straightforward solution to the problem of getting a room full of people to interact with a videogame together.Reflections: Designing for an audienceShoutFight! was run as part of the Playing Along talk at the BFI Video Games Day 2018 and Continue Edinburgh events.ShoutFight! has been run as a standalone game (minus the button and string variants) at a number of events at Abertay, including IM/MATERIAL #2: PLAYING IN IM/MATERIAL WORLDS, and university Open Days.Dissemination & Impact

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