Blackout is a virtaul reality video game experience created by Specular Studio. The project is intended to answer the question of what people on the subway are thinking about. It does this by lacing the consumer in a subway car that has stopped and gives the audience the ability to read the minds o the passengers around them.
I find this project really interesting because they took interviews of real people, so the game itself is a great mix o virtual reality and reality. I think the premise or the game is good as well and would be able to create a really good story.
I think a shortcoming of the project is how the user is just viewing the piece rather interacting it and influencing how the story goes. I think it would be interesting to have the player be able to follow these people after they get off or to help solve their problems or to be able to change the course of the story besides listening to different people. I think the premise is really good and their use of virtual reality seems really smart.
I think this piece is really inspired by other virtual reality projects that focus on recording real life events and then being able to show them to others. I think it also seems to be inspired by the Humans off New York Project since it looks into the minds of interesting people riding the subway in New York.
I think this is a good example of audience interactivity and also shows an interesting insight into human character which I find interesting. I think a big idea to pull away from this is that the audience can just be viewing a piece and still interacting with it in an interesting way.