Shamelessly Pulverizing Enemies
October 21, 2007
ShameStation was one of the funniest demos presented at this year’s PerGames.
In this game, the player controls another human being as if in a first-person shooter. The “avatar” obeys voice commands output by the vision-impairing helmet, which are sent by the “station” itself as the player manipulates an arcade-style joystick & button interface. The player experiences the world as seen from the perspective of the “avatar”, thanks to a camera set up in the helmet.
Obviously I would never pass the opportunity to try this (and make an ass of myself in front of the pervasive gaming experts whose work I follow) and so, as an “avatar”, I subjected myself to the sadistic whims of my friend Christina Heidecker.
I just wish they would have used a big friggin’ watergun to go with the cool helmet. For instance, a Super Soaker Hydroblitz would have done a good job (and made a lot of pervasive gaming reasearchers angry):
PS: Hey by the way, this soaker is awesome, it looks like something out of a futuristic FPS (Doom 3 comes to mind)! If someone is wondering about a Christmas present for me, this might just be it. Although with the temperatures I get here in Austria I might have to fill it up with hot tea.
Not Enough Memory... 
During your try-out, did you wish you were more in control or did you wish she was controlling you more?
Besides wanting a Super Soaker, to plainly answer the question I’d say I wish she was controlling me more. The basis for this is that following the voice commands output by the helmet wasn’t easy. First there was some slight problem (if I understood the author well) in the responsiveness to the player’s input. Second, you have to make some processing yourself in interpreting the voice commands. I have suggested that the author replace (or complement) the voice output with haptic output, namely a belt with four rumble motors, one for each direction.
What about an electric shock? i’ve heard they’re quite popular over there