Ahmaa
An interactive experience which aims to serve as a vessel for the user into his own mind in order to experience it in a different way than usual. I am interested in creating an experience that will give me the illusion of traveling into myself, hopefully I can give any user this experience. The story is not about events occurring so much as it is about describing the sensory characteristics of an imagined environment. My wish is to describe something which is defined loosely enough so that people can fill it with their own constructs but at the same time have a similar sensory experience to that of other users. I am interested in studying how the story affects the emotional state of players. There will be certain ambient conditions and perhaps even a series of steps/ritual before starting to read the story, the purpose of these will be to have the user enter an ideal state of perception and openness to feel the story. I try to avoid talking about things I want people to stop perceiving, like time for example. I also attempt to make the descriptions come alive in such a way that they can be felt by people. The choice of words I use needs to be particularly careful so that they can generate the right feelings in the users. Progressively, the story moves from more concrete to more abstract.
The vast dark ocean blue under the black sky, you can feel the dark blue as it embodies your being… The cool temperature inside the cave where light has never been. You cannot see well, it is too dark to know. The cool underwater which allows you to feel its internal currents as they go through your physical body. You allow yourself to leave it, to immerse yourself in the alternative, the one where it is dark and blue and your heart is cool and your spirit is free. Where the sounds are of life, pure and absolute.
Choice:
– Experience what awaits further. I have opened my heart to live fully.
– Internal forces have not aligned for me to be able to feel as I need to yet.
Kuku
A little orange fluffy ball of emotion named Kuku falls next to you. It makes some squeaky sounds and it rolls a little on it self while it appears it attempts to get itself into a consistent shape. It reacts to the user but it has no face to show emotion. The story revolves around you having to decide what to do with this ball. It doesn’t look at you or react in any other way but sound. The idea of the game is not so much to give the user choice, but rather to make the user feel in certain ways when he makes a choice. If he treats the ball well, he will receive love and will hopefully feel good about himself in the real world. If he doesn’t care for the fluffy ball, he will receive sad feelings which are contagious. The more involved he gets with Kuku, the more it will be able to influence his emotions.
What is this? It is right next to you. A little orange fluffy ball. It has a name tag, it says Kuku. It seems it needs to roll around for some reason, it looks like it is trying to get into a comfortable shape. Maybe you can help it by picking it up and trying to help it fit into its natural shape?
Choice:
– My joy is profound when I see this creature, I will love it.
– I am too busy to help a living creature that needs my help.
I really like your first idea. Describing a sensory experience of looking within yourself definitely piques my interest, and I like that you want to make it ambient. Music clips might enhance the experience, as well. The illustration you included is very nice and fits the feel that I would imagine this game would have.
My only concern is what the choices would be. You say you want the choices to move from concrete to more abstract, but I worry that the player might get bogged down by the abstract language towards the end. Also, how would the game “end”?
Your second idea, Kuku, isn’t quite as strong in my opinion. It’s reminiscent of Tamagotchi. I also think that any ‘pet’ game would hopefully invoke emotion in someone if they mistreat a pet versus care for a pet lovingly. Your first idea definitely seems more fleshed out and interesting.
Ahmaa – This is a very broad idea and will be very difficult to predict the players state of mind as they go through the experience. Perhaps choose a very specific emotion to target and break it down to its most raw form. The visual for this is intriguing. Could the visual be giving the experience rather than the text separated from it?
Kuku – Another difficult one. Visuals would be key for this in my opinion and it possibly is an idea to be explored in another game style. It sounds like you want to evoke emotion with your games so I would recommend your first proposal. Internal emotions are stronger than feeling emotions towards something.
Ahmaa – this seems like an interesting idea and would be really cool if it worked the way you described. I’m not sure about the choices for it though. I don’t know what they would lead to or if it would be fun or interesting at all to go through the “not aligned” one.
Kuku – this one is much less abstract than the first one which I think is good because the user outcome will be easier to control / be more predictable. I’m not sure what the end argument is for the fluffy ball, what’s the plot of the story?
I think your first idea is much more original than the second. I like the idea of making using the story to help the user become more aware of themselves and their senses as they become more engaged in playing. It presents an interesting paradox that you can get so immersed in the game that you lose all sense of surroundings but gain a better sense of your own body. Your example does a really good job of creating this feeling and the use of graphics is definitely a good idea. I think you can further the experience of the game by steering aware from language describing definitive/recognizable surroundings: keep the actual location of the story fuzzy and elaborate just on the body. You can do this using the graphics too: keep using ambiguous but sensory images like the one you posted for example.
Your first idea is interesting, but I feel like it could get very complicated. Trying to find imagery and word use that evokes similar emotions in everyone seems like an almost impossible task. Also, I’m not sure where it could go, in terms of progression. It doesn’t need to be a concrete narrative but right now your only choices seem to be stop and go, which sort of like an audio-recording with minimal interaction.
If your main goal is to evoke emotion, Kuku isn’t as strong as Ahmaa. However, I feel like Kuku has more potential as an exploration into moral obligation. In the example choice you give, picking the second option makes you feel like a jerk, so most people would choose the first. I think this could be an interesting look into morality, although it doesn’t seem to fit your ideas about emotion very well.
I don’t know if Ahmaa is really achievable in the time allotted, it has a huge scope. The problem is that evoking emotion in any predictable way using a narrative that asks a guest to involve themselves with a “sensory” or surreal experience is something that artist have struggled with across many mediums in the past. I’m not saying it can’t be done, it is just a far more difficult project.
Kuku seems like something more achievable, I would be careful about making the decisions so clear cut. One thing I hate about choices in many games is that they seem to make judgements about your actions when they are asking you to make the action. If you try not to lead the guest so much, with sentences like “I am too busy to help a living creature…” then it might be a more enjoyable experience.
The second idea has a lot of promise, and is most likely to move the player if you can make the ball give unexpected/unusual responses. If the responses are too obvious (like “It is happy”, or “It feels rejected), then the player will feel no attachment to the game. You should aim to try to have the ball go through a coherent narrative arc, and not have it randomly move from emotion to emotion.