Wednesday, February 01, 2012
WAY Without Words
Let's make a game about communicating. Without text or speech. This was the initial concept of WAY, a gaming experience with no shared spoken language. The idea was developed by a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) to encourage cross-cultural communication and collaboration through play.
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5 comments:
This is a very cool concept and seems as though it would be a great team building exercise. The use and understanding of body language as the only means of communication seems to be a great way of better understanding the basics of human interactions. This would be an interesting supplementary way of increasing communication at shows with international casts and international crew.
As one who loves puzzles and challenges like the ones presented, I find this game extremely intriguing. I think that the use of techonology is both a advantage and disadvantage of this concept. Technology allows us to use these games together and interact with one another across the world, which is a spectacular feat. But at the same time, I think that the technology would also inhibit the game play because not all the emotions can be displayed and conveyed in a significant amout of time or even accurately.
After reading about this game, I feel that it is an incredibly good invention that fills the gaps other games tend to leave open. What is really special is the way that the characters can't use words but the mere universal vernacular of motion. It is how humans used to communicate, it is sometimes still the way humans communicate. The understanding that movement speaks to a greater level than words can completely be applied here. The thing is, we are now in a video game. I am curious to see how the game tends to the problem of having the players express themselves through technology.
On a tangent, the gesture thing reminds me of Portal 2 coop, where your robot-character can make gestures at the other character based on what has happened or how the feel. On a relevant note, it's a very interesting and ambitious project, and it would be a great teambuilding and communications project. But I wonder whether they can achieve what they're trying to achieve without sacrificing gameplay in the process.
As someone who has a lot of trouble communicating through writing - from the most informal chat up to polished emails - I found this really intriguing. I really like the idea of interacting on a computer in ways other than textual. When talking face-to-face, we communicate with much more than the words we are saying. I would be really interested in adding basic movements and gestures back into a computer.
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