The previous team session where we used the lotus design technique allowed us to establish, document and then reflect upon the features that we felt were important to consider including in our games design.

During this session, following on from the lotus method, we started thinking about the more technical and physical elements of the experience, taking consideration of platform, technology, player engagement, interaction, regulation and use of sound.

Collaborative Task: Game Elements Mind-Map created by Myself (blue) and Emilia (green).

Game Elements

Platform:

What is important to us is that this experience that we are creating is accessible to all, easy to access, and can be understood by anyone. There are many considerations to take to ensure this and I have begun thinking about this in my Inclusive Design research but this is more targeted to games that are made available online. If we were to create this experience for use on PC or on mobile, I think it would lose success in creating immersion for the player. While mobile would be able to reach a much larger audience, I believe and that there are better alternatives for us to explore.

If we are to create this game as a physical or virtual space, which I believe would allow for much more opportunity to supply immersion, then completely different adaptions will have to be made. We have considered the idea of this experience being used as a tool of intervention in environments where many people are experiences similar symptoms of stress and anxiety such as, schools, universities and hospitals.

Technology:

The technology we have explored during this activity is mostly targeted towards supplying the sense of immersion in our experience. We considered using virtual or mixed reality but as explained above, I believe the best route for creating this experience is to create a physical game space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture_recognition

So then we must consider what kind of technology can we use within this space, and some examples we have thought about are body motion and gesture control. From my research on the Igloo 6m Cylinder & Visit I am aware that we do have the tools to include these features in our games design but it may take a large amount of time trying to figure out how to implement it. I think that this would be an incredible feature because it separated the player from the computer by taking away the need for a controller which I believe adds so much more to the immersion of a space. Haptic touch and vibrations would be easier to implement but of course the greatest ease would come with including a controller for this experience.