One of the domain I have been interested in the last few months is mobile on-line multi-player games. Having done research in pervasive/location-based games and knowing that this path was still a sort of “ubiquitous computing proximal future” for various reasons, I started exploring less advanced projects such as mobile multi-player on-line worlds/games such as Mini Friday or TibiaME. Although I was silent about it, this was one of the project I work on at the Media and Design Lab.

Both the game and the mobile industry are also quiet about this vector, but even old news show that this field start getting some attention. There are indeed various opportunities in this area, depending on various axes/design choices:

• Be synchronous like Tibia ME or the upcoming DofusPocket (Ankama - Kalmeo) or asynchronous (turn-based game) like Armada Kingdoms (by Bloomsix)
• Stand-alone virtual worlds such as Mini Friday (from Sulake, who also runs Habbo Hotel) or cross-platforms such as The Violet Sector.
• Offering of a complete game/social experience or only a subset: for instance it can be very well tbe the “mobile companion” to computer-based MMO like Ragnarok Mobile Mage or this mobile service called Level Up Mobile that allows to manage your account (balance inquiry, password, lock/unlock), get news and guild message exchange. A bit similar to what Rupture or Magelo are doing except that it would be a mobile version.

There’s a lot that can be done in that last area, as described in the gamasutra news.

“There are also social networking opportunities in World of Warcraft that could be done on mobile. Text and voice chat are obvious candidates for mobile, allowing players to keep in touch with their guilds when they are away from their computers. Also, things like browseable profiles and screenshot albums could be easily implemented. RSS-like news feeds by mobile could provide players with info on who leveled up or who joined a guild. Players might enjoy rating content that could be viewed on mobile such as rating quests or avatar appearance. Once the technology improves, Youtube style videos of World of Warcraft activities could appear on mobile. “It’s the perfect activity for mobile because it can take up as much or as little of the player’s time as desired,” Roy said.“

That said, this wide spectrum of opportunity is not the only solution why I am interested in that. Being a user experience researcher, my focus is on how people use certain technologies (such as urban technologies, location-based services, games). Mobile on-line multi-user games interest me because I see them as interesting platform to study the hybridization of the digital and the physical, especially in contexts such as contemporary cities. Where do people play these games? How do that influence what they’re doing after/before/during playing them? The whole interlinkages between the digital activities+context and the physical activities+context was the purpose of my work as EPFL last year. This is another vector than the one we’re exploring with Julian since physicality, geolocation and motion is not taken account. In this case, I am interested in pure raw mobile applications deployed on phones that are available on the market.

So, to some extent, as in the CatchBob project, I find interesting to employ mobile social games as platform to explore broader issues, especially the ones related to mobile user experience and what are the relationships between contemporary cities and these games. More about this topic later.

This afternoon, I was invited by Julian to give an informal talk at USC in his “experimental game topics” course. I showed a bunch of projects from others that I find interesting and it triggers a discussion about the near future of mobile/pervasive games, what are the main factors, the limits, the “pain factors” etc. Slides can be downloaded here (pdf, 8Mb). It’s just a compilation of various projects to reflect on different topics.

[Last year, I wrote a paper for a workshop at a human-computer interaction conference about the user experience of video games, actually it briefly presents the work I am doing with game companies. The paper was not accepted and I thought it would be pertinent to leave it online anyway]

Introduction
Video game companies have now integrated the need to deploy user-centered design and evaluation methods to enhance players experiences. This has led them to hire cognitive psychology researchers, human-computer interface specialists, develop in-house usability labs or subcontract tests and research to companies or academic labs. Although, very often, methods has been directly translated form classic HCI and usability, this game experience analysis started to gain weights through publications. This situation acknowledges the importance of setting a proper method for user-centered game design, as opposed to the one applied for “productivity applications” or web services. The Microsoft Game User Research Group for example has been very productive on that line of research (see for example [5]) with detailed methods such as usability tests, Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation [4] or consumer playtests [1]. Usability test is definitely the most common method currently given its relevance to identify interfaces flaws as well as factors that lower the fun to play through behavioral analysis.

That said, most of the methods deployed by the industry seem to rely heavily on quantitative and experimental paradigms inherited from the cognitive sciences tradition in human-computer interaction (see [2]). Studies are often conducted in corporate laboratory settings in which myriads of players come visit and spend hours playing new products. Survey, ratings, logfile analysis, brief interviews (and sometimes experimental studies) are employed to apprehend users’ experiences and implications for game or level designers are fed back into game development processes.

While these approaches proves to be fruitful (as reported by the aforementioned papers which describe some case studies), this situation only accounts for a limited portion of what HCI and user-centered design could bring to table in terms of game user research. Too often, the “almost-clinical” laboratory usability test is deployed without any further thoughts regarding how players might experience the product “in the wild”. For example, this kind of studies does not take into account how the activity of gaming is organized, and how the physical and social context can be important to support playful activities.

What we propose is to step back for a while and consider a complementary approach to gain a more holistic view of how a game product is experienced. To do so, we will describe two examples from our research carried out in partnership with a game studio.

Examples from field studies

Our first example depicted on Figure 1 shows the console of an informant: a Nintendo DS with a post-it that says “Flea market on Saturday” and an exclamation mark. The player of “Animal Crossing” indeed left this as a reminder that two days ahead, there would be a flea market in the digital environment. This is important in the context of that game because it will allow him to sell digital items to non-playable characters in the game.

This post-it is only an example among numerous uses of external resources to complement or help the gameplay. Player-created maps of digital environments xeroxed and exchanged in schools in the nineties is another example of such behavior. Magazines, books and digital environment maps are also prominent examples of that phenomenon, which eventually leads to business opportunities. Some video game editors indeed start publishing material (books, maps, cards) and try to connect it to the game design (by allowing secret game challenges through elements disseminated in comics for example).

Figure 2 shows another example that highlights the social character of play. This group of Japanese kids is participating the game experience, although there is only one child holding a portable console. The picture represented here is only one example of collective play along many that we encountered, both in mobile of fixed settings. They indicate that playing a video-game is much more than holding an input controller since participants (rather than “The Player”) have different roles ranging from giving advices, scanning the digital environment to find cues, discussing previous encounters with NPCs or controlling the game character.

Another intriguing results from a study about Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS has revealed that some players share the game and the portable console with others. An adult described how he played with his kid asynchronously: he hides messages and objects in certain places and his son locates them, displace them and eventually hide others. The result of this is the creation of a circular form of game-play that emerged from the players’ shared practice of a single console.

Conclusion

Although this looks very basic and obvious, these three examples correspond to two ways to frame cognition and problem solving: “Distributed Cognition” [3] and “Situated Action” [6]. While the former stresses that cognition is distributed the objects, individuals, and tools in our environment, Situated Action emphasizes the interrelationship between problem solving and its context of performance, mostly social. The important lesson here is that problem solving, such as interacting with a video-game is not confined to the individual but is both influenced and permitted by external factors such as other partners (playing or not as we have seen) or artifacts such as paper, pens, post-its, guidebooks, etc. Whereas usability testing relates to more individual model of cognition, Situated Action or Distributed Cognition imply that exploring and describing the context of play is of crux importance to fully grasp the user experience of games. Employing ethnographic methodologies, as proposed by these two Cognitive Sciences frameworks, can fulfill such goal by focusing on a qualitative examination of human behavior. It is however important to highlight the fact that investigating how, where and with whom people play is not meant to replace more conventional test. Rather, one can see this as a complement to understand phenomenon such as the discontinuity of gaming or the use of external resources while playing.

One of the reasons why this approach can be valuable is that results drawn from ethnographic research of gaming can be relevant to find unarticulated opportunities. For example, by explicitly requiring the use of external resource or the possibility to have challenges designed for multiple players as shown in the Animal Crossing example we described.

In the end, what this article stressed is that playing video-games is a broad experience which can be influenced by lots of factors that could be documented. And this material is worthwhile to design a more holistic vision of a product.

References

[1] Davis, J., Steury, K., & Pagulayan, R. A survey method for assessing perceptions of a game: The consumer playtest in game design. Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research, 5(1) (2005).
[2] Fulton, B. (2002). Beyond Psychological Theory: Getting Data that Improve Games. Game Developer’s Conference 2002 Proceedings, San Jose CA, March 2002. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2002/features/fulton/fulton_01.htm
[3] Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild, MIT Press.
[4] Medlock, M. C., Wixon, D., Terrano, M., Romero, R., Fulton, B. (2002). Using the RITE Method to improve products: a definition and a case study. Usability Professionals Association, Orlando FL July (2002). Available at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/c/c/5cc406a0-0f87-4b94-bf80-dbc707db4fe1/mgsut_MWTRF02.doc.doc
[5] Pagulayan, R. J., Keeker, K., Wixon, D., Romero, R., & Fuller, T. User-centered design in games. In J. Jacko and A. Sears (Eds.), Handbook for Human-Computer Interaction in Interactive Systems, pp.883-906. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2002).
[6] Suchman, L.A. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.

[Now it’s also interesting to add a short note about WHY the paper has not been accepted The first reviewer was unhappy by the fact that many ethnographies of game-playing have been published. Although this is entirely true in academia, it’s definitely not the case in the industry (where ethnography is seldom employed in playtests). And my mistake may have been that I frame the paper in an game industry perspective, using the literature about gaming usability. The second reviewer wanted a more extensive description of a field study and less a scratch-the-surface approach that I adopted. My problem of course is that it’s always difficult to describe results more deeply because most of the data are confidential… This is why I stayed at a general level]

A very comprehensive article by Ernest Adams in BW about the “50 Greatest Game Innovations”. The underlying argument there is how video games are a hotbed for innovation (in other domains than the gaming field). I won’t enter into much details about every single design advances presented there, stating only that they cover the following:

“GAMEPLAY INNOVATIONS: By gameplay I mean the challenges that the game poses to the player, and the actions that the player may take to meet the challenges. The vast majority of these actions are obvious: jumping, steering, fighting, building, trading and so on. But some challenges and actions distinctly advanced the state of the art, and provided new ways for us to play.

INPUT INNOVATIONS: Interactivity is the essence of gaming, and in a videogame, some device has to translate the player’s intentions into action. We’ve always had buttons, knobs (aka spinners or paddles), joysticks, sliders, triggers, steering wheels and pedals. But recently our options for input devices have exploded, and a good designer gives careful thought to them before choosing an approach to use.

PRESENTATIONAL INNOVATIONS: Innovations in what the player sees and hears may depend heavily on technological advances, but I still consider them design innovations as well, features the designer can choose to use in their game—or not. I take static and scrolling 2D screens for granted; they already existed in mechanical coin-ops.

GENRES: We borrowed many videogame genres from other game forms, but a few genres would not have been possible before the invention of the computer, and represent real design innovation.

PLAY STYLES: Different ways that people play, and how designers facilitate them.“

Why do I blog this? A must read even though it’s only a selection among other possibilities

(Cross-posted at Terra Nova)

Science Mag has an article entitled “The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds” by William Sims Bainbridge which gives a pretty good overview of how games such as MMO have a “great potential as sites for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as in human-centered computer science.

Although the examples are well-known now, what is interesting in this article is the emphasis on the environment and methodological choices: which environment can be tight to what methodologies as described in the following excerpt:

“In terms of scientific research methodologies, one can do interviews and ethnographic research in both environments, but other methods would work better in one than the other. SL is especially well designed to mount formal experiments in social psychology or cognitive science, because the researcher can construct a facility comparable to a real-world laboratory and recruit research subjects. WoW may be better for nonintrusive statistical methodologies examining social networks and economic systems, because it naturally generates a vast trove of diverse but standardized data about social and economic interactions. Both allow users to create new software modules to extract data.
(…)
WoW is a very conducive environment for quantitative research because it encourages individuals to write “mod” or “add-on” programs, and scientists can use some existing software as research tools or write their own. These range all the way from very simple sequences of character behaviors constructed using macros built into the WoW user interface to long programs written in the Lua language. For example, one widely used program called Auctioneer analyzes prices on the WoW virtual item auction system, and CensusPlus tallies all the players currently online by several characteristics
(…)
Other fields of computer and information science that may use virtual worlds as laboratories include human/computer interaction (HCI), where “machinima” videos shot in virtual worlds may be used to develop prototypes of a wide range of systems and new methods of information visualization“

Although I am not a great fan of SL, it’s very rare to see a discussion about the merits of certain platform to conduct X and Y type of research (also crossed with the disciplines). I’d be happy to know more about the use of other platforms; for example I’ve seen psychological studies about immersion using car games. What FPS and RTS can be useful for? What about mini-games? Is tangible interaction a good model for certain phenomena?

The article continues by addressing how different disciplines may find virtual worlds worthwhile to explore as research platforms (for example how political sciences may find the experimental method in small laboratory studies). The advantages the author points out ranges from the easiness to recruit participants, the availability of scripting and graphic tools, the motivation factor.

To some extent, the article has a great literature review of existing work (close to the Terra Nova community!) about this topic but I am a bit less optimistic than the author (”Virtual worlds may help unify some branches of the social sciences and give them greater scientific rigor. “). Anyhow, virtual environments at least emable people to talk about a common object and make comparisons.

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).

(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.

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.

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.

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

(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.

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.

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 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.

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).