gamma3d postmort
When Kokoromi announced gamma3d, we honestly didn’t know whether our design challenge, anaglyphic stereoscopy (which is - binocular display using superimposed red and cyan images), could actually be integral to a game. We issued the challenge to ourselves and other creators to explore whether the technique could produce truly original gameplay - interactions not possible to achieve in any other manner.
Based on the submitted games, our answer could be “yes, but extremely rarely, and only with carefully controlled and limited visuals.” Namely, of the games we received, only The Depths To Which I Sink was impossible to play without the anaglyphic red-cyan glasses. Depths strips away all other depth-of-scene cues, like scale, horizon, and parallax, and disguises the anaglyphic color palette in simple non-representational graphics. In other words, if you don’t wear the 3D glasses, the rectangular game world of Depths is completely flat.
But stereoscopic design techniques are deeply dependent on the specific hardware and software used to deliver the illusion, which means each is unlikely to become widespread. The gameplay innovation of each would be limited to that particular interface, and even then, there doesn’t seem to be much that can’t also be done by other means. Other stereoscopic technologies that feature more discreet perceptive separation between the two “eyes” might offer a few unique opportunities, which we hope to see when that technology becomes more accessible to experimenters.
In general, stereoscopy seems primarily a way to interest and immerse players visually and sensorially, rather than create any revolutions in gameplay. But we invite you to prove us wrong on that one. In the meantime, it’s definitely a way to get a room full of our favorite people to put on wicked cool cardboard glasses.
Photo: Simon Law - Some rights reserved.
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:C
I want to go to Denmark!
Posted 11 Apr 2009 at 8:35 pm ¶Post a Comment