ARt: The Possibilities of AR in Indie Gaming Storytelling

Influenced by Spook Country by William Gibson and what spook country means: a place we are learning to live.


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The Story becomes interpersonal.

It comes part of the physicality of the player.

Augmented and Virtual Reality gaming has become a staple for gaming companies to integrate into their distribution of games. That means VR/AR modes, updates that add VR/AR capabilities to already widely distributed games, and the application of mashup gaming categories such as indie (independent) gaming with VR/AR integrations. A major aspect of indie gaming is the storytelling element that propels simplistic gaming activity, used as the hook for gamers, and often implemented in ways that create a connection between player and character. This sense of attachment and contribution to the story creates an engrossed measure of enjoyment and fulfillment from playing the game. What if that feeling often obtained by indie games was pushed through a VR/AR experience? Instead of witnessing the story unfold from a perspective that must transfer through a screen first, the story becomes interpersonal to the very physicality of the player.

This concept of learning in a place where we have found ourselves speaks to the concept of stepping into AR/VR: we must learn again, and that augmented or virtual reality is not what we have been predisposed to learn or experience. It comes and shapes our world differently, or completely lifts and shifts and tosses our conception of the outside as perceived by our sole perception, as ourselves, of the world. 


Below is a Locative Media in Art focused Pecha Kucha. The topics covered range from Locative Media as we know it today to how location based mediums are used to create art, games, and have become implemented in the use of AR. Enjoy.