Mobile self-contained video game system

A very curious patent from 1985 for a mobile self-contained video game system with instantaneously selectable game (by Robert J. Nikora).

"The system internally stores a plurality of standard video game cartridges simultaneously and provides instantaneous external user selection of any game cartridge without power sequencing of the console electronics or physical extraction/insertion of the cartridges. The system includes a video monitor for viewing either color or monochrome game images, a video game console electronics unit, a cartridge storage and switching apparatus, a plurality of video game cartridges, multiple hand-held game controllers for providing player control inputs to the console electronics, audio separator and amplification circuits, a choice of speaker or earphone audio devices, an externally activated and lockable power switch, an audio device selector to disable conventional speaker use in "quiet" environments. The system is enclosed in a mobile housing which includes a height adjustment mechanism and a power cord take-up apparatus."

Why do I blog this? What I found funny here is the "mobile" feature of the apparatus ("the mobile base unit"). Obviously, mobility was a total different concept at that time. The range of movement in space were not the same (especially when you consider the presence of a power cord).

Habbo Hotel as a boundary object

(Cross-posted at Terra Nova) There is an insightful interview of Sulka Haro, the lead designer of Habbo Hotel by Brandon Sheffield on Gamasutra. The interview covers a broad range of issues and may be of interest for who-ever is intrigued by "gameless games" or the "social web" or the evolution of the game industry as a whole. It's not all about MMOs but it shows how the topic overlaps with other themes such as social software, multiple on-line identity or scrum development etc.

It starts from the recurring question (at least for people in the game industry") about Habbo is not a game "as games straight out, we probably should be expanding what our definition of game". Haro answered by highlighting the importance of "play" as opposed to "game" in terms of the important metaphor. The discussion goes on and on about this and it reminds me of some people from the video game industry who still overlook Habbo at "some part of the industry". The main reason they give comes both from the technology employed and the game mechanics.

(A screen capture of Habbo Hotel as shown on the Gamasutra website)

What is more interesting is the following:

"BS: It seems like you've added more of what we traditionally consider video game-like game elements to Habbo over time. What was the reasoning behind it?SH: I guess the initial couple of games we did were very small. (...) So these would be like the super minigames, which are really popping out more and more nowadays, but then we've been expanding into doing more complicated stuff, where the user is actually playing what you would identify as a game, like the snowboard game, and you have proper games, like throwing snowballs. I guess, partially, it's good business. There are people who actually want to play, and they pay money for it. But also, at least in my view, if you're looking at, like, a 13-year old guy, who is used to playing games, it's easy to communicate that, "Hey, there's this game-game here as well, and if you start off on playing that, maybe you'll get used to talking to the other users and get excited to meet people and eventually do the other activities as well." It broadens the scope a bit as well. The action in Habbo is really in the rooms themselves, so... (...) BS: I was wondering how it was that you came up with the idea to let users play around with stuff. It hadn't really been done too much on a scale where it was easily accessible like that.

SH: As I said in the keynote, the people who founded Sulake -- the first core group of people -- they all had multimedia-slash-web backgrounds, and [were] not the games people. So we didn't even have this notion of stuff not being done before. It's kind of like really looking at all the websites that were already back then doing a lot of content -- obviously not to the extent where it is now, but really just looking at the past experiences and knowing that people want to do it."

Some elements about the users are also worth to note:

"The market penetration in some of the markets is incredible... I don't know exactly, but almost every single teen in the whole country who is in that age group has actually been there. It's kind of funny -- if you go and look at like eighteen-year-olds, or people who are already past the teenage age, they still have this thing in common, that they actually have been to this service and have played out. It's kind of funny, sometimes, to talk to people who are way beyond it already, but still remember the funky stuff that they did. (...) , the fact that we have the teenagers in there is a big turnoff for the older people."

There are also interesting issues regarding the importance of localization (" The UI is always local. Especially with teenagers"), no plan to go on the console market (" the fundamental thing is really like text-based roleplaying, and with consoles, people don't have keyboards. ") or UI issues.

Overall, it's interesting to notice how this project came out form the blue and is now taking more and more respect in the game industry (although there is still doubt and skepticism). From the academic perspective, it's a bit similar, I haven't really found any research regarding Habbo and it's often studied as part of the Web2.0/user-generated/social software artifacts. Anyhow, we can possibly think about Habbo Hotel as a boundary object, something interpreted differently by different communities. One can see it as a boundary objects both for the industries (web vs games) and the demographics (teenagers vs grownups). And as every boundary objects, it's something worth to explore.

Spatial evolution in MMOs

Closely related to my earlier post about the evolution of space in multi-user environments, Richard Bartle commented about a paper he wrote on that topic. The author's starting point is that there is less discussion about virtual worlds ARE than WHY people play them, and he claims that VW are places. He basically describes the evolution from text-based MUDs, to 2 1/2D (with isometric or first-person viewpoints) and 3D MMORPGs.

His paper revolves around the display format of virtual worlds, a characteristic Jake Song did not address in his speech at LIFT Seoul:

"Given, then, that virtual worlds should endeavour to approximate reality for their everyday workings, how can this be implemented? The real is at a distinct advantage over the virtual in that it works entirely in parallel. It can ray-trace every photon in the universe simultaneously, whereas even the best of today’s home computers have a hard time rendering a few shadows in real time. Virtual worlds therefore have to cut corners. As it happens, they have developed three ways to do this, which correspond to the three main display formats: (...) Contiguous Locations: Textual worlds represent space as a set of interlinked nodes. Each node represents an atomic location (commonly called a room), which generally conceptualises the smallest meaningful space into which a player’s character can fit. (...) A map for a textual world therefore consists of a network of rooms connected by a set of arrows that correspond to movement commands (...) the arrows on the map need not be bi-directional (...) nodes need not represent rooms of the same size (...) A location can link to itself (...) Tessellated Locations:r ender the world graphically as an array of tiles. The major advantages over a network of nodes in this respect are the constant scale and the implicit connection between the squares. (...) Using an isometric approach, height could now be shown; this meant that hills and mountains no longer had to be suggested by a change in a square’s background texture (...) introduce a degree of nodality back into the system. (...) Access was gained through particular wsquares flagged as being coincident. As an example, if on the main map you walked onto a square containing a staircase leading upwards, that would teleport you to a submap for the floor “above” where you were; (...) Continuous Locations: a location is instead a mere point in a 3D co-ordinate system (...) In a true 3D world, the representation finally goes from contiguous to continuous. Strictly speaking, however, because computers store information using discrete bits, even their “real numbers” are not actually continuous; nevertheless, the level of granularity is so fine that to players it feels continuous."

Why do I blog this? material for a paper about cross-media studies of location-awareness interface in a MUD, 3D space and pervasive gaming. The elements discussed by Bartle are interesting wrt the literature review about the evolution of space.

Bartle, R. (2007). Making Places. In Borries, Friedrich, Walz, Steffen P., Brinkmann, Ulrich, and Matthias Bottger (eds.), Space Time Play. Games, Architecture, and Urbanism. BirkhÔø?user: Basel / Berlin / Boston.

Ben Cerveny's talk at PicNic 2007: "Gaming the system"

Last bit from Pic Nic: my notes form Ben Cerveny's talk: "Gaming the System"

Ben started his talk by claiming his main hypothesis: game can be thought as a way into thinking how to approach not only entertainment but also computer-human interactions as a whole. Acknowledging the breakdown of the "operating system": to him, "architecture" and underlying principles as a mean to organize context in culture has failed. What is interesting to him is what happen in the margin, not in the over-organized areas: this is where 'play' happens.

So what would be a space of play? According to Ben it's a space of fragments and flows in which objects are interconnected, a dynamic environment that is evolving constantly ("we're leaving behind linear constructs"). Another characteristic is the profusion of dimensions ("an aura of multidimensionality that surrounds everything"). Game design can be then seen as a description and tuning of the variables: the building of models to handle the domain of play ("depeche models"). Data visualization is a possible way to model phenomena ("maps for these territories").

And games are meant to explore models. In the process of playing a game, people are not afraid to learn (as opposed to use applications). The mindset of play invokes the optimal experience: play invokes flow and brings you into the flow. Game design defines a vocabulary of moves that are internalized by players and this type of "literacy" is going to allow people to utilize complex applications. Video-game players have internalized how simulation works, as a new scientific approach. They can reclaim this knowledge to other fields: players are able to find patterns for example.

Games are instances of play, a way to understand the boundaries and to learn, they can be seen as a vehicle for understanding. Ben concluded that much of our future lies in literacy about dynamic systems such as the one designed in games: "play is about fluidity, work is about crystallization", "play as the negative space of work that allows work to continue".

To a person in the audience who asked whether this meant the end of traditional knowledge, Ben answered that "it doesn't mean that books are over, it's just that we build a more complex construct that takes into account games in the production of culture".

Why do I blog this? I like the "meta" aspect of Ben's talk. In this case, I found very interesting how he wrapped up all these aspects that makes a lot of sense considering past background in the field. This is the sort of elements I discussed for years with some game designers.

At a less meta level, the implication I see in this is not to think of games are a way to convey and directly put content in players' brain but rather that the cognitive processes mobilized when playing games can create relevant routines that may possibly be transfered to other activities.

Some differences between physical and digital spaces

In their paper called "Emplacing Experience", the authors compare aspects of space and place in physical and digital gameworlds. They describe different characteristics that show the specificity of digital places:

"Players, through the agency of their avatar, may expend considerable time traveling to the location for a quest. (...) RPG game design has a conspicuous propensity to afford and then discard the notions of place that compel the player in gameplay. (...) players may visit such places only once in gameplay to realize the experience. After performing a quest the place might as well cease to exist, having little further role in gameplay. (...) Although often rendered in attractive detail, the space between the places where the gameplay activities occur is, for all intents and purposes, empty. (...) Computational resources are often diverted from peripheral details of a place or by rendering environmental assets “just-in-time”. (...) Gameworlds and other Virtual Environments (VEs) contain far fewer cues than the physical world and therefore tend to fall into the category of being unfamiliar, particularly when first encountered. (...) a quality of an interaction that allows sense to be made only in a specific spatial, temporal or social context. Such indexicality is used frequently, subtly and without much ado in the physical world. In gameworlds, indexicality is often overt and even clumsy, such as NPCs providing information at set locations. "

Why do I blog this? material needed to write an article about the evolution of mutual location-awareness interfaces over time, in MUDs, 3D games and pervasive gaming. The elements described here are useful to document how the environments (game spaces) are different.

Browning, D. Stanley, S., Fryer, M. & Bidwell, N.J (2006). Emplacing experience. Joint International Conference on CyberGames & Interactive Entertainment, Perth 2007 Published in ACM Digital library

Virtual space evolution according to Korean developer Jake Song

(cross-posted at Terra Nova) Last month, I had the pleasure to co-organize a small event in Seoul about digital and physical space, and how technologies reshape them. One of the speaker, Jake Song gave an interesting talk about the evolution of "virtual space" in multi-player games. A South Korean programmer, regarded as one of the greatest game developers in Korea, Jake is one the of the creator of Lineage and is now CEO of XL Games.

He started by describing text MUDs (1978), in which 100 to 200 concurrent players wandered around virtual places in the form of interconnected rooms. He described to what extent today’s MMORPG inherits most of its design (chat, emote, social structure, etc) but more interestingly pointed out how MUD space was "not correct in 2D sense" using the following schema:

The next step corresponded to 2D MMORPG such as Lineage or Ultima Online, which involved 3000~5000 concurrent players per world. Due to the technical impossibility to have everyone in the same place, there are "parallel universes. As opposed to MUDs, space in geographically correct and as he showed with exampled, players approximately needed about 2 hours from end to end by walking. Through various examples, he showed how buildings are smaller than real world and the necessity to have fast transportation methods (horses, teleportation, etc.)

Then, with 3D MMORPG like EverQuest, Lineage II or WoW, game space is designed for 2000~3000 concurrent players. Compared to 2D MMORPG, the number of concurrent players are reduced somewhat because server has to handle more complex 3D data. The game space generally corresponds to 20 × 20 km in size and transportation methods are needed more than ever (mounts, flying mounts, teleportation). Level design included place utility buildings for players to access conveniently. Shops, banks, etc can be placed far from each other to make players feel the city big, but it will make players inconvenient (" Down time means idle time such like staying in town, moving to other place, etc."). The virtual environment is large enough to feel like the real world and is similar enough to use common sense to navigate.

He concluded with the challenges: the difficulty to have larger game world, the possibility to have user-generated content (to populate worlds), the difficulty to have "one big world" and the ever-growing inclusion of environmental change (weather changing accordingly with weather feeds), evolution over time (deformable terrain destructible building, changing forest, buildings turned into ruins, etc.

So, down the road, the main issues are:

• geographical correctness: should the system looks and behave like a real-life equivalent (which somehwat connects to the work of Harry Drew).
• given that geographical correctness is now common, time and transportation is an issue: it takes time to go from A to B and transportation systems must be designed (teleportation, flying in Second Life).
• presence of concurrent players.
• presence of "places" with functional capabilities (communication, trading).

Although this may look obvious to many reader, this description if interesting from the research point of view (as well as to have the developers' opinion). In my case, this is important for my research about how location-awareness interfaces can convey information about people's whereabouts in digital spaces. Given the differences to represent space, there are some implications in the way location-awareness tools can be designed. More about this topic later.

Trans-media gaming

Given that I am at PicNic, the "cross-media" topic is everywhere (from talks to random people met on streets of Amsterdam). Being interested by that topic as well, it made me think of this pdf that stands on my desktop for ages: "Transmedial Interactions and Digital Games, actually a description of a workshop organized by Shaowen Bardzell, Vicky Wu, Jeffrey Bardzell and Nick Quagliara. Some excerpts that I found interesting:

"Transmedial access should not be confused with what is currently labeled as “cross-platform” games, where a particular game is developed for the console, PC, and mobile. Cross-platform games, are generally variants the same game, customized for a given set of user inputs, but they are not a single game experience accessible from multiple devices. For example, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is available on Xbox, PC, and mobile phones, but they are three separate games, and a mobile phone user cannot access her or his Xbox version of the game from the morning train. Providing this ability to access and interact with a game anywhere, anytime is the primary goal of TMA, (...) Although any game with elements of persistence or community-driven content will benefit from transmedial interactions, persistent online worlds especially stand to benefit (...) Transmedial interactions offer an infinite variety of possibilities for game design, as the following examples illustrate: - A collectible-card game, such as Perplex City which introduce players in an alternate reality game. - A team-based alternate-reality simulation spread across diverse “stations,” - Both Nintendo’s and Sony’s dabblings with GameBoy-GameCube and PS3-PSP connectivity - A guild management tool, where increased connectivity leads to increased social networks and a richer, more realistic experience. (...) Beyond the games themselves are meta-game content, such as blogs, guild pages, and social network sites, strategy guides, mod sites, and so on. Most of this content is player-created and accessed through different mechanisms. Devices or interfaces that aggregate meta-game content in ways that help create coherent, if not seamless, game experiences represent another potential area for transmedial interactions to improve gaming."

Why do I blog this? this is material for a new research projects I am starting about digital/physical worlds interconnections. I am quite interested in how to augment games with new layers of interactions (both in mobile and fixed contexts). But, as opposed to certain arguments in this paper ("Time investment for players must be reduced to achieve the market’s growth potential, recapturing those who quit because of demanding commitments in real life, and attracting those who never even made the effort to begin."), I am more interested by the new forms of interactions that may appear than by market growth or filling every human's free time with content.

Hard Science of Making Games

PopSci has a short series about The Hard Science of Making Game, which cover different aspects of video game design. Interestingly enough, it shows how AI, water, human faces, light and shadows, fire, realistic movements. The article aims at summarizing "the top ten hurdles facing game designers today, and the cutting-edge tech that will soon make them relics of the past", and inevitably, the first point is "processing power". What I found surprising there is that all of this stuff seems to be relying on a model of video games that I find a bit passé. There's nothing explicit about User Experience, Interaction Design and it clearly shows an overemphasis on how "game design hurdles" can be fixed with technological blurring. I know these are less about "Hard Science" but still, one could wonder why the design of new user-interface are not present. Especially when you have points such as "fire", "water" or "human faces" described, as if they were the most important issues to design playful interactions.

Why do I blog this? morning rant.

Space Time Play book

Space Time Play Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger (Birkhäuser/Springer Online bookstore). A big compendium of 140 writers, the book "explores the architectural history of computer games and the future of ludic space". The table of content is impressive and I am looking forward to read as it seems to be a blueprint about this topic.

You can fin on-line the introduction about "Why should an architect care about computer games and What can a game designer take from architecture?", which has some interesting perspectives and summarizes very well the issues as stake.

"The spaces of computer games range from two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional spaces to complex constructions of social communities to new conceptions of, applications for and interactions between existent physical spaces. (...) The spaces of the digital games that constitute themselves through the convergence of “space,” “time” and “play” are only the beginning. What are the parameters of these new spaces? To what practices and functional specifications do they give rise? What design strategies will come into operation because of them? "

Of particular resonance with my research will be:

"THE ARCHITECTURE OF COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES, traces a short, spatiotemporal history of the architecture of digital games. Here, architects are interested in the question of what spatial qualities and characteristics arise from computer games and what implications these could have for contemporary architecture. For game designers and researchers, on the other hand, it’s about determining what game elements constitute space and which spatial attributes give rise to specific types of interaction. Moreover, it’s not just about the gamespaces in the computer, but about the places where the games are actually played; playing on a living-room TV is different from playing in front of a PC, which, in turn, is different from playing in a bar.

The third level, UBIQUITOUS GAMES, on the other hand, demonstrates how real space – be it a building, city or landscape – changes and expands when it is metamorphosed into a “game board” or “place to play” by means of new technologies and creative game concepts. (...) What happens when the spaces and social interactions of computer games are superimposed over physical space? What new forms and control systems of city, architecture and landscape become possible? (...) The migration of computer games onto the street – that is, the integration of physical spaces into game systems – creates new localities (...) 4th level (...) how the ludic conquest of real and imagined gamespace becomes an instrument for the design of space-time. "

Why do I blog this? tons of material for my current research, I am expecting this to be good for thoughts for future projects. I also wrote a chapter with Fabien about how pervasive gaming can be seen as a re-interpretation of >la dérive situationiste (Guy Debord): a new way to experience the city environment.

Lack of innovation in the game industry

It's been now 6 years that I am in the video game industry (I worked part time as a user experience and foresight researcher during my masters and Phd and am still doing that) and I have always been amazed by the lack of innovation. Part of the reasons for that are covered in are interestingly described in this interview on gamasutra from a game studio director at Vivendi:

"It seems like most companies are one failed game from either dissolution or being purchased. Most companies have to put all of their eggs in one basket just because of their size, and when that basket is filled with 20 million dollars, it tips over. What kind of industry is going to result from that mentality? I don't think it's necessary.

CK: I don't think it is either. I don't think that making minigames and digital content is entirely the answer. It's one avenue, and they'll do more of it. I look toward some of the other industries that have solved this problem. There's car design centers that design cars, and set things up. It's a different skill set, and it's often either a different branch of the company or a different company altogether from the ones that figure out how to reduce costs much as possible to save money on things that they know about -- the repeatable things that don't have to be iterated on.

Our consultant uses the Big Mac example -- a Big Mac tastes exactly the same in Japan as it does in San Diego. The reason for that is that they have a 300-page Big Mac recipe manual. That's how you mass-produce things, by knowing exactly what it is. You can't do that with games. You can't repeat that process unless you know exactly what it is you're producing. That's what I'm saying -- separate the preproduction, know the game first, and only spend the five million dollars discovering that one hour of core that you want to sell. Then go to your 300-page Big Mac recipe and make 40 billion of those, like they do at McDonald's.

The problem is that you've got a developer like Angel Studios, which has big spreadsheets explaining, "Okay, we have to be in production here. I don't care where the game is. I have to find something for these 50 people who are coming off of Midnight Club to go on, on this date." You've got to make payroll, and you've got to get cash flowing in. That's what's forcing us to make all these decisions. The decisions aren't being made about the game. It's because resource flow on huge games is what rules developers right now. These days, you can't survive just having one project with 100 people. You've got to have three to justify your company. You've got to figure out what everybody's doing on a day-to-day basis."

Why do I blog this? quite sad but very common in the industry. Which does not mean, of course, that there are exceptions (the Wii, WoW, etc) or that external actors are going faster (see Sulake with Habbo Hotel for instance).

Audio interactions in Nintendo DS games

Beyond blowing at your DS to inflate bubbles in Nintendogs, other games make interesting uses of the microphones: Spectrobes:

"dark energy creatures called the Krawl, and they're now invading your system. The only way to defeat them is to excavate and reawaken ancient creatures that are buried deep underground, called Spectrobes. (...) minigame and involves making a certain level of noise, with the tone and pitch of that noise playing a part in deciding what kind of Spectrobe you will get once the process is complete."

Dragon Tamer Sound Spirit:

"Dragon Tamer: Sound Spirit is basically your standard Pokemon monster battling game, but in order to get new dragons, you record sounds from different instruments and sources with the DS mic.

This is kind of like what Monster Rancher for the Playstation, where different random CDs would generate monsters with different statistics and abilitie"

Why do I blog this? interestingly enough, the mobile game industry, which has the perfect affordance and habits to control things with the voice (i.e. a cell phone...) has never released something similar (although I've seen some prototypes) on mass markets. Interesting HCI anyway... and on the NDS, as usual.

Level design and folk representations of the world

In lessons from first-person shooters, Robert Janelle curiously describes the quirks one can find in FPS:

"Red Barrels Always Explode When Pierced By Bullets You Run Faster When Holding a Knife You Can Fit ANYTHING In Your Pocket Coloured Doors Are Locked Green Liquid is Harmful Helpful Items Are Just Lying Around Crates Break Into Splinters When Pierced"

Why do I blog this? a video-game world is a "microworld" in the sense that it's a close environment with its own rules and processes. As an artifacts crafted and designed by humans, it embeds values and folk mechanisms about how the world could behave. It's then curious to see what are people's projections as the one described above. Would a game level be boring/non-challenging if it replicated the material world?

Game settings and privacy

Different type of game require different levels of privacy. On these pictures taken in Seoul: compare the lonely gamer in arcade-game row to the comfy-door-augmented karaoke arcade game. The possibility to close a door surely allow more privacy for shy karaoke players

At the same time, read about this topic in The Economist:

"as other aspects of gaming become more realistic, from high-definition graphics to vibrating controllers, manufacturers sense an opportunity to offer dedicated gaming furniture, controllers designed for specific gaming genres and new types of fancy screens."

About "virtual recycling"

Ecotron is new feature/device in Habbo Hotel:

"The Ecotron is the latest in Furni recycling systems. No longer will you have to delete your room, turn off the computer or dump your unwanted Furni on a friend. Now you can throw it all into the Ecotron and get some brand new Furni back! Open the catalog and click and drop your unwanted Furni into the Ecotron - when you've put enough in, the power bar will turn green. You can either accept the bounty or continue to fill up the Ecotron for the next gift."

As described by Sulake:

"In Habbo, it is possible to recycle the virtual furni that you don’t need anymore. In exchange for recycling the old items, using a recycling device called Ecotron, the Habbo user receives a brand new piece of furni, which is in fact created from the old materials, or so the design makes you believe. In a virtual world the bits of data are of course always new.

A joke? Maybe not. Since it's launch, the Ecotron device has recycled 4.634.117 pieces of virtual furniture and the amount increases all the time."

Why do I blog this? recycling is, a priori, an intriguing practice in digital environment (in which everything is recyclable by definition, because of the "code" nature of artifacts). What is more striking here is the spatial/artifact recycling which may be meant to bring people to recycle material stuff (after being used to recycle digtial stuff)?

I wish Habbo's artifacts could also age and evolve over time, but this recycle bit is a step towards re-thinking the evolution of digital objects.

MMO communication tools

Game Career Guide reports on Nick Andrew Quagliara's masters thesis about communication in MMOs. The research conducted here basically addressed the following issues: "Do these chat communication interfaces support the types of interactions that users desire?" and "do the current interfaces, which rely on prior experience with MMOs, inadvertently frustrate new players to the point that they stop playing?" The author addresses them through 3 steps: content analysis of chat communication, expert evaluation of 10 MMOs and a focus group of users (to gauge their impressions of chat communication interfaces in MMOs). Results indicate "that there needs to be a reexamination of the designs of the chat communication interfaces in MMOs". Some of the problem mentioned:

"chat communication interfaces within these MMOs were alike. Tasks were typically carried out in a similar fashion from one MMO to the next. The most significant difference noted was with the handling of windows (...) Users felt that the interfaces were at times overwhelming as there were situations of information overload. Participants provided anecdotal evidence that they were often missing messages in the chat communication window while they were occupied with other tasks in the MMOs. It was also noted that the interfaces did not seem to be learnable or conducive to play."

Some heuristics to go beyond these problems are then proposed:

"Automate when possible / Make information meaningful / Don't assume prior knowledge / Look to the mod community / Simplify when possible / Alert the user to messages / Gradually present some functionality / Give users access to information relevant to their play / Keep consistency with interactions / Provide different functionality for different users / Consider icons in place of text commands / Give the user the chance to opt out."

Why do I blog this? although the research is maybe briefly described on the Game Career Guide website (mabye more here), there are interesting elements here about the connection between game interface and computer-mediated communication.

Reactrix's game

Visiting the COEX mall in Seoul yesterday, I ran across several interactive media displays designed by Reactrix. Although the point of this device oriented towards promotion and branding, I was more curious about people's reaction. Stood there for a while with Laurent to see what happens around these floor-displays. It's basically a beamer which projects some interactive scenes on the floor. Walking across or gesturing triggers reactions. There are different minigames like 2-players soccer games, whack-a-mole bits and other instantiations such as the one below:

People's reactions range from 0 attention (those people never look at their feet or they simply do not care) to short play and long play. The only thing is that the mini-games are so short that people seems to be fed up waiting the bloody soccer game to be back. Also of interest, the fact that a minority of users try to understand the infrastructure, looking up at the beamer or opening an umbrella above the floor.

Anyhow, the system's is not really about gaming and rather about enabling brands to be recognized, which obviously failed with him because I am incapable of remembering what ads I've surely seen after staying around these.

There’s no reason why WoW couldn’t be represented by anything other than an RSS feed

Gamasutra has an insightful write-up of Raph Koster's talk at the Austin GDC. The talk is about how the web is destroying games in terms of revenue and access and how to rely on the web model to design future playful games. Koster slides can be found here (pdf, 3.8Mb) (Another good writeup is here). Some excerpts I found interesting:

"If you’re like me, you’re really tired of hearing about Web 2.0,” says Koster – but he maintains that the elements of the concept behind the buzzword are sound. (...) The net says the platform can be anything - there aren’t real hardware requirements or interface problems. The hot topic right now is the non-gamer. The hot feature is other people (as in YouTube), not the systems we write. The hot technology is connectivity and simultaneity. He added: "The hot game is a mini-game. Really small games."

“When you look at the kinds of problems we ask people to solve, and the things we assume them to do, it’s like we’ve given them a PhD in mathematics. No wonder you sit mom down and she asks 'how do I move?'”

If I look at that WoW screenshot,” says Koster, “I see a user interface begging to be simplified.” He calls for something along the lines of just showing the most pertinent information – and already there are hacks to do this. “Every time you make an assumption about inputs or output, you’re shrinking your user base. This is really the secret behind the DS and the Wii – it’s mapped to stuff we already know, which reduces the learning curve.” (...) “There’s no reason why WoW couldn’t be represented by anything other than an RSS feed, and if you could, it’d probably be doubled in users.” "

Well, without the context the last quote might sound weird but there is an relevant point here. And I quite his description about what works on the web that can be transferred to gaming:

"- the system is the game, not the interface, not the presentation. - any button will do. - long phases take your time – response time is rough. - be done fast, once you’ve made a decision. - do it side by side. Has to be massively parallel. - extended accumulated state – save your profile. - no roles – classless – teams are deterministic. - representation agnostic – draw it however. - open data – change it however."

Why do I blog this? preparing a presentation about how web practices (social web, web2.0) will change digital entertainment, and how to turn some of this into sound game mechanics. There is a lot more, especially about game grammar. If you take a look at the slides, their are also nice prognostication about the evolution of digital entertainment based on what he finds important in Web2.0:

"- Participation: trust, remix and mashup, cult of the amateur, Quality not required, distrust of centralized authority - Abandonment of the publisher model: long tails, niches, duplicate content - Different distribution channels: digital only, monetize passion not trials, slow openings, not big - Services instead of products: data not code, perpetual beta - 3R's: Ratings (the participatory Web is premised on metadata on “content”), rankings (And metadata on “users”), Reputation (adding up to a user-driven system of surfacing user-created content) - Run anywhere, common platform: “Above the level of a single device.”"

Challenges for MMORPG on cell phones

In 2003, Tommy Palm wrote an insightful piece in Gamasutra about the birth of mobile MMORPG. What is interesting in this paper is the development challenges described by the author:

"

• Latency: Whereas latency in network calls for PC games is measured in hundreds of milliseconds, for mobile phones latency is typically measured in seconds. (...) How can these long latencies on mobile networks be hidden from players? (...) Tick-based gaming is a solution to this problem. In tick-based gameplay, you take a turn-based game and allow all players to plan their moves ahead of time, and then the game executes all the moves simultaneously.
• Device Anarchy: The mobile phone market doesn't offer as much hardware certainty as today's PCs. (...) The screen sizes vary wildly, as do the number of buttons and their locations on the phones. It may go without saying that until there are standards for the most basic hardware capabilities (...) Application size is limited on many models. (...) Color depth also varies substantially between phones, but luckily there are not an infinite amount of color depths from which to choose.
• Operator issues: Internet connectivity for mobile phones isn't as easy as it is for PCs. (...) everything relies on the capabilities of the operator. (...) network packages are transmitted via the operator's software, and in many cases those messages are like frogs crossing a highway: sometimes they make it, sometimes they don't
• User Behavior: the average gaming session on a phone lasts just a few minutes. In some respects, this fact bolsters the case for 3MOGs since a persistent world can make better use of short playing cycles than a game that requires a player to start a new session each time the game is played. (...) Mobile games must behave politely and accept that the player's situation must always come first. A game in which the player's character dies and can't be resurrected -- just because the player got off the bus or answered a phone call -- will aggravate users and result in fewer players and lower revenues. Devising multiplayer functionality to accommodate frequently distracted players is one of the great challenges

"

Why do I blog this? food for a new project I am writing. These elements are very interesting, even though it's form 2003. Most are still relevant today. And I am quite interested as well in the implications for game mechanics plus how to cope with the limits from the user point of view. There are surely near future solutions to put in place to take these problems into account. The creation of playful interactions can use some of the limits.

Platforms such as Tibia ME or Mini Friday are intriguing systems, with different mechanics. Platforms to observe!

Ubisoft CEO on future of gaming

Excerpts from an interview of Yves Guillemot, UbiSoft CEO:

"We are moving towards launching books, games and movies at the same time," he said. "The movie industry creates more ideas than us at the moment, but the more they work, the more they are coming up with the same ideas. We are working more and more on re-using the same graphics [to reduce costs], and we are going in that direction, especially for AAA products."

"We will have to start making movies," he continued, "because if we don't do it, we won't be able to take advantage of the power of the next generation. In creating movies and games at the same time, we see what we have to improve to make better games as well.

Guillemot admitted that "you have different experiences in different mediums." (...) "We try to make the products complementary in different media," he said. "The goal is not to do the book of the game, but a quality product in itself, that will help you feel more immersed in the game because you know more. It's the same in the movie.""

Why do I blog this? focusing lately on reports about the future do digital entertainment, these quotes are quite interesting to see to what extent it lies in "complementary" experiences.

Beyond the situations that are expected (release of AAA-game+movie+book+merchandising simultaneously), it would be good to think about complementary aspects in the game design. For example, how to include cues and elements helpful for the game in books or in movies, etc.

Roles of architecture in video games

The role of architecture in video games by Ernest Adams is a Gamasutra column that is very relevant to my research interests. Prior jumping into his explanation about this topic, the author compares the reasons of constructing buildings in the real world and in a video game. If protection or personal privacy (toilets) are not important i game architecture, military activity and general decoration certainly are. Then he describes the primary functions of architecture in video games:

"The primary function of architecture in games is to support the gameplay. Buildings in games are not analogous to buildings in the real world, because most of the time their real-world functions are either irrelevant or purely metaphorical. Rather, buildings in games are analogous to movie sets: incomplete, false fronts whose function is to support the narrative of the movie. (...) There are four major ways in which this happens:

• Constraint: architecture establishes boundaries that limit the freedom of movement of avatars or units. It also establishes constraints on the influence of weapons.
• Concealment: architecture is used to hide valuable (and sometimes dangerous) objects from the player; it's also used to conceal the players from one another, or from their enemies.
• Obstacles and tests of skill: Chasms to jump across, cliffs to climb, trapdoors to avoid.
• Exploration: exploration challenges the player to understand the shape of the space he's moving through, to know what leads to where.

The Secondary Function of Architecture in Games:

• Familiarity. Familiar locations offer cues to a place's function and the events that are likely to take place there.
• Allusion. Game architecture can make reference to real buildings or architectural styles to take advantage of the ideas or emotions that they suggest.
• New worlds require new architecture. To create a sense of unfamiliarity, create unfamiliar spaces.
• Surrealism: It creates a sense of mystery and more importantly, it warns the player that things are not what they seem.
• Atmosphere. To create a game that feels dangerous, make it look dangerous.
• Comedic effect. Not all game worlds are familiar, dangerous, or weird; some are supposed to be lighthearted and funny.
• Architectural clichés: set a scene and establish player expectations quickly. These are a sort of variant on familiarity, without the benefit of being informed by real-life examples

"

Adams also gives pertinent examples of spatial elements that, considered as real-world architecture, would not be very sensible or coherent, but that are perfectly functional and fun as part of the game mechanic.

Why do I blog this? a very insightful review of how spatial features are important to support game mechanics. What is also important is that this reflects the game designer vision, which is complementary to the architecture view (see for example this article I blogged about the other day).

In addition, it made me think that this could also spark some interesting thoughts regarding physical space and pervasive gaming. Maybe this correspond to how parkour people see the physical environment, as game designers.