sapeck-telematic

Unfortunately, this demo sometimes has issues being embedded due to camera integration. Please run it here if it doesn't work: https://face-game.github.io/

The Face Game is an attempt to create awkward, anonymized interactions by pairing two players' facial expressions.

Players move around their face in various positions without knowing that their picture is being taken. After a few head-moving tasks, players are shown their face side-by-side with other players who have completed the same tasks. The intended affect is to make two players seem like they may be kissing or licking each other. After the game completes, the player's images are upload to a database where (pending approval to filter out NSFW content) they can then be randomly selected to be shown when a new player plays the game. The game's interaction is one-to-many where the many is infinitely growing. The anonymous yet intimate nature of the game makes players both uncomfortable seeing their intimate faces next to a stranger but comfortable in that they don't know the stranger and the stranger did not witness the interaction.

I think that my project is successful in creating an awkward interaction. When I tested the game on my peers, it took them a moment to figure out how to move the cursor, but they then got the hang of it very quickly. One pitfall is that moving the head to the edge of the screen often moves it out of frame if the player is too close to the camera. Another pitfall is in the varying quality of computer webcams. However, the game works fine most of the time. My peers found it odd to see a picture of someone else at the end, but they always laughed. They would then want to play it again and see if they got a different result.

My original idea was to have two face silhouettes side by side. One user on one side and one user on the other. The game would coerce the two players to kiss and then snap a picture. However, this was difficult to implement and hard to understand. I think that the one-to-many approach with the hidden goal is much more successful.

Source code on GitHub: face-game/face-game
Image database on GitHub: face-game/face-game-content
Backend hosted on Glitch: face-game