GRiD : Transforming public spaces with collaborative play

Before its large scale debut at the MAPP_MTL festival, GRiD began as a question posed to our research and development team: how can interactive affordances be built into public space to enable play?
To explore this question, it was obvious we needed to build something—something that would transform the city into a playground and engage passersby. The game mechanics had to be simple enough to be intuitively understood, and easily controlled by the body. We also needed a game mechanic where the levels can be completed quickly, but become increasingly difficult as the game progresses. In other words, we needed a game where players’ focus is on embodied gameplay rather than just visual effects or narrative.

Inspired by the incredibly simple game mechanics of table tennis, this arcade classic seemed like an obvious model for a first experiment. Imagined by Nolan Bushnell, developed by Allan Alcorn and brought to market in 1972 by Atari, Pong is one of the first and most iconic arcade games. But despite being revived and adapted countless times, (including Loren Carpenter’s famous 1991 crowd experiment) it had yet to be transformed into a human-scale game integrated with public space. The challenge was therefore to translate the mechanics of the classic 1970’s game into an innovative form by updating the gameplay technology.

GRiD is the culmination of a year or so experimentation using a LIDAR sensor. We saw this technology being used to track moving objects on self driving cars, and we figured we could use it to follow people in public spaces as well—so we ordered one.

After writing some custom software to detect point cloud clusters (moving humans), we tested it in our black box and were impressed by its accuracy. With one LIDAR in the corner of the room, we could reliably track the position of a dozen or so people. So we set about turning our 40 x 60 ft. m black box into a giant game interface using Unity as a visual and gameplay frontend.

GRiD evolved by iteration. Each time a group of Moment Factory employees came to play in the Blackbox, we collected their reactions and used them to inform the next iteration of the game. This allowed us to fine-tune the speed of the gameplay, and inspired us to spice it up by adding some unexpected effects!

The first public test took place during the MAPP_MTL festival. Instinctively, people began playing. At first, they were caught off guard by the unexpected changes in gameplay such as acceleration, duplication of the ball and other surprises. But quickly they began to figure them out, and wanted to play again to improve. Spectators gathered around and teams formed organically, spurred on by cheers of encouragement. The excitement became increasingly palpable as everyone got carried away. Little by little, the teams began to blend and diversify. Circles of friends opened up to strangers, and touching moments were sparked—like this son, playing his father, super excited to share a rare moment of pure play. As the game ended, players congratulated each other with the utmost sportsmanship—they high-fived to the cheers of the crowd, and those in line jumped up and down with excitement waiting to take their place on the interactive court.

Witnessing these spontaneous social connections, it immediately became clear that we were rediscovering a social dimension of games that has been missing since the sudden death of arcades in the 90s. It was so refreshing to be playing with a person you could see, and to be moving your whole body. The technology is still a bit expensive, but we hope this kind of public interaction gets more and more people out of their living rooms and playing together. The technology is finally available to bring games back out into the real world. This idea of taking games out in to the real world marks the beginning of a new era for the interactive team and, more generally, for Moment Factory.