NOTE
Due to the potentially sensitive nature of this project, it will be necessary to provide a certain level of anonymity for at least one of the developers involved in this project (me).
Inspiration
A little over a year ago, I was asked by a friend to monitor a particular social media page. The page in question is a journal kept by a person stalking my friend and their family. In that time, there have been nearly 600 vitriolic, disturbing and frightening posts made by this person. I was struck by the fact that no one, from the victims to the perpetrator, is receiving any sort of help that will ameliorate the situation. Clouded is my attempt to bring awareness to the plight of the mentally ill and those affected by their illness, and hopefully raise funds to help both the victims, the perpetrator (earmarked specifically for therapy), a mental health charity to be determined, and to recompensate the developers for their time and effort.
How it works
while both the core concept, mechanics, and even the content of the project are still potentially in flux, here are my initial thoughts on how Clouded will work as an experience: All posts have been stripped of any identifying information, and tag clouds have been generated for them as well. All environments will be 360 degree photos, or stereoscopic video. inside these environments, the air will be filled with a quiet cacophony of whispers. Using positional audio, the player will locate the source of the sound, to reveal the corresponding key word from the tag cloud. when enough keywords are revealed, the player will be able to view or hear the entire post. As a counterpoint to this, some posts will also contain correspondence between myself and the victims, to illustrate how divorced from reality the perpetrator has become.
Challenges I ran into
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
What I learned
What's next for Clouded
Because of the sheer volume of content that I already have, it's very unlikely that we will be able to produce the entire year's worth within the scope of the jam. Additionally, this is an ongoing concern. Everyday, new posts are being created, making this a potentially very open-ended project. Eventually, we would like to produce additional content releases for Clouded to accommodate the full scope of the content gathered so far and in the future.
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