I am immersed in the small alternative reality of sitting in my room in the morning and calling. On a small, shiny screen, I am not a writer, but a young architect preparing for a lifelong interview.
When you look at your phone like a next-generation viewfinder, the cute New York City bedrooms with modern furniture are filled with fire escapes and 2 milk boxes. It's far from the real environment where you haven't worn pants or shoes for days. On my screen, you can see a stylish wardrobe with jeweled outfits, including what I learned. On social media, I posted a picture of the jacket. I think my sister Inez is absurd. I promise to buy new clothes for my first salary. She sent me private messages and jokes. I am only hiring diversity.
In reality, there are no sisters and no suits. In the telephone world, my name is Carmen and I work for a mysterious architecture company called Mesmer & Braid. When you move your iPhone to see more of Carmen's virtual bedrooms, you guess all the objects on the screen and look around your phone to see if they are actually there. Even after eating lifelong science fiction, this simple experience makes me feel like the two are cognitively divided.
this is Holo vista, Aconite's new mixed reality game, a new media storytelling platform. Partly inspired by the 2016 Cultural Bomb, Pokemon Go, Holo vista Creative fixtures Nadya Lev and Star St. It has a decisive experimental team led by Germain and an aesthetic sheen that is commonly found in high-end fashion. Lev is a photographer who co-founded the alt-culture magazine. Coil houseSt. Germain is an outstanding art director, illustrator and developer with background in theater design. The team is inspired by the game veterans Jay Treat and Scott Jon Siegel, leading artists Blake Kathryn, award-winning story designer Whitney “Strix” Beltran, and the game. DESKPOP music group obtained.
The result is just a whole new world.
Holo vista It is the first mobile game and, of course, a social media simulator. Players need to find specific items in various environments, take photos and upload them to Carmen's social media accounts. From there, the story unfolds across stories, replies, and private messages. Aconite took incredibly one of the most notable modern acts of consuming the world over the phone, turning it into a core gaming mechanic. Smartphone gyroscopes are important to stop distrust. You can turn this amazing home as if you were standing and wander around at the bar where you are taking pictures with your friends.
During the play test, Lev and St. Germain noticed how people like cameras. “The consistent problem is that when people first look at the camera it lights up and sometimes it takes some time to register,” said Lev. “My favorite thing is that people have something similar or identical to what is open in front of the camera. At the hotel, people did a play test and it opened up to the apartment and had a bed in front of the bed and a bed in front of the bed. And that is the idea. ” Holo vista No hardware or additional equipment is required. “The scene is great in VR, but not everyone has a headset,” says St. Germain. "We have access, and we may not have been in the United States, and the iPhone can."
Easy to fall into Carmen's life over the phone, it's packed in a familiar interface with square cropped pictures and clickable heart icons. She lives in Mesmer & Braid's latest project, Autohaus, where she feels awkward romantic tension, sibling rivalry and increasingly anxiety. The auto house not only knows its own memories, but almost becomes a bait. But Holo vista There's a lot bigger talk about Carmen's personal story. "Our games are still trying to create a personal brand, so we question many difficult things like surviving with capitalism and maintaining authenticity while maintaining a permanent record of everything we do forever on the internet." Lev.
Holo vista Due to the ugly dismantling, I started with a paper prototype. Lev was doing what we all do while personally struggling with her feelings. “I went out one night and I was really drunk… I saw my new girlfriend and my ex boyfriend. ”She recalls. "I thought about how we all are always performing and how exhausted we are on social media." Later at home, Lev saw an article about how former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya prevented their children from using social media. "He knew that the company was using gamification technology in its products in a way that could poison people." As he thinks about the myriad ways games and social media intersect, he remembers the following thought: “Why don't you create, make, have fun and make a story out of all these dysfunctional patterns? ? ”
St. Germain said of the original board game, “If you do something different on social media, it's expensive. “At the very moment, everyone felt the weight of the world, and at that very moment burned on social media, the Cambridge Analytica took place. The full board game version & # 39; You lost two spaces all night stalking the Facebook page the day before. You had a political debate with a crazy uncle.
While having a baby Holo vista Lev came from a burnout chapter where Saint Germain jokingly described it as a “really amazing version” and believes he tried a balanced approach between reality and escape two years ago. She recalled the initial story the team used to fight the mechanics: “It was about the girl being canceled on social media to write an unsound article, and she was like an accidental intern and could have been thrown on the bus. By her editor. We got too far from that question because we think it's too realistic and after processing in real life people want to move to a different place if they use a social media simulator. ”
Econite tried dozens of prototype experiments before landing on the current form. Holo Vista. And to help shape the final shape, Germain painted the background of the theater design. “When we landed on the idea that a character would be an architect, St Germain first threw his face at the idea of creating a memory palace,” explains St Germain, referring to ancient mnemonic visualization techniques used to improve memory. . . “Because it was a hidden object game, it actually felt like a natural fit. So, the biggest inspiration from the project is how to communicate with space and objects, inner feelings, thoughts and memories. ”
As an intermediate veteran, Lev and St. Germain was inspired. Holo vistaSpike Johnze she, Black mirrorGames like Red String Club and Near: Automata. One of Lev's biggest sounds is the 2016 short film. Surreal Everyone has an interactive heads-up display in the near future version of Medellin, Colombia. "thank you [media depictions of the future] There is a portrayal where things are underestimated and literally everything does not look forward-looking. Because many of them are old and dating people … Many of the future descriptions feel like a copy of a copy. copy. Certainly there is a formula that falls little by little. Blade runner About the territory and trends we have today and when you see it, you are bored and aware. "St. Germain, an avid gamer, mentions a variety of games that fall into the waters of social media issues. Orwell, Normal phone lost, Simulakra — But I think Aconite is technically ahead. "There are definitely other people exploring this field in the game," she said. “But none of them have mixed reality elements. Perhaps this will be added to a mix like a new kick. ”
although Holo vistaAppeal must rely on familiar design patterns (favorite icons and routines that respond to recognizable icons) to shake things up. St. “The way we create new ways to interact with each other online seems to invent and embrace new design patterns. “I think there will be many changes depending on the hardware. There are people like Radial Games staff who create new experimental UI patterns. A fantastic strike. They put inventory in the cats that follow you, pick up your pets, and take things out. It's that kind of creativity and willingness to repeatedly explore new areas to save us in the same pattern. ”
Familiar design results in familiar behavior and this comfortable intimacy Holo vistaTo appeal. But the ghost of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan adds a new layer of meaning to the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us, including his mirror stage theory video, one of Aconite's promotional emails. And thanks to the technology at the forefront of modern life, it's much more complicated for us to understand people with numerous versions that we refract on various apps, social channels and platforms. In this game, Carmen's younger sister Inez is an influential “pits for” yoga with strong followers, but seems uneasy and unhappy. Mainstream reliance on social media as a tool to understand themselves has created the kind of anger and anger that an author called the “technical crisis”. In a message with Carmen's popular and successful friends, it is clear that everyone has a private anxiety of dragons.
Holo vistaIntimacy with Influencer culture is one of the most pioneering stories, especially with regard to Virtual Influencer. Dozens of digital celebrities, including Liam Nikuro and Noonoouri, have appeared in the past few years, but the Instagram sense created by transmedia agency Brud, Lil Miquela, has topped over 2 million followers. “We're actually good friends with the people who make Lil Miquela and we think of them as allies with storytelling that twists reality,” said the Miquela team, inspired by HG Wells. World war. This alien invasion classic, first published in 1897, made history when the radio story of 1938 caused a lot of hysteria. “When I went in the air, people thought it was real,” said St. Germain. “It's the heart of what both companies want to do. Take the most interesting part about storytelling and the most interesting part about reality and put it in a container where you can stop distrust. "
As we experiment with the kind of future we want, Aconite has a big plan to build a new world, either pixel-wise or physical. However, even with this platform based on emerging technologies, Lev's vision for the future of storytelling is rooted in old-fashioned larping (real-world role-playing), a break in unbelief that is only possible through a veil of fiction.
“When I was raised in the Soviet Union, my parents were J.R.R. Tolkien Middle Earth LARP Club ”. “Because LAP was behind the iron curtain, there was no guide to the LARP method. Everything was very brewed. ” In a broadly homosexual culture, in this microcosm of the Middle East, there were two figures in the queer relationship. “Everyone was good, cool, cool and no problem,” she said. “In Russia, it was a very beautiful romance with truly tender feelings that were not supported by the community, but in the game's magical world, things weren't good, so it wasn't good in reality. "
When it comes to mixed reality, it seems that all the roads have a big impact again. Pokemon GoThe small magic circle of the homemade lab can now easily be extended to millions of people via smartphones and internet connection. In games or fictional reality, we will be able to imagine a better world. Lev definitely thinks so.
“If we play a network game that's big enough, my parents are imagining something like LARP like LARP in Russia, but I think it's a hundred times bigger. “I think we can try new experiments on how to coexist with society within a circle of magic,” she says. “Society because there are many systems that are destroyed, unsustainable, and unable to meet specific needs. People. But whether it's Aconite or someone else, we hope that people will have a fun experience that's complex, large, and culturally different, allowing people to experiment with new systems in a fun and experimental way. ”
correction. The article claimed that the original game will be released on Android in June. Currently only for iOS with no specific release date.