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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nWeekly Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With the 360\u00b0 display up and running, Week 2 marked a shift in our focus. In Week 1, our main question was \u201cHow does this device work?\u201d<\/strong> This week, we began asking a more important design question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What kinds of experiences actually make sense on a 360\u00b0 display?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We continued testing the display in a more stable setup while expanding our research beyond the hardware itself. Our goal for the week was to understand how physical multiplayer experiences attract players, communicate rules, create social interaction, and encourage replay, then use those observations to begin defining our own design space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning from Arcade Experiences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of our major activities this week was a field trip to Dave & Buster\u2019s Pittsburgh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than only researching games online, we wanted to observe arcade experiences in the environment they were actually designed for. We played a range of multiplayer and physical games while paying attention to how people approached them, understood them, interacted with one another, and decided whether to play again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Several qualities stood out across successful arcade experiences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. The core interaction could usually be understood very quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Players were able to start playing without lengthy instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Physical controls made the experience immediately approachable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Multiplayer games naturally created conversation, competition, and spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Many games were short enough that losing did not feel discouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Clear scores, rankings, or visible progress made players want to try again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These observations aligned closely with the type of experience we want to create. Since our display is itself unusual, we do not want the gameplay to require a long explanation before players can enjoy it. The interaction should ideally be simple to learn, social to play, and interesting to repeat<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Multiplayer as a Social Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The arcade also helped us think more carefully about multiplayer interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, seeing several players racing side by side in Mario Kart Arcade GP DX<\/em> highlighted how much of the experience comes from more than the game itself. Players can immediately see who they are competing against, understand the shared goal, and react to each other’s successes and failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Studying how arcade games create readable, social multiplayer experiences.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This made us interested in how the 360\u00b0 display could create a similar sense of shared space without simply dividing the screen into several traditional player views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, different parts of the circular display might become relevant to different players at different times. Players could be asked to move, turn, communicate, compete for space, or respond to events occurring around them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The circular screen could potentially become part of the multiplayer relationship itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expanding the Design Space<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside the field research, we began a much broader brainstorming process. Our concepts explored areas such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racing and chasing around the circular screen<\/p>\n\n\n\n Territory control and area occupation<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cooperative tasks distributed across different parts of the display<\/p>\n\n\n\n Environmental and reaction-based experiences<\/p>\n\n\n\n Party-game style competition<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physical movement and spatial awareness<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asymmetric player roles<\/p>\n\n\n\n Experiences combining controllers with motion tracking Defining Our Constraints Short<\/strong> Replayable<\/strong> Social<\/strong> Spatial<\/strong> Prototype-friendly.<\/strong> We also began considering a combination of game controllers and motion tracking<\/strong> as possible input methods, giving us different ways to connect physical player behavior with what happens around the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next Week \u2014 Prototype #1 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Week 2 Devlog From Hardware to Play Weekly Overview With the 360\u00b0 display up and running, Week 2 marked a shift in our focus. In Week 1, our main question was \u201cHow does this device work?\u201d This week, we began asking a more important design question: What kinds of experiences actually make sense on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"blog","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-104","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/b98b01b5394b5d80044348c16efe0ddb-scaled.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Each team member generated a set of concepts for both cooperative and competitive gameplay, aiming to explore as many uses of the display as possible before committing to a single direction.
Rather than immediately asking \u201cWhich game should we make?\u201d<\/em>, we tried to ask:
\u201cWhat kinds of interactions could only, or especially, work well in this space?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/360-studio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/f79bfff519442faa36beb40186ba8715-1024x581.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
At this stage, quantity was more useful than polish. The purpose of brainstorming was to expose different possibilities for the device and identify recurring interaction patterns worth prototyping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>As we discussed the concepts, several design constraints started to become clearer. We are currently aiming for experiences that are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A complete play session should generally take less than ten minutes<\/strong>, allowing players to quickly understand the game, finish a round, and potentially play again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience should remain interesting across multiple attempts rather than being something players only need to see once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whenever possible, gameplay should encourage players to notice, communicate with, cooperate with, or compete against one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience should make meaningful use of the circular display rather than treating it as an unusually wide monitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this stage of the semester, we want ideas that can be tested quickly. A strong concept is not necessarily the most complicated one \u2014 it is one that lets us learn something meaningful about interaction on the 360\u00b0 display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>With a broad set of concepts on the table, Week 3 will be about turning ideas into something playable.
Instead of spending too long debating concepts on paper, we want to use rapid prototyping and playtesting<\/strong> to evaluate them directly.
Our first prototype will begin exploring how objects and players can move through a continuous circular environment, giving us our first opportunity to test gameplay on the actual display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n