Artists of Blindfold Racer!

For those of you wondering if there are games that have no graphics, or minimal graphics at all. There is an answer to that… Yes, there are some, and for the last two weeks I have been playing precisely that type of game! www.blindfoldgames.org Usually, these types of games are for a specific audience, such as low vision/blind individuals. Blindfold Racer was developed with help of students from App Club at Cushman School Miami, FL and Blindfold Games. The games are sound based, which a player uses to play and progress in the game. http://www.applevis.com

The game that I’m playing is called Blindfold Racer, and I have played the first ten levels, but the game goes up to 40 levels. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blindfold… Before I began playing the game, I went to the “Help” section to learn how to hold and move my phone in order to play the game. In the first several levels, the game consisted of not crashing into the fence, which I knew that I could be close to by a sound I heard. Additionally, two of those levels had roads that either went to the right or left. In levels 7 through ten, I learned to speed up, dodge animals, and I still had to watch out for the fence.

I truly enjoyed playing Blindfold Racer!!! There were several factors… For example, all the game was sound based, so I didn’t need anyone to help me play.

Now, I’ve arrived at the pivotal point in the quest of figuring out who is the artist of Blindfold Racer. Is it the person who had the idea for Blindfold Racer? Is it the developer of the game? Or, is it the person who designed the roads? Is it the sound design team? Finally, is it a combined team effort, which in collaboration with each other created this game; therefore, making them all the artist of this game.

I think that the artist of Blindfold Racer would be some type of combinations of artists from different genres. First and for most, I would consider the person who thought of the concept to be the artist, but I feel like I would be leaving other artists out that that added important artistic value to the game. So yes, I think there are multiple layers of artist involved in the process of creating the game. Beside the creator, I also believe that the sound design team is another artist of the game. Without the creator… there would not be a game concept, yet without the sound design team there would not be a game structure to play. So, I think both types of artist collaborated to create Blindfold Racer. This is the idea Becker discussed in “Art Worlds” that there is a division of labor in creating art work. Thus, referring me back to what I had stated previously about “the layers” idea, which also refers back to Becker’s idea of collaboration between different art worlds for the creation of art, which now includes games. Thus, extending the concept to video games.

 

Here’s a link to a brief video of me playing Blindfold Racer  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5QUh-2Aiw8oc1NKcXRiTHNDR3c