Casually Hardcore devlog

Games Of 2020 (my entry) – This Is Your House

March 6th, 2009

On a whim, I submitted a quick-and-dirty home decorating game idea to Gamasutra / Mountain Dew’s Green Label Gaming contest. I didn’t win, but a friend did (congrats Jim) who wrote a humorous entry.

I’m posting my entry here because I WANT somebody to implement this and it’s my stress-relief from prepping for GDC and I tend to openly share game concepts. Disclaimer: Would I play this game? No. On the other hand, I will never play Halo 3 and COD4. I’m neither a casual nor hardcore gamer. My mother would be addicted to this game.

Summary:

Home decorating show + game combination made possible with easy to use touch-displays and improved 3D graphics. The future will be a friendlier, nicer now.

What:

The most popular game in 2020 will be a home decorating show/game, This is Your House.

Each week an exotic house is profiled and explored in the TV show section, but afterwards the viewer/player can re-arrange all the furniture + props + doors to score the optimal air-flow, light-flow, sound quality, etc.

Gameplay:

• Begin with empty room – similar to the one in the show.
• Drag and drop (using finger) furniture from the right side of the screen to the room.
• Press “score” to get a ratings for:
• Air flow (prevent stuffy rooms with large furniture block air paths)
• Uniform light (place windows + lamps optimally)
• Colour/pattern variation (who wants to live in a grey room?)
• Acoustic quality of room (is the room good for audio listening?)

Technology like fluid simulation, acoustic rendering, and final gathering will be used to score the player.  Complex algorithms implemented for mainstream uses.

The show/game will scan the objects in the house into 3D models for the player to use.  3D graphics should be powerful enough such that the 3D models will be nearly photoreal. Technology like this is beginning to pop up (see Mental Ray RealityServer):

Results can be shared online. Custom patterns for furniture, drapes, etc. can be created by placing a real object in front of the webcamera (all consoles and TVs will have one built in).

Real pieces of furniture can be ordered in the game… so the game is part 3D IKEA catalogue, 3D game, 3D television show…. mixing passive entertainment (TV) with online sales (furniture catalogue) and world-building (game).

This is Your House is a better “virtual world” than Second Life – it will be accessible to grandmothers and children alike. There’s no Second Life porn, there’s no weird goth people flying through the world and there are weekly furniture updates. This is Your House takes the best part of The Sims (home decorating) and makes it accessible to PC illiterate and also provides near-photoreal results.

The Sims now:

This is Your House (circa 2020):

The second most popular game will be a spin-off of This is Your House – called This is Your Garden where players grow virtual gardens. Again, the interface will be the touch-sensitive LED display.

How:

In 2020 we should have paper-thin touch-sensitive displays that can be “taped” to any surface like a desk or wall. Homes will have a 8 feet by 4.5 feet display “taped” to a wall.

Sony and Phillips low-power LED displays (now):

Like how LCDs replaced CRTs, low-power/thin LEDs will replace LCDs. These displays can be used as touch-sensitive input devices – no different from what you see in Star Trek and other Sci-Fi movies.

The games of the future will be less and less like hardcore games of today.

The mainstream will be playing games without consciously “knowing it.” These “universal games” will be integrated with television shows as the display also acts like a touch-sensitive surface. A separate touch-sensitive LED display can be used as a remote/joystick if the player does not want to play standing upright.

Why home decorating:

In the future, gaming will become mainstream more than even the Wii has. The nature of gaming will change. Instead of hardcore violent fantasies we get reality-TV like fantasies of home decorating, gardening, fashion, being a celebrity, etc. that also act like marketing tools. Advergaming to the extreme made possible by technology that seamlessly blends into our normal life.

Why LED displays:

Time and time again, history has shown us it takes about 10 years for research or high-end technology to make it into mainstream. High-definition digital video was available to visual effects production houses in the mid-to-late 90s. 3D graphics cards for the consumers appeared around 1996 after this technology had been available in high-end SGI workstations since 1982.

What is appearing now in 2009 is “digital paper” – low-power thin LED displays.  In about 10 years this technology will be cheap and plentiful.

Why other technologies will fail to arrive:

The state of the art now will be mainstream in 10+ years except at a lower-cost point. Holographic video, non-calibrated real-time motion capture, brain wave sensors are still all very primitive and even the state-of-the-art is not very reliable. In 10 years the results will improve, but few of these improvements will arrive at the consumer level.

Entry Filed under: Game Development