VISION STATEMENT & SUMMARY OF PROJECT IDEA
Sheltered past is an immersive experience where players see the world from two perspectives: humans and dogs. Players start the game from a human perspective and get to explore the animal shelter. Then, as they walk up to the bio cards on the cage, they are transported into the dog's perspective, where they witness all the events that led to them being put in the shelter.
GOAL
Our project aims to create empathy and raise awareness for dogs living in shelters worldwide. The main focus is to show immersants that real dogs are living in shelters right now that have emotions and a past that requires love. Through experiencing our project, we hope to show people that adopting a pet over breeding one is an option and the right thing to do. What sets our project apart from others is that we will have players embody both a human and a dog. Using the two separate bodies and experiences, we hope to connect people to the animals we see every day, to show them that animals have feelings just as much as we do.
THEMES
The main themes that we'll be focusing on are "connection across species" and "empathy for a non-human ."As for what these mean and how they relate to the course challenge of "Impact," the theme of connecting across species is the core theme and is the crux of what Impact we hope to make. We've interpreted Impact as something that will affect the immersants and stir them towards an emotional change to better the world. With this in mind, the theme of connecting across species essentially encompasses our goal to create a meaningful connection with a dog, show someone their perspective and past and put them in an animal's body. The secondary theme of "empathy for a non-human" is similar to connecting across species, except it deals with the goal we hope to have post-experience. During the experience, we hope to connect people to the adventures of a dog. At the same time, post-experience, we want to have established enough of a connection that immersants develop a sense of empathy and understanding for dogs specifically and other animals that think and feel. In essence, our two themes are two sides of the same coin, and together they form our intended "Impact" to open the eyes of our immersants to the emotion and suffering of animals.
THE VISUAL STYLE OF PROJECT
In the visual aspect of our project, we want to make the visual the most realistic-ish as good as we can get. Since we want to let the immersants get to see a perspective from the dogs, creating a realistic art style would be the best choice to recreate the experience of being a dog and seeing the world from their viewpoint. In the mood board, we want to show how the realistic art style can apply to our project as well as the compassion, pity, loneliness feelings and share those emotions with the immersants.
CORE DESIRED USER EXPERIENCE
We want to create an empathic experience that evokes a sense of compassion in the user as the user gets to see the world from all fours and witness the tragic past of the dog. We hope they empathize with dogs' struggles as they are left trapped in small compact cages. We want to create a sense of pity for the dogs. We plan to execute this by making the user see what the dog saw when their families abandoned them. And how happy they could potentially be in a new home. We also hope this helps deter users from purchasing "designer dogs" or bread dogs because there is no shortage of dogs waiting to be adopted. The current aesthetic we plan on implementing is realism. It would not be easy to empathize if the models were low poly as it doesn't look real.
INTRODUCTION
The project's premise is that there are millions of dogs in shelters across the world right now, with almost a million of them being sent to die each year from not being adopted, and many people aren't aware of what it's like for the dogs stuck in them. The user's goal is to explore the backstories of four dogs and get an idea of what they went through before they ended up in the shelter. The core interaction will be walking around the environment and playing with the dogs through their cages, then entering their past from the dog's perspective.
NARRATIVE
Our narrative sets you, the player within a dog shelter looking for a dog. You personally wanted to get a high-end luxury dog bred for you, but your partner insisted that you go to a shelter first. Upon arriving at the shelter, you check out the dogs before finding Walter, an older dog and are then mysteriously transported into Walter’s past from his perspective. You find that Walter was once a beloved family Dog before being replaced by a fancy purebred and left on the side of the road to die before ending up here. After experiencing Walter’s life, you’re presented with the choice of adopting him or going to the breeder after all.
The narrative is essential to our experience, as showing the user that shelter dogs each have their own story is key to the core message we’re trying to send.
VR MECHANICS & PHYSICAL RIG
For the physical setup, we plan on having the user first be introduced to the experience by a host(one of the teammates). While the introduction is being presented, there will be audio of dogs barking to tease the user into the experience of entering a shelter. Once the user is briefed, we will provide them with the oculus device decorated to look like a dog to immerse them further. The decorated oculus also brings interest to bystanders. Once the user is wearing the VR system and it begins, they will be seated in a chair to complete the user journey. While they are completing the experience, we will wheel cages around them so that when the user takes off the headset, they are enclosed in an enclosure just like the dogs in the shelter.
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INSPIRATION ANALYSIS
1.Little Island: This game allows the player to experience interacting with a variety of cute animals in VR space. The player can relax by interacting with the lively animals. Help them in their time of need, play with them, and love them.
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2. A tour around an animal shelter: This video shows us how the shelter works as well as the interior of an animal shelter, so our team could understand the scene of the animal and get references to recreate it in unity 3D.
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3.Catlateral Damage: This is a first-person destructive cat simulator game where the player plays like a cat on a rampage, knocking as much stuff onto the ground as possible. It allows the player to see the world through the eyes of a cat.
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4. Dog being abandoned on the road: This video inspires our team in creating the narrative story for the project. We planning on showing the scene where each dog has their own background story about how it is being put in the animal shelter.
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5. Shelter Dogs Get Adopted: This video shows the moments when dogs in shelters get adopted, which let us understand their experience and how they would react when getting a new home.
IMMERSION FRAMEWORKS
For what aspects of immersion we plan to focus on, we’re aiming to make use of three specific ones:
Spatial Immersion
Narrative Immersion
Empathetic Immersion
We’re focusing on using narrative and empathetic immersion in tandem to first have the user percieve Walter the Dog as a regular pet, then through placing the user in his past from his point of view, we plan to create an empathetic link with Walter that will leave a lasting impact
INNOVATIVE
In terms of what makes our experience unique, we believe that swapping avatars to a non-human character mid experience to place the user on the other side of what they usually see is where we stand out.
When combined with the immersion of VR, we hope that the altering of perspective like this will make our experience a memorable one.