Timeline

2 months (October–November 2019)

Disciplines

Installation
Game Design

Technologies

Socket.IO, Node.js, Canvas API

Team

Alex Villacis (Visual Identity)
Isa Defesche (Fabrication)
Arimit Bhattacharya (Interaction Design, Development)

United by our interest in dark patterns on social media, I teamed up with Alex and Isa to create an installation-based game. This installation was the focus of Major 2.1 at Willem de Kooning Academy.

Play it yourself

Data Carnival is a competitive game with a simple rule—the more you share about yourself, the easier it gets.

The game is deceptively simple—the player has to keep their finger on the black circle. The longer they hang on, the higher their score.

As they soon find out, this is trickier than it looks. Lending a hand, the game nudges the player towards answering an optional questionnaire.

These questions get increasingly personal—starting from simple biodata like name and age, and ending with the colour of their underwear and what they had for breakfast.

Data Carnival - Ball Sizes.gif

Each question has a certain “weight” based on how personal it is. The more questions answered, the larger the black circle (and hence, easier the game).

A note on difficulty

I walked around playtesting the game with strangers to fine-tune the difficulty. It had to be (or at least, seem) easy enough to start playing, but just hard enough that players would have to answer questions to have a serious shot at the leaderboard. This also meant the game would be accessible to a large number of people while maintaining a high skill-ceiling, leaving room for a competitive atmosphere.

This was done by adjusting a few factors:

  1. Minimum ball size (before answering any questions): This had to be small enough that the game was (almost unreasonably) hard, pushing the player towards submitting more data.
  2. Maximum ball size (after answering all questions): This had to be large enough that the game becomes significantly easier, while still keeping it challenging.
  3. Ball acceleration: The ball speeds up as the game progresses. A lower initial speed helps ease the player into the flow of the game. There’s a cap on the maximum speed so that the ball is never inhumanly fast.

The leaderboard played a critical role at the installation—having live standings incentivises players to get a higher score. A long list of previous players also invites people to try the game by means of social proof. A live visualisation broadcasts the current player’s round to spectators, building tension and hype around the installation.

The leaderboard also acts as a call-to-action in its idle state, attracting people to the installation through its bright colours and movement. This is also a tongue-in-cheek imitation of similar visual elements omnipresent throughout predatory games and websites.

Data Carnival - Pedestal + Screen.jpg

This underlying predatory mindset is hinted at throughout the installation—from the visual language (with dark blobs breaking through otherwise brightly coloured surfaces), to the slightly provocative language used in the CTAs.

These undertones are also clearly communicated after the end of a player’s round, when they are handed a receipt with all the data collected from them. A copy of this receipt is pinned to the wall for further social proof. This also makes the lack of privacy abundantly clear to future players.

Data Carnival - Receipts.jpg
Data Carnival - Receipt Footnote.png

The receipts also acted as a parting footnote to the installation, addressing a problem we faced in tests—how do you convey a meta-message without being obtrusive?

The note clarifies the data submitted by the player as the “price”, and connects this gamified analogy to their actual online experiences.

Data Carnival - People.jpg
Takeaways

The final installation created quite a lively atmosphere around itself, pulling in a large number of players and spectators. There were interesting patterns in the data collected. A number of people were initially reserved about sharing anything. While some of them maintained this reservation, most of them eventually answered everything to make the game as easy as possible.

It was surprising how many people submitted genuine data. In fact, we only had 3 players who submitted fake/random data, despite there being no real penalty for doing so.

I also expected some people to skip the “What is your name?” question, since it was:

  1. Optional
  2. A low-weightage (technically impersonal) question
  3. The only unique identifier asked of the player

Of course, this was always the first question to be answered.

Want to try the game? Give it a shot!

(🚫 Receipt machine not included)