Team Goal:
As the Transmedia and Rabbit Hole team, our primary role in this experience is the recruitment and priming of our players. Since the rabbit hole must be designed and circulated well in advance of the experience, once our team completes this aspect of the project, we will be assisting other teams in creating the transmedia elements of their deliverables, such as assisting Puzzle Design with the digital aspect of one of our puzzles.
Schedule:
After forming our team, we spent time documenting our availability and our work style/preferences. Based on this information, we decided that our team would be best-suited meeting once a week (Saturdays at 3pm) and that meetings would be oriented around planning and presenting deliverables, rather than functioning as work sessions.
First Meeting:
Prior to our first meeting, Noor compiled research on rabbit holes which she distributed to the team. This document detailed the pros and cons of different media and methods of rabbit holes and helped spur conversations surrounding potential challenges our team might face in designing a rabbit hole for this experience.
During our first meeting, we began the session by deciding that our rabbit hole would be broken into two separate stages: the recruitment and the invitation, which confirms a player’s spot in the experience and provides them with a backstory. For the recruitment process, we decided that using a digital medium would increase the ease of access and distribution. This led us to discuss creating a fake casino website where potential players would fill out a forum to “apply for membership.” By framing the forum in this way, we are able to maintain the atmosphere of our game while simultaneously collecting the necessary basic information about our potential players, such as their name, contact information, availability, and their familiarity with the casino games being played during the experience. Once our player pool has been selected, we will be sending out a round of formal invitations that confirms a player’s spot in the experience and provides them with their backstory, in addition to any instructions regarding attire.
After selecting this structure, our team picked the platform to host the website, Squarespace, and Katelyn volunteered to host the website and be the lead on this aspect of the project. We then addressed the request from other teams that the rabbit hole should hint to the players that the casino is rigged. We plan on achieving this by having a carousel of the casino’s latest Instagram photos embedded into the website. One of these photos will be a posted apology addressing a recent rigging scandal. We will also be fleshing out this Instagram account more thoroughly and linking it to the website.
At the end of our first meeting, we had each team member sign up for deliverables to work on and present for the next meeting.
After the meeting, Emily created a summary of Rabbit Hole’s chosen direction and sent it to the producer channel on Discord.
The Website Process:
We chose to go with Squarespace to host our website, for ease of domain use, the availability of markup and typefaces, and integrations.
We started evaluating out-of-the-box solutions for disseminating invites and collecting RSVPs. The below are listed in an increasingly “in-game” tone.
- Hosts (classmates) will send their invitees an email containing the link to the form section of website
- Hosts will collect relevant contact information, submit that info to us, and we send an email with less story tone
- Hosts will collect relevant contact information, submit that info to us, and we will send an email fully in story tone (the game begins HERE)
We began iterating different style motifs as we awaited more concrete visual theming from story, staging, and costumes. We first wanted to start with color schemes that evoke old money, luxury, and excess, as well as typography with serifs. These have NOT been tested for web accessibility, which will be prioritized once we reach a consensus as a group on the visual aesthetic.
Current Deliverables:
Noor:
Regarding the logo designs, Noor created three logos aimed to 1) spur discussion around our the casino’s atmosphere (motel, sleazy, upscale, modern, fantastical), 2) establish the color palette and typography for future visual design elements, and 3) solidify the name of the casino.
The current exploration of logos focuses on concretizing three different options for settings. The first, called Lucky Dice, emphasizes a cacophonous color palette reminiscent of slot machine aesthetics and lends itself to a neon-lit, run-down motel atmosphere. The second, Jackpot Casino, adopts a more modern casino aesthetic borrowed from Las Vegas logos from Emily’s background research. The third, called ACE, offers a sleek, somewhat fantastic design that lends itself to numerous settings and may resonate with younger audiences.
Noor also produced the text for the casino’s online membership application, which will serve as our method of recruiting players. The form aims to gauge the potential players’ experience with the three types of games proposed by the puzzle team (blackjack, poker, and craps) and confirm their availability for March 7th. Katelyn is spearheading the implementation of the form on the website.
Emily:
Emily is going to be creating visual assets to populate the website and Instagram. Since we are currently waiting on a group-wide confirmation regarding our aesthetic, these tasks are on hold until a decision has been reached.
In the meantime, Emily has been coordinating with Bruno and Puzzle Design to discuss recruitment equity and the horseracing puzzle, respectively.
Katelyn:
Katelyn will continue to generate website mockups based on details from story/staging and our team’s research. She will also begin work on both electronic and physical invitations once thematic elements have been locked in.
Tallon:
Tallon will work on fulfilling/discussing requests from the puzzle team as they arrive, and in the meantime will assist with website accessibility.
Potential Challenges:
Noor: A number of teams—namely set design and script—serve as key stakeholders in establishing the mood of the settings. In order to select a logo, we should first have a more general discussion about the type of mood we’re aiming to create.
Emily: As the rabbit hole team, part of our role is to ensure that we pick a fair model of recruitment that affords every member of the class a say in who is invited to the experience. Since we may receive more respondents than we can actually host during the experience, there may be a situation where we must decline a player from participating. In this event, we want to have very clear expectations about how this process will take place so that there is not any personal bias in deciding who is admitted to the experience. Currently, our plan is to encourage every person in the class to invite one potential player by sending them the website link. Based on availability conflicts and other constraining factors, we estimate that this process will yield a player pool that is within our anticipated bounds of 15-20 players. Prior to circulating this link, we will be transparent with the class about what criteria we will be looking for in players should we exceed the expected range: confirmation of availability on performance day and experience with at least 2 out of the 3 casino games (Black Jack, Poker, Craps). If we must limit the number of players, we plan on circulating a confirmation of availability and the first respondents to this notice will be admitted into the experience.
Collaboration Between Teams:
The puzzle team initially asked us to assist with a horse racing-centric puzzle, which would have involved footage of horse races (with a specific winner) and a newspaper encouraging players to bet on other horses. It was determined to be infeasible to fabricate immersive footage of horse races that would contain the desired narrative, so we are now awaiting further developments from the puzzle team. The feedback we provided to puzzles was to pitch transmedia a couple of ideas so that our team assessed the idea’s feasibility before the idea became integrated into the core story. Once we have an update from the puzzle team about the desired elements of the puzzle, we will also assist in brainstorming ideas that are feasible with our capacities.
