Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I stumbled upon this fantastic clip a year ago and recently came across it again. Now that I have an outlet, I thought I’d share because that’s just how nice I am. It’s a futuristic CG robot spoof shot in Johannesburg in Gurella cam style (to enhance believability) for a ficticious corporate company called Tetra Vaal. The idea here is to introduce a robotic police official without the interferance of humans, i.e. a non-human controlled robot for “developing nations”. Assembled by the uber talented and local! – Embassy Visual Effects on a Canon GL1 and software all to familar with me.

I considered how this clip is related to gaming from an aesthetic point of view only. Or, if you prefer to relate it on other levels of game theory, by all means. Processing power is at a stage now where we are very close to mirroring life-like senarios in real-time. “What if” we could experience games where the environment was “life like” CG but the character – you, in this instance was live action. A compelling thought. So maybe its the whole VR medium revisited only this time in a completely immersive environment. You strap some high-tech goggles on, walk around in a world powered by a Quake 3 engine in the 3rd person so you can watch your movements and not just your hands. You’re on a tredmill with a camera tracking you, strapped into your motion capture ball suit. Just imagine.

Tetra Vaal clip via Analogik