The Woods, 2017-present

 “The Woods” is a mixed-reality, two-player cooperative game that addresses the perils of social isolation by promoting connections between people and actively engaging them in collaborative play. Through our unique design of AR and audio spatialization, “The Woods” further expands this by promoting real-world, physical interactions over screen-based interactions. Highlighting the importance of physical interaction and collaborative play, our design intent is to provide positive social impact by illuminating our human connections to one another by prompting our players to coordinate their efforts, discover what connects them, and work together in pursuit of shared goals.

As a two-player game, “The Woods” is unique in how it enables players to physically collaborate with their whole bodies. A client-server model exists between the players’ phones and the Photon Unity Network where each client renders the game based on its shared positional data. We accomplish this by tracking the positions of each phone relative to an AR marker located on the floor as players move about the 12-foot diameter game space with their positions synched over the network. Based on the calculated positions of each client, we connect the players together by placing a virtual branch at their midpoint. As players move their phones through physical space, the branch simultaneously moves accordingly in virtual space. Thus, players must choreograph their movement and, by extension, the branch to provide a perch for virtual birds to land on. The game checks for collisions between the branch and two other virtual objects. If a collision occurs between the branch and a bird, then the bird will land on the branch and reveal additional story narrative through the phones' speakers. Alternatively, if a collision occurs between the branch and a storm cloud, then a crash of thunder erupts, and any birds that had been caught scatter and fly away. 

I designed these rules and game mechanics such that it is not enough for one player to do all the work. Because each player controls only one end of the branch, success requires their combined effort to reach the win-state of having four birds perched on it. The mechanics were also designed to parallel the game's narrative of isolated siblings navigating their own obstacles while attempting to reconnect with one another.

As a cooperative AR game, “The Woods” promotes face-to-face interactions over screen-based interactions. It can only be played in person because the game is built upon the players’ adjacency to one another. Furthermore, the phone as an AR device is not the focus of interaction with the other player. After the start of the game, there is no direct interaction with the phone other than holding it and using it as a viewport. Here its primary purpose is to provide the players with feedback and encourage verbal and physical collaboration as they negotiate the game environment together, locating birds in flight, moving the branch toward birds to provide a perch for them to land on, and evading storm clouds. In “The Woods,” the player’s interaction with the other player extends beyond the phone and into the space in which they are playing together. 

Grants:

• "The Woods: Funding Extension", Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT), Arts Creation Grants Special Initiatives, Funding Extension, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University, $15,682.00
• "The Woods", Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT), Arts Creation Grants Special Initiatives, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University, $65,682.00 

Exhibitions:

• 2022 Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference, Game Showcase, University of California, Irvine, June 15-17, 2022
• "The Woods"  CURRENTS New Media 2021, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 18-24, 2021 

Papers:

• “The Woods AR Game”, IFIP- ICEC, International Conference on Entertainment Computing 2021, Coimbra, Portugal, November 1-5, 2021, Proceedings pp. 501-504, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89394-1_44
• “The Woods: A Mixed-Reality Two-Player Cooperative Game”, SIGGRAPH 2021, Art Papers, Virtual, August 9-13, 2021. Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Volume 4, Issue 2, August 2021, Article No: 30, pp. 1-7, https://doi.org/10.1145/3465616
• “The Woods: A Mixed-Reality Multiplayer Cooperative Game”, HCI International 2021, Washington DC, USA, July 24-29, 2021. volume 29, LNCS 12790, pp. 388-397, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77414-1_28 

Presentations:

•  2022 Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference, A Well-Played  presentation, University of California, Irvine, June 15-17, 2022
• Global Digital Humanities Symposium, Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, Michigan, March 23-25, 2022 
• IFIP- ICEC, (Virtual) International Conference on  Entertainment Computing 2021, Coimbra, Portugal, November 1-5, 2021
• Arts in Society 2021 (Virtual), The University of Western Australia, School of Design Perth, Australia, Jun 15 - 18, 2021
• Design Principles & Practices (Virtual), Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico, March 3-5, 2021
• CAA 2021 (Virtual), College Arts Association Annual Conference, Feb 10-13, 2021
• Technarte 2020 (Virtual), November 12-13, 2020
• Arts in Society 2020 (Virtual), The University of Western Australia, School of Design Perth, Australia, Jun 15 - 18, 2021