Gaming and Experiencing in a Broader Horizon

In the growing fusion of different art forms and different fields, the exploration of creativity has become more varied and diverse, and games, as the "ninth art", with its gameplay and broad audience, have attracted countless outstanding designers and artists from other fields. They are providing a constant stream of freshness for games, and from their perspectives, we can be inspired to develop a broader and fresher gaming experience.

1. Better to play together than to play alone: designing to build relationships

In the field of community design, the design revolves around the relationship between people and people, and people and the environment, where the game is the means and community development is the ultimate goal, and this transformed design is based on local cultural background and geographical environment, so that people become part of the community through a game, and the community culture is stored and transmitted in individual memories. In this way, the presence of the game is diminished, but the "playability" is greatly increased by the presence of people.

Arima Fuji Park, located in the remote mountains of Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, features a nature learning center and a nature garden, and is a park both for fun and learning. Designer Ryo Yamazaki invited the neighborhood residents most likely to visit the park in the future to discuss the vision for the park and lead the children to enjoy it. This kind of collaboration not only leads local people to imagine and expect about the future park but also activates the creativity of the children and gives full play to people's biggest latent ability. In an invisible way, the connection between the community residents is strengthened, as they come together to conceive and practice "play", and continue to play through friendship.

NetEase's Harry Potter: Magic Awakened also uses this technique, grouping players into different dormitories and encouraging them to invite and lead others to join the game. Through such "playing together" mechanics, the engagement of users is also invisibly increased. When people and friends are together, as long as they are given entrance to protect their autonomy, they will have fun with each other spontaneously, such as decorating the dormitory and taking pictures together, and players will spontaneously make the game more fun in a pleasant environment.

2. The intersection of reality and virtual: how space and technology develop gaming experience

In many cases, interactive installations are very similar to video games. Still, the difference is that the former allows for more various interactive operations, and when the players become the rule makers, they have the power to define what is "most fun". dongqi Architects has built a light, tensioned structure at an intersection that looks almost invisible from a distance. Refresh Together, the beautiful work releases fragrance by lifting up the hood on the stand column, providing an olfactory enjoyment for strangers who walk by. In fact, the height of the installation makes it impossible for children to trigger the fragrance, but surprisingly, children will continue to jump and try to lift the hood, and these movements are close to dancing, far beyond the movements that the designers originally envisioned, and the dancing blend in well with the originally inclined structure of the columns.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild, by its subtle and unique system, provides a variety of mechanisms and tools to accommodate players to explore freely and creatively. For example, the stasis launch is generally used for puzzle solving in the game, but it is not impossible to use it as a vehicle. Some players developed a new method called "super launch", can make Link fly in the air at high speed in a long distance. A player named Zant has put out a tutorial on how to do this, so if you want to pass through in a limited amount of time, you'll have to learn how to do this. Even if just try to see how far you can actually fly, this "super launch" is also very interesting.

The feeling of reality has always been an important part of the gaming experience, and technology plays a key role in this. For example, with a unique haptic feedback system on the PS5 handle, the vibration feedback delivered to the palm of the hand can be more diversified, which is extremely significant for the sense of immersion in the game. In the game experience of Astro's Playroom, when you control the robot walking across the beach, the handle will give you feedback of a soft feeling of the sand with "takh-takh"; when you swing attack, the vibration will be short and powerful; if you pull a rope and jump into the water, the vibration will simulate the tension from loose to tight and the supportive buoyancy of the water.

In Call of Duty, the trigger button will provide different resistance to the finger according to the type of firearm, and it will also simulate the shaking of the barrel. I believe that in the future after the technology evolves, there will be more interesting gameplay based on it.

3. Meaning of thoughts: Games as means, thoughts as end

The developers of Disco Elysium, once said, the idea that games are where humanity is won or lost is depressing, video games are the new battleground for the human mind but are super undefined and with no borders yet.

In the commercial environment, the cultural connotation and social critique of games are easily ignored by the result-driven design, and once it is emphasized, it’s easy to make games like preaching. But the good thing is that more and more independent artists start to use games as a medium to convey their thoughts, adding color to the diversity and developing the thoughtfulness of games.

Seeing CO2 is an open-world game project from the design studio Extraordinary Facility that uses gaming as a media to explore how the invisible data of carbon emissions can be presented in a more relevant and interactive way. In the online game, players can drive around in a blue minivan and explore a landscape filled with increasingly large black cubes. By driving around the world and watching the giant black cube of CO2 in-game, the virtual experience is designed to help players see and feel how big these emissions really are. Although the designer doesn't consider it a game, "it's more like an article, or a snippet of public information, that happens to exist in the game world. I could have printed it or presented it in animation, but given the dominance of the game world in pop culture right now, designing it in this way is culturally relevant and more effective," he says.

Seeing CO2 brings data visualization to the game, making the infographics playable

From the presentation of social problems to philosophical and humanistic thoughts, learning from these independent artists and learning from the process of transmitting their ideas can help us make more socially responsible games and create game mechanics which are more culturally attached.

For example, Disco Elysium, a role-playing game that has won many awards, and its great success can not be separated from the production team's own experience, as the producer recorded his confusion and loss after experiencing the dramatic social changes in Eastern Europe through the game text. But at the end of the game, it will lead you back to the people themselves, to look at themselves once again, to look at the history of class struggle written on every page, and to recall what we have been fighting for until today.