The project investigates combinations of existing TV IP with ubiquitous 4G handheld technology in the world of casual games. Its four main design principles are:
Accessible and extensible: the concept has to be not bound to any single IP but open for any content.
Use player-driven content to make the play experience personal: use a player's personal preferences to drive the emerging game play. At the same time, NGP connects players not only to a virtual community but also to their real neighborhood.
Procedural content generation: NGP generates game levels on-the-fly on the server side to provide fresh and new gameplay any time you start the game.
Cross-platform and multi-screen approach: connecting television screen with PC monitor with handheld device in one accessible environment.
The Next Generation Game prototype connects to the virtual couch project and allows players to collect virtual objects while watching TV. Players automatically add these objects to their individual database. The second part of the NGP project works on handheld computers and utilizes those collected objects in a casual 2D multiplayer jump and run game.
Depending on which players decide to play together a unique 2D game level is generated and filled with the objects collected by the players involved. Each player, thus contributes to the level design in an indirect but significant way. The better one performs in the 2D game, the more options are unlocked afterwards in the TV collection game.
The project is supported by Alcatel-Lucent as part of their new University Innovations Program, facilitated by the Broadband Institute at Georgia Tech and conducted at the School for Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech.
