Congratulations to Erin Reynolds (MFA 2012) and team! Her thesis project “Nevermind” has been nominated as “Most Innovative” at the Games for Change Festival in NYC this summer.

Nevermind is a biofeedback-enhanced psychological horror game in which the player must leave the comforts of reality to explore the dark and twisted world of the subconscious. Nevermind strives to be a compelling virtual experience that leaves the player with the tools to face the stresses of the real world.

The Most Innovative category at Games for Change honors games excelling in creativity and aspiring to bring new ideas into “games for change” – whether through unique game design, technology, or audiences. Creatively and technically experimenting in a manner that may pave new ways.

Great work by all involved!

Check out this Gamasutra article by Kris Ligman on IMGD’s very own Professor Richard Lemarchand: Leaving AAA: Why Naughty Dog’s star designer became a teacher

I just finished some changes to Spacewalk, a networked multiplayer game where you play as astronauts piloting EMUs to explore the exterior of the International Space Station. I developed the game over the course of five days as a prototype for thesis prep (CTIN-542/548). It now supports the Oculus Rift, which alters the experience dramatically. Here is an unedited video of the game in action.

Spacewalk is a networked interactive experience about taking a space walk outside of the International Space Station. Players collectively take on the role of astronauts navigating and exploring the structure of the space station. Spacewalk is an interactive experiment in alternative control schemes, free-form play, virtual embodiment, and metagame communication. Although it connects to other players across the internet, it is intended to be played with people in the same physical space.

You can download Spacewalk for free here: http://spacewalk.spadille.org/

Spacewalk was recently featured on NBC News, the Penny Arcade Report, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Introduction

Extending guest experience beyond the gates of a traditional theme park, and essentially, into guests’ homes, is already happening — through online presence, social networking and other strategic technologies.

Traditionally the guest experience began at the park turnstiles, but that model is changing. Now the strategy is about circular flow that begins when the guest initially considers and begins planning their trip. These new technologies and social mediums help the guest personalize their visit so when they return home they can relive their experience online, customize their memories, and share the experience with their network of friends and family.  In this way, the visit is never truly over, and one visit can connect seamlessly into the next one.

Social Media

Walt Disney was an excellent social networker, and was many years ahead of his time. Before Disneyland opened, he signed an unprecedented deal with the ABC Television Group that allowed him to promote Disneyland via an hour-long television special. The Wonderful World of Disney premiered on October 27, 1954 under the name Disneyland and introduced viewers to the magical theme park he was building on the west coast.  This brilliant act of synergy allowed Disney to air what was essentially a weekly, hour-long commercial for his park, thereby building a fervor that reached critical mass when the park opened the next year— everyone in the country knew about it and wanted to visit it.

Flash-forward to today where many new socially interactive technologies have taken the place of television marketing, all of which can be used to promote and customize a theme park resort experience.  The rise of Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and a myriad of other information streams have saturated the consumer market to the point where major companies have recognized their potential and started to embrace the concept of maintaining an online presence.  A clever example of this is Sea World’s “official” Twitter feed for Shamu, in which they hired a writer to regularly send out witty messages to subscribers that were actually written in the first-person character of the park chain’s aquatic mascot.  These “tweets” are not blatant advertisements and marketing, just clever messages that spread by word-of-mouth and help build brand allegiance over time.

Again, this extended the park experience outside of the turnstiles, as guests could interact with Shamu before their visit, and share their experience long after it.

Exclusive Access

Disney’s Magical Express at the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando utilizes a simple online interface so guests are able to print out luggage tags that they then affix to their bags at the airport before they even depart for their flight to Orlando. The next time they see their luggage is when they step into their hotel room in Orlando. So, Disney takes the tagged bags and delivers them directly to their corresponding hotel rooms that have been booked online.  A fleet of busses is also ready and waiting at the airport to take guests to their hotels. This investment in “courtesy” infrastructure is invaluable, as guests now have a tangible amenity (one less thing to worry about) and no reason to leave the property.

The advent of RFID-wristbands continues the trend of simplifying guest experience by linking everything from a hotel room key to credit card information on a lightweight, waterproof wristband.  No longer do guests have to worry about losing the valuable contents of their wallet, getting their credit cards wet on waterslides, or losing their park admission ticket. With a simple tap of their wrists, guests can charge a meal to their room, rent a locker, or open their hotel room door.  Of course, this wonderful convenience only works for facilities that are integrated into the overall resort. If the same family of guests wants to dine off-property, they would be subject to the inconvenience of cash transactions.

Here we see again that a resort can create an exclusive amenity that provides incentive to stay on-property and helps increase per capita spending, while the end user also wins because their experience is “plussed” in terms of convenience.

Interactivity and Repeatability

We are quickly becoming a videogame culture, where guests expect a degree of interactivity in their entertainment.   The Toy Story Mania! attraction located at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s California Adventure is essentially a virtual shooting gallery where guests ride on a moving vehicle through a physical space, shooting at targets while wearing 3D glasses.  At the end of the ride, guests receive a score that reflects their abilities. The targets are all presented via 3D media on large screens, allowing for the potential of new content updates (different targets, seasonal overlays, etc.) with little or no impact on facility or footprint.  The next logical step, which has yet to be taken, is user-generated content.

The reality is, guests are already doing this: creating their own attraction soundtracks, audio tours, and in-park Smartphone applications. For example, an ambitious fan and computer programmer has created an App called “Wishing Stars”.  This application is essentially a geocaching overlay mapped onto a physical theme park, in which guests make use of their phones’ GPS ability to guide them to locations in the park where they can answer questions and earn points.  Another fan has created a crowdsourcing App in which guests share information about an attraction while waiting in line, to create a virtual “info board” of up-to-the-minute wait times.

Resort and park owners and operators shouldn’t contest this treasure trove of user-generated content, but actively engage their most passionate fans and embrace this fundamental change in the resort experience.

In the not-too-distant future a great transformation is coming to location-based entertainment design. Imagine the resort of the future where your schedule is itemized via smartphone and every cast member and audio-animatronic figure knows your name via RFID ticketing.  All of a sudden, the illusion of a personalized experience has become reality.

Currently, designers and engineers are embedding this technology infrastructure into resorts worldwide, even if it won’t be utilized in the immediate future.  Although it might not seem to make financial sense to add “unnecessary” infrastructure cost up-front, it will pay off in dividends when the resort has a competitive advantage by allowing for quick implementation and more immersive integration of new technologies.

Conclusion

Many of the amenities described above are already in use in theme park resorts around the world, but they are still in their formative stages.  The technology is proven, but successful large-scale implementation of it is still in its infancy.  It is time to aspire to make that next leap in location-based technology integration.  The right touch of technology will enhance and complement a guest’s experience, rather than detracting or worse, distracting them from the carefully-created environments that they are visiting.  When the right mix of non-intrusive technological integration is achieved, it will provide a more complete and inviting guest experience.  More importantly, it will be the amenity that separates whoever does it first from all other resorts.   Imagine personalized, concierge-level service for every guest — eliminating stress and offering guest service that can’t be beaten.

GDC ::
Two things I did in San Francisco really stuck with me this year: I went to SFMOMA and the Walt Disney Family Museum to see the exhibit on the making of Snow White.

SFMOMA really as inspirational because it brought me back in touch with my desire to make things. I feel that most of the time in game design, I get caught up in the system of what I’m trying to create and I lose track of the actual message behind the artwork.

My favorite exhibit was the work of Lebbius Woods, a futurist architect who had a huge influence on both the film and game industries.
Wood’s architectural work is a direct influence of the world of City 17, from Half-Life and Dunwall, from Dishonored.

I feel that I get my best ideas for interactive work from outside of the game industry . . . after all Shigeru Miyamoto’s inspiration for Zelda was exploring caves as a child. I feel that it’s very important to interact with the world you are creating for, and my visit to SFMOMA was the perfect excursion to get me in touch with other types of culture.

I also had an amazing visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum where I saw an exhibit on the making of Snow White. It was really interesting to see the trial-and-error process that they went through to get the right story and look to the film. Despite the age of the film . . . I learned some great techniques that I’m anxious to try out in my next interactive process. For example, to increase the feeling of speed as the camera “whipped” from one shot to the next. The background artist painted portions of the scene skewed, so the diagonal lines would add a sense of quickness to the transition shot.

These camera tricks really made me realize how much the animators in Snow White studied the cinematic techniques that were available to them. In other words, they got really good at “faking” the characteristics of film cameras.

In Interactive land, I think that it is important to remember that everything the player sees can be designed. We don’t have to “push more polygons” or render with better lighting effects. We can simply be more intentional in the design of the experience.

Honestly, these two museum visits got me more excited than any of the GDC announcements / talks this year.

I’ve been spending too much time in game design land, and it was great to get out of the mindset for a little while.

USC Interactive Media & Games faculty Jeremy Gibson and students from our MFA program play Ninja in front of Blooming Flowers, an interactive installation which uses the newly developed Full-Body Scrubber. And the audience became performers shaped as Lego blocks in front of the other procedurally-generated, real-time, ‘fun-house mirror’ at Rhythms and Visions 2, April 26, 2013.  Here’s what it looks like from the other side of the screen.

Topic:               IMD Project Showcase
Time:               Wednesday, May 1, 6-9pm
Location:        USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122 [ZML]

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :
- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile Experiences (Essen)
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson/Lemarchand/Essen)
- CTIN 492 Experimental Game Topics (Lemarchand)
- CTIN 499 Special Topics: Games for Animation (Brinson)
- CTIN 501 Interactive Cinema (Kratky)
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity II (Kontopolous)

- CTIN 590 Directed Research

and more….

Food and Drink will be provided starting at 5:45.

The Animation division would like to invite the Interactive Media and Games division to an informal workshop with their Rhythms+Visions guests, Davide Quayola and Natan this Friday at 10am in SCB 104. You will see their process and learn how they create their live/real-time work. They will have everything set up so we can gather around, look at screens, ask questions and discuss!

Bachus-Summers Fund for Innovation in Interactive Entertainment Established

Video game industry pioneers and USC alumni Kevin Bachus and Chanel Summers have made a donation to the USC School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media & Games Division (IMGD) to establish The Bachus-Summers Fund for Innovation in Interactive Entertainment. The gift was announced today by School of Cinematic Arts’ (SCA) Dean Elizabeth M. Daley and will establish a fund for student support to be awarded to students showing initiative in the emerging fields of interactive and immersive media.

“There has never been a greater opportunity than there is today for talented and passionate individuals to come together and create the legendary game studios of tomorrow,” said Bachus. “The Bachus-Summers Fund for Innovation in Interactive Entertainment is meant to do two things: to recognize and reward the most innovative work by a student in the Interactive Media & Games Division and to encourage that student to build their own future, for themselves and for others, after leaving school. It is our expectation that the recipients of this Fund will be provided with the tools to build lasting creative and commercial success.”

“I’ve seen first-hand that the most meaningful work is always achieved when visionaries take risks and break boundaries,” said Summers. “Creative and talented individuals must be allowed to realize their dreams, regardless of resources. When thinking about this Fund, it was critical to us that it be used directly to support the efforts of tomorrow’s creative and entrepreneurial leaders.”

One of the best-known and most highly respected executives in the video game industry and an active investor in the digital media sector, Bachus was one of the original group of four individuals at Microsoft Corporation who came up with the idea for the Xbox video game system, an initiative that grew in part out of his role as group product manager for the DirectX family of Windows technologies. Bachus currently serves as Senior Vice President, Entertainment & Games Strategy, for Dave & Buster’s, Inc., an innovator in the restaurant and entertainment industries. Before joining Dave & Buster’s, Bachus co-founded or held executive-level positions at a number of companies in the technology and video game industries, including Capital Entertainment Group, the video game industry’s first independent production company; Nival Interactive, the largest independent game developer in Eastern Europe; and Bebo, one of the world’s largest social networks.

Summers began her career as a pioneering designer and producer of video games, developing a wide range of innovative products at a variety of early industry-leading game companies. After supervising the release of Microsoft’s first multiplayer internet game, Fighter Ace, Summers was selected to become that company’s first Audio Technical Evangelist, launching innovative audio technologies and dramatically increasing the use of Windows as a platform for audio creation. With the inception of Xbox, Summers was tapped to help design and promote the audio capabilities of the new system and in the process created the industry’s first support team for content creators. After leaving Microsoft, Summers co-founded Syndicate 17, an audio production house based in Seattle and Los Angeles, and has also recorded and toured extensively as a highly sought-after professional drummer. A frequent lecturer at music and technology industry events as well as leading educational institutions around the world, Summers also currently teaches the popular course Audio Expression for the IMGD Division.

“The support of alumni and industry pioneers like Kevin and Chanel is incredibly important to our students and program,” said Tracy Fullerton, the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of the Interactive Media & Games Division at SCA. “IMGD is very much about community, and we all benefit from the experience and knowledge that they bring to their interactions with students and to the community as a whole. Bachus/Summers Fellows will be selected not only for their creative talent, but also for their entrepreneurial drive. And they will be exposed, via our advanced projects classes and our new startup classes, to the skills, people and ideas that they will need to take those ideas from innovative student projects to marketable products and companies. We expect these Fellows to graduate with a head start and prepared to launch their projects professionally.”

USC IMGD!  A game I designed with Jesse Vigil, IM(G)D alumnus, is now available on iOS and Android.

The game is called FREEQ, and it is an audio-adventure game that turns your phone into a device that intercepts radio signals form the future.  Listen in, and manipulate information to see what happened to bring the world to the brink.  FREEQ is recorded in the style of classic radio plays, and was also worked on by IM(G)D alumni Diana Hughes and Mike Stein.  Also, our own Mark Essen is a voice in the game, if you can find his character.

Anyways, please check it out!  Here’s the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqTC5Z_Rkmg

iOS link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/freeq/id577659568?mt=8

Android link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.psychicbunny.freeq&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5wc3ljaGljYnVubnkuZnJlZXEiXQ..

Thanks,

Sam Roberts