2BCF: Weeks 9 + 10

And just like that, we got to the last two weeks of the summer. We pivoted back to our Space Squad game that Aubrey and I were designing, and brought the entire team of us onboard (no pun intended). 

Jacob worked on programming the game, while Aubrey and I learned more fabrication skill sets. Sloane (graphic design intern) and I also worked on creating art assets for the game. And I also worked on trimming down the script.

My goal was to learn how to laser cut by building a cardboard prototype of a docking station for the PC laptop that would run the experience. The goal was to build something that looked alien/spaceship-like to cover the laptop with. It would need to hide the Makey Makey as well.

With my first laser cut, I accidentally set a tiny fire… whoops! I learned the hard way that lowering power AND speed actually makes no difference, only one variable should be changed at a time. From my experience, I learned that laser cutting is a lot of trial and error to figure out the right settings for different materials.

Baby’s first laser cut project on recycled cardboard!

The downfalls of small laser beds.

In addition, the laser cutter that we were using had a small laser bed. Which meant that I had to constantly adjust my design to fit in the cutting area. While this method was clean and precise (when it worked), it didn’t allow for me to build as large of a design as I had wanted to. I was limited to the laser cut bed size for my design. Also, since the program that we were using didn’t rescale exactly, sometimes my pieces wouldn’t fit together well.

But it was a really fun tool to use because it allowed for rapid prototyping. It was much easier to make design choices when I could see and hold the piece in my hand.

Second prototype of docking station.

Control panel cardboard prototypes done by Aubrey, button box and alien symbols done by myself, Jacob’s arms programming furiously.

Aubrey worked on building on the control panels for the experience, and by the end of Week 10, we had a fully working prototype!

We playtested with the Director of 2BCF, Leah Hanes, and with designers from the corporate side. Nigel Randall, who is an ETC alum, and game designer at corporate, played our game and gave us feedback.

Interns Jacob and Hannah, flanking Leah Hanes, Director of 2BCF as she tries to navigate our new game.

Graphic Designer Lauren, Game Designer Nigel, and Director of Innovation Justin taking a photo during the data transmission finale.

Positive comments:

• Visual effects of fabrication

• Sound effects - meow

• Mouth visual effects

• Button mashing most fun part

Negative comments:

• Less text, more imagery

• Mouth moving inconsistent - could use polish

  • Could attach to another gameobject to handle that

• Idea of how good or bad that you performed

• Rocketship effect that she’s being uploaded back into force

• Add sprites turning? ← add more challenge

• Negative feedback?

  • Impedes you?

• Title - rank that you earned

  • Her distance traveled back to Alpha Centauri?

If I had more time, I wish I could’ve fully prototyped out the docking station. I had wanted to do some arduino tutorials and learn how to add LED lights and moving components. I had also wanted to fabricate it out of acrylic and add hinges to easily remove/transport. I also wish that we could’ve had time to playtest with kids and see the experience in action. But time flies when you’re having fun!

2BCF: Week 1

Day 1, I arrived at the Two Bit Circus Foundation Warehouse in Gardena, with absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. First of all, driving on the 405 was an experience within itself. Having grown up driving in Boston, I was sure I could navigate the LA traffic, but I was wrong. Think aggressive Masshole drivers combined with Pittsburgh Left-ers who never signal when they’re about to merge, but also with less honking so that you have no idea where people are on the road. But I did get there in one piece!

I got the low-down on the organization and a history lesson of the growth of 2BCF. Having written about them in my senior thesis in college, I was familiar with their history up until 2015. 2BCF is an interesting model, as one of the few organizations that started as a non-profit and has since then grown a for-profit arm (of which, most people in the industry are more familiar with). 2BCF still retains the original initiative to inspire the next generation of innovators, while the Microamusement Park focuses more on building experiential entertainment. However, their goals are not mutually exclusive of one another. The experiences that the Microamusement Park creates can be used to inspire programs run by the Foundation.

Having gone to Eyeo (a creative technology festival in Minneapolis), I was a week late to the game. I joined a group of interns from USC who were working on rapid prototyping games. Justin (our supervisor and the Director of Innovation at 2BCF) challenged us with each building 5-10 games with Scratch and Makey Makey in one week.

Scratch is a free block-based visual programming language available online for students to learn the basics of programming. While Makey Makey is electronic board that allows everyday objects to be converted into alternative controllers. Both were created out of the MIT Media Lab. Funnily enough, I had actually just attended a talk at Eyeo by Amon Millner, one of the people who worked on developing Scratch.

We were challenged with taking games that already existed on Scratch and “bastardizing” them into STEAM-themed games (his words not mine). Think Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. We were told not to worry about graphics, but just to focus on gameplay and building interesting alternative controllers with the recyclable materials in the warehouse. This was the first time that I was tasked with fully producing a game on my own. I had no programming experience before I arrived. I was a bit overwhelmed. But I figured, if kids could do this, I could probably do it too?

Like any project, I started off with research, aka playing a TON of games on Scratch. It was pretty impressive what kids were able to make with the program. I really wish that I had something like this to play with growing up. I think the closest I ever got to coding was messing with the HTML & CSS of my Neopets storefront.

I also started to think about what I wanted to create this summer, inspired by what I had seen at Eyeo and the 2BCF brand. At one point my list of brainstorming ideas looked like this:

Which then involved into this specific list for Scratch & Makey Makey games:

I started off with what I know best: button smashing and chickens. First semester during BVW, I had worked on a game called Chicken Run. Originally, we had wanted to use Makey Makey to create a controller that involved the guest wearing a beak that they would then have to peck with to pick up objects. That dream had died when we realized that the mechanic didn’t make much sense in the context of our game. Typically, objects in racing games are automatically picked up when you run over the object.

So I decided to bring that idea back to life. I took the code from a really cute game of a bird pecking to pollinate flowers (not scientifically accurate btw), and turned it into a Chicken Infanticide game. The guest wears a beak and must smash their face into the table to smash eggs. The more eggs they smash, the higher their score. To complete the experience, heavy metal music plays aggressively in the background.

Playtesting showed that people enjoyed watching other people play the experience more than playing it themselves. The beak was uncomfortable to wear and also the angle of the screen to the controller itself was awkward. It was difficult to both look to see where eggs appeared and then smash it concurrently. The game also had absolutely no STEAM learning (though I had considered skinning it to be a blue jay smashing other bird’s eggs - that is scientifically accurate… kind of). But overall, I would consider it a success for the first game I’ve ever built on my own! My goal was to make people laugh and I definitely succeeded in that.

From there I continued to work on some other ideas:

I reskinned a Dance Dance Revolution game into a DNA DNA Evolution game. I replaced the arrows with nucleotide bases, and the guest had to press the corresponding base pair (adenine to guanine, thymine to cytosine). I had wanted to add a RNA mode, where uracil appears and has to be paired with adenine, but I ran out of time. This game turned out to be incredibly challenging, as players often wanted to just press A to A, G to G, etc.

I reskinned a rocket game where the player has to avoid obstacles, into a reactive elements game. The player is an H2O molecule avoiding reactive elements. The size of the obstacles corresponds to the size of the elements as they go down the periodic table. This game ended up being more successful in terms of gameplay, but I had trouble programming the explosions to correspond with the actual reactivity with H2O. I had also wanted to create a controller involving actual water, but turns out water and electronics is not a great combo. In addition, water as a medium for conductivity is inconsistent because water droplets form and create unwanted connections.

I also had an idea to take some old books that I found and convert them into controllers. How cool would it be if you could cast spells with a real book? But in the time that we were given, I couldn’t find develop a game to match the controller.

I love puns. So I created a Fishing for Phishing Scams game, where two players have to fish out the phishing scams that appear using these baby fishing rods that I created last minute before a demo with a professional game designer from the corporate side. I used tinfoil, cardboard, conductive tape, and a La Croix can that I cut open last minute to serve as a vessel for water. The player must pull their physical rod out of the water to yank their digital rod back up in the game. My favorite part of building this game was by far putting in an image of Rick Astley rolling by quickly across the screen and telling guests that they just got Rick Rolled. Capturing Rick = maximum points.

Aside from building games this week, we also stayed late on Tuesday night to play Two Bit games at the park. While waiting for the park to open, we were asked to help attach this giant sticker to the side of a game cabinet. How many people does it take to put on a giant sticker? A lot. And then more to spectate. And then myself to tell bad jokes the entire time.

We met Scott Barrett, who designed Heavy Burger and talked to him about his design process and how he learned how to build game cabinets. Apparently, this was only his second one. His advice: YouTube it. I did ask him when Light Burger was coming out. I got one scoff, which I consider to be making a great impression!

Concurrently this week, I worked with my brilliant co-intern Jacob Surovsky to put together a proposal for the Children’s Museum at Kern County. We were tasked with coming up with five standalone interactive learning stations for an energy exhibit targeting children ages 8-12. 

Having just worked with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, I was tasked as lead on this proposal. I was pleasantly surprised by how much my previous experience lent me with insights on designing museum experiences. Specifically, how important game mechanics are to scaffolding learning and how mechanics should correlate with learning goals.

We only had a week to develop this proposal, while working on our own games, so it was a little tricky to balance needs. But together we came up with three different concepts:

• Sustainable City: Power a miniature model of Kern County using wind, petroleum, solar, hydropower, and natural gas.

• Energy & You: See how much energy daily objects in your life consume. Generate energy to power your life using the five power stations.

• Energy Midway: Welcome to the Energy Midway! Step right on up and try your hand at any of our energy games! How much energy can YOU win?

We also developed ideas for each interactive learning station that can be re-skinned to any of the above three concepts.

Also, this week I attended a professional development workshop run by 2BCF. Justin taught teachers in the Santa Monica school district how to best utilize their newly provided STEAM Lab and resources. Teacher had 20 minutes to build their own STEAM-themed game using recyclable materials. This Checks & Balances game was by far my favorite.

In my opinion, one of the most notable aspects of 2BCF is their focus on professional development. Many similar organizations have a strong focus on educating youth and providing resources, which is admirable, but doesn’t consider how important teachers are to the equation. Without teachers to support students in using those resources and continued engagement, these can easily become one-off experiences. Teachers are arguably the most valuable resource to students.

My most memorable learning experiences are not from what I learned or how I did it, but from who taught it. I will always remember Mr. Snow from AP Biology teaching us how the cardiovascular system works through a rap song (please watch to make your day.)