Social Breakout*06 is a cooperative multi-player video game based on Atari’s original 1976 Breakout. The game attempts to get four players to simultaneously control one digital paddle to clear a level of bricks. The game is designed to teach the players to collaboratively move the digital paddle at the same time. As the users move in tandem they control the paddle on the screen. Players are continually challenged to work together, as they do, a narrative will unfold.
Why would players want to work together? Social Breakout*06 is designed so that players make decisions based on their sociopolitical beliefs. Various levels of the game will challenge the players to direct their ball volleys towards specific bricks determining the nature of the continuing narrative. The bricks function as buttons or markers that reveal the narrative as they are manipulated or destroyed during game play.
The object of Social Breakout*06 is to work as a team to manipulate rows of bricks of bricks by bouncing a ball off your paddle. Each time you hit a brick with the ball, the brick is changed or destroyed.
Through play, the users reveal or make decisions based on a narrative. Hitting sets of bricks results in passing through and deciding the progression of the narrative. The bricks will either be destroyed or changed depending on game play and narrative context. Missing the ball with the paddle will result in a loss as the players will only have three chances to continue play. If the player is able to successfully break the specific narrative bricks, the levels will continue. If the player fails, there will be a game over splash screen.
Activate or destroy bricks to further the narrative.
Using the modified Dance Dance Revolution controller the user moves the paddle by stepping left, center space stop, move paddle right step right. The paddle wont stop till all players have moved to the stop position.
Four players will each sand on a their own modified Dance Dance Revolution Controllers in front of a large sixteen foot tall projection of Social Breakout*06. Two Camera’s will be used to document users’ interaction with the game.
Research, narrative development and digital mockups of game interface
Writing and programming, final design for game interface
Hardware and software testing, installation setup test
Installation
2 Apple Mac Mini $899 each, 2 wireless keyboard mouse sets $99 each, iSight $99, InFocus x2 Projector $699, 20 inch Studio Display $799,
4 Dance Dance Revolution Controllers $359 each, Sony HDR-HC3 HDV Handycam $1499.
Equipment total $6,488
$500-$2,000
$718-$1223 per person
Travel total 1436-4892
$18,280-$19,813
Hanson, Matt. The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age. Rotovision: Switzerland, 2003.
Kent, Steven, L. The First Quarter: A 25 - Year History of Video Games. BWD Press: Bothel, 2000.
Meadows, Mark, S. Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative. New Riders: Indianapolis, 2003.
Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy. Arcade Publishing: New York, 2000.
Salen, Kate, Zimmerman, Eric. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press: Cambridge, 2004.
Saltzman, Marc, ed. Game Design: Secrets of the Sages, Second Edition. Macmillan: Indianapolis, 2000.
Sheff, David. Game Over, The Maturing of Mario. Gamepress: Wilton, 1999.
10 years after the original breakout was released Nintendo developed ARKANOID which was considered by many the next generation of paddle ball games.
http://www.arkanoid.com/aboutarkanoid.html
Breakout has had such influence on people it has even appeared as an easter egg in the Mac OS.
http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/Breakout.html
The History of Video Games: From Pong to Pac Man. by William Hunter, curator of ' the dot eaters '.
http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/pong2.html
The 50 most important games! They may not all be the greatest titles, but they are important for their contributions to technology or new ways of playing.
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3116290
Arcade : A Blinkenlights Installation. I just love the fact that people can play Tetris on a building. Talk about constructing reality, I think I'm sensing a theme here...
http://www.blinkenlights.de/arcade/games.en.html
Buzzcut article on Simulacra and Gaming. The most relevant reference I can make is the film eXistenZ. There is something the way Cronenberg handles the distortion of reality by humans that makes sense here. Reality and simulations are mental constructs defined by humans to access their world be it natural or virtual, or is there a difference?
http://www.buzzcut.com/article.php?story=20050215202013246
When the virtual and the real collide, code is for sale at eBay! Some might say "Get a life," but for many people, this is life. How different is this virtual life different then say the virtual life humans construct for themselves as they attempt to cope with the natural/virtual world (see eXistenZ).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/
A database of game designers and industry insiders. This text covers what it takes to make a game in a practical sort of way. This is not a treatise on gameness but on gaming and what it takes to make a game "fun."
Saltzman, Marc, ed. Game Design: Secrets of the Sages, second edition.
Macmillan, Indianapolis, 2000.
Interviews with artists, programmers, and various gamers, this text attempts to define what is about video games that is so important to this generation. The book explores the emotional resonance and sense of being involved with games. From going to arcades, to home consoles, to access to early military computer equipment, these writers contextualize the importance of playing video games and how that playing has influenced what it is that they do now.
Compton, Shanna, ed. Gamers: Writers, Artists and Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels. Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn, 2004.
This text explores new linear media and how gaming is building on the emotive qualities of the cinema. Hanson claims that New Media Interactions explore beyond the square pixel or canvas of the picture tube to make compelling narrative experiences. These experiences are funneled through avatars that much like cinematic heroes, are the conduit through which the gamer experiences the gaming world and is able to experience a range of emotions. When the viewer is sucked into the world of the protagonist and is immersed in this virtual environment, the player or spectator is immersed in the computer "flow." This happens either through immersive worlds that are open and allow the player to explore (Tomb Raider) or through a more structured narrative where the player makes key decisions and choices based on the given narrative (Metal Gear Solid). It seems there is a key difference between those games designed in the United States and then everywhere else (to borrow a line from Eddie Izzard).
Hanson, Matt. The End of Cellloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age. Rotovision, Switzerland, 2004.
The film eXistenZ is about layers of reality and the simulations of that reality. Daily, people make decisions and play out their lives as if they were playing simulations. Citizens get locked in ritualized social contracts and become embedded in these social "loops." In this endless repetition, a person can get mired in the endless simulation of life or the facade of life so that reality becomes unnecessary; an idealization formulated by hegemonic centers of social control. And the best part, Jennifer Jason Leigh is The Architect!
eXistenZ. Dir. by David Cronenberg. Dimension Films, 1999.