Experimental Projector Games

The secret to making a game is to create a game (and then another and another and another and…).

It takes work to introduce yourself as a game designer. If the other person is outside of the world of games, they always say, “How fun,” as if working on games doesn’t require work, just play. If they are gamers, they ask which games you’ve made. If they are young, they ask if you made a specific game - in the early 2000’s it was always Call of Duty (now it’s Roblox or Fortnite). And then there’s the category of folks that want to give you an idea as if coming up with an idea is the hard part.

“Why don’t you make a game with dinosaurs in it? There are no games with dinosaurs.”

“Remember Battle Chess? You should make that.”

These are actual quotes. And yes, there are games with dinosaurs and recent versions of Battle Chess.

Note: I once interviewed a game designer for iD Tech Camps. I thought it would be a cool inside look into the industry. This designer was releasing a 2D platformer for iOS. He was almost done. He told me he made the game because “there are no games on iOS like the ones we grew up with.” After reviewing his demo, I understood he meant, “There are no 2D platformers on iOS.” He was wrong - I sent him a list of ten or so to look into. Kids do your research!

I always felt like an imposter in the game world. I started making games at eleven, but they were physical. PacManhattan had a video component, but it also wasn’t commercial. The first video games I made were for three websites: Owen & Mzee, Knut, and Miza. The best was Gorilla Mountain on Miza, although I’m pretty confident the last level was unbeatable (sorry - I’ve learned a lot since then!). These games were commercial but not video games you bought in the store.

My work revolved around live-action experiences. This meant I was a game designer, but not the kind of designer anyone found interesting. Do Move Say was my first released card game, although it was a live-action game in disguise. The board game design Reddit tore me to pieces! The gatekeeping was real. Many folks told me I wasn’t a game designer because they didn’t know my work. Huh.

The same happened with my first card game release, The Good, The Bad, and The Funny . I posted it on BoardGameGeek, and within minutes, I was given multiple one-star reviews. I contacted the reviewers, pleading they shouldn't review it since it wasn’t released. The answer was that they “didn’t like the type of game I described.” My guilting got the reviews removed, but the damage to my Kickstarter was done (or maybe it was the potato salad ).

I did make some projection-based live games, such as Rhythm is a Dancer, Ninja Fall (with Bryan Vitale ), ROYGBIV , and The Lost Treasure of M.O.W . However, these were all facilitator-controlled, and none were commercial—they were all games intended for live events, which, at the time, were done without compensation. I also made some Unity demos, such as Hallways and Library Lost, that haven’t been released due to a lapse in development time.

Why didn’t I create video games? I have never been a confident coder - I’m much better at writing. I’ve been making video game prototypes for twenty years(!), and they exist for me. The challenge is that my day job is almost always design, which requires a different daily toolset than coding. I need to live in the programming language for a while to have momentum; otherwise, a project will wither and die.

I designed over a dozen authentic video games for the ESC Game Theater and never had to touch the code. That was a validating experience—I made video games that people paid for and enjoyed. Some might have been bonafide hits if the ESC Game Theater still existed.

ESC took just about nine years of my professional life. The first six or so years were all about the game theater. We needed a new angle, however. The theater was a dedicated location-based entertainment space, and we couldn’t find the right venue. It was just too early for the competitive socialization trend, and we kept battling with a key fundamental challenge of our product: even if we could get the installation price down, the ESC Game Theater was a destination of its own. Few companies could install a new idea like ours into their space without compromising the business's identity. And the truth is that it was designed that way!

Note: Someday, I’ll share the full vision of ESC…

We decided to work on another product to expand the reach of our core concept: What if we could turn any screen into an ESC screen? What if, instead of 30 players, we could host 10,000 players? How about 100,000 players? What if we could create a game everyone could play on New Year's Eve at Times Square? And what if it was all low latency? That’s a compelling challenge!

The team changed and expanded. We hired developers, engineers, designers, and a writer. We wanted to change the world (who doesn’t?).

We made a demo for PlayNYC 2018 , a game festival in New York run by Playcrafting. The game was called Borough Gods. I based the idea on a game that Greg Trefry and Mattia Romeo created for Come Out and Play. Their game had five basketball hoops, one for each borough of New York, and anytime someone came up and made a basket, the corresponding team would get a point. That was it. Their game worked well because people immediately had an opinion and affiliation. Simple yet brilliant.

Note: Let’s take a moment to reflect on the wonders of Playcrafting! This meet-up group was initially called the Games Forum and was (is?) the most prominent indie game meet-up in New York City. The scene in NYC in the early 2000s was experimental and gritty. We didn’t have significant studios aside from Avalanche and Rock Star. Most people who make games do so while working in an unrelated field. There were few of us able to merge our love of the game industry and our professional lives. I became a regular when Dan Butchko was hired to bring the group to new horizons, which he did! Playcrafting brought me so many beautiful memories throughout the years and many lifelong friends.

Further Note: I started an after-party for Playcrafting called Local Folks. The idea was to highlight local multiplayer games in a bar environment. This was a regular occurrence for almost three years, including dozens of titles and thousands of players. Too bad there isn’t a dedicated space for local multiplayer games - it’s an underappreciated genre (and one I’m obsessed with).

Further Further Note: Gang Beasts was the most popular Local Folks game by far. The developer, Bone Loaf, sent me a beta copy to share during my meet-ups, which was very well received. It was pulling teeth to bring in other games! Why was Gang Beasts so popular? It was fun to play and fun to watch. The physics mechanic and cute characters were immediately beloved by the group, and it required very little explanation (which is always a challenge in a loud bar).?

Borough Gods showed an almost top-down view of an arena surrounded by five silly and scary “Borough Gods.” Players joined from the browser on their phones and drove a car around the arena. The goal was to destroy other cars by shooting them - I think players shot trash at one another, but I can’t quite remember! We did consider bagels at one point… If a car gets hit three times, they are destroyed, and the successful shot rewards that car’s team with a point. The defeated car would respawn, and the game would continue.

The impulse was to create an ambient conference game-like experience. Players could drop in throughout the day and play for a bit, benefiting the team they selected, and then go on their way. All other games at PlayNYC needed to be reset between players and had player caps. Borough Gods had no firm player cap.

Note: Technically, at the time, the maximum number of players was around fifty, but the convention layout wouldn’t allow that many players to be present at once. We were at the very beginning of our journey toward Times Square.

Borough Gods was an excuse to test the technology in public and learn from the execution. It wasn’t intended to be a commercial release, although seeing a similar experience in a public space such as an airport would be cool. The real goal was to create a platform for large group games and a more ambitious tent-pole game.

Shifting into movie theaters would be a good halfway point for the platform. We talked to many theater companies during the game theater days,? but it didn’t quite fit into the cinema model without altering their identity (which wasn’t a bad thing but wasn’t an easy thing!). The new idea was to build a game before the movie started. Many concepts went in and out of active development, but we ended up settling on The Twerps.

The Twerps was an expanded variation of a demo I had made previously called Hallways which I had shown in the early alpha form at a Playcrafting event. Both games were intended to be two-dimensional digital versions of Territory. Both Territory and Hallways centered around capturing zones, similar to Risk, but with some Capture the Flag mixed in. The Twerps started as an engine for tag-like games, with the first flavor being four-team Capture the Flag. Players could send a pulse as a tag to send enemies back to their base, and those carrying the flag would be slightly slowed.

The three keys to the game were simplicity, narrative, and spectacle. We wanted to give folks attending a movie an authentic, delightful experience that required little explanation. Capture the other team’s flag, and you win - it seems easy enough. A full-motion video intro and outro championed by Joshua Sargent supplied the narration and spectacle. The team was confident in the game’s direction, and we brought it to the beta playtest phase before the business took another sharp turn. The movie theater direction was abandoned, as our expected connection was severed. We slimmed down the company and put all our efforts into creating a platform.

I was bummed. The game theater was gone, the entire game design and development staff was laid off, and The Twerps was cut. It was a matter of time before I joined them.

The company continued, however, with renewed vigor to create a backend for X number of low-latency clients on large screens, particularly at sporting arenas. The tricky bit was that we didn’t have a game creation team anymore—where would all of the new games come from if the engineers were busy on the back end?

Part of creating a back end is creating the related documentation. I started reviewing the work and figured someone would have to test this, so I started learning how to make an ESC game. I needed much hand-holding at first - I know I annoyed the engineers with my constant, seemingly apparent questions.

There were two main issues. The first was that my experience with Unity up to that point was with its version of Javascript, which was being phased out. I had to learn C# on the fly, which was possible but took work. The other was that our mobile app was using REACT and some other frameworks (maybe it was React Redux?) that used a different layered scripting technique, which felt overly complex. Javascript was supposed to be the easy one! I agonized over small changes too much, so most of my controller code was copied and pasted repeatedly!

I persisted, though, and it was magic. I was creating my own prototypes—nothing incredibly complicated, but complicated wasn’t the goal. The goal was to make big games, which are my specialty.

The Global Game Jam was coming up, and I wanted to take my newfound power for a spin. I told Dan Butchko that I would attend the Playcrafting event with a game that everyone in the audience could play simultaneously. This would be our first foray into testing with more than fifty players (the game jam site was one of the biggest in the nation). The first app I showed was a rudimentary test called Paint Here. Everyone could draw on their phone and have it appear on the screen simultaneously. Each line had a set length and expiration so that they would fade relatively quickly. I assumed the TTP wouldn’t be an issue, but I was wrong.

Note: TTP refers to “Time To Phallus,” a comical measurement of the amount of time it takes a large group to draw a phallus using a creative tool. The term was heavily publicized when the Spore Creature Creator was released, and within moments, millions of penis critters were uploaded to the internet.

Yes, the group ruined my fun, but it was a great test, and I immediately shut the app down. The second prototype was a game called ESC Video Tennis, which was my version of Pong. Players were given a side and could cycle colors, making it easier to see their paddles. I could adjust the size of the paddles, the ball, the speed of both, and the number of balls, among other exposed variables - all through our backend GUI. We went above 80 players before the system started to falter (at least, that’s the number I remember - it could have been much higher).

The final game was Letters With Friends, a primary icebreaker and sorting tool to get players into game jam groups. The experience was mostly a quiz that would categorize participants and give them an excuse to walk throughout the space to find other like-minded creators. We hit 294 players without a crash. Granted, the amount of information passing between the controllers and the server was small, so it was a lightweight experiment, but it validated the direction. We were making low-latency apps for hundreds of people - and I was building them all myself.

The next event was the Playcrafting Bit Awards, hosted by Carolina Ravassa of Overwatch fame. This was the third Bit Awards, and I participated in each as head judge and as a momentary distraction on stage. The first one, which had a smallish holiday-party vibe, featured me playing one of my favorite large-crowd analog games, This or That. The game is about guessing the majority opinion, Family Feud style.

Note: Do people brag about being a judge? I’ve been a judge over a dozen times for various game awards, such as IndieCade and Games for Change. When Dan and I discussed the Bit Awards, I would not let him participate in the judging. He needed an outside group of specialists I oversaw each year to establish a sense of integrity. Is this something that should be on my LinkedIn or resume? Do people care?

I brought a digital version of This or That to the 2019 Bit Awards. The idea was to have the audience vote on pairs like Batman vs. Superman and have three random audience members try to guess most of the answers. I was confident in the mechanic; it was a solid idea, and letting the audience vote at the moment was a fabulous addition. I built the app and was excited to see what happened…

There was a moment during dress rehearsal when I looked at Josh Levine , our head engineer, and had reservations. There would be 500 or so people in the audience. Would the system work? We were working with a stingy New School IT group, which didn’t love the way we wanted to use their network. I needed a backup plan. I could always revert to the analog version I did during the first Bit Awards, but I had a better idea…

My youngest brother, Mark Vigeant , was doing an incredible technology-themed comedy variety show called Internet Explorers at Caveat . It was a hot scene for the New York City tech crowd and always a great time. I called him up and asked him if he could be my backup. Specifically, I asked if he could prepare a quick presentation on epic technology fails. I didn’t review the presentation nor fully imagine plan b being executed. I ensured that the AV folks could easily switch to Mark’s laptop and that he was prepped backstage.

I’m a great facilitator - it’s one of the things I do best. I get stage fright in certain situations, but my facilitation brain takes over if I run a game. Hence, I didn’t spend any time prepping for my turn in front of the audience. I programmed the game and knew how it would work - I would figure out what to say as I went. I would get nervous if I spent too much time creating a script.

It was my turn on stage, and I was in the initial rush of being in front of many people. Then, I recognized some Playcrafting faces and immediately went into facilitator mode. Everything was working excellently - we had put ESC Tennis on the screen while folks were taking their seats before the event started, so I was confident This or That would work. I gave my fun intro, put the link on the screen, and join numbers started increasing - a great sign. The numbers hit a new high for us, which was incredible. I hit a button on the docent controller, and… nothing happened.

The system crashed, and I was the only one who knew.

I took a beat and composed myself. I can’t remember what I said, but my words, combined with whatever happened on the screen, clearly indicated that everything broke. I collapsed on the stage in surrender as Mark smoothly went into his bit. Carolina, not knowing anything about our plan, came onto the stage and did mock CPR on me in the background while Mark talked about the most remarkable epic fails in tech history. It was glorious .

We hosted the after-party at ESC later that night, and everyone thought it was intentional. That’s why I always have a backup plan!

This or That was retired. I made it for the event, and ESC wouldn’t have had another opportunity like that. Josh and his team identified the mistake and improved the system. We set our sights on bigger stages with more significant risks. ESC would have to go without a safety net, but we needed more testing. So, I kept experimenting.

My focus was creating an array of fun toys that could be used in multiple situations to demonstrate the technology. I wasn’t going to design showpieces for the investors, however. I wanted to make unique expressions and play with mechanics to my satisfaction.

Flip the Switch was a riff on the clicker genre, although clicking only unlocked other things to click.

The Emotion Meter lets players control my mood, which always defaulted to “meh.” Players would compete in spamming a happy or sad button to reach the maximum level of either emotion.

Welcome Traveler was another riff on the instant team affiliation mechanic that inspired Borough Gods. Players could spam one of four choices (or any combination), making the choice move a single pixel across the screen. It was a race with many stats to inspire greater participation.

Fireworks was a simple “tap to shoot off fireworks” app that became the go-to demo app. We used it at a pep rally for Michigan State(?). It received excellent reviews.

Effects and Gif Magnet were similar to Fireworks, except you could choose your effect design (or write the text) in the former and spam gifs on the screen in the latter. It was annoying, and both left room for abuse, so I didn’t show them off too much.

I took many small experiments to Bit Bash in 2019, along with Live Action Pocket Monster Snap and some new field games. I turned on the projector right when the sun started going down. My two-story-tall face was a scene on the side of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty cool.

The last public demo I created was called Ball Pit. It was a collaboration between Max Bode and me for a Wassaic Project fundraiser. Max made a series of unique icons that evolved each time they were tapped. It was pretty and captivating—an interactive screensaver. We showed this one off at a conference in Vegas with many sports vendors (for the record, we were way out of our league at that event).

We produced a commercial game, Shake It Up, in March 2019. The game used a tug-of-war mechanic between two teams of hundreds shaking their devices. We tested it at a Seton Hall versus Villanova basketball game, and it was well received. Shortly afterward, however, Apple turned off accelerometer access by default on the mobile web , which killed the game.

I made a couple of internal demos. The first one was called ESC Trivia. It was a bare-bones trivia application intended for stadium audiences.

This laid the groundwork for a well-produced ESC Trivia Live app that debuted at the Iron Pigs (thanks, Zach Betkowski !).

The other internal demo was a slideshow application I used when giving a keynote lecture at The Museum of Games in Tampere, Finland. That night, I discovered that ESC Games was no more, ending my video-game-based prototyping streak.

I transitioned my prototyping spirit into creating games out of wood and physical computing games using an Arduino. However, I miss the ESC prototype days, as these games were large-group interactives at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds. Perhaps I’ll spin something new soon—it’s been too long.