The Intro
Hey y’all. I’ve been thinking about space again. This time I wanna focus on space as an extension of the play experience, rather than the current mechanical limitations placed on the play experience by our available space. More specifically I’ve been talking with my boss about creating an environment in which we can give people basic mechanical interactions/experiences within a well defined and easily understood space so we can have people test the mechanical viability of an interaction in a VR application vs. a desktop application. Part of this post is going to be a pros and cons discussion of the different environments we’ve been exploring, but another part I want to focus on is the idea of “functional space” and how it relates back to VR mainly.
Let’s talk about Space!
So let’s start from the ground up. I want to create a VR space in which these experiments can be acted upon by the testers. Some of the interactions will be 2-dimensional in nature (pushing objects on a plane), while others will be 3-dimensional (holding objects and manipulating them in 3-dimensional space). Relating this idea to The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell, if we look through the Lens of Functional Space, and imagine each interaction taking place in its own zone, and those zones being connected, but independent from each other(with one space acting as a central hub the player returns to after each experiment), we end up with an abstract representation of the Functional Space as something like this:
![First draft of BEC Map](https://sites.psu.edu/andykennedy/files/2020/11/Map1-300x300.png)
Okay, this works, and was what I initially started with, but in talking with Zac it seemed like this wasn’t the exact model he was going for. This model is more reminiscent of Valve’s The Lab, in which each experiment inhabits their own space. This model works really well if you want to isolate an test a specific interaction or mechanic (such as a Fly Through demonstration), but does little to alleviate the spatial dissonance of being in a VR game and seeing a loading screen pop up. While nothing is set in stone, this initial pass showed that the experiences overall may benefit from having them present within the same interconnected world (as least as much as possible) like Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau. In doing so, the abstract concept of the world turns out to look a little more like this:
![Second draft of BEC Map](https://sites.psu.edu/andykennedy/files/2020/11/Map2-300x300.jpg)
Now this is the hope, right? That everything will fit together really nicely in this much larger, continuous space. Unfortunately, this will probably not be the case. For example, a Fly Through is a really cool experience, the idea of flying over a space as though you were a bird is crucial not only in games, but in other media like movies. While the Fly Through is cool, it can be very hard to find an aesthetically pleasing location that also allows for this sort of action (especially if the scene is indoors), so these experiences and their space may not connect to the other experiences’ spaces at all. Hell, it might not even exist in the same space as the other experiences. This means a more accurate representation of the map may look more like this:
![Third draft of BEC Map](https://sites.psu.edu/andykennedy/files/2020/11/Map3-300x300.jpg)
Alright, so what aesthetics would fit over this space. A 3-dimensional, semi-continuous space? Well, I’ve been knocking around a couple of ideas this week, and in future posts I may even add more or further elaborate on the ones presented here, but for now I’ll be taking three ideas I’ve heard and analyzing them using The Lens of Functional Space and The Lens of Holographic Design to make a personal judgement call on their validity. Those three spaces are, a lab, a playroom, and a park.
Space 1: The Lab
So the lab seems like a no brainer right off the bat. It provides a clean, organized space in which these experiments can take place while also appealing to our core demographic (university professors). I mean hey, we already looked at an application that’s trying to do something similar to what we want to do, and they used a lab, let’s just use a lab! And yeah, a lab works, but it’s got some glaring weaknesses.
First off, a lab can become visually sterile and busy very quickly. With even simple components looking complex, numerous, and neutrally colored (think like beakers, bottles, tables, etc.) the whole lab could become very uninviting very quickly. That may contribute to The Lab using completely separate environments for their experiences, which is cool, but kinda defeats the purpose of this being at least a semi connected (continuous) space, since everything would just be segmented into it’s own little region. That’s the second problem with using a lab: lack of interconnectivity. Because the lab exists as a clean environment for things to be tested, the incentive is to test a thing individually and move on, not experience it in relation to other experiences or interactions. Really the lab aesthetic would function similarly to a train station. It would shuttle players from one experience to the other, with them only returning to the space so they could hop off one shuttle and on to a different one, which is definitely not the desired outcome.
Space 2: The Playroom
Alright, what about the playroom. Honestly, I thought this suggestion was strange upon first hearing it, but the more it was explained the more it made sense. Our core design principle is having people engage in basic experiences in a safe environment using either VR or desktop applications. A playroom gives us an easy explanation as to why seemingly distinct experiences would be centralized into a specific location: they would be represented using children’s toys. Children’s toys also provide an easy translation to the mechanics we want to test, as many of them (especially the educational ones) are simply testing the same real world mechanics we are (motor control, basic problem solving, etc.). In addition to being easy to understand and use, the toys and the playroom allow for a level of color and excitement that couldn’t be believably replicated in the lab, so the space would just look a lot more fun and engaging to be in when compared to the lab.
The playroom isn’t perfect, however. Though this is yet to be tested, I have my suspicions that faculty may find the playroom/ early education aesthetic to be condescending and would disengage from the experiences, writing them off as trivial, or a waste of time. Others may find the aesthetic to be obnoxious and again distance themselves from the space. Another issue is the scope of the playroom may be limited. Thinking of some of the larger experiences we’d like to test (appreciating scale, the Fly Through, and the 360 video viewer) finding a thematically appropriate way to represent those things in this space would prove difficult. Even ignoring theme, because the playroom is another discrete space similar to the lab, players would have to remove themselves from it to truly gain beneficial insight from these experiences.
Space 3: The Park
And the final environment is the park. This one evolved from the idea of the playroom when I asked my brother (an accountant) about this problem. I asked him “Joe, where would you put someone if you wanted to have them play with different things, like experiments, but with less expectations.” I know, I’m excellent at explaining things. He thought for a minute, looked at me with eyes still closed, and said “playground”, and then immediately went back to bed. I mulled over that answer, and felt a playground was a good starting point, it got us outside, which was huge, considering this needs to be a semi-continuous experience, and getting people outside is a great way to do that. The playground was good because it also allows us to use the same objects from the playroom example, or keep their framework and design, at least. But I still had concerns that it would come off too childish, so I thought bigger. Why not use a park? Sure it’s much larger than either the lab or the playroom, but it allows for basically all of the experiments to exist within the same space, making our abstract look much more like the second map compared to the third. In fact, it allows us to further nest the experiences, making our model look more akin to this:
![Fourth draft of BEC Map](https://sites.psu.edu/andykennedy/files/2020/11/Map4-300x300.jpg)
And from there we develop a wide array of ways to translate the experiences. Like making a cliff and having the glider there to be the Fly Through, or having a playground for our simple motor experiences, or having huge trees with branches you can climb to experience scale!
Obviously, the park idea has some pretty notable drawbacks. The scale of the project for one thing. Making a park that big while also making parts of it easy to navigate without using a ton of teleporting could be unrealistic. It also requires way more attention to detail on the environment itself, which may be a detriment, as that’s time that wouldn’t be spent refining the experiences themselves.
Conclusion: Why Write this?
So why did I write this? What did I get out of it? I didn’t really come to any conclusions, I just kinda spat out 1500 words and didn’t even answer the title of this post. Well first off it was fun. Breaking down and analyzing the basic structure of fundamental space for this project is fun, since space is so critical to the project. I also did it as a way to keep records. Get my thoughts down and make sure I know where they are when I have to talk about this stuff more in the weeks to come. This isn’t the last you’ll be hearing of the project, and this is certainly not the last I’ll be talking about it, so this essay kinda functions as pre-production for the project.
But I also did it because sometimes it’s good to get out of the editor, get out of the IDE, and just think about your game. It can be really refreshing to think about your game with a new lens and understand what you’re trying to do in the bigger picture, not just what you’re making in the moment.
Leave a Reply