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| Scotty
Hoag
Programmer Portfolio scotty.hoag@gmail.com (209)-298-2622 |
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 stREetMIX
Unfortunately,
the server for this game is not currently
active. Thus, the game can not be played at this
time.
I wrote this game with Jesse Sanford and Kevin Andrew Zeidler as a final project for a graduate level game design class in the Berkeley Center for New Media. The goal was to create a video game that studies the ways that players interact in urban environments. We approached the project by making a game that tasks players with solving mysteries using elements of the environment as tools. Teams begin the game by selecting a mystery scenario from the list provided by the server. These mysteries range from "The water in Strawberry Creek has become toxic. You must discover the reason why." to "Your Art Practice professor is going to be fired for going over budget on the commissioned art piece outside the art department building! You must think up an excuse for why the horrendously ugly piece cost so much to save his job!". Then, the teams are given a set amount of time in which to search the area for "Clues" they can use to develop a solution to the mystery. The scenarios are entirely fictional and the players are encouraged to dream up as far-fetched responses as they can imagine so long as they can support their ridiculous claims with photographic evidence. The proposed solutions for the mysteries have ranged from government conspiracies to alien invasions, all creatively supported with evidence found around the city. (See the stREetMIX slides for an example) The clues can be anything from rocks to buildings to park benches and anything else that players can develop into a story line. To claim a piece of evidence, one member of the team snaps a picture of the clue through the stREetMIX Android app which then automatically submits the clue to the stREetMIX website. This also places a territory marker for that team at the GPS location where the picture was taken. Spectators can view evidence pictures and watch territory updates occur in real time for each team through the website. When time expires, the teams meet back up and present their solutions. An unbiased "Judge" player then awards points for categories like "Best Overall Solution", "Most Creative/Funniest Solution", and "Solution Most Strongly Supported by Submitted Evidence", among others. Points are also awarded for most pieces of valid evidence submitted. Opposing teams can attempt to "veto" a piece of evidence before the judge if they deem it does not have anything to do with that team's explanation. Lastly, a point is awarded to the team that has claimed the largest amount of territory by acquiring clues. This latter rule encourages players to run further distances in order to acquire larger amounts of territory. In our tests, this game worked very well with teams of 2-3 people travelling around as individual groups. Original Design Document: PDF NOTE: The original game design is very different from what the game actaully turned into. Presentation Materials: POSTER POSTER-TEXT SLIDES Example Game
Scenario: "Your Art Practice professor is going to be fired for going over budget on the commissioned art piece outside the art department building! You must think up an excuse for why the horrendously ugly piece cost so much to save his job!" Winning team's proposed solution: "The sculpture in front of Wurster is a monument to the Ohlone people of Berkeley and their sacred burial ground at the newly-destroyed Oak Grove behind Wurster Hall, site of the 2008-2009 tree-sitting protests. The monument is built from the remains of a native oak felled in the early 1900s to make way for the burials. Ishi, among the last indigenous inhabitants of the Bay Area, donated the sacred timber to the institution." "The tip of the tetrahedron is part of a solar alignment that connects the location of the burial height stone head and the position of the sun at precisely 3:30, 30 days after the first day of spring (April 22nd this year). An astute observer will note that facets of the monument face the three cardinal directions of Ohlone space. (The Ohlone employ a complex space-time conception that involves three cardinal spatial directions that together with the four seasons multiply to give the 12 temporal divisions of half a day - hence the twelve-hour clock.)"
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