The Story

Dean Monsternelli of the Evil Technology Center has captured Jesse Schell during the Building Virtual World's show! Luckily Clifford Secord III, an exchange student from the Evil Technology Center, learned about teamwork and created an Audience Controlled Jetpack. It is your mission, as an audience member, to help navigate Clifford to the top of the Evil Technology Center and go rescue Jesse. But watch out for bad guys along the way!

The experience was in three parts (two brief commercials and a game demo).

Commercial #1 - Brainwashing Promo

(01:08)

Commercial #2 - Audience Controlled Jetpack

(00:42)

Gameplay Demo

(04:35)

The Backstory

This world was created in four weeks for the Building Virtual Worlds class. Our goal for this project was to create a virtual world that combined elements from all of our classes (visual storytelling, improvisation, etc fundamentals, & building virtual worlds) and would be an experience focused on the audience. We were also able to choose our teammates for this round so I recruited people whose work I admired and with whom I had not yet worked.

We went through a variety of iterations, beginning with a magic show and giant hands. Throughout the brainstorming process there were a few ideas that seemed to be recurring. We wanted to (1) kidnap someone, (2) create a throughline for the BVW show, and (3) build something new.

We utilized a live green screen to have an actor featured in the game in real time. We also had audience interaction using Beyond Question (BQ) remotes. The audience controlled the on-screen character's lateral and vertical movement.

This screenshot from the Gameplay Demo video shows the three things that were happening at once during our game.

For the story aspect, we created the Evil Technology Center. To create a throughline for the show we put together two commercials. The first was a brainwashing promotional video for the Evil Technology Center. It introduced the school and the antagonist, Dean Monsternelli. The second commercial introduced the protagonist, Clifford Secord III, and instructed the audience on use of the BQ remotes. The idea of the Evil Technology Center was also useful to explain any technical difficulties that might have arisen during the BVW show.

Sadly, the Evil Technology Center did not get selected for the BVW show. However, we were able to set up the game at the BVW post-show reception. Our programmer, Walt Destler, changed the BQ remotes to a Wii-mote controller so that one person could fly around in the game and experience it first-hand.

BVW Round 5 Team 7:

Steve Geist - 2d Art
Brent Elmer - 3d Art
Walt Destler - Programming
I served as Producer and Sound Designer on this project.