In this episode, Lydia Kilian, the chief editor of research at AMT lab, sat down with Chance Lytle, a game designer at Schell games, and a recent graduate from the entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Together, they will discuss several projects that Chance worked on with interactive game design, audience engagement, and gamification.

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Alyssa: Hello, AMT Lab listeners, and welcome to an interview episode brought to you by the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is Alyssa, and I am the Podcast Producer.

Please note that the episode recording took place on April 5th, 2020, during the Coronavirus pandemic. Both participants practiced social distancing by recording over zoom. Therefore, you may hear differences in the audio quality, particularly as we switch from speaker to speaker. We hope you enjoy this episode brought to you by AMT lab.

Lydia: Hello AMT lab listeners. This is Lydia Kilian, chief editor for AMT lab. And I want to welcome our guests for today Chance Lytle, who is a Masters of Arts Management student in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. His work focuses on new methods of exhibiting works of interactivity in order to provide additional context to existing mediums, works, and topics. Chance has a background in computer science and engineering and works as a game designer. So, thanks for coming in today Chance.

Chance: Thanks for having me.

Lydia: So, could you describe for our listeners, some of your past projects that you've worked on that deal with interactivity and the types of settings this sort of work would be exhibited at?

Chance: Sure. I found myself working in public spaces quite a bit. I worked previously on a project that used Twitch streaming to get large audience participation. I have done a project working for a theme park where the whole idea was to get as many people through an experience as possible. And, I've done a couple of other smaller scale games that are designed to be just picked up and played with whenever someone's passing by an area. So, I found that that's pretty interesting to work on.

Lydia: Yeah, that's interesting, you bring up Twitch, we're gonna have an article coming out on how Twitch can be used in arts management for fundraising. But yeah, also I heard that could be a really great opportunity for more interactive experiences for institutions to use.

Chance: No, yeah. And ironically, like, as we are talking right now, there's a live stream of an arts festival in Britain, called Now Play This that is doing a talk on improv in Twitch, which is the same as a project that I've worked on and how it fits into the whole idea of arts, publicity, and public spaces.

Lydia: Yeah, yeah that's interesting, seeing all the new kind of methods of disseminating that information and getting and becoming more connected and it's especially relevant today, right during, you know, the current situation. Was the interactive experience you were speaking of for a theme park, was that the front seat project?

Chance: Yes, that was front seat where we are given some crazy hardware, a large VR chair and told to do whatever we want with it. Basically, it could move in any direction we wanted. And we were trusted to keep it in a room safely. So, trying to get that approved for public access was a big challenge that I was not expecting when designing things for public spaces either. Since this chair, could spin 360 degrees, go up and down super-fast. And just safety is something that is not considered a lot, I suppose when talking about public spaces. But that was a big wake up call. But very fun.

Lydia: Yeah, I actually hadn't thought about safety when I was reading about that project. So, that must be one of the barriers to the work you're doing.

Chance: Oh, yeah, definitely. I'm involved a lot in VR in public spaces and museums a lot as well. And I know a lot of institutions like the Smithsonian, or I think the Andy Warhol are investing in VR more and more. And there's a lot of weird challenges that come across not just like safety or hygiene but making it an involved experience for not just the person going through in the headset, stuff like that. Trying to make the spectator experience part of it is a really big idea of interactivity, which kind of bleeds into like 15 other areas to talk about in ways in which like, maybe the kid in a family wants to do the interactive experience in a museum and the parent just wants to watch but still kind of be engaged. Or, another idea of spectatorship is just the idea of throughput of just having one headset in a gallery and trying to make the people in line not be bored. Ideas like that are pretty interesting when talking about VR, and interactivity.

Lydia: Yeah, I've definitely experienced that. My husband has an Oculus go and so a lot of times we have people over and we'll try using it. But it's very, it's very isolating to the for the person using it and no one else can see what's going on. So, I'm interested to see in the future how, how we can make that more communal.

Chance: No, I definitely agree. Um, I've done a handful of projects on that, including front seat and another one where you climbed up a virtual staircase, which was also incredibly unsafe, but fun. Since the there was a physical fake staircase that players in headsets would walk on. And, I think one of the biggest parts that is not really talked about this isolated interactivity is instead of just like streaming what they are viewing on a television next to them, it's really about bringing the virtual world into the real world and trying to blend the idea of what is interactive and what is not such that maybe players in the headset could affect things around them in the space like turning on the lights above them in a gallery or piloting certain things that they are looking at, and just ideas of in the line in general are really, really interesting.

Lydia: Yeah, yeah, I would really love to see how that could be done. Yeah. That's interesting about manipulating objects around you and that sort of thing.

Chance: Definitely making it more communal is where everything needs to go I think. A lot of current experiences are really like Choose Your Own Adventure kind of deal where they give you like a smartphone and say, “Okay, go explore the museum and aim the smartphone at various things”, which has its benefits, but is pretty limited as being a fancy encyclopedia a lot of the times.

Lydia: Yeah. So, as you bring up that idea of choose your own adventure. These experiences are really about personalization. And I think that experience so I imagine that these types of interactive experiences can greatly impact a person's motivation to do something because they are given more power to choose what they're doing. I think this is I think, for me, I think of education in terms of this crossover because it's something a lot of educators struggle with is really building student motivation. I myself am a piano teacher and I know that's something about students and how that how I can get them more practice or work on certain skills. So, how do you think that these sort of interactive experiences can affect motivation, or specifically learners motivation?

Chance: I think the easiest one is definitely just having something cool that everyone wants to do in the center of the room. And filling a room or the lesson with ancillary material that they pick up along the way, that is what they actually want to learn. So, it's very easy to lure people in with like a theme park door ride or a VR headset experience that they want to wait in line for. And, then making that journey to the experience worthwhile is a really easy point that a lot of institutions and museums are taking advantage of right now. I know the Smithsonian I think at the Natural History Museum is like really working on the idea of queues and how to make the paths through the galleries more of a journey as opposed to like a space that they just throw a bunch of stuff in. So that's pretty interesting. I think In terms of game design, one of the core tenets of game design, especially in VR, since players feel more like they are the person affecting the world is tricking players, tricking guests into doing things that they aren't quite sure what they'll do is like a classic game design problem where you have, oh, a rock or something, and you tell the player to throw the rock over the cliff. And then they throw that rock over the cliff. And then you're like, Oh, actually, that was the last rock on Earth. So, the players feel that guilt actually. And this is the idea of, I think, what is called a head fake, that many people use where you bleed the interactivity into what you were trying to teach. Not through exact educational lessons like that but embedding it more directly in the interactions, stuff like that. That was a bit of a ramble. But yeah.

Lydia: No, actually, I think that really is interesting, because I'm also interested in speaking about the educational field, in this trend of gamification, that is been really emerging over the years. Not just in education, but to businesses, you see it in the fitness industry and, you know, many different sectors of life so that these works of interactive experiences can be used to [Inaudible] gamified experiences. It almost sounds like what you were just describing is a type of that because you don't exactly fully understand what you're doing or the something that comes after it.

Chance: Yeah, exactly. It's, I know, it's just based on other institutions and other experiences this idea of like fulfilling a role whenever you get like, oh, the paleontologist’s map at a dinosaur museum or you get like a historians journal as you walk through a art museum, and you're just told to kind of fulfill that role. And, I think that is a very good starting point for many interactive experiences of like fulfilling a role that you would want to be, a fantasy that people are kind of missing out the ways that a lot of institutions fail in doing that are that they don't make the actions that they want you to do with that paleontologist’s map or the historian’s notebook things that support that fantasy. It's always like, “Oh, go look at this painting and make an outline of it in the historian's book” where it's like, would an actual historian do that, do you feel like a cool historical figure or a paleontologist in doing those actions. And I think that's where a lot of learning can come from, where you actually embody someone who studies the subject or parts of the subject itself, whatever is being taught.

Lydia: Right, so it seems like taking it one step further. So, you're further invested in that.

Chance: Very much so. It's like winding instead of just having a role be a skin around some lesson plan. It's really making the role or the fantasy, the core of the story of the journey of the things that you teach of like steps in a historians life as opposed to steps in a lesson and figuring out where to insert the lessons or education gamification in there is much more natural, I think.

Lydia: Right, I think you can often feel it's obvious you're just layering these game elements on top of an experience. And they kind of feel like two separate things and it sounds like what you're talking about is really fusing the two so that you're not really feeling that separation as much.

Chance: Which is very easy to say and hard to do.

Lydia: [Light Laughter] I'm sure. So, in gamifying something or as you even were mentioning these different elements to games, you mentioned the tricking players in a way. So, in researching gamification I've seen there's three, there's different views on the different elements of game design, I feel like it kind of boils down to the three that are mechanics, like the actual behaviors of the game. So, it could be leaderboards or badges, and that sort of thing. The dynamics so how the players and mechanics interact and the type of feedback you get or the time pressure you have. The aesthetics so the desired user experience and how they will feel after which it seems like something you were actually getting at when you were talking about being a paleontologist. Can you elaborate on these game elements and the process that you personally go through when you develop a new game? And I know there might be different terminology. I've seen different terms used to kind of describe the same things. So...

Chance: Oh yeah, no, there's a billion ways to lay out the parts of what makes a game from trios like this to like four keywords to a long list of things and stuff like that. But to answer the question, I think an idea that's helped me a lot and will be super helpful. And, talking about roles as well is an idea that is taught at Carnegie Mellon called the story stack. And, its main problem that it's addressing is story and plot in games and making that not worthwhile. But, the idea that I will express in a second is very core to this, and that it's like a stack of important things almost like the hierarchy of needs, or the food pyramid, where at the very bottom, the most important is the fantasy, the role that you boil down to whether it's that paleontologists, or historian, and that is what you should make all decisions when gamifying something around. Does this thing that I'm adding into the project actually support this role or feeling that I want guests to take away in games? That's very much like, oh a superhero character, or a military special ops person, or so on and so forth. But, that's definitely broadly applicable to many ideas of embodied personas and education. And then on top of that strong base, you really build those ideas and mechanics and dynamics and aesthetics. And the importance in which games tend to go for is that mechanics should be the closest to the fantasy. So, as I was saying, you really need to make the actions that you ask us to do feel like actions that a actual historian would do. Because, the way games usually work is that mechanics are the most intuitively understood parts. And that those are the base level expectation that players have whenever they want to see if they themselves are fulfilling the fantasy that they were promised by the game. So, then you kind of can just freely layer on Oh, an art style, or a plot or on numbers and works together on top of those elements. As long as that strong base is very much there. You're going to be okay with whatever game you make.

Lydia: Yeah, that's it's really interesting and does that change you would say, depending on where you're trying to do this? So, like the market or pool you're intending to make the game for, I'm sure.

Chance: No, not really, I don't think so. I think everyone ultimately wants to be something else do something else whenever they're playing a game. And, I think that's a pretty core trait that you can easily know to be whatever you want players to take away.

Lydia: Yeah, that's, that's interesting. So as you mentioned that I'd like to get a little bit into some of your specific projects. And you mentioned some arts institutions like the Smithsonian that are currently creating these interactive experiences. So, you did some work related to improvisational theater in [Inaudible] commit to this. Could you say a little bit about that project and how you think theater institutions or other arts institutions could use similar works of interactivity?

Chance: Sure. So I suppose the basis for this project was the idea that streamers on Twitch or other livestream platforms are really hungry for more creative experiences as a lot of new channels coming up like ones where you paint together with someone, ones where you watch actors perform actual theater together, especially in times of the pandemic, when people are doing zoom renditions of Shakespeare and stuff like that is very much desired by many livestream audiences. And on the other hand, improvisational theater really is looking for ways to expand their audiences. improv is very much only maybe the show Whose Line is it Anyway, in terms of larger Media Presence, but it's mostly small theaters dotted around the country. So, the idea of the project was to bring those two areas together. And I think some of the largest thoughts we've taken away is just how powerful the idea of the spectator is. And I think I touched on this briefly but trying to find the balance between letting people be involved and letting people choose to just spectate is incredibly, incredibly hard. It's the idea of trying to make an experience appealing and involving, while still giving them the option to just spectate and watching what other people are doing is something that A lot of institutions are really riding that fine line on, since at the end of the day, you don't want to push gamification onto people who just don't want to play it. That's especially true for theaters. People just want to watch the show sometimes while other people want to be a part of the show and make their decisions be heard within the show. That's a pretty key area. If I had to pick another out of the project, spectatorship is probably definitely the most important. I think another idea is the idea of long standing community. It's very weird in streams how a streamer may do like two hour shows every Monday Wednesday, Friday, almost like a regular occurring TV show. And improv shows are very much on a similar schedule where they do similar shows Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or just Friday and Saturday for two hours every time. But on streams. They kind of develop a culture throughout those whole times they develop emotes that they can use for themselves they develop phrases and inside jokes that recur throughout the entire stream. In improv that doesn't happen. Every show is meant to be different every time but there's no like long standing traditions that are uphold really whenever you try and apply that idea to kind of like public theaters or I guess any public institution, it's very interesting to see how you can kind of create community out of people. Whether you want to create community is also a big question. But I think something that would be very helpful to consider for any kind of arts institution in the future is ways in which they can feel like a more stable place for people to kind of leave behind thoughts and ideas for future people to pick up on. That's pretty abstract as it is, and this research is very much still ongoing. So, it's a bit halted by the pandemic. But that idea of being a stable third place is the scientific keyword is something that not a lot of places are really striving for. And I don't really know if they can sense their physical places most of the time, but the idea of a stable place for thoughts to be deposited and picked up is exciting.

Lydia: Well, this may be the moment where you know that starts to happen more. Different organizations coming up with creative solutions or putting their content online or engaging and building community right now when you can’t go to the physical space.

Chance: Oh yeah, very much so. I was just at a gallery show last night that was entirely online. And like a online MMO, in the web browser, where people came up with their own memes and repeated them throughout the night. So, stuff like that is very interesting to see.

Lydia: Yeah and it's just unfolding as we speak. Um, another arts related project I noticed you worked on was called Monolith, which incorporated a thing I saw called the Jam-O-Drum.

Chance: Mmhmm. That is a piece of hardware.

Lydia: It's a piece of hardware?

Chance: Yeah, so a brief story time. Back in the 90’s, there was a project by a musicologist, I believe, who just wanted to figure out a new way for people to experience music in a communal public space. And, this crazy thing called the Jam-O-Drum, which is basically a flat table with a projection on it and four buttons that are like drum pads on four corners of it came to being. And, that's been used by my department for just any kind of possible game that they want to put on they usually want to torture someone and say "Okay, here's two weeks go design your Jam-O-Drum game." and thus was born Monolith where we tried to tell a story on a four player, communal public space hardware thing, which is a very big challenge. But if you have any specific questions on it, let me know.

Lydia: And it looked really interesting. In a way you mentioned this. Earlier, you mentioned this idea of guilt, like maybe not knowing what you're a part of, if I remember correctly this game dealt with a lot of human emotions and how you like it was restricting what the player was able to do throughout the game.

Chance: Oh, yeah. No, it was very much built on that idea of guilt. And, it was overall the game was probably a failure, but there are still plenty of good ideas, I think that are in it somewhere deep in there.

Lydia: They didn't seem like the motivation of the game was music learning or anything, but I did see that it incorporated elements of rhythm into it.

Chance: Oh, yeah.

Lydia: Could this sort of game be used for music learning, do you think or some sort of extension?

Chance: I think Yeah, the real appeal of the Jam-O-Drum is the idea of just four players. collaboratively doing something on a pretty easy easily communal platform. So, that is very much just four people at a table looking at each other throughout the entire game, it's much more easy to look at each other than at the projection on the table. So, the Jam-O-Drum has definitely had some games that are super beneficial for music, learning, and education. And that people are sharing an instrument as opposed to just having four drums laid out in a corner or something like that. Monolith in particular, probably not. I think the core idea behind Monolith is four people collaboratively creating a rhythm, they take turns and then they all repeat each other sections, and then eventually, that gets taken away from them. And then they're told, okay, you have to play this one rhythm that the game taught you to play, and kind of like a dystopian sense. But um, yeah no, the communal creation aspect of music learning is super, super viable, I think.

Lydia: Right. As a pianist, I've done a lot of collaboration with other musicians. I'm you know, thinking of and I definitely think that working sense of community and like playing with other people and building ensembles is an important aspect of music learning.

Chance: Yeah, very much. Very much just two people sitting on the same piano bench. That same idea of getting up to work is very, very nice.

Lydia: Um, well, are there any ways that you would recommend arts institutions could take advantage of these interactive experiences? So, maybe things you have yet to see, but you see think could be very effective.

Chance: Well, if they hired game designers like me, I would appreciate having a job in six months. [Light Laughter] Otherwise, let me think. I'd say being able to embrace weirder hardware would be a good approach. That of course, explodes scope and cost and everything more so than the idea of just getting an app developed for everyone's smartphones to take in. But I think a lot of the unique elements of games can be found in very specific hardware that is tailored specifically to any Museum's needs. It's pretty much the same idea behind like natural history museum's having butterfly gardens and also petting areas and also shallow water ponds and that they specifically know what they want to communicate with each of those experiences, whether it be how dainty butterflies actually are and how gentle or how strange sea creatures feel, while giving guests different ways to appreciate those, I think that idea of really malleably changing the experiences is something that can be looked forward to a lot more than just putting an experience on a smartphone or a recording device that a lot of people tend to use, but also Meanwhile, it's really just way more accessible to put things on smartphones that people are basically guaranteed to have whenever they come into a museum. So, a double-edged sword there, but there is your answer.

Lydia: Right. And I think if museums successfully can create these interactive experiences that go beyond a cell phone or you know, they're more integrated into the design of this, that that can motivate audiences or patrons to be more involved and to kind of build that community. Do you think it could have that sort of effect?

Chance: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Smartphones are inherently not about bringing together community in a public space. They are very good at virtual communities. But the strength of the museum is having people there in person seeing works in real life. And I think different hardware or experiences that can focus and take advantage of the idea of having people being in the same place would be exceptional.

Lydia: That's great. Well, any final thoughts on anything that we've talked about or anything you'd like to share with our audience?

Chance: Ah, not really. If I had one book to recommend to any person designing an exhibition in the future, there's a book that founded a lot of this logic that I've talked through by Claire Bishop called Spectator Art that is very good about institutional spectatorship, but other than that, nope.

Lydia: Well, I'm excited to look into that book. Thank you for sharing that.

Chance: No problem.

Lydia: And, thank you for coming in today Chance. If our listeners are interested in learning more about Chance and his work, you can visit his website which is at www.ChanceLytle.com and little is L Y T L E. So, thanks for listening today.

Alyssa: Thanks for listening to the Arts Management and Technology Lab podcast series. You can read more on the intersection between the arts and technology at www.amt-lab.org Or, you can listen to more interviews and discussions in our podcast series on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher. Thank you for joining us.

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