Hugh Davies will be in the lab from Monday onwards working on his PhD on the alternate reality game The Darkest Puzzle. Hugh has produced alternate games for the ABC and has extensive international experience in the games research arena from Europe as well. Welcome Hugh!
Wouter Walmink is an amazing designer who has done fascinating exertion systems and games in both Australia (CSIRO) and in the Netherlands, where he co-founded Studio Ludens that attracted prestigious clients such as Philips and TUE. He will be joining the Exertion Games Lab on Monday, working on a distributed exertion game for teenagers. Welcome Wouter!
A word from Wouter
Hi there!
I am super-excited to be part of the Exertion Games Lab as of today (29-8-2011). A quick introduction: I’m an interaction designer with a passion for physical interaction. I love empowering people and helping them discover their own talents. In the past 5 years I have been running my own company studio:ludens with Alexander Rulkens, developing online design tools and products in the emerging market of mass-customization. Last year we created an interactive installation called ‘Flosculus’ with Philips and Little Mountain (watch the video).
Among others we developed a pattern-making tool called Repper. An early online version of this tool generated over 100.000 patterns made by people all over the world, browsable at ColourPatterns.com. Have a go at it yourself with the latest version in the online demo.
In the next months my aim is to develop an exertion game that will knock your socks off. I’ll try and merge new interaction styles into exercise gameplay, mingle new themes with old-school fun and make magic happen.
This project is all about making something amazing —> more brains involved = more amazingness. So if you’re in for a brainstorm session, want to share your wisdom with me or join in, contact me at wouter@walmink.com.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will be talking about Exertion Games and give a demo of Hanging off a Bar on Tuesday, 16 Aug 2011, 12.30-1.30pm in the new Exertion Games Lab at RMIT’s 9.1.27. Everyone welcome.
Today we showed Hanging off a Bar at RMIT’s Open Day 2011, lots of people learned about game design while exercising with our game! Everyone enjoyed the experience, which was very pleasing!
Last night we created a new and improved version of “Hanging off a Bar” in a 1-night hackathon. The goal of the game is to “hang on” as long as you can, not letting go and falling into the virtual river below you. There are some rafts coming by from time to time, on which you can jump to rest, but you have to be quick, as they keep moving and you have to jump back up onto the bar. Winner is who can hang on the longest. We will show this game at the Open Day and use it afterwards to explore the relationship between exertion investment and particular game elements.
Thanks for contributing to today’s brainstorming session for the peace.facebook initiative, it was great fun!
Attached is a picture of the board where we posted all ideas. They will now be summarized and put forward to the peace.facebook initiative and then we’ll turn them into some great student projects.
In the User Experience in Games lecture organized by the Exertion Games Lab, students were challenged to redesign the hand-dryer experience in a playful way. They came up with some amazing ideas on how to turn a task-focused activity (how can we dry hands faster and more effectively?) into an engaging play experience, see the pictures.
Eberhard Graether, a very talented multimedia student from Austria specializing in games in augmented reality, will join the Exertion Games Lab later this year. We are very excited to have him on board.
We are having a brainstorming meeting on Fri, 5th Aug, 3-4pm in 14.11.04 to think about a mobile exertion game that we can bring to the table for peace.facebook.com. If interested, get in contact with Floyd.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller gives a talk on “User Experience and Games” on 29 July 2011 to the Design degree students from Jeremy Yuille at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. 13:30-16:30 in room 9.03.04b.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller gives a talk on “Research in Games, are you serious?” on 26 July 2011 to the Honours degree students at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. Venue is 56-07-98 from 4.30 to 5.30.
Interested in getting writing done? Every morning, 9-10, Mo-Fr, the Exertion Games Lab offers the Writing Club, where you are invited to join others to “just write”, whether it be an academic paper, grant application etc., motivated simply by fellow writing-sufferer’s presence and the feeling of not writing alone. Writing Club – the next best thing after Fight Club.