Charade of the Dead
From CIRCA
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Contents |
Overview
Something has gone wrong with the tar sand refinery facilities in North Alberta. We report hordes of monsters coming down South, and the first target is Edmonton. You are on the front line to stop their advance, but for now, you must get through the night yourself. Facilities and building on the University of Alberta campus provide the perfect opportunity to gather material to aid you in your adventure.
Charade of the Dead is a locative game where you must scan QR code in specific nodes provided by the the Layar application. Scan those codes to get words (items) and find their common association (craft the item) to get the word (combined item) you need to get through the night. For example, the story might need you to help a fellow survivor from hypothermia, but the solution is not provided. However, the map indicates that the nodes for this challenge are located at the Biochemistry Lab and at the Emily Murphey House where you respectively scan the words ??matches?? and ??scrap wood??. How those two items might help you find a solution to the challenge?
Combine objects by combining words. Find the solution to the
scavenger hunt charade by crafting the appropriate to survive
another night!
Charade of the Dead in 4 points:
- Survival game in a zombie-apocalypse setting
- Gameplay mechanics based on ??crafting?? items based on the QR
codes users gather
- Narrative embedded with an environment-awareness discourse on oil
exploitation
- Hall of Fame showing the names of players who survived through
all challenges
Project Planning
What's the point of the project? Who are the stakeholders?
The stakeholders of this project include the FarPlay platform, the
GRAND research network and the Office of Sustainability (or other
organization set on environment consciousness-raising).
FarPlay platform: Since this project taps heavily in the culture
of gamers in terms of fiction (zombies) and game play mecahnics
(collecting, crafting, high stakes challenges), it has the
potential of increasing gamers' attention on the FarPlay
platform and ultimately, get media coverage necessary to increase
the number of people interested in contributing to the locative
gaming project.
GRAND research network: Any form of public interest towards
Charade of the Dead will translate into further acknowledgement of
the team that will create it as well as the research network that
will provide the resources to fund it. Additionally, the creation
of the game also provide an opportunity to test the game design
framework that the team already engineered that may result in a
published paper or conference talk. If we reach outside interests,
the game could migrate from the Far Play platform into the hands of
a small scale studio that could help make a ??app?? version of it,
resulting in another to extend public acknowledgement of the GRAND
research network and the team behind the original ideas.
Office of Sustainability (or other organization set on
environment consciousness-raising): Since the initial game's
narrative heavily focuses on a zombie apocalypse that finds its way
into the savage exploitation of non-renewable and
environment-damaging on a global scale, this might attract the
attention of consciousness-raising organization that focuses on
such issues. Should we decide to engage the issue more deeply
during the design process, we could involve such organization to
provide data and statistics that could be embedded in the
game's fiction in the form of complementary information or as
the origin of the game's challenges. This involvement could
help bring more attention to the game and environment at the same
time.
Since the heart of this project lies in the testing of the game
design framework and the promotion of the FarPlay platform, efforts
should be mustered to make locative game that works well, keep it
simple and reaches an end. The main objective is to make an
engaging locative game that gamers can ??get?? easily. If this
works, the project would be much more interesting to present in
academic events as an example of successful locative game made in
an University. All effort towards adding consciousness-raising
content should come afterwards if resources and interest by
organization is there. We don't want this aspect to be a burden
for the initial game design.
Persona Tests
Persona 1 - Zach Romero: Zach is based in Edmonton and is what we
can call a ??power gamer??. He plays a lot of videogames on
traditional consoles and he is always up to date in regards to the
latest tendencies and newest products related to gaming culture.
This knowledge comes from online gaming publications such as Kotaku
and Gamespot. From those news outlets, he heard that the University
of Alberta developed a mobile game using locative technology that
requires users' wits and urban exploration skills to survive a
zombie apocalypse scenario. Living in Edmonton and owning an iPhone
device, Zach's interest was picked by the game and he decided
to try it. The game accompanies his daily routine as he scans QR
codes near him and makes quick detours to reach those that fall
outside where his commuting habits bring him. In the evening, he
tries to complete challenges with the words he got from the QR
codes by solving the charade.
Persona 2 - Janey Raimie: Janey Raimie is a student from the
University of Alberta. She is not really a gamer: she possesses a
single outdated game console that is not used often. However,
Janey, like most students, has a smartphone that allows him to got
on the net and use augmented reality applications. Janey is curious
about new technologies and what she can do with them, but has never
really tried locative applications before. Through the
University's news outlet, she hears about a locative game that
uses her phone to access a QR code-based series of challenges while
following a zombie apocalypse-themed narrative. Janey is intrigued
by this concept and decides to install the game and try it for a
while. She does not go out of her way to scan QR codes too much,
but having tried the game, she knows more about how locative
application work and she will apply this new knowledge with her
phone use in the future.
Persona 3 - Alex Johnson: Alex is a resident of Edmonton and works
in the city's downtown. Alex is married and has a happy life
communing to work in the weekdays and staying at home on weekends.
He owns game consoles and mobile devices that allows him to check
his email and social media information wherever he goes. One day,
he notices a weird signs on the front of one of the buildings he
often goes to an decides to take a closer look. Under the sign is a
small paragraph that says that this sign is part of a locative game
called Charade of the Dead where users scan codes to complete
challenges in a zombie-apocalypse narrative setting. It just so
happens that Alex is a big fan of zombie-related media such as The
Walking Dead and Resident Evil, the game's premises has him
hooked. Owning a mobile device, he signs up for an account and
starts integrating the game to his daily routine, aiming to achieve
completion and confirm, once again, that he would be alright in the
event of a zombie disaster.
Survey of Ressources
Programming: The barebone framework of the game would be
relatively simple to implement. Each challenge would start with an
expository narrative along with a map showing where the QR codes
(two or three per challenge) are located. Each challenge page
should welcome player to put the answer of the charade in a small
text box. The webpage should verify if the input provided is the
correct word to clear the challenge. If so, the user advances to
the next challenge page. This is the most basic functionality that
the game would require.Additionally, we could think of a ??save??
function for all QR code gathered. Once discovered, the words
associated to any QR codes would display in a sort of ??inventory??
page, easily accessible for future reference. This would help
players have everything they need to complete the challenge in a
single spot (no need to take notes separately).
Hall of Fame Feature: In order to add a reward to the
completion of the game, a Hall of Fame feature could be
implemented. This page would display the name of all player who
sucessfully completed the game along with a comment on their
experience. Depending on the capabilities of the fAR-Play platform,
this could be integrated to the game's main interface.
Environment-damaging practice awareness: One of the prospect
of this project would be the integration of an
environment-awareness discourse to the game's fictional
narrative. This discourse would be implemented slowly throughout
the narrative: while the first challenges should mimic a standard
zombie-apocalypse themed survival scenario, the latter challenges
should focus on the exploration of the origins of the disaster tied
to the infection of the population living around the tar sands
area. Ideally, the last challenges of the game should make use of
the knowledge acquired in the previous discourse focused expository
elements in order to craft the necessary items for both the
player's survival and to bring the game's narrative to a
satisfying end in regards to the world in general.
The creation team should ask the help of the Office of
Sustainability in order to gather the necessary empirical
information that could make the backbone of this part of the
project. In the event that their are interested in getting involved
in the project, they could counter-verify the final version of the
narrative to confirm if the fact presented are correct and if the
game could be integrated to a large environment-awareness plan on
their part. Complementary information on global warming and soil
contamination that would not directly be part of the narrative
could also be implemented in the final project to fulfill that
purpose.
Integration of narrative and information: The game's
success would depend largely on how engaging the narrative is and
how tightly woven its environment discourse is. To fulfill that
purpose, we could ask for graduate students in the English or
Comparative Literature departments to provide an short original
narrative separated in several chapter that takes place in a
zombie-apocalypse. The subject matter is not particularly difficult
to grasp and it would be the chance for a group of student to
demonstrate skills in creative writing as their work would be
credited as due.
Idea - fictional blog website: It was suggested that the
project could make use of a fictional website to deliver critical
plot information related to the environment consequences of oil
exploitation, similarly to Jane McGonial's game I Love Bees.
The idea would be that a specific challenge of Charade of the Dead
would require players to combine words found in a fictional blog
instead of using locative QR codes. The basic gameplay idea would
remain mostly the same: users must look for specific words within
the blog entries based on several hints. After identifying the
words, the user must then type them in the command line in order to
complete the challenge. This part of the game should not be
especially challenging, but should mainly have players read through
what could be a personal account (or an fictional activist blog)
relating how the ??zombie apocalypse?? came to be (until then, the
player is left without background information on the event of the
game so that information could be gradually integrated, hopefully
making the game more directly engaging). The blog should relate the
events while integrating an easily readable account of how long
term damage are enacted on the land where tar sand exploitation is
done. The objective is that this small interlude in-between regular
missions should be the climax of the environment-awareness goal of
the project where users acquire information on sustainability for
themselves.
In order to make this idea possible, we will need a server onto
which host the website as well as a programmer in order to build
the basic framework the fictional blog. The website is meant to be
static so that all users have the same experience while trying to
complete the challenge.