This new hyper casual game from Original Games lets you run like the wind (or duck) while jamming to some great music!  Duck Runner also comments on how the never-ending digital world of today is saturated with information constantly being forced upon you.  It strives to show its users that the ability to navigate through this information is not an easy task and can affect your well-being.

The object of the game is to dodge as many walls as you can and claim the high-score.  Two versions of the game will be released, the first being a version of the game as it is now without environmental images.  The second version will feature increasing complexity of environmental images, much like a highway full of billboards.  Jaron Lanier stated:

“Advertising can be a manipulative, sneaky, and maddening source of distortions” Lanier -pg266[1]

The Objective is to see if distracting images rather than traditionally increasing the speed and number of objects to avoid can increase difficulty.  Both versions will be played together and the high scores compared in hopes to show the effects of information overload.

My development of this game began with a course on Udemy.  I wanted a straightforward game project to get back into Unity development.  I found a course that gave me the basis of an Endless Runner prototype from start to finish.

During an earlier experiment on creating a multiplayer game, I produced a running duck animation that fit wonderfully.  I decided to use the asset for the main duck running animation throughout the entire game.  I also reused a music track I had purchased for use during a game stream.  With a weekend of intense game development, I had a custom prototype to work with.

To complete the game, my first thought was that I needed multiple levels and a game that increases procedurally.  I found a white paper that explains Procedural Level Balancing in runner games that seemed interesting.  I also began researching how to increase the BPM (beats per minute) of a sound track through code.  This seemed like a logical route for development but I wanted to make something that goes against the grain to stick with the Original Games motto of making innovative and experimental gameplay.

Although my future development was not yet clear, I used this prototype to capture data on my audience for marketing purposes.  I created a Facebook advertisement and released it for five days.  The greatest take-away from this experiment was that the ad was almost solely viewed on a mobile platform.  Unfortunately, this did not help the fact that the prototype was released for PC.  I ended up only having about a couple of people try the game.  I also found that my audience was mostly males ages 18 – 35.

As I move forward with creating ad campaigns I plan to have the game published for mobile.  I also found an interesting article on the history of gaming revenue titled: 50 Years of Gaming History, by Revenue Stream (1970-2020). Visual Capitalist.[2]  It clearly shows the mobile market growing and becoming the most liquid platform, making up over half of all the gaming revenue.  With this information, my previous goals of publishing on the Steam platform have been changed.

After reading the game synopsis, you should have a good idea of where my development is going.  I want to break away from the traditional escalation of the speed and number of objects to avoid in order to increase difficulty and try something new.  The idea is to have images in the background become increasingly prominent as well as have images come towards the player on the sides of the screen as well, almost like billboards.

This mechanism will hopefully bring awareness to information overload.  There have been numerous studies on the effects of information overload.  One readily available paper on the subject is titled: Information Overload: The Differences that Age Makes, by Jennifer C Benselin and Gillian Ragsdell.[3] It does a nice job of breaking down the effects on information overload on different age groups. According to Benselin and Ragsdell’s findings many negative factors are attributed such as depression, confusion, agitation and even anger.  Another paper titled The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies

“The modern information environment… presents us with information in forms with which our senses, and prior experiences, are ill-equipped to deal. The causes of overload, in this sense, are multiple and complex”[4]

An article in the Guardian illustrates the concern about how much stress the human brain is under due to the amount of information it processes in short periods of time.  In modern society, most people have a smartphone which acts as a phone, watch, computer, game console, camera and even a flashlight.  Levetin, a neuroscientist, explains how trying to do many things at the same time can cause someone to not be able to think straight.

“Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking.”[5]

Theoretically the score won’t be as high in the second version with the distractions. I hope to increase awareness of the effects of information overload with a simple endless runner.

“Don’t forget to blink.  First it’s a super casual running game, then you start bobbing to the catchy background music, and before you know it, your eyes are watering because you don’t want to run into a wall!  It’s a fun game where you just want to beat your own high score (:”

“OMG That ducky waddle run is so cute!  Oh no, a wall!  A simple game with an adorable distraction… well played, Original Games, well played.  To make things tougher, maybe have some jumps and ducks (pun intended) to dodge walls?”

“Will the duck learn to fly?  Maybe have a flying section and he has to dodge clouds!  Or other things that float in the air?  Swimming would be cool too!  Don’t get caught in the floating garbage o.o”

Citations:

[1] Lanier, J. (2014). Who Owns the Future? (Reprint ed.). Simon & Schuster.

[2] Wallach, O. (2020, November 25). 50 Years of Gaming History, by Revenue Stream (1970-2020). Visual Capitalist. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-years-gaming-history-revenue-stream/

[3] Benselin, J. C., & Ragsdell, G. (2016). Information overload: The differences that age makes. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 48(3), 284–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000614566341

[4] Bawden, D., & Robinson, L. (2008). The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other

paradoxes and pathologies. Journal of Information Science, 35(2), 180–191.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551508095781

[5] Levitin, D. J. (2018, March 22). Why the modern world is bad for your brain. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload