Usability of video-games HUDs

In Gamasutra, there has been a good article about Heads-Up Display last week. It adresses the topic of HUD usability. As they say, the developer's challenge is the following: how do you convey necessary information to the player without utilizing a traditional HUD?.

A HUD is simply a collection of persistent onscreen elements whose purpose is to indicate player status. HUD elements can be used to show, among many other things, how much health the player has, in which direction the player is heading, or where the player ranks in a race. (...) what would make console developers suddenly rethink the necessity of such a seemingly essential and time-honored technique as the HUD? Here are three compelling reasons. (...) millions of high-definition televisions have an Achilles heel that can hinder developers as well: burn-in. (...) it is caused by persistent onscreen elements that, over time, create a ghost image on the screen even after they are no longer shown. (...) yes traditional HUDs can pose a risk to many who play console games for extended periods of time on their HDTVs. (...) Just as a filmmaker doesn't want a viewer to stop and think, “This is only a movie,” a game developer should strive to avoid moments that cause a gamer to think, “This is just a game.” (...) nothing screams “this is just a game” louder than an old-fashioned HUD. It is not a part of the game world; it is an artificial overlay. (...) [casual] Gamers looking for a “pick up and play” experience are not inclined to spend time figuring out what all those bars and gauges are for.

The article then investigate "how to go HUD-less":

• remove useless information, decide “Is this information essential to the game experience?”
• use audio cues to either reinforce a visual cue or offer a unique message that is not easily shown visually.
• if a HUD is really need, only show an element when the player status changes.
• another solution is to allow the player to control the appearance of the HUD.
• remove static elements from the HUD

Chuck Norris-esque Wow items

The Wow item creator (designed by Krigaren) seems to be a good way for Chuck Norris fans to express themselves in MMORPG worlds. There are indeed various norris-esque tool such as:

• The Orange dagger of mighty Norris: Use: You become famous, shiny and every female elves all around just take their clothes off and throw them at your feets. Equip: Make you look like Chuck Norris
• The Eye of Chuck Norris: Call forth the eye of chuck Norris to Roundhouse kick your ennemies. Equip: 50% Chance for an ennemy to flee at the sight of the Eye of Chuck Norris. Equip: 100% Chance when In melee for the eye to say " HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT CHUCK NORRIS ???" Equip: 20% chance to call Chuck norris to your aid

Check also this interesting Chuck Norris Fact Generator that can post random Chuck Norris facts found on ChuckNorrisFacts.com

Thumb-mounted vibrator for trigger-happy gamers

In the last issue of Wired, there is a short article about Periborg is very intriguing japanese company which does bizarre accessories for video-games. My favorite is "Ore-Commander" targeted for trigger-happy gamers who need a thumb-mounted vibrator that can help pressing buttons 20 times a second.

Why do I blog this? I like this trend of having more and more devices/accessories on top of existing video games paltforms. It leads to a certain variety compared to the low number of consoles.

Psychophysiological techniques to measure user experience with entertainment technologies

Using psychophysiological techniques to measure user experience with entertainment technologies by Mandryk R, Inkpen K, Calvert T, Behaviour and Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2. (April 2006), pp. 141-158. This seems to be the new trend in 'user experience' analysis: using psychophysiological techniques to attest/validate specific applications/environments. Here is roughly, the point of the paper:

Current subjective methods of evaluating entertainment technology aren’t sufficiently robust. This paper describes two experiments designed to test the efficacy of physiological measures as evaluators of user experience with entertainment technologies. We found evidence that there is a different physiological response in the body when playing against a computer versus playing against a friend. These physiological results are mirrored in the subjective reports provided by the participants.

The authors base their claim on the fact that current methods are either costly (coding gesture, body language... then there are some inter-rater reliability) or too subjective ( user preference) and then advocates for taking psychophysiological techniques into account: Galvanic skin response, Cardiovascular measures, Respiratory measures, Electromyography, Emotions identifications.

Some of the results:

The methodological problems that we initially experienced in collecting and analyzing physiological data revealed a number of caveats for conducting this type of research. For example, great care must be taken to avoid stimuli that affect emotional responses, other than the stimuli being investigated. Although we took many precautions in Experiment One, such as the caffeine intake, sex, and age of the participants, there were still effects that we did not predict, such as the responses generated.

Super Mario Bros Maps

At last! I found the complete maps of Super Mario Bros.

Also, read chaotic n-space network for a good analysis of SMB level design:

SMB was rather revolutionary in terms of level design. Earlier games had usually only had a few game screens which did not change. Games like Adventure, which had distinct levels with multiple screens, were the exception. SMB, however, was a scrolling platformer with 32 different levels, some of which were even mazes. Gamers had no choice but to memorize some levels. The last level is a good example of this: There is a specific sequence of pipes one must go down in order to get to the end of the level; take the wrong one, and Mario is returned to the beginning of the level to start all over again. This memorization was probably SMB's biggest contribution to the gaming world. While almost all games require some level of memorization, and Super Mario Bros. was not really the first of its kind, SMB took it to a new level and a new prominence, setting a precedent for most of the popular console games to follow. This came to be both a blessing and a curse. While it introduced a new genre, it also introduced a new fad, as large portion of following games would be sidescrolling platformers. Just as first-person three-dimensional shooters dominate now, and Space Invaders or Asteroids style shooters dominated the early years of gaming, these games came to dominate gaming in the late eighties and early nineties so much that one becomes almost sick of them. And as level design and graphics began to dominate new games, gameplay tended to suffer: Each game was just like the last one, but with a facelift.

Why do I blog this? I am an absolute fan of SMB.

Notes about IBM podcast on online gaming

One month ago, IBM releases an interesting podcast about IBM and the Future of Online Games. An important note is that this is available on their 'Investor Relations' website. In this podcast (targeted to IBM shareholders), Quentin Staes-Polet, head of IBM's online gaming practice in Asia and Joey Alarilla, president of the Asian Gaming Journalists Association, discuss how online gaming's immersive, virtual environments are pioneering how we will play, learn and work in the future. The transcript of the podcast is available here.

Some pertinent excerpts:

There are changes in the business models in the way people are being charged for play. There's still a lot of experimenting being done with that.

You know the basic model works around you pay for one month's subscription. But you can also pay per the hours. You can pay per level you are going for games. And there's a whole paradigm now that is showing up around paying for items where you play for free but in order to succeed and do your game play you need to purchase certain items. (...) you can also buy real estate in the game. (...) Harvard Business Press published this book called Dot Game which talks about how the gamer generation is taking over the workplace.

It argues that, you know, we are learning a lot of real-world skills playing games. We're talking about resource management. We're talking about leadership skills, getting your team together. Focusing on an objective. (...) the funny thing about games is that we are willing to absorb a lot of information. We are willing to master a lot of skills in a very, you know, short span of time, in order to win.

Of particular interest is this part, that attests the use of various devices while playing:

the mobile devices complement your online playing, because you know you know that you can check up on your characters. You can chat with your friends or you can, you know, make small transactions during what's supposedly should be your down time. If you're waiting for a bus or waiting for your train. You can just check it using your mobile.

They also deal with human-computer interaction with this:

I spend half of my weekend with my son in front of a PlayStation 2 equipped with a camera interacting with virtual boxes and virtual ghosts and everything by not touching any controller. The camera just recognizes your movement and use this data to make you interact with a virtual environment. Now, again, those are technologies that we will be using. Nobody wants to use a keyboard. It's very impractical way to communicate to actually have to type on little squares..when you can actually just talk to that computer or make a move to explain what you're doing. So what we see the technology industry bring in to online gaming is a very good indicator, I think, of how we will in general interact with networks and computers in the future.

Since I am working on projects about collaboration and on-line comunities, the second part is very relevant for that matter:

In online games, you have clans. These are groups of people who band together. The thing about online games is it really makes it sociable because you can try to adventure all alone for a while, but at some point you need to form clans in order to tackle the biggest quest and bring down the bigger opponents.

Most games are built in that manner. The reality is that many of the early massively multiplayer online game to make sure there would be stickiness and people would come back, there was a requirement to team together, achieve things together, et cetera. So naturally the industry developed that taste for community, because it's good for the business as well. (...) Another aspect of it which we see in a lot of these online games is that you know people help each other out. (...) there's some games which actually have Wikis, so they're using this open source tool in order to in effect build, you have the gaming encyclopedia. You have people volunteering, contributing, okay, so this is really, this is what this monster is like. It's not coming from the company but the users themselves are building this pool of knowledge

Why do I blog this? this podcast offers great insights about the potential of the video game industry. They're useful as starting point for 'user experience' research projects.

Social Bluetooth Games

While surfing the web, trying to find some good bluetooth games, I ran across this nice text by Daniel Blackburn (manager of Carbon Based Games) about social bluetooth games. It explores some of the possible social gaming opportunities that now exist due to the recent proliferation of Bluetooth enabled mobile devices. The author has good points about it:

One of the main problems will probably be gaining a critical mass of players to make the game work. If the only way people can play a game is via Bluetooth they will soon loose interest if there are no other users around them to interact with. One way around this is to view the Bluetooth elements of the games as an enhancement rather than the core game. (...) Bluetooth has the added excitement that the people you playing with or against are within a few metres of you. They may be know to you or they may not be. (...) One way to establish Bluetooth social games initially would be to allow users to set up there own games for just them and there friends that they have invited into the game. 'Killer', the live action role-playing game by Steve Jackson is a good example of this. (...) Another factor that could help to speed up this process (...) Bluetooth offers a new viral like form of distribution.

Relying on the Mogi-Mogi game experience, the author questions whether the bluetooth social games might modify people's behavior in physical space by creating new technosocial situations:

With GPS games such as mogi some players would detour from their everyday routes to go and pick up a virtual object. With Bluetooth enabled game will people try to get within range of someone while there phone is in their bag so they are unlikely to hear it so that they can steal virtual objects without their knowledge. Or will they stay clear of people at work because they are at a high level than the game than them and they want to avoid defeat again. Or will they be constantly checking their phone because they're convinced someone is trying to virtually assassinate them an could set of a bomb at any time. Meaning they would need to run with there phone to get it out of range of the blast.

Why do I blog this? I follow this closely from the HCI and game design point of view, the emergence of behavioral changes due to technological disruptions is still not met but it might be a matter of time. In addition, I like the idea of using bluetooth a technology for simple game design concepts a la Killer.

Online games and technology advances

Raph Koster's talk at the IBM Games on Demand webcast conference: Moore's Wall: Technology Advances and Online Game Design (thanks Regine!). The author works at Sony Online Entertainment and his talk offers some great insights about how game designers deal/cope with technology advances. Some excerpts I found pertinent:

a little bit of perspective on how game designers approach the advance of technology and frankly all the headaches it gives us. (...) The point is that we've seen a tremendous advance in the processing power, and we're going to continue to see increases in computing power even if these do not come on single processors. We're seeing a move to multi-core processors, we're seeing a move to distributed computing, and we're certainly seeing vast increases in storage space, in media, in network connectivity and broadband bandwidth, and so on. (...) Nathan Myhrvold's Law, which is that software is a gas that expands to fill its container. What this means is that if you give a programmer a really nice computer, he's going to find a way to suck it dry and use up every bit of capability that that computer has. This is particularly common in the game industry, where for various reasons -- we're an entertainment medium -- people want whatever's exciting, whatever's sexy, the eye-candy, the visuals, the speed… the result is that we're constantly pushing the boundaries of computers, and we're constantly developing games that force people to buy new machines, buy new computers. (...) So, what does this do to the games themselves? (...) The next generation of console titles is going to be looking at budgets significantly higher than the $12m. (...) In twelve years, budgets have gone up by a factor of 22. (...) The first thing to realize is that game play elements have not really become more complex. (...) The thing about technology is that it has enabled a lot of really cool stuff, a lot of really cool visuals, in theory a lot of cool AI, and stuff, but the biggest effect it has had is to make game development more complicated and more significantly, more expensive. And that’s because the technology is primarily focused on presentation. (...)

Then the author does a case study about first person shooters to show that a lot of what game designers has done is improving "the immersion factor and improve the standard ways in which we portray the environment rather than improve the fundamental game play".

And at this point the author came up with this really good statement:

Creativity is enhanced by limitations. Creativity, innovation, is largely about finding solutions within a known problem space. When the problem space starts growing too large, you can pretty much start throwing anything at the wall, and it’ll stick. And in a situation where we don’t have a particular problem to solve, it’s just human nature to fall back on known solutions. It’s just human nature to do what we have done before, only to try to do it nicer. And that fundamentally is the limitation of advances in technology as regards game design.

This reminds me what Fabien wrote about designing with constraints. Actually his blogposts does not reflect what he thinks about it but the point is that having constraints is great for design because it sets boundaries and influences.

Another great part in the talk deals with how can we cope with this situation:

The question becomes, if all this cool technology is coming along, how do we leverage it in a way that’s innovative from a game design point of view? (...) it can offer us roads towards procedural content. Already, if you play a contemporary game, odds are very good that the trees you see in that game are not all modeled by hand. Odds are they were generated by a computer using an algorithm, using middleware, products such as NatFX and SpeedTree, for example.

The next thing that can help is sandbox design. This is something such as The Sims, games where users can make use of tools provided within the game itself in order to provide new kinds of game play experiences. This is a very algorithmic approach. It’s something that computers do very well.

Lastly, technology can help with user-created content. As technology marches on, the content load becomes more difficult to create, but technology can help in tools as well as in setting the bar higher.(...) The entire genre of the first person shooter these days is propped up to a very large degree by user-created content. We should remember that 90% of the online game players out there are playing a game that was not developed by a professional: they’re playing Counterstrike, which was user-created.

Why do I blog this? Raph Koster's talk is strikingly relevant to some questions we have both at the lab and with people I work with. Great food for thoughts!

Tutorial at the GDC 2006

Four relevant tutorial I'd like to attend if I could be at the Game Design Conference 2006:

• Do-It-Yourself Usability: How to Use User Research to Improve your Game (by guys from the Microsoft Game Studios): basics of usability testing for game developers. It covers all major steps involved, including designing and setting up a test, running participants, analyzing data, and reporting actionable results. The tutorial consists of a combination of lectures, illustrative examples from the game industry, hands-on exercises, and small-group activities run by experts in the field. At the end of the day, participants gain a deeper understanding of usability testing and how they can incorporate usability testing into their own product.
• Game Design Considerations for Alternate Controllers (by the guys from Harmonix Music Systems): More and more gamers are connecting to their games with cameras, bongo drums, microphones, plastic guitars and a host of other unconventional controllers. Games using alternate controllers have the ability to provide fundamentally new experiences to the gaming audience, and to welcome new gamers who wouldn't normally think to pick up a console gamepad. This session uses the development of three different Harmonix games: Karaoke Revolution, Eyetoy: AntiGrav, and Guitar Hero to illustrate a common design methodology adopted by Harmonix for all three titles. We will analyze the player experience provided by each game, and describe the fundamentally similar design approach that was applied to all three projects, with very different results in each case.
• Games on Instant Messenger: Tapping into 170 Million Interactive Users (by Bryan Tussel from MS): Instant messaging has revolutionized the way scores of people - from trend-setting teens to savvy CEOs - communicate. As a result of the technology's broad demographic adoption, casual game developers have a unique opportunity to interact with a host of new and diverse audiences. This session will explore how to leverage characteristics specific to the platform to engage players as well as Microsoft Casual Games' key learnings, successes and vision for the future.
• The Social Dimensions of Digital Gaming (by a huge list of great speakers): This tutorial brings together expert social scientists doing research on game design, play and culture to work with designers in generating useful vocabularies for making sense of the social dimensions of digital games. Content will focus on identifying and mobilizing key sociological concepts for design practice, reviewing methodological tools useful for studying gamers and game culture, and present current research findings by a number of academics working in the field.

Why do I blog this? among all the topic the GDC deal with, those 4 topics are interesting with regards to my interests.

New academic journal about games: Games and Culture

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is a new academic journal which seems of interest with regards to my research/work/interests.

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is a new, quarterly international journal (first issue due January 2006) that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal will serve as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking work in the field of game studies.

Games and Culture's scope will include the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives, including textual analysis, political economy, cultural studies, ethnography, critical race studies, gender studies, media studies, public policy, international relations, and communication studies. Other possible arenas include:

- Issues of gaming culture related to race, class, gender, and sexuality - Issues of game development - Textual and cultural analysis of games as artifacts - Issues of political economy and public policy in both US and international arenas

It's an interdisciplinary publication, welcoming submissions by those working in fields such as Communication, Anthropology, Computer Science, English, Sociology, Media Studies, Cinema/Television Studies, Education, Art History, and Visual Arts.

Technorati Tags: game, videogames

Video Games and Advanced Technology

In the Economist "The World in 2006 print edition", there is a very good article about video games and advanced technology (registration required). Its claim is that previously the most advanced computer technology in the world could be found in research laboratories or corporate data-centres. Now it's rather in millions of living rooms, inside video-games consoles. A complimentary information is this mp3 by Tom Standage, technology editor at The Economist. Some notes:

• gaming is no longer a kid thing: demographic shift on the way: game is a new media (now there are lot of gamers in their 40s)
• not bigger than the movie industy but it's really moving
• console technology is now better then tech used to do movies like star wars... high definition
• gaming is not just a matter of having super high tech with special effects: retrograming is also great
• future: nintendo's unusual way of doing: change the game experience (through the new console controller + games aimed at older people)
• future: episodic gaming: buy or download game episode with new segments on a regular basis (every week)

Game controller trick for Katamari Damacy

Via, this impressive game-controller trick to be used in Katamari Damacy for getting one million roses.

Why do I blog this? this is is a good expression of gamers' creativity to achieve their game goals. I also like the idea of using additional artifacts to act on the game. The use of rubber bands is interesting. Would we see some people using a vaccuum cleaner to create huge bubble with the bubble toy in Nintendogs on the DS?

Technorati Tags: game, hci, katamari, rubber

Katamari Stuff

Some things about Katamari Damacy I collected after talking with Julian and Regine. Exemples of the Katamari Damacy frenziness:

• LEGO Katamari
• harvey-kartel's home made katamari
• cake
• glass beads
• paper version
• a less achieved project connected to Katamari and lego and the ball at MIT
• fluffy toys

Technorati Tags: game, katamari, toy

Gamepad ergonomics: Nintendo controller and 3 years old

This button makes you go up: three-year-olds and the Nintendo controller by Erik F. Strommen, Setareh Razavi and Lisa M. Medoff in Applied Ergonomics 1992, Vol. 23, No. 6, (pp. 409-413).

Abstract: Forty three-year-old children used the Nintendo controller in a simple cursor-placement task, with two different software interfaces. The directional interface required children to map specific directions of movement on to specific buttons on the controller. The non-directional interface simply advanced the cursor in a clockwise direction to the next placement location, regardless of the specific directional button pressed. Results indicate that while the youngest three-year-old children find the non-directional interface slightly easier to use, older three-year-olds are more successful with the directional interface. In addition, all three-year-olds actually experienced problems using the simpler, non-directional interface - and problems increased with age.

Why do I blog this? I am always interested by research about gamepad. This paper is a bit old but we can still consider some of thre results + the methodology since some gamepads are still similar (the Nintendo DS pads is very close to it).

New commodore handheld

Via Gamasutra, this new handheld device capable of playing games by Commodore International showed at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Navigator Combo is an upgradable handheld device with GPS functions that also plays games, music and video files. The Combo runs on the Windows CE platform, and contains a 20GB internal hard drive for storing media. Some of that media apparently includes games; the Combo will ship with 5 game titles pre-loaded, and 90 more available for down

There is also a Mediatower platform with no game functions (I'm less interested by this).

Why do I blog this? the interesting thing is that there is a GPS inside, do they believe in location-based games? I am looking forward to see this.

Ludium I: intellectual gathering made of participants embedded in a virtual world

The Arden Institute organized a smart event called 'Ludium I':

Ludium I was an effort to develop and prove a radical new paradigm for intellectual gatherings. Abandoning entirely the standard speaker-audience structure, the ludium instead embedded participants in a game designed to generate both tangible output and emotional excitement and satisfaction - fun. It intentionally ignored the distinction between work and play, and sought to test the possibility that professionals engaged in a properly designed game would generate both entertainment and productivity at the same time. The Ludium was designed during the summer of 2005 and was held at Indiana University, Bloomington, from September 29 to October 1 of that year.

A selected group of academics and game designers were formed into five teams to play a competitive game of concept generation. The teams were tasked with developing proposals for using online game technology in university research; proposals were judged by a sixth team, with the best proposal earning a grand prize.

The report presents in some detail the five proposals on online games for research, and then appends a large amount of additional creative work and commentary captured from the participants during and after the ludium. Three kinds of readers may find this material useful. First, academics should find the proposals and associated critical discussions to be a valuable introduction to the kinds of university research one might do using online game technology. Second, game designers should find clues about the kinds of online games that may be viable in the academic gaming sector. Third, administrators should see in the structure of the event, and its success at enabling people to have fun while working very hard, a potentially valuable strategy for motivating their workforces.

There is a huge document that summarizes the event (25Mb). Still have to make a more serious pass on this (I just skimmed through the whole document, but from what I've seens there is a lot to grasp here in terms of online game technology used for other purposes...)

How video-games blur the boundaries of work and play

In his paper The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur The Boundaries of Work and Play (Games and Culture, Vol. 1, pg. 68-71 (2006) ), Nick Yee explains how "video games are inherently work platforms that train us to become better game workers". The underyling assumption in this paper is that work being performed in video games is increasingly similar to the work performed in business corporations. The author hence studies online games and sees them as a way to "reveal larger social trends in the blurring boundaries between work and play". In order to assess these statements, he taks relevant examples such Star Wars Galaxies players who "operate a pharmaceutical manufacturing business for fun". He also underlines this interesting point: "The central irony of MMORPGs is that they are advertised as worlds to escape to after coming home from work, but they too make us work and burn us out". And now, the bunch of studies about virtual goods which have a real value can lead us to think that game play can constitute a real work... His last word is strikingly pertinent: "he blurring of work and play begs the question - what does “fun” really mean? ".

Yes guys, playing is hard and it's not a matter of toying with simple things as people reluctant to consider video games as a serious activity think.

Testing alternative forms of social practive in a video game

Spring Alpha is a networked game system based on Chad McCail's drawing "Spring".

This narrates the attempts of a small, urban community to create its own "utopian" society. The narrative is used as a metaphor for the real-world issues that the project explores and a focus around which speculative and critical ideas can develop. The software system serves as a "sketch pad" for testing out ideas for alternative forms of social practice at both the "narrative" level, in terms of the game story, and at a "code" level, in terms of working with the actual data and communication structures that support the game. It is an exploration of software and social governance in relation to Free Open Source Software practice. The project combines the development of an open software system along with workshop events that seek to broaden Free Open Source Software development principles into areas outside of programming.

It can be downloaded here.

Why do I blog this? What I find interesting is this:

The basic aim of the game is to change the rules by which the society in that world runs. This is done through hacking and altering the code that simulates that world, creating new types of behaviour and social interaction.

Video Games Trends

Game Girl Advance has an insightful post about 5 trends in the world of video games that I fully agree with:

1. Sex and games are coming into their own. (...) If the critically and financially successful God of War is a sign of anything, sex will soon become an effective part of storytelling in mainstream games.
2. Wireless Online Gaming: (...) Online portable gaming has paved the way for MMORPGs and even more impressive strategy games. Furthermore, the DS's touch-screen capabilities make impressive ports of games such as Civilization, StarCraft, and Diablo possible.
3. Nintendo has basically said that they know they can't compete with Sony or Microsoft in terms of straightforward gaming. Instead, they want to co-exist. Rather than creating a competing third console with pumped graphics and a two-stick joypad, Nintendo is made a console that will complement a console set-up. [So does Philips with its <a href ambx project - nicolas]. Nintendo's business strategy acknowledges a very new trend in gaming - companies don't always have to outright compete (...) "the system wars," as if one company must plant a flag in the gaming public and declare victory. Nintendo's new strategy suggests a different outlook in which different systems deliver fundamentally different experiences and therefore all warrant a unique purchase.
4. Console Indie Development
5. Gamers Fight Back against Critics

What I find really interesting is the console indie development thing (Xbox 360, Nintendo Revolution) and the Nintendo strategy that we will follow closely.

To some extent, we are still waiting for the next thing: at some point, video games will jump from the set-top-box (PC, console) to the real world, embedded in various objects. The mobile phone is already something but the existing game are translated from old consoles and they still do not take that much advantage of the phone capabilities such as voice or location-awareness. Alternate reality games is another step towards this direction and I am pretty sure that the so-called "Internet of Things" will allow game designers to create great challenges or pertinent features (like playing the same game on a cell phone, an interactive tv or a computer for instance). I am also looking forward to see how the toy industry will meet the video game companies...

Ludocraft: a relevant finnish lab

Ludocraft is an interesting finnish lab (Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu):

LudoCraft studies games and applies the theoretical knowledge into game design. The approach combines theoretical, technical and artistic expertise in serving both the academic and the practitioner communities. The mission of LudoCraft is to distribute the knowledge of analytical gamers and game designers for the benefit of wider audience.

Ludo - Theories of game and play Craft - Art of game design and development

LudoCraft = The Art of Designing and Creating Games and Play

LudoCraft is a flexible research unit with skills to study, invent and apply theoretical and empirical knowledge of games and game-like virtual environments. LudoCraft specialises in research, design, teaching and consultancy in three main areas: game design, game palying, game analysis

It's lead by researcher Tony Manninen who is doing a great job leading this.

Why do I blog this? I like what Tony Manninen wrote, especially about his analysis of first-person shooters. Check their publications! The approach of conducting research projects about video games to create a body of knowledge so that game designers could improve the way they create game is a topic of interest to me...