#muse based design

So there’s a thing I noticed, It might be just me, but people who never drove a motorcycle had a harder time for about 3 mins figuring out how the game works. One of the goals of my game was to make something completely accessible by a large variety of people, even those who do not like games in general. It’s a fun activity after all, with little elements that make it overtly gamey in any way. 

But the Motorcycle theme, even in the sort of double abstraction that my game has seems to have, sort of works out. It’s interesting, considering its an abstraction of a fantasy. It would have been more ‘realistic’ in a way if a Button is used to accelerate. Sure, most motorcycles are accelerated through a rotating handle, some others have small pedals for acceleration. However, one could say the mode of acceleration in a motorcycle resembles more the pressing of a button or the pulling of a switch than the screaming your lungs out.

My Game, therefore, is a re-imagining, of an imaginary mode of driving. Sort of like an Imagine-ception. It does not seek to abstract in an operable  form the act of driving a motorcycle. It seeks to abstract the act of Imagining that you are driving a motorcycle. That is kind of fascinating, and the actual reality of it only hit me now. 

That’s where the accessibility and the wide appeal comes from, because although not everyone has driven an actual motorcycle, or is capable of doing so, everybody can Imagine that he/she is driving a motorcycle, and the most frequent way where one ‘Plays’ as though he is driving a motor vehicle is by assuming the driving pose and making the characteristic engine sound. 

Sometime last week, I went to a biker’s gathering at the Local Moto Guzzi Club. I took my Game with me. We ate pizza, they sung Kareoke, then I asked them if they wanted to try my game.. 

It wasn’t the easiest going of all, the think is when there is a LOT of chatter in a small room the controls may not respond as well. Espescially if the player keeps a constant note, the game has trouble isolating it from the chatter. It’s easy to notice, the ones with a voice that blends in with the rest of the chatter, is the hardest to detect.. my voice seems to have least of a problem with that. 

I made a video of it.. Here it is.

My Pseudo-probes have returned!! Lets see what we got. Actually I believe it would make more sense to recap what we asked for first. As I don’t think I have clearly specified it yet:

List of Most important items you need to take on a motorcycle journey.

List of crappy things that can happen to you on a motorcycle journey.

List of Great things that can happen to you on a motorcycle journey.

5 photos of the most memorable moments of the trip. Good or Bad does not matter.. Just memorable.

Anything else you feel you should add, or would like to put in. 

I added that last point because I wanted to allow a certain sense of freedom. I had to keep in mind here that I am completely un-cultured when it come to motorcycle journeys. I understood from the beginning that adding that last question would mean that because there is no specificity it would return no result, however, giving my muse the freedom at this point was important. I made sure to tell him that these are guidelines, try to follow them to help you, but if at any point you want to slightly deviate you are free to do so.

In the end, my muse did not deviate all that much. He followed the instructions, all 5 of them pretty closely. One thing I noticed though, is that he didn’t spend too much time pondering about these. I saw him working on it a total one 1 time, the next day after I gave him the tasks. Two days later he gave me two lists and told me, “the other material is on it’s way, you just wait” 

When they went on the journey last summer, were 3 people. What I didn’t know was that one of them had an action camera attached to the handlebars at some points in the journey. A few days ago, this friend of his showed up at my place with an external hard drive. “You have 30 Gigs of photos and footage of the trip there”. I stared at him for a moment, I realized he would need to stay here for a few minutes at least until all that copied onto my hard drive, so I invited him in for a coffee.

At this point then, I’m left with these –

  Three handwritten lists of good stuff and bad stuff that can happen on the journey.

The actual checklist that my father used to go on the trip, with all the items he took and with the names of the people who had them. This thing followed him all the way to the north cape.

A DVD with photos of the trip (I know I asked for 5, but I got 3,000 instead)

A 30 GB folder with more photos and a little bit of footage

    Yesterday my dad came up to me and said: “Dave, what you have is only a little bit of the video, because he forgot to copy most of it… he will bring me the rest of it next week”

What I’m afraid of is how the heck am I going to go through all that video and choose the good stuff.. most of it is just… long winding roads with mountains in the background.. or else.. im sure I can do something cool with a video like that… hmmm mmm mmm

 One thing that I noticed is that Dad, really really has a managerial sort of look towards things. Firstly, the things that he needed to do himself, he did them quick and in one go. No questions asked. Secondly, HE STILL HAD THE CHECKLIST HE USED ON THE TRIP!! Thirdly, he delegated the work! Whatever he did not feel like doing (looking through photos to find the best 5), he called a friend and delegated the work to him.

Maybe, i’ll end up using that when making the game.. I think he would enjoy being overseeing everything, making sure that all is working well.. 

we’ll see

In a previous post, I spoke about my considering choosing my grandma as a muse for a game. That contact I had with her showed quite an interesting option. Designing a game for a granny would be fun and definitely a different thing to explore. However, I do not want to simply settle on that without considering a few more possibilities.

Which brings me to my Dad. 

I knew that if I asked him what he would like a game made about, he would undoubtedly say a loud resounding "Motorcycles!". And that's okay, I was prepared for that. I knew there was no way in avoiding that, no use putting the words differently. What he suggested after that though, is what I was not expecting.

My Father, about 4 years ago, a little before turning fifty, suddenly woke up one day and decided that he would now like to become obsessed with motorcycles. It was sudden and unexpected. He had owned a motorcycle in his 20's and had mentioned it sporadicly here and there, but there was no sort of foreshadowing for what seemed like a spontaneous, impulse thing. 

Fast forward a few months and my dad is president of a biking club and a full on "Motorcycle Activist". He became involved in international activities and started organising all sorts of events. Last year though, my dad did something that I have to say, is pretty cool.

He took his relatively small 750cc motorcycle and drove from the southernmost part of Europe (Malta) all the way up to the highest point (most northern) in Europe accessible by land - the North Cape (Norway)... and back! No less than 15,000 km, without support vehicles, just two friends, also on motorcycles. They camped up in a different place every night and drove through most of the morning. It took them a little over a month.

He asked me to make a game about it, to commemorate their journey, his biggest adventure. 

There is just so much stuff in something like that. Themes of epic adventure, combined with mid-life crises and the beauty of childlike obsession, slotted into two slices of the white bread of everyday life. 

I said nothing for a while and thought about it.. and then told him;"I like it, at least in this journey you don't get Dysentery"