Paddle Player

2022

Physical Computing // Creation & Computation // Interactive Play

Anusha Menon

Prathistha Gera

Creative Coding
Physical Interactions

Screen Space

p5.js

01 / Conceptualization

Breakout was among the first games to be created, back in 1976 by one of the oldest video game developers, Atari. It came out as a modified version of Atari’s first game, Pong and was referred to as “Pong turned on its side”. A concept created by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, it uses a paddle near the bottom of the screen to bounce a ball towards layers of bricks at the top of the screen. When the ball hits the bricks, the bricks that are touched are eliminated. The goal of the player is to eliminate all the bricks on the screen.

Following its success as an arcade game, there were a series of Breakout games released by Atari in the following years, as well as numerous similar games by other developers. Breakout also inspired Steve Wozniak, its original engineer along with Steve Jobs, to create Brick Out in BASIC for the first Apple ][ computer - the first software version of the original hardware creation. Where the original was a black and white arcade machine game that used cellophane strips on the screen to colour the bricks, this new version used both colour and sound to amplify the user’s experience playing the game.

For our project, we analysed the three primary elements of the game - the bricks, the paddle and the ball - to see if we could manipulate these elements to create an interesting experience for the player, considering the increased possibilities that computer vision offered us now, compared to the simplicity of the original game. We found that the engagement offered simply by bouncing the ball off the paddle was very high, especially when the paddle was controlled by an unexpected body part like a nose or a wrist, and players found that experience itself to be fairly rewarding. So we decided to continue with an exploration of the possibilities of interaction between the player and the screen, while maintaining the simplicity of the gameplay.

Some of the questions that arose during this process of exploration, helping us formulate our final concept were:

How does the scale of the screen space impact the player’s ability to continuously engage with the game?
What is the value of the body in creating an engaging experience with a game that is traditionally played using computer hardware?
Is it possible to draw the player into the screen space without physically placing them within the screen?
How can analog tools like a piece of chalk and a blackboard amplify the user’s experience of the game?

In answering these questions, we found that the best user experience for our game came from being able to present it in a life sized scale where the player is able to focus solely on the functionality of their body as the paddle and where the primary and only goal is to hit the ball. With no scorekeeping or ending, it functions as a way for the player to let go of any mental boundaries placed on the movement of their body and allows them to “enter” the screen space completely, almost forgetting about the presence of their body in the physical space.

To increase the effect of this experience, we decided to create the game with a black background using a brightly coloured ball and paddle that both changed colour based on the success of the player. This was achieved using p5.js for the design, Posenet by ml5.js for the computer vision aspect and Collide2D for the gameplay. This was then projected on a blackboard, stretching the limits of the screen beyond what the projector could offer, minimising the player’s awareness of the existence of a separate screen at all. Placing written guides on the screen, for which two parts of the body created the paddle, helped the player move more easily and offered a good level of amusement as well, by highlighting the absurdity of the placement of the paddle and how it would move. Ensuring the player could not see their actual body reflected on the screen in any way was the key to minimising how conscious they were of their physical presence.

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