Oxygen Flute

Updated June 2004

Review of the Organum Game Demo at the BID

The Organum Game project team presented the Organum Game Demo for two purposes. One purpose of the demonstration was to show participants a new way of playing a video game through individual and collective voice input. Another purpose was to observe the reactions and to record the comments of the participants to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the game. For the most part, the game was a success, yet there is still room for improvement. The team will then take these strengths and weaknesses listed below to develop the final version of the Organum Game.

Strengths of the Organum Game Demo		Weaknesses of the Organum Game Demo
Most people liked playing the game. The game required a lot of concentration and effort, which seemed be a good thing at the time. People liked seeing the time flash up at the end. One participant wanted to play again to "get a shorter time.” People enjoyed watching others play. One participant helped his/her teammate determine whether to sing higher or lower through hand signals. “I love this… this is so cool!” “It’s not often you go into a research lab and hear people ‘mooing.’” "I asked my friend to whistle for me." "I liked making weird noises and watching the ball move."		Many people were shy at first as to how to play. Most people needed instruction. Even after instruction there was some confusion. Microphone interference may have been a cause of this confusion. It was difficult to know when a target had been hit the first time. The flashing did not seem to work that well. However, once they hit one target and heard the sound, the game made more sense. Some got bored or exhausted after hitting a few targets and wanted to abandon the microphones. The participant who wanted to improve his/her time did not seem to think in terms of “we.” Hitting the high notes was really hard for male voices and was hard for those who couldn't whistle. A couple of participants thought that they were moving the targets rather than the gray ball. The z-axis was hard for some people to understand. Most players did not switch microphones or find help in the audience. It happened when encouraged by project members. It is also possible that people had learned that this was acceptable by watching people play first. A few audience members found the noises people were making to be funny and strange. One really didn’t like it and didn’t want to play.

Feedback Forms

The feedback forms were another method of gathering results of the demonstration. In the feedback forms, participants were asked how they participated (playing, watching, or just hearing from a distance). Niine people, who all played the game, filled out the form. The two open-ended questions were, "what did you like," and what didn't you like."

Participates liked singing and harmonoizing with their teammates. Most of them enjoyed figuring out how to use their voice to control the game. One participant felt more comfortable making strange noises after watching others do it and loved how the game was a group-oriented competition. However, participants had difficulty whistling, shifting tones to manipulate the ball and figuring out how far the ball would move due to changing pitches. Depth indicated by the size of the ball was not so clear, and ambient noise between microphones was problematic.

Fortunately, participants provided suggestions. One person wanted to see a path of the grey sphere in the end, which would enhance the players' accomplishment. Another person wanted to be able to adjust the colors and shapes of images on the screen.

results collected by Dan Perkel

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Copyright Notice 2003 Greg Niemeyer: All contents of these pages are released by the author for single user non-commercial usage.