Daily Archives: August 1, 2017

Tacoma revolves around an imaginable near future of space travel and advanced AI. Photograph: Fullbright Productions

It seems unavoidable to compare Tacoma to Gone Home, the previous game by developer Fullbright Productons. Along with Dear Esther, it is often credited with popularising a certain type of linear narrative-focused game, often pejoratively labelled walking simulators. As soon as Tacoma was announced, people starting calling it Gone Home in Space. Again, you play as a woman exploring an abandoned environment, and again youre piecing together what happened to the people who used to be there.

But here the focus has shifted from the recent past to the not-so-distant future. Where Gone Home is set in a spooky house in 90s Oregon and intentionally plays on horror tropes, Tacoma takes the traditional science-fiction setting of a space station the titular Tacoma. The futuristic placement allows for changes both narrative and mechanical. Whereas the charm of Gone Home, for many, was the familiarity of the 90s setting, the plot of Tacoma in 2088 revolves around an imaginable near future of space travel and advanced AI.

An augmented-reality (AR) system has replaced smartphones, and allows the player to witness audiovisual recordings of the crew as colour-coded 3D figures superimposed on the world. This is the players main way to experience story moments, a logical next step on the path from the audio diaries of Gone Home through the light shows of Everybodys Gone to the Rapture. The voice acting is inconsistent (though some is excellent), but the animation is convincing; you cant see the crew members faces, but you can see them brace themselves on a hand rail or pace around a room.

Interestingly, while the players role in Gone Home as a member of the disappeared family encouraged emotional investment in the stories they left behind, in Tacoma your character isnt supposed to be watching these recordings. You are Amy Ferrier, subcontractor to the Venturis Corporation that owns the station and all data recorded onboard, and youve been sent just to retrieve the stations AI, called ODIN.

But Amy is a quiet protagonist for the bulk of the game, reminding the player of her presence only when an arm reaches out to open an airlock door or a neat conceit to log on to something in AR by gesturing in American sign language. And she does have an excuse for being nosy about the crew records. Her task will take her through three areas of the station, and in each she must plug in a device that uploads ODIN, slowly. A loading bar shows that progress does tick along at a rate of 1% every few seconds, but it jumps up every time you retrieve an AR recording. Its a great way to encourage players to take their time without worrying about the pressure of their main goal.

In the first section Amy explores, you witness the crew gathering to celebrate Obsolescence Day, a holiday meant to mark the successful prevention of plans to fully automate stations like Tacoma. As theyre about to cut the cake theres a crash, which is all the more disconcerting because all you can see in the recording is the crew reaction superimposed on the present environment already in disarray. From that point on, each section has a couple of these group recordings in roughly chronological order that show you and Amy what happened next, as well as a handful of recordings of smaller groups of crew members from earlier in their year of service that provide context on the characters and their relationships, as well as the state of this future world.

The group recordings are by their nature more interesting, not only because they advance the mystery element of the plot but because they involve all members of the crew (and if youre observant the station cat Margaret Atwood). Tacomas new-ish take on this kind of story delivery is that you can rewind the recordings, and replay contemporaneous moments featuring different people in different rooms.

To encourage this, each recording features points along the timeline at which you can retrieve additional data from a particular crew member, marked by their colour and symbol (for example the botanist, Andrew, is green and represented by leaves). Once youve tracked that crew member down at the right moment, youll see their AR desktop open in front of them; click on it and you can see what apps they had open at that time: an email from a loved one back home on Earth, an instant messaging conversation with another crew member or with ODIN, a page in a book, and so on.

Here is where Tacoma shines as an interactive narrative. The story is entirely linear and unaffected by the players actions, but no other medium could so effectively engender this feeling of investigation. Sure, the narrative content is clearly marked both in these AR recordings and in visibly meaningful objects in the environment, but you still have to go looking for it, occasionally even using a hidden code or physical key to open the way.

The station is a perfectly manageable size, divided as it is into these three sections each with a handful of rooms. But each area has been carefully crafted to convey character, whether through directly informative written notes or indirectly through good old environmental storytelling. It can feel formulaic at times (several crew members have a box in their room in which you will find something sentimental) but it works. Tacoma feels lived in.

And the people who lived here feel real too, no doubt in part because theyre deliberately designed to avoid stereotypes: more women than men; of a variety of races, sexualities and body types. Its satisfying to gradually learn more about them by putting together the pieces you find, perhaps witnessing the posh British man call station administrator EV mon capitan and matching it up with something he was reading on his AR about how to banter in the workplace. Even ODIN has a personality that develops through the game. If theres anything missing, its evidence of occasionally insinuated tension between some crew members, though perhaps that would have detracted from the tightness of the narrative.

Over the course of about three hours, your investigative journey through Tacoma has you rooting for these characters by the time their story concludes. A space station powered by an advanced AI might not be a particularly original setting, but the team at Fullbright has taken these familiar pieces and used them to tell a different and engaging tale. Its what youd expect from the people who made Gone Home, but thats no bad thing.

Fullbright; PC (version tested)/Xbox One; 14.99; Pegi rating: 12+

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Tacoma review narrative space game is engaging and convincing ... - The Guardian

On July 20, 1969, man was on the moon.

"The eagle has landed." "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." The world breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated maybe no group more so than the people inside the Apollo mission control room inside Building 30 of the Johnson Space Center, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann.

Johnson Space Center

The room is sacred to Gene Kranz, now 83, who was NASA's flight director during the Gemini and Apollo missions. "We won the battle for space in this room and we captured the high ground and we did not surrender it during our tour," Kranz said.

It was Kranz who was in charge when an explosion aboard Apollo 13 nearly cost the lives of its three astronauts. That high drama was featured in the movie "Apollo 13."

NASA used the mission control room with its monochrome computer monitors and rotary dial telephones starting in 1965. It went dark in 1992, well into the shuttle program.

CBS News

Since then, the room has been designated a national historic landmark, but you'd never know from the looks of it. Houston, we have a problem: decay from years of neglect and souvenir-seekers who walked off with pieces of space history.

When he sees the room, Kranz said he feels "a combination of frustration, anger, resentment."

CBS News

"This is not appropriate. This is where our generation made history. This is where Apollo fulfilled the challenge issued by President Kennedy," Kranz said.

It's an insult to everyone who worked in the room to make history, he said. With NASA's slashed budget, the agency's priority is the future of space travel, not preserving its past. Space Center Houston, the non-profit that runs the visitors center here, has launched a $5 million fundraising campaign to restore this room to its 1960s glory. Space Center Houston CEO William Harris detailed for us how this iconic part of NASA's past will have a brighter future. "All the consoles have to be removed, restored, buttons replaced The screens will need to be redone," Harris said. "All of this is really old. But our commitment is to restore it back to the way it was." Kranz wants to experience one more thrill in this room to see it restored and he's bringing his legendary can-do spirit to the project. "This is a room that will now represent the best American had to offer," Kranz said. "Failure is not an option."

It's not an option, and there is a deadline. Organizers have until late summer to raise the $5 million to get the restoration work done in time for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 2019.

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Campaign launched to restore NASA's historic mission control room - CBS News

Kenneth Smith named to Forbes' '30 Under 30' list By BOB GAETJENS Staff Writer Published: August 1, 2017 4:00 AM

When Streetsboro native Kenneth Smith left college early to help his family out, he was a biochemistry major. Now he has dreams of going into space.

Named earlier this year to Forbes Magazine's "30 Under 30" list, Smith became enamored of space travel while volunteering at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland during his break from college and has since been pursuing his dream of becoming an astronaut.

"I went from thinking I was going to cure cancer to being like, 'I want to go to space,'" said the 27-year-old, who's now stationed at NASA's Langley Research Center.

Smith said he was "very surprised" to be named to the "30 Under 30" list and is unsure who nominated him.

A structural dynamics engineer at Langley, Smith said he's spent parts of the past four years, on and off, working for NASA in different capacities. He worked at Langley for three semesters during his undergraduate career, spent the summer of 2015 at Kennedy Space Center, spent the 2015-16 academic year at Glenn Research Center and is now at Langley.

He also worked for Space X, Elon Musk's commercial company aimed at sending citizens to space.

"I wanted to go to grad school, and they weren't really looking for someone to go to grad school," said Smith of Space X. "My end goal is to be an astronaut. With the competition out there, you at least need a master's."

While at Space X, he said he worked on one of the company's spacecrafts.

"When I was at Space X, I was working specifically on the analysis and development of the Dragon Version 2 crew capsule," he said.

The Dragon capsule is designed to transport humans into space and was the first commercial effort to transport cargo safely to and from the International Space Station. The company announced earlier this year that there are plans to fly two private citizens around the moon in late 2018 in a Dragon capsule.

Smith said he thinks he's about 18 months away from completing his preparation to become an astronaut. At that point, he said he should at least be eligible to be chosen for a flight.

"I'm working on a few things," he said. "To become an astronaut is tricky. People so randomly get chosen."

He said his strategy is to gain as much relevant experience as he can to strengthen his astronaut resume. He's seeking his pilot's license, SCUBA license and more. Having experience in extreme conditions, such as the antarctic, is another key to being chosen. Although he hasn't made a trip up north, Smith said he's hoping his expertise with the equipment will help.

He's also participating in a botany program at Virginia Tech to prepare him for heading into space.

"If we're going to create a civilization on Mars, you're going to have to have some botany skills," he said.

Founding the Akronauts

While working toward his undergraduate degree in aerospace systems engineering with minors in math and physics at the University of Akron, Smith founded the Akronauts, a club aimed at furthering aerospace technology while providing students a lab for honing their skills.

Though Smith left college early, he was able to return and earn his degree.

Smith said the club's goals mirror those of the space program. Each year, the club participates in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, in which students fly rockets into suborbital space and recover them afterwards.

Smith said teams were judged on whether the components of the rocket were "fried."

"They're really big right now into making things reusable," he explained.

In his current job, Smith said he works for NASA analyzing its spacecraft produced by Boeing and Space X. He said he's a member of an analyst team that inspects crafts for safety. Space X and Boeing also have analyst teams, and the teams combine their data to make spacecraft as safe as possible.

"We have our different analyst pools," he said. "The commercial companies are sending up our astronauts; they're NASA astronauts."

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Streetsboro native dreams of space - Ravenna Record Courier