The DWI Learning Game/Experience

The DWI Learning Game/Experience differs substantially from the games typically presented at Demo Night. It's an educational game sponsored by the government of the City of Westchester, NY currently in pilot programs at local schools. If successful, it will then be adopted by schools all over the state of New York. It aims to drive home the dangers of drinking and driving by placing students in a simulated drunk driving situation. The game starts off in a street course where the students pilot the test car in accordance with road rules and earn points for obeying (an audience member pointed out that, normally, points on your license are a bad thing!), which gives them a nicer car in the subsequent simulation area. Then, a social scenario is presented in which the student chooses how many drinks he or she has had and over what timespan. Based on a statistical model, vision, braking ability and control are degraded to approximate the effects of alcohol.

Taking us through the game, VRShell founder Mark Grob began the DWI simulation and the first attempt to veer slightly to pull away from the curb evoked surprise from the entire audience at the blurriness and low visibility. As he spoke about the brake degradation, he missed a stop sign and slammed into the side of a passing vehicle. The audience broke out in laughter, but sobered up immediately when the game's emotional payload hit: every crash is linked to a real life drunk driving fatality, most with video messages from family members of the victims.

The DWI Learning Game is built on VR technology, with support for stereoscopic vision, and uses the Unity 3D engine

Game Data

The DWI Learning Game/Experience is designed to bridge the serious nature of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) related education and content into an interactive media like a video game. The simulation/experience is divided into the Pre-game and Post-game formats. The Pre-game format is designed to engage the student to want to learn about the topic of DUI. The game design is intended to draw the student into the world of DUI and experience the effects based on the choices they make (number of drinks, etc.). Once they make their choices they live them out through the driving simulation. Once the driving simulation has ended; by crash or by reaching the logical end point; they are brought into the Post-game format. The Post-Game format incorporates a standard educational approach for teaching the real life facts to the student and provides a method of feedback to the Instructor.

Company: VRshell LLC
Platform(s): Mac, PC, Wii
Release Date: August 15th, 2008
Total Development Time: 2 years
Full Time Team Size: 1
Total Team Size: 5
Budget: $65K
Fun Fact: We had to do a lot of Standardize Drink Tests to make sure the metrics for the effects were correct.

aMaze

The final game of the night, aMaze was not a game in the traditional sense. Ilan Schifter, who made the game by himself, was participating in a design workshop where the concept of a game that "anyone can play" came up. Familiar with a hospital in New York that cares for severely disabled children, some of whom are only able to move parts of their bodies or who shake constantly, he designed a simple activity that uses a camera as input and the whole body as control. The game is unfinished, and likely never will be, but it was playable, and more importantly the children liked it.

Ilan spoke on the variety of disabilities affecting the children, and the options he built into the game to accommodate them. The objective is to pop bubbles with body parts to release items inside them. Some of the children required the bubbles to be more translucent in order to catch their attention; others needed specific color filters due to their individual color sensitivities. Some children even needed the video image from the camera to be switched off and only the "motion data" be rendered, due to the ways they process information.

Ilan also spoke about the challenges of hit detection and physics libraries for ActionScript - the tradeoff between perfect detection and response time (the game is written in Flash). Ultimately, he found a reasonable tradeoff that makes collision misses extremely rare.

Game Data

aMaze is an online Flash game that uses a visual motion tracking controller to encourages full body movement. It features several difficulty levels and motion controlled interactions. aMaze requires players to move virtual objects through a maze by waving their hands and feet in front of a web-cam. Points can be gained by collecting prizes along the path. Bonus points are awarded for speed. aMaze is coded in AS3 and uses a physics engine to enhance the motion tracking experience. It involves strategic thinking, coordination and speed. aMaze is accessible to everyone.

Company: Play Patterns
Platform(s): Flash/Flex/AS3
Release Date: September 26th, 2008
Total Development Time: 1 month
Full Time Team Size: 1
Total Team Size: 1
Budget: my spare time
Fun Fact: Elephants can't jump