Data and Player Behavior in Reality Ends Here
One of the first tasks for prepping Reality Ends Here each year is to devise the cards that’ll be used in the coming semester. The task itself is divided into two main content areas: collectibles and gameplay. The former has traditionally taken the most amount of time. Gathering 100+ different types of documentaries, famous directors, influential [...]
An Audiobiographical Space: Los Angeles
With a working title of I Hear Los Angeles, this is a project conceived to explore the notion of an audio-biographical, navigable space. I’d create an audio-only 3D space in which sound clusters exist that are reflective of my personal perception of real neighborhoods found in Los Angeles. The audio is a mix of field recordings, [...]
(a game for) TWO
[lead designer, creative director] (A game for) Two is my MFA thesis. It’s currently in development and is slated to be done by May 2013. (a game for) Two is a game that abstracts how two people form a partnership / friendship / relationship, and reconstructs it into a play experience. It does this by [...]
Installed this in the gallery. It’s called “Hey have…
Installed this in the gallery. It’s called “Hey have you seen this thing from the internet?” via http://simonium.tumblr.com/post/38263295497 on December 18, 2012 at 04:17PM
Hey, Have You Seen This Thing from the Internet?
“Hey, Have You Seen This Thing from the Internet?” was an installation made for USC’s School of Cinematic Arts gallery. Two cats, made from a mash-up of cat pictures, follow people as they pass in front of the screen. When they get close enough, the cats show them a trending picture from the internet (at [...]
Visual Expression in Film
As part of an exercise in visual expression in films, I was required to take photographs detailing the ability of films to convey meaning and emotions through visual cues in a 2D plane. These are the photos.
Reality Ends Here
[co-designer, game runner] SCA Reality is a project that serves many functions, although it’s probably easier to discuss what the game/project is before discussing what it does. In its simplest form, SCA Reality is a collaborative project game based around cards. It was designed for all incoming undergraduate students in the USC School of Cinematic [...]
Collegeology
[designer] The goal of the Collegeology series is to improve college literacy and efficacy in Middle and High School students. I came onto the project at the very onset of what’s being temporarily called the “middle school project”, whose goal is to help middle schoolers make the mental connection between their passion/ambitions and the steps [...]
Hands
[designer] Hands is an experimentation in the boundary between physical and personal spaces in the context of games, using human interaction as a method of control. It was created for Experiments in Interactivity II, a class at USC. Using custom-build controllers, the game is played by two persons physically holding hands in various configurations, playing [...]
Wild West (v1)
Wild West is an experiment in a different type of game design approach for me: purposeful feature creep. Experimenting in processing, I slowly began adding features until it arrived at its currently state. The goal of the game is to match the background color to the color of the square travelling from right to left. [...]
Three Generations
[designer] Three Generations is a board game about the Californian Eugenics movement of the early 1900s. It aims to deliver not only the experiences of those subjected to forced sterilizations, but the situations around which such a movement could have occurred. Originally crated for a “Serious Play” assignment in a class with Tracy Fullerton, Three Generations [...]
Board Game Sprints
[designer] All of these board games were designed by either solely myself or by myself and one to a few others. Abandon Building Collaboration with Sarah Scialli. A modification of Up The River, Abandon Building adds a resource-gathering and management system to the game. As the building is destroyed by the lava at the base [...]
BMW-MINI Ambient Storytelling
[visual designer, experience designer] BMW approached the MEML workgroup and asked them, using all the ambient data they’re constantly collecting within their cars, to develop a lifelog-type experience to help enhance the driver experience. It started with the Ambient Storytelling for Vehicle-Driven Interaction project, which took place in the months before I joined. When I [...]
Grayline
[writer] Grayline was the thesis project of IMD MFA graduate, Sean Bouchard. A film noir-esque mystery game, it was a game designed to tell a story in an interesting an innovative way. Two players, using two different iPads, work together as character to attempt to solve the mystery of a murder. More information is on [...]
Through Sound I See
[designer] Created for an experiment with a navigable space, Through Sound I See is a space in which the User navigates based on the world he or she creates by interacting with (“tapping”) objects, largely by imagining the world as constructed through visual representations of a sound-scape. It should be mentioned that navigation is very difficult. Play it [...]
To Dream
[director, editor] To Dream is an interactive film with a basic tree-structure branching narrative. At several points during the film, the user has to make one key decision: to fall back to sleep or to get up and either start or continue his/her waking day. These decisions affect the flow of the narrative and how [...]
Roulette
[writer, director] Roulette is a simple, one button game about Russian Roulette. The project itself was originally imagined by Peter Lu, who asked me to write and help direct it. Made completely by filming an actor, Jake Parker, and stitched together in a seamless way, it’s based somewhat loosely on the incidents of Russian Roulette [...]