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“Instead of focusing on racking up 10,000 hours, spend a few hundred hours being bad at something. It is a good way to understand other people, appreciate their skills and the way they view the world and it is a good reminder of what it feels like to learn something new.” Some interesting thoughts on mindsets versus skillsets and which of those truely define the boundaries of disciplines. Has me reflect on my own attempts to branch out from interaction design into game design and, occasionaly, computational design.
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A solid piece of writing on the forces shaping pervasive, mobile and urban games. With some interesting points about the influence if science fiction, as well as an entirely appropriate reference to metagames.
Author: Kars Alfrink
Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.
Week 153
I totally forgot to post this last week; I’ll blame it on a combination of excellent weather and too much work on my hands. We’re already well into week 154, but to give you a brief overview of what number 153 looked like, let me just say it was more or less divided between:
- preparing for and subsequently running a hand full of urban games at the NU Grounds festival in Leidsche Rijn (we had gorgeous weather and a lot of fun, can’t wait to run more)
- sitting on a mid-term exam committee at the HKU (exhausting, but when a student nails it, as happened several times, it’s a real treat)
I also attended Kunstgras where a book profiling several creative entrepreneurs in Utrecht (for which I was interviewed) was presented.
That all left me quite spent so I took Monday off. Which, I think, is a first in over 6 months. And now we’re in the second week after my return from Copenhagen. It already seems ages ago since I stepped off that airplane.
links for 2010-06-01
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It’s nice to see that Bashers has become the home for critical appraisals of games (such as this one about Red Dead Redemption). I’d just like to see more talk about how a game actually plays (at an equally critical level) and less about the narrative that is draped over it. (The article is in Dutch, by the way.)
links for 2010-05-31
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A game “about exploring space to find art, while at the same time learning how to fly around in a graceful way. There isn’t any scoring system or way to lose, instead it’s all about self improvement and judging your own performance.” It features gorgeous water color art, too. Worth giving a go, I’d say.
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A strange set of divination cards, meant to be art, but might be very cool to use as a prop in a game some time…
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These designs for carnival outfits and floats from the beginning of the last century look absolutely fabulous, in a weird way. I wish I could see some of these as photos, too.
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An interesting set of “predictions” for the future of computing, with the usual pretty pictures to accompany them, from a Frog Design led workshop. What I find a shame is that most if not all of it is about quantification and optimisation of utility. No new experiences.
links for 2010-05-30
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A short piece on the workshops James Rojas runs to get people’s ideas on urban planning issues. He lets them build cities using various colorful objects, many of them found. The results are often stunning.
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Mooi werk van Alper, een bak statistieken van het CBS dat digitaal stof stond te vangen toegankelijk gemaakt voor iedereen. Ziet er ook nog eens lekker clean uit.
Week 152
This was the last week of my stay in Copenhagen. Coming Sunday it’s back to the Netherlands. As usual leaving feels bittersweet. There certainly things I’ll miss about being here, not in the least our lovely apartment in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods. And the many great cafés. But there’s a lot to be said for being in Utrecht, too. I have so much stuff going on there, it got a bit tiring towards the end managing it all remotely.
So this week…
- I went over to Malmö to meet with Dan Gärdenfors at TAT and with Jonas Löwgren at MEDEA. In both cases there is reason for follow-up; it looks like there might be a TAT-Hubbub concept video about pervasive play and mobile UIs on the horizon, and I might come back to MEDEA to do some teaching.
- I had a marathon Skype session on wednesday. Talking to all my students who are now nervously prepping for their mid-terms. As well as sessions with Claudia and Karel in preparation of the urban games festival in Leidsche Rijn we’re assisting with.
- I lectured (and ran a little playtest of an audience game I’ve been tinkering with) at CIID. Look for a full report and annotated slides at the Hubbub blog, soon.
And now, it’s time to do a few more touristy things and then pack, and head home. The next weeknote will be Dutch flavored again.
links for 2010-05-26
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Some pretty disturbing news from Sweden about youth gangs. (If you like me don’t read Swedish, Google does a pretty good job of translating this.) The article posits that the way kids get caught up in these gangs is through abusive games such as ‘slave deck’ but I think that is taking it too far. If there’s any play at work here, it’s young people mimicking the dog-eat-dog world of business. That might be a cynical reading of this piece, but there you have it. More likely than some evil ruleset subverting kids into becoming mafiosi.
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“URBLOVE is a service that in an innovative way combines urban exploring and games, with user-created content. It is both a service for location based mobile games mainly in urban areas, as well as an online community where these games are distributed. On the web community users can create their own games and share their experiences with each other.” I had a chat with one of the girls behind Ozma recently and what I liked the most about the platform they’re building is the decidedly low-tech approach they’re taking. Urblove is text message driven, making it very accessible to young people who tend not to carry around iPhones and the likes.
links for 2010-05-25
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“A wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn.” An idea that has been floating around the labs finally finds it way onto the market. Interesting.
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A time tracking tool that is controlled by stacking wooden pieces. I’m working on a game design involving stacking physical stuff so this was intriguing to see. I like the aesthetic of the thing, although I am slightly doubtful of its utility.
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“Back in 2006, early on a Saturday morning, artist Julien Berthier installed a new door in the city of Paris—but it was a fake door, leading nowhere, on an otherwise empty wall in the 3rd arrondissement.” Entertaining musings on in-between spaces, fake facades and urban labyrinths. Put me in mind of the Miéville novel I read recently.
links for 2010-05-23
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The film of the Playmakers project, which chronicles the creation of a pervasive game by Alex Fleetwood and Holly Gramazio is now available online. It’s really nice to see the design process of a game demystified like this. There are also some nice reflections on pervasive games in general.
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Ichi Face is “a new twist on a real classic, and it gets people scrutinising and meeting each other in an exciting and unusual way.” It’s essentially bingo with chopped up photo portraits. I love the look of the contraption where participants get their photo shot and also the quirky look of the print out materials.
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“Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.” I’d be interested in donning this crazy contraption to experience life from a third person perspective in real time.
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A pretty comprehensive (although slightly US-biased) overview of the history of location-based games. The last Area/Code example Kati London briefly discusses is of most interest to me because it deal with situated, applied game design.
links for 2010-05-22
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“I don’t play videogames because I want to have competent, professional militaristic encounters with friends. I’d take Dangerous Mistakes In The Company Of Friends over competence any day. Sure, they may be mistakes, but they’re dangerous! They’re exciting! And sometimes, they make the game better than it ever could be when you play it “right”. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” It’s great how Tom manages to describe a hilarious episode in a Left 4 Dead session so well, it had me laughing out loud.
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It as a real pleasure to be involved with two recent events that The Mobile City was at, too. This report is a nice reflection on both of them from people who have been thinking abut this urban computing stuff for longer than most.