spiele waren schon immer eines meiner „steckenpferde“. und ganz unnütz sind sie auch nicht: bei der entwicklung lerne ich immer wieder wichtige dinge für die „ernsthaftere arbeit“, seien es einfache webspiele mit flash oder komplexe echtzeit-3d anwendungen.
In the summer of 2005 the area at the corner of Weinmeisterstraße and Rosenthaler Straße in Berlin Mitte became the location of what the participants themselve refer to as reality clash. One sunny day in July a huge crane showed up followed by a truck carrying a large overseas container painted bright orange with large typo on the sidewalls reading www.etoy.com. In the course of this afternoon the orange container was lifted on top of two other armystyle painted overseas containers equipped as office tanks that were already sitting there, identified by the word PLATOON written on their side.
The temporary liaison of the swiss art corporation etoy with the Berlin based organisation PLATOON cultural development had begun. The summer should become a time of spectacular events, art performances and parties all night. Not the least all this was fueled by some profound discrepancies in the self-conception of the two parties. Here: etoy, who see themselves as „hyperreal combat unit“, and gained part of their fame in the mid nineties through a struggle with some big american toy-company, the toywar.
On the other hand, PLATOON claims to be constantly fighting hyperreality, committing themselves to infiltrating the real world and communicating reality.
As one project in the course of this hot summer it was decided to develop an interactive 3d computer game, that would incorporate the place, containing the three overseas containers - or tanks - as well as a fourth container, whose topside is cut open and that is equipped as a swimmingpool. Furthermore the area features a small bar in an abandoned building and another so called jungle bar in a part of the premise that is densely occupied by bushes and trees and thatswhy called The Jungle. Besides these material features of the location the game was to incorparate and communicate the self-image of etoy and PLATOON. At least purely visually seen, this was not a big challenge, since both squads tend to have quite strict a dress code: while etoy.agents are always clad in black with some orange applications, PLATOON wears olive green army-style garments. More demanding than that, was to communicate the more ideal substance of corporate image through the game.
We decided to emphasise the contradictory opinions of the two groups about the real and the hyperreal by designing the game in a way, so it constantly blurrs and transgresses the boundaries between the gamespace and the real space of the lot, the former being a most accurate copy of the latter.
This dissolution process of real space and gamespace takes place on several different layers. On the one hand the similarity of the spaces has the most striking effect, since both are situated locally inside of their respective counterpart. Thatswhy the game was set up to be played mainly on site. The machine where the players could play the game, was located in one of the office tanks and the screen output was projected onto its glass wall to be seen from the outside. So the player was immersed in gamespace and the real space represented by it and vice versa at the same time.
But also other facts of the real world situation influenced game design. For instance, the lot is no public ground and legally seen it is not allowed to have public parties here. For that a club was founded and only club members are admitted to the area. So we set the background story of the game in such a way that the player is a non club member who is actually trespassing. Sentry agents watching the area will by and by get suspicious about you, the player. So your task is to not get identified, which would happen, if the scanning would be finished, that is conducted by the agents as soon as they get aware of you. Anyway, while avoiding contact with the agents you can try to find a certain amount of tokens that grant you admission. These tokens are in fact made after the so called etoy.fizzles (little engraved steel pachinko balls) that represent a fraction of a realworld etoy.share and on the other hand after the military dogtags, that PLATOON uses as membership id.
Moving around the virtual playground the player can read basic slogans from the „ci-bag“ of etoy and PLATOON, watching not yet suspicious agents that are talking to one another.
A really challenging task is to enter the etoy.tank, since that one has no door, but only a topside hatch, really as well as in the game.
The realworld situation forming the background recures at the end of the game, when the player reaches his goal. She will then get a certain code at the virtual bar, and can move right over to the real bar, where she will get a free drink and a membership to the club. On her way to the bar it is fairly possible, that she encounters one or another of the ingame characters, which are modelled after real persons …
da hat sich aber am sonnabend einer gefreut.
etoy.ROCK war ein treuer kunde beim spielen der endversion! von friendly fire.
und die ganze mannschaft hat sich mit dem „product“ ablichten lassen, … nur ich bin nicht drauf.
wer wills probieren?
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