Tag: altctrls

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Highlights Projects

Dreaming Gargoyle

A gargoyle sculpture with a phone on its mouth,

Sing a lullaby to sooth the gargoyle to sleep. An alternative controller game based on bring-your-own-device and a concrete sculpture. The game was created during a 5 month creative residency at the Whaaat?! Lab in the University of Colorado – Boulder (Boulder, CO, USA). It is a collaboration with Danny Rankin.

In Dreaming Gargoyle, players encounter a small concrete gargoyle sculpture in a dark room. They use their phones to open the game’s website and place the device in the gargoyle’s mouth. The phone screen is projected through the sculpture’s eye. Players then learn that the gargoyle is having insomnia and are tasked with signing a lullaby to calm the gargoyle and help it sleep. The singing is detected by the phone’s microphone and pitch is mapped to different notes that make the game’s narrative progress, leading players into learning more about the gargoyle’s troubled dreams. It is an experiment in creating games using durable materials and unpowered extensions, creating new possibilities for urban sites and public play.

Exhibitions and showcases

2023 – ATLAS Expo at ATLAS Institute of the University of Colorado – Boulder. – Boulder, CO, USA.

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Highlights Projects

DE VOLTA

DE VOLTA is an alternative controller game about finding your way home while avoiding paths previously taken. Players use a variety of input systems to fly their starship around a planetary system, manage scarce resources, and dodge ghosts of past runs. How many times can you find your way home?

DE VOLTA being played at alt.ctrl.GDC 2022.

The game was created for the Tinycade system, using the Godot game engine, in early 2022. You can play DE VOLTA on devolta.tinycade.io. It has been exhibited as part of the Tinycade booth at alt.ctrl.GDC 2022.

Made by

Enric Llagostera: game design, controller design, programming and visuals

Peter Gyory: controller design and programming

Perry Owens: controller design and fabrication

Enric Granzotto Llagostera’s work on this project is partially funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), as part of the Doctoral Research Scholarship 2020-B2Z-276952.

Exhibitions and showcases

2022 – alt.ctrl.GDC 2022, as part of the Tinycade booth – San Francisco, CA, USA.

Categories
Highlights Projects

altctrls.info

A community-curated list of resources for creating alternative controllers, playful installations and physical-digital hybrids. It compiles and annotates tools and information to support game practitioners.

Started in 2019 and 2020, you can find the full list of resources and more info here.

Are you interested in games that let us play differently? Have you found some intriguing project on Shake That Button and would like to find some extra information to help you start to make your own thing? This community-curated list of resources is here to support you: it is focused on tools, materials, and things that you can use to craft alternative controllers.

Enric Granzotto Llagostera’s work on this project is partially funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), as part of the Doctoral Research Scholarship 2020-B2Z-276952.
Categories
Research

Demo and Doctoral Consortium at DIS 2019

I presented my game Cook Your Way as a demonstration and also participated in the doctoral consortium at the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2019 in San Diego, USA.

My participation at DIS 2019 resulted in two extended abstracts published in the conference proceedings. Here they are (click on the title to download a PDF):

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2019a. “Cook Your Way: Political Game Design with Alternative Controllers.” In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion, 25–28. DIS ’19 Companion. New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3325148.

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2019b. “Critical Controllers: How Alternative Game Controllers Foster Reflective Game Design.” In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion, 85-88. DIS ’19 Companion. New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3324872.

Categories
Work

Student organizer at DesignJam: Accessible Gamepad Jam

I was part of the student team organizing the accessible gamepad jam, in a participatory activity part of the accessXchange forum on advancing inclusive, accessible approaches to design and learning.

My main focus was on the use of the Micro:bit board as starting point for prototyping and experimentation on collectively making accessible controllers for existing games. I also participated in designing the jam process and collaborating with peers from EducationMakers and Milieux.

More information is available on the event website.

Categories
Highlights Projects Research

Cook Your Way

In Cook Your Way, visa applicants (i.e. the players) are tasked with cooking a typical dish of their country of origin using a cooking station. Immigration authorities then evaluate applicants according to their efficiency and potential to contribute to the new country’s society. Cooking becomes a standardized test, one step within a longer application process. This game is a research-creation project created during my doctoral research on alternative controller games at Concordia University. You can visit the project’s website here.

Awards

2020 – Winner of the Explorer award at the AMAZE. Berlin festival 2020.

Exhibitions and showcases

2023 – Art et/ou jeu : symbiose ou dissonance ? at Centre Culturel Canadien as part of ISEA 2023 – Paris, France.

2023 – JEU_ART_GAME exhibition at Centre BANG – Chicoutimi, Québec, Canada.

2023 – JEU_ART_GAME exhibition at Elektra – Montréal, Québec, Canada.

2022 – Pelipoikilo – Kouvola, Finland.

2022 – PLAYTIME 20.22 exhibition at Culturcentruum Bruges – Bruges, Belgium.

2022 – JEU_ART_GAME exhibition at Sporobole – Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada.

2020 – Explorer Award at A MAZE festival – Berlin, Germany.

2019 – alt.ctrl.GDC 2019 at Game Developers Conference 2019** – San Francisco, CA, USA.

2019 – Demo at Designing Interactive Systems conference – San Diego, USA.

2019 – Artcade – Montréal, Québec, Canada

Press

2019-08-09 – Rock Paper Shotgun – In Cook Your Way you must cook a meal with a strange controller to get through immigration

2019-02-26 – Game Developer – Alt.Ctrl.GDC Showcase: Cook Your Way

Credits

Cook Your Way was created by Enric Granzotto Llagostera.

Videos, photography and documentation graphics by Vjosana Shkurti.

Music from https://filmmusic.io: “Modern Jazz Samba” by Kevin MacLeod. Licence: CC BY. Intro music by John Bartmann.

French translation and localization by Jess Rowan Marcotte.

I would like to thank a few folks for their ongoing support and various contributions to this project: Carolina Chmielewski Tanaka, Rilla Khaled, Rebecca Goodine, Jess Rowan Marcotte, Dietrich Squinkifer.

Cook Your Way  was created with the support of a Hexagram Student Grant and the Reflective Game Design research group.

This project was partially funded with the support of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), as part of the Doctoral Research Scholarship 2020-B2Z-276952.

Citation

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2019. Cook Your Way. Videogame with alternative controller. https://enric.llagostera.com.br/cookyourway.

Related publications

Granzotto Llagostera, E. and Khaled, R. 2023. On Cooking a Sour Game. Journal for Computer Games Criticism, Volume 5, Bonus Issue: Surviving Whiteness in Games. https://gamescriticism.org/articles/llagosterakhaled-5-a.

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2019a. “Cook Your Way: Political Game Design with Alternative Controllers.” In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion, 25–28. DIS ’19 Companion. New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3325148.

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2018. “The Design Process of Cook Your Way.” Conference panel presented at the 2018 Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA/ACÉV) Annual Conference, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan.

Categories
Highlights Projects

gambi_abo

gambi_abo is a research-creation project featuring a series of do-it-yourself (DIY) cardboard-based game controllers. Each controller has approachable and accessible building instructions for how to create controllers using easy to find interface devices. With gambi_abo, the public can make controllers for the games you choose, not the ones a certain company decides are the best for its platforms. You can learn more about this project in its website: https://enricllagostera.github.io/gambi_abo/about/.

Press

2018-04-27 – Vice Brasil – Três controles de videogame pra você construir com papelão

2018-04-20 – Game Developer – Create your own cardboard controllers with free ‘gambi_abo’ blueprints

Citation

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2018. gambi_abo. Videogame controllers. https://enricllagostera.github.io/gambi_abo/.

Related publications

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2020. “Despedaçando plataformas: ferramentas alternativas de criação de jogos e práticas compartilhadas.” In Proceedings of SBGames 2020, 8. Recife, Brazil: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação. https://www.sbgames.org/proceedings2020/WorkshopJogosDiversos/209562.pdf.

Granzotto Llagostera, Enric. 2019b. “Critical Controllers: How Alternative Game Controllers Foster Reflective Game Design.” In Companion
Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion, 85–88. San Diego, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3324872.

Categories
Highlights Projects

Roots

Roots is a collaboration between Rebecca Goodine and Enric Llagostera, started in January 2018. It is a research-creation game design project that actively involves intergenerational players in an experience that cultivates each other’s capabilities for care within a larger community.

Gameplay is both haptic and visual in nature, with players working together to grow an onscreen digital garden through an alternative controller resembling an underground roots system.

In the current Roots “well” design, players put their hands inside a soft padded well through holes in its sides. The game’s digital garden inside the top of the well can be grown and watered by connecting roots within the well’s interior to a circuit based ground cushion. Each root has a different feel, texture and weight, with softness and tactility acting as invitations into new and unfamiliar learning spaces.

Exhibitions and showcases

2018 – Flop Rooftop Artcade – Montréal,
Québec, Canada.

2018 – Different Games 2018 conference –
Worcester, USA.

2018 – Milieux Expo – Montréal, Québec,
Canada.

Citation

Goodine, Rebecca, and Enric Granzotto Llagostera. 2018. Roots. Game installation. https://tag.hexagram.ca/games/roots/.

Categories
Research

Designing Cook Your Way at CGSA 2018

I went to Regina, Saskatchewan, from 29 May to 03 June, to participate at the 2018 Annual Conference of the Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA). The conference was part of the 2018 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

In the event, I presented a talk in a panel which featured my fellow student members (Jess Rowan Marcotte, Dietrich Squinkifier, and Rebecca Goodine) of the Reflective Games research group, directed by Dr. Rilla Khaled. Our panel showcased and discussed the group members’ research-creation work, focusing on design approaches and how our projects aim to encourage critical reflection in games and their design.

My individual talk at the panel (about the design process of Cook Your Way, a political game discussing the experience of migrants in relation to issues of identity and otherness) also sparked interesting conversations with other researchers. Topics discussed ranged from the representation of power in the game to how the different layers of design in the game reinforced its message and reflection through play.

Sample slide.
Categories
Projects

Balance the Beam

This alternative controller game was made for the Alt Ctrl Game Jam in 2015. I designed and programmed the game, using an Android controller attached to a broomstick as its controller, connected to a PC running the game logic. Players have to use the broomstick to keep an interstellar portal open and save the spaceships. My goal was to explore existing devices, subverting everyday objects and use them to invite players. You can download it here and there is also a preview video here.

Categories
Projects

A Duel in Limbo

This local multiplayer game had two players playing asymmetrically: one controlling physical tokens and the other a virtual character. They had to compete and take turns creating a range of virtual obstacles via the physical tokens and escaping that fractured landscape. This game prototype was made for my MSc experimental game design class, and it used computer vision libraries to enable the interaction with the tokens. I made the programming, design and art.

Categories
Projects

The Wise Head Says

This game is a local multiplayer game in which players compete to reach the top. However, their only way to go up is by using jetpacks fired by their singing. I made this game as an experiment about shared microphone input and competitive play during my MSc game design class.