Inspiration 2: Visualization Inspiration

Well, if you read the post that rude guy made about walking backwards, you already know that I went to Garfield Park for this part of the assignment. Because he spoiled it. Seriously, how rude?

First off, let me say that I am an avid gamer. That said, while I was there I noticed a few things. First off, lots of trees (DUUUH!), which, as a gamer made me think of cover for a First-Person Shooter. Then I thought that so much dense cover would make the game really hard, unless there was a cover-piercing system like in Call of Duty. Then I started thinking of laser tag, and of how much easier it is to react to targets in dense cover in real life than it is in a video game. Actually aiming the weapon yourself instead of with analog sticks makes reacting in that kind of situation a lot more accurate.

I also noticed things like buildings that would offer varied locations/maps/whatever for a shooter, and gazebos that would act like a focal point for the action in the dense foliage.

While we were at the AVL mention was made of ARGs, and using things like goggles to project virtual items onto reality. I was thinking that with that technology and a laser tag-like rig you could make a really amazing FPS that plays out in an actual location with actual people. The difference between this and normal laser tag would be the scale: This could cover extremely large sections of the park; much large than a laser tag game.

Then I started thinking of the other ways this kind of technology and video games could come together, because even though FPS's are awesome, they aren't the only kind of video game that could use this. An RPG could have you, the player, actually be the hero of the story, and could use the goggles to project creatures, stats, etc into the environments. I think the biggest issue with this kind of game would be getting the monsters to behave like actual creatures and not omniscient things that always know where you are; adding the ability to hide from foes would add a lot of versatility to a game.

Below is a link to a site I found that displays the kind of thing I'm thinking about. This guy is making a game that seems to use an Iphone or similar touch-screen device to project objects onto real surfaces. Check it out; I think this is the future of gaming.

http://www.virtuater.com/?p=86