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).

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.

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?

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.“

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.

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.

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.

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.”“

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!

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.

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.

I am not a regular reader of Wired but stumbling across it in Mexico the other day after two weeks offline was refreshing, especially this piece about game testing at Microsoft Games User Research.

The article basically describes the work done on Halo 3 by a team of user researcher. Some excerpts i found interesting:

“Pagulayan’s team quickly went to work building tools for extracting gameplay data, including the location of each player and when and where they fired weapons, rode vehicles, killed aliens, and died. They ran weekly tests, analyzing 2,300 hours of play by 400 gamers in under two months. Over and over again, they found snags — a mutant alien that was far too powerful, a lava pit that too many players fell into.
(…)
Some tests include a pop-up box that interrupts the player every few minutes, asking them to rate how engaged, interested, or frustrated they are. Pagulayan also has gamers talk out loud about what they’re experiencing, providing a stream-of-consciousness record of their thought process as they play. (…)
After each session Pagulayan analyzes the data for patterns that he can report to Bungie. For example, he produces snapshots of where players are located in the game at various points in time — five minutes in, one hour in, eight hours in — to show how they are advancing. If they’re going too fast, the game might be too easy; too slow, and it might be too hard. He can also generate a map showing where people are dying, to identify any topographical features that might be making a battle onerous. And he can produce charts that detail how players died, which might indicate that a particular alien or gun is proving unexpectedly lethal or wankishly impotent. The lab also records video footage of every testing session and hyperlinks these clips to the individual progress reports. If the design team wonders why players are having trouble in a particular area, they can just pull up a few test games to see what’s going wrong“

Interesting enough, there are some result examples, about spatial behavior that I found pertinent:

“Pagulayan pulls up an early map of Jungle; on it are superimposed the locations of about 30 testers after half an hour of play. The dots are scattered throughout the terrain. This, he says, is bad: It means that people were wandering aimlessly instead of progressing through the level. “People were lost,” Pagulayan says. “There wasn’t much deep analysis to do here.”
To solve such problems, the designers must subtly direct player movement by altering the world in small ways. In this case, they decided to change the geography of the Jungle level so that in certain places players had to jump down a steep ledge to reach the next area.“

This is very similar to what Ubi Soft employed for Splinter Cell (see here).

See the two examples they give:

The first one shows how “players wandered lost around the Jungle level: Colored dots showing player location at five-second intervals (each color is a new time stamp) were scattered randomly. So Bungie fixed the terrain to keep players from backtracking. Sure enough, the dots clustered by color, showing that players were moving smoothly through the map.”

This one is about “player deaths (represented in dark red on this “heat map” of the level) were skewing toward the base on the left, indicating that forces invading from the right had a slight advantage. After reviewing this image, designers tweaked the terrain to give both armies an even chance.

Why do I blog this? although these techniques are common in User Experience, it’s good to see how they are applied and which sort of results they lead to.

There is a very long and comprehensive interview of Richard Bartle on the Guardian games blog, which addresses lots of different topics. Some excerpts I found interesting:

“MUD has little that today’s virtual worlds don’t, but it lacks something they do have which makes it worth looking at: baggage. In today’s virtual worlds, there are many components that are only there because they were in the worlds that the designers played. These things work, but the designers don’t know - or even consider - why they work. A designer will ask “what character classes are we going to have?” when they should first ask “are we going to have character classes?”. Only when they have decided that yes, they are going to have them, will they know why they want them, and therefore why they are important. With MUD, we had no precedents. Therefore, a designer looking at MUD can do so in the knowledge that everything there is there for a reason, and then hypothesise what that reason might be (or, if they realise I’m not dead yet, ask me).
(…)
Most people will use the technology but not care about the worlds as worlds. If you want the intelligent stuff, you’ll be able to find it; however, if you don’t know it’s there, you won’t know to look.“

Why do I blog this? some good points here, also considering what I just blogged about “design inheritance” and the persistence of stereotypes. It’s indeed important to see how the game design/user interface/user experience evolved over time from tabletop role-playing games to MUD and them MMORPGs. The strong typologies of “class” or material prevails in an unbelievable way, promoting certain aspects of the games. What would be the alternatives?