Robots for Distant Musicians

A minimally multiplayer online robot playing game (MMORPG)

As the capstone project for my position as Game Designer in Residence at the MICA Game Lab, I developed a set of musically responsive robots that could be controlled by anyone in the world in real time. I called this project Robots for Distant Musicians.

The robots use pitch detection to control their movements – different musical pitches will make them move in different ways. This very basic system forms the basis for a wide variety of interactions, from gameplay to freeform exploration, with the added twist that they can be connected to the internet to be controlled live through existing communication platforms like Discord or Zoom.

I set up a fun little stadium in the MICA Game Lab for a few days, anyone could jump into a robot and drive it around by singing or playing an instrument. You could play a game or try to score a goal, or not! It was pretty hilarious.

It was also possible to just play with the robots locally. If you set up a few robots together they would end up doing lovely little synchronized dance routines.

Much later I presented these robots at the 2024 DIS conference.

Here is a very long discussion of the robots along with a lot of my other work on the lovely alt+ctrl show…