You may recall that Jonathan and I were fortunate enough to see Face Fighter featured in the TIFF Next Wave festival. The event, which happened from May 10th – 11th, exhibited seven films and five video games created by post-secondary students in the Next Wave “Future Frames and Games” programme. The experience was incredible without a doubt, and here I’ll attempt to share my experiences.

Firstly, for those not in the know, TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) is a Canadian not-for-profit organization best known for their annual cinematic extravaganza, which regularly draws in celebrities, famous directors, and other related figures into the city. (I guess they show films too, but we won’t get into that). In the last few years, TIFF’s horizons have expanded quite a bit to help further foster and support creativity in the Toronto arts and media industries, most recently with the TIFF Nexus initiative. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the TIFF Nexus team a few times and can vouch for the incredible work they’re doing for the public awareness of New Media art in Toronto.

Introductions aside, the Future Games programme was a great opportunity for Jonathan and I to help make a bigger dent into this swiftly-growing Toronto indie game development scene. We were able to meet the developers of three out of the five games that were shown (four out of five if you count our game, but we were kind of already familiar with ourselves). To Glen Watkinson, Nguyen Tran, Derrick Law and Samuel Law, developers of Crack UP, Nimbus, and ASDF, it was an honour meeting you all and I look forward to seeing what new games you all churn out in the coming years.

As for the “screening” itself, TIFF welcomed about 30-40 high school students on the first day and closer to 60 on the second day. We got to watch them enjoy our game, attempt to assist friends without realizing that the game’s head-tracking might be negatively affected by peering over their friend’s shoulders, and overall have a head-bangingly good time.

After students tried out our games for about an hour, we got to sit on a panel, mediated by the amazing Nick Pagee and Peter Kuplowsky, and answered some of the questions they had for us. Jonathan and I shared our experiences conceiving of the game’s premise (which involved a good number of Tim Horton’s donuts and some borderline-hallucinatory late nights brain storming), as well as some advice for students who were struggling between studying in a “profitable” field and, well…game design. Needless to say, we encouraged them to do whatever it was they truly loved while protecting the integrity of the game developer community. In particular, I mentioned the recent planting of Ubisoft’s Toronto studio and the provincial investments being made into the video game industry. For anyone who is struggling with their love of game making, I would say now is as good a time as ever to be apart of this ever-growing community.

I’d like to give a big thank you to all of the TIFF programmers and staff who made the Future Games exhibit possible. I had a blast participating in the event and hope to be involved in more to come!

By now, many Torontonian New Media art lovers are familiar with Super Conveniently Head-Controlled Face Fighter 10987654321. Put simply, the game is a classic space shooter, except you control your ship through a face tracking interface. Moving your head from side to side maneuvers the ship, and nodding your head causes the ship to shoot a bullet. To create more interesting interactions with the game, Jonathan Séguin and I experimented with adding a networked layer to the piece for some multiplayer shoot’em up action.

We were initially intrigued with the idea of creating a “spontaneous multiplayer mode.” Users would play through the game as though it were a regular, single-player Face Fighter experience, up until the point where a second user connects to the game server. Once this happens, the first player’s game would be interrupted with a “warning” signal, shortly followed by the introduction of the second player’s purple ship. Players would engage each other in a teeth-grinding duel, created by a continuous series of speedy decisions — “should I shoot or dodge at this moment?”

Another concept that struck us was the notion of replacing a boss’ AI with an additional user’s input. This case would be similar to the scenario outlined above, except the second player sprite might be the giant boss head we never ended up using for the game. This way, both players wouldn’t suspect that they are in a networked experience, but instead assume that they are facing a boss with a sophisticated AI.

We did end up creating a prototype for the first outlined scenario (two ships facing off against one another). In the prototype, basic functionality for transmitting and receiving movement from both players simultaneously was developed.

The idea of “spontaneous networking” has excited us to create more iterations of the game with this networked layer. We would like to test user’s behaviours and reactions in this context to see whether or not human input is identifiable, even behind a computer interface and graphics.

Artist Statement
A Warm Place is an interactive video game, best enjoyed on an analogue television, played with a classic game controller. The piece attempts to evoke a sense of nostalgia in the player by capturing and emulating moments from my own childhood (playing video games in the mid 90s). In particular, the piece addresses the notion of re-experiencing the past in hopes of recreating a childlike sense of wonder, while at the same time understanding that this nostalgic encounter is simply an emulation. The idea of “keeping the past in its place” is communicated by the game’s narrative structure: the first half of the game acts as a gateway into the player’s childhood, making reference to several classic video game tropes. The latter half of the game abruptly disrupts the player’s experience by introducing unconventional, disorienting and psychedelic elements.

The game should be played on an old-school analogue television, using a SNES game controller to interact with the piece. The software runs on any Java-supporting machine, and can be plugged into a television using an A/V converter box to transfer the computer’s digital display signal to analogue. The game itself takes audiovisual cues from classic RPGs of the mid-90s, including Pokémon Red and Blue, The Legend of Zelda, Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound – all of which are games I have made nostalgic connections with from my childhood. The environment is modeled after a generic RPG town, featuring houses, wooden signs, and trees.

Players begin the game with an introduction from a young boy named Gene, who seems to share visual resemblance with the player’s unnamed character. Gene has left his notes at home and forgets what he was supposed to tell you, so you soon find yourself at home, unknowing of the adventure that awaits. Your house environment is incredibly similar to the home of the main character in the original Pokémon games, down to the moment where your mother subtly prompts you to begin your adventure. Players explore the town, and eventually find themselves in the home of a local shopkeeper and his pregnant wife, who is on the verge of giving birth. Shortly after entering this awkward situation, players are swept into an uncomfortable and psychedelic scenario where they cannot distinguish their surroundings, and the ghostly image of Gene appears all around. After a few frustrating button presses, a message pops up: “You aren’t able to find your home… even if it were right in front of you.”

It is important to note that once players have entered this psychedelic field, they cannot backtrack through the experience, communicating the idea that moments from our past can never be truly revisited. Because the leisure time of my childhood was largely spent enjoying video games, it is my hope that emulating a classic gaming experience will evoke personal feelings of nostalgia for myself and other users who participate with the work. In a gallery setting, the idea of nostalgia can be further highlighted by presenting the game with an analogue television set and classic SNES controller, paying close attention to the limitations of gaming hardware in the 90s and imposing those restrictions on the audiovisual components of my work. A Warm Place aims to ease participants into the childlike fun a retro gaming experience offers, all the while preparing them for an abrupt and uncomfortable reawakening – that the past must remain behind us, and the present never ceases to move forward.

Some of the events and elements that appear in A Warm Place might seem odd or out of place. I’ll try to explain some of these components to the work here.

Who is Gene? Gene is you, the player, as a child. This is why he recognizes you in the beginning of the game.

Why do we see a woman on the verge of giving birth? Birthing a child represents the progression of time and the formation of a major moment in a person’s life. (Also, one might say that the womb is “a warm place,” and being forced out of this warm place is parallel to growing up).

What’s with the end of the game? Before witnessing the woman give birth, the player is sucked into a psychedelic scene. Here there are a few elements: firstly, Gene (your younger self) appears in a ghostly manner around the screen. He represents the clouded memories of childhood (and moving away from them as an adult). The background is also particularly hard to make out — they are images of the player’s house, zoomed in to the point where objects are difficult to distinguish. This ties in to the message that plays: “you aren’t able to find your home… even if it were right in front of you.” The player has been home this entire time, but has grown so attached to memories of the past that the present has become distorted and difficult to grasp.

You heard that right, folks! Super Conveniently Head-Controlled Face Fighter 10987654321 (or simply “Face Fighter” for short), an interactive video game installation created by Jonathan Séguin and myself is going to be featured in TIFF Next Wave from May 10th – 12th. More specifically, our piece will be shown in the “Future Games” exhibit.

They accentuate the film component quite a bit in their advertising, but it’s good to know that video game innovation is being celebrated in the Toronto cultural arts scene. Rest assured, TIFF has given our game a “G” rating, so feel free to bring along your youngins.

From the Future Games website:
“Future Games presents a selection of the country’s most challenging and innovative video games made by post-secondary students. A hands-on play session at TIFF Bell Lightbox will be followed by a panel discussion, giving high school students a chance to engage with the creators and discuss game and interactive media design opportunities at Canadian post-secondary institutions.”

You can see more about the exhibition, as well as the other four games being featured alongside Face Fighter on their website.

A young designer could encounter several scenarios (many of which are humorously highlighted on Hische’s Should I Work for Free? flowchart) — for example, are you doing work for a legitimate business, a not-for-profit, or a charity? Should you be getting paid to some degree regardless? In most cases, Hische concludes with a resounding “yes” — that you should not only be getting paid for your work, but also critically thinking about what you charge. The value you attach to your services will consequently be attached to how much you’re worth as a professional. Hische suggests that keeping your rates in check (and at a reasonably high amount) will help to set a standard for all clients looking to hire within design-related fields.

I’ve had a particularly difficult time deciding to charge an hourly rate versus a flat fee from personal experience. Clients tend to prefer solid quotes that they can budget for. Even in the event that you prefer to charge an hourly rate, the client is at least going to expect that you’ll know how much time will go into the project (and as a result, how much they’re going to be paying). This is especially challenging for new freelancers who don’t quite know how much time they’ll need to put into a particular project. Hische bluntly states that “pricing hourly punishes efficiency” (though she does say to take the idea with a grain of salt). To explain this idea, she uses the example of two professional designers who produce work of equal value, both charging hourly rates. However, one designer works at a more efficient pace than the other, accomplishing in 7 hours what the other designer did in 18. If both were to charge $100 an hour for their work, the client would be paying out $700 to the more efficient designer, whereas they would be paying $1800 to the less efficient designer for a work of equal value. Hische is firm in declaring that this isn’t fair, and to combat this, all designers should consider charging at flat rates.

I think one of the biggest concerns for young designers is knowing how much to charge for your work — especially if you opt to charge a flat rate. How much value can you really attach to your work when you’ve only had a few clients under your belt? While Hische does provide a quote example for charging an international clothing brand, she notes that most designers are reluctant to share what they charge with the rest of the world for fairly understandable reasons. Ultimately, “standard prices” are not set in stone for a new designer. When deliberating on a quote, Hische notes that designers should consider the amount of time they’ll be putting into the project, how big the client is, and what kinds of rights they will require.

Reading what Hische has to say on the matter certainly helped shed some light on considerations to be made when charging a client. The bottom line is that our work has a value, and we will set the bar for what it’s worth — what we’re worth.

An experimental video game project I worked on with my partner in crime, Jonathan Séguin, entitled Super Conveniently Head-Controlled Face Fighter 10987654321 (and yes, I know that’s a mouthful). The project began in October of 2011 and has since been featured in various exhibitions, receiving minor updates along the way.

Face Fighter attempts to transform traditional views of retro and retro-styled video games by means of a non-conventional control interface. Modern mainstream video games typically use advanced game engines, 3D graphics, and rely on powerful machines to run. As a result, retro-styled games are denounced, sanctioned off for independent developers working on low-budget projects, only for their work to be consumed by the nostalgic. We propose a video game that harmonizes new technologies with retro aesthetics. Face Fighter is an old-school “shoot’em up” that is controlled not with a D-Pad, but with your face.

Face Fighter being played at Threshold (February 2012).

The premise of Face Fighter is simple. The player controls a combat ship flying through outer space, being mindful of incoming asteroids. Instead of using a game controller to influence gameplay, the player controls their ship through a purely camera-based, continuous interface. Software tracks the player’s head and creates coordinates in the software space, directly corresponding to the direction and speed the ship flies in at any given time. To shoot, the player tilts his or her head downward. This non-conventional interface is juxtaposed with aging visual and audible cues to create an entirely new experience for the participant.

This is a shot of the final boss, an enemy face. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to include this in the game yet, but I thought you might enjoy the extra pixel art.

The player must react by instinct, moving their body based on what is generated on-screen. They may even find themselves moving in unexpected, unnatural ways as a knee-jerk reaction to what they are seeing. Player can fully explore the game’s virtual environment without being overtly conscious of the often-silly movements they’re making in physical reality. The user drifts between the virtual and the real, both informing one another.

Exhibitions
Face Fighter was featured at Threshold in February 2012, Maximum Exposure in April 2012, and TIFF Next Wave: Future Games in May 2012.

I’m currently working on an art game project for one of my New Media classes. While I won’t spoil too many of the details, it will be an RPG with a physical installation component. Above you can see the “modern” hero sprite that I’ve started working on. You’ll hear more from me by the end of the month!

Beat Jumper is an online multiplayer game that allows users to interactively create melodic compositions through play. The bass and soprano tones generated by players blend together to produce a unique melody accompanying the background music — notes can sound random and dissonant, or rhythmic and harmonic, changing from playthrough to playthrough.

Beat Jumper takes visual cues from old-school 8-bit games. The two player characters and their respective environments have contrasting colour schematics, signifying their contrary roles in the soundscape (the blue character produces higher-pitched sounds, whereas the orange character produces lower-pitched sounds).

Our main focus for this networked piece was to bring attention to audio in a game that would otherwise rely on more traditional game conventions (such as focusing on a narrative-driven goal). Users can choose to collect points by collecting “note objects,” or can try to compose a piece by jumping on the beats. The game experience is brief, timed at one-minute-long play sessions, and users are free to interact with the piece however they wish during this short time span.

A still from game play. I plan on sprucing up the visuals for a future release.

How It Works
The game begins with a simple lobby system that invites both players to press any key to begin the game. The game won’t start until both players (stationed at different computers) have pressed a key, and players are notified when their opponent is ready to begin.

After both players are ready to play, they are immediately thrown into the game world. Similar to any classic platformer, the player’s main objective is to progress and jump to avoid obstacles. By hitting the space bar, players signal for their character to jump. As characters collide with “note objects,” players will accumulate points (displayed on their score to the top right), while collisions with obstructions will decrease the player’s total score and fire off an unpleasant sound.

Each character is able to produce one of three selected pitches upon collecting a note object. These sounds are hand-picked to compliment the game’s energetic background music. One of these pitches is randomly selected and generated upon collision.

After one minute, the game ends and both player’s final scores are displayed on screen!

Just thought I’d share a photo I took about a year ago at Nuit Blanche 2010. I really love the kind of aesthetic style achieved using a combination of bright colourful lighting, an out-of-focus zoom, and a bit of motion. The visuals outshine the subject matter in this case (I don’t even remember what I was photographing at the time), but there are definitely some intriguing project ideas emerging from this type of imagery.

Artist Statement
The OMEGA Project is an interactive networked experience that encourages teams of strangers to work together in order to solve riddles and achieve a predefined goal. The piece explores possible uses of online video-based chat systems in a playful and engaging setting. By relying heavily on the networked experience, OMEGA takes the ideas of simple video game mechanics and inserts them into a living reality for user immersion and interaction. A compelling story world acts as the backdrop of the experience, drawing people into the interactive real-time ‘video game’ and expelling people from the world of the video screen into a fictional reality.

Themed around the narrative of a post-apocalyptic zombie epidemic, users are pressed to find the cure before time runs out, all while learning more about the fictional characters involved on a personal level. The experience is split between four locations: a security room (the master control room), an office, a house, and a laboratory. Players are grouped into pairs and are given ‘survival kits.’ Groups are distributed amongst the office, house and laboratory while the remaining users monitor their progress in the security room. All rooms are networked via iChat videoconferencing and contain various hints and puzzles, many of which pertain to puzzles or objects in the other rooms. This requires groups to maintain continuous communication, working together to solve all of the puzzles and ultimately find the cure to the zombie epidemic.