concept: spectator, participant & pilot
This project will support three distinct audience activity types across two distinct types of input.
On systems equipped with a controller, all activity types will be available including spectator, participant and pilot.
On systems with a touch input style, only spectator and participant will be available.
These three activity types can be understood roughly as automatic, semi-automatic and manual - they describe varying degrees of engagement required by the audience and varying degrees of autonomy on the part of the system.
On one side of the spectrum in spectator mode, the videogame plays by itself. Events unfold, it looks great, it sounds great, and whoever is playing (probably one of the project creators) is putting on a good, interesting show. Think of the 'attract mode' concept, now think of a 'let's play' video series on youtube... now imagine the audience can choose a camera angle, skip ahead, skip backwards, and maybe turn on/off layers of audio. A spectator will be lead down the garden path, but it'll be a lovely garden path, beautiful and interesting a/v unfurling all on its own.
Moving a step away from system autonomy towards player engagement we have participant mode, a sort of semi-automatic spectator mode where the audience is involved as much as he or she might like. The audience is tasked with optionally making various decisions about where to go, what to do. Go north and look for materials for X, or go south and explore along the coast? Intercede in an argument between two crew members or stay quiet? In spectator mode we might not have even noticed these as decision points, in participant mode we see the decision and we can choose to affect the flow of events. A participant is more or less lead down a garden path, but if they see a fork they can choose to explore, and they can stop to smell the roses, as it were.
Moving a big step away from system autonomy towards player engagement we have pilot mode, which absolutely requires a controller with its precise joysticks and many buttons. The audience is making the same decisions as in participant mode, but they're also in control of their aircraft at every moment as they move from location A to location B. In pilot mode the audience can roam, staying on the garden path, choose whichever fork, and once they're feeling familiar and brave, they can set a course for the horizon.
As a point of reference, Sword & Sworcery would exist in a space in-between participant and pilot modes. Would-be pilots who enjoy the moment-to-moment of direct control and decision making were perhaps a little unsatisfied, while would-be-partiicipants, who would like to follow a story and interject here and there, were perhaps given a bit too much freedom to get lost and lose momentum.