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API using a very simple principle that can be used to generate all kinds of charts.
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“I still hope that “core” and “hardcore” developers will not see casual cloning as an easy way out. My belief is still that a good original game will outsell any clone, and creating an original title has side benefits, like curing cancer.” Ha!
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“As you may know, I’m suing a cigarette company because their product hasn’t killed me yet.” Excerpts from a wonderful interview with Vonnegut (the last in fact).
Author: Kars Alfrink
Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.
links for 2007-12-07
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An overview of some of the stuff Gamevil (Korea) have been doing in the area of social networking crossed with mobile games.
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A presentation by Philippe Starck about why he (or anyone) should be doing design right now. It is a bit challenging to follow but does offer some great insights. Plus Starck is surprisingly humble about his own achievements, which is refreshing.
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“I would claim that true knowledge management-viewed as the management of strategic knowledge assets-is the process by which communities of practice are supported in completing the full cycle described here.”
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NYT doesn’t have a design section. That’s what I love about a magazine like Monocle – they explicitly address design while at the same time putting it in context with other fields.
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Dare I submit an XTech 2008 proposal? They’ll have a mobile track of some sorts, probably. Dublin in May, hmmm…
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“Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection.” Bookmarking old stuff again, Labor Day is long gone but still this Godin piece is worth reading.
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“When you are designing an emergent system, … you … need to take an entirely bottom-up approach, and think through the eyes of the elements themselves.” Oldish post from Simon Oliver on the challenges of designing complex emergent systems.
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A great interview with Levine on the design of Bioshock. His comments at the end of the interview about games and stories are remarkable given the fact that Bioshock is still pretty storydriven…
What should a casual MMOG feel like?
I’m finding myself in the starting phases of designing a casual MMOG (or virtual world, if you prefer that term). When I say design, I mean determining the structure and behaviour of the world — interaction design, in other words.
It’s an interesting challenge (and a significant change from designing mobile games, to say the least). I can’t think of a class of games that has the potential for more emergent phenomena, both social and economic. This is truly a second order design challenge.
Of course, the same old player needs still hold true, and tools and techniques such as scenarios and storyboards are just as useful here as in any other project. But the need for an iterative, test driven design and development process becomes hugely apparent once you start to think about all the effects you simply cannot design directly.
You might think I’m involved with a WoW– or SL-like endeavour. On the contrary! The aim of the project is to bring some of the unique pleasures of a virtual world to a mass (adult) audience.1 That means making the experience more casual, more short-session.
Our players will still want to feel related and socialise, but on their own terms. They’ll still want to feel autonomous and explore, but in short bursts of activity. They’ll still want to feel competent and achieve, but without having to make too huge an effort…
There’s plenty of movement in the space of casual, short-session MMOG’s. Some have dubbed them PMOGs — Passively Multiplayer Online Games — and focus on making them open systems that interact with daily life. I’m trying to imagine what — as a closed system — a casual MMO should feel like, what its aesthetics (PDF) need to be. What, in other words, would WoW or SL have turned out to be if Miyamoto-san had designed it?
- Plus some other more unique goals, that I won’t talk about just yet. [↩]
links for 2007-12-06
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“The game industry has … lagged behind [the social web] in creating what Sulka Haro calls “gamer created activity” … At this year’s GDC, we intend to rebalance things on that front, …” Glad to be part of that.
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Another interesting Gamma256 submission. Via Ian Bogost and Niels ‘t Hooft.
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“What I’m saying, fundamentally, that—the Tetris effect notwithstanding—you can’t hum a video game. So while Tetris and Thriller may have sold about the same number of copies, Michael Jackson has touched many more people than Alexey Pajitnov.“
Alle
links for 2007-12-05
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“Nokia identifies Circular Entertainment as a coming trend” Effectively Nokia are branding what is commonly known as remix culture. Still something not readily acknowledged in most social web apps today: Users don’t just contribute original content.
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Awesome live performance by Imogen Heap (whom I had not heard of before, thanks Guy Parsons). Have seen similar things done before by Dutch artists C-mon and Kypski but this just being one person hugely increases the impact.
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“The following list provides information about the uptake, impact and awards garnered from ‘alternate reality games’ (ARGs). … It is not a definitive list, but hopes to provoke one.”
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More goodness from the tangible interactions course: a bowl in which tokens are placed that controls media playback. Lots of opportunities for game play here.
links for 2007-12-04
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Sweet little book blog with a nice design. Actually pays attention to the feeling of browsing through books as you would in a bookstore. Via Benedikte.
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If I can’t find a proper new company name I can always generate one with this. “Nutritious Neon Vehicle”? Hmmm… Via Andreas.
links for 2007-12-03
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The Playyoo Game Creator which I helped create has gone beta. David Mantripp of Imagiventure gives an enjoyable overview.
links for 2007-12-01
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First in a long series of posts on the ways people have gone about documenting their ARGs. Nice nuts and bolts kind of stuff.
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Mister Saffer is at it again — writing a book on gestural interfaces this time. Curious to see how this turns out…
links for 2007-11-30
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Sweet sweet wallpapers. Can’t I just get a random one of these on my desktop everyday? Via the ever tasteful Bart.
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“The map not only presents a narrative of how a designer “gets things done with the help of all her smart things” but at a higher level also seems to hint at how we may deal with mass amounts of information in the future.”
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“My Location is a new beta technology from Google that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS.” The video that goes with this is freaking awesome!
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Leisa tries to convince BarCamp techies that user research *is* the cool thing to do (no matter what 37signals say). Nice brief presentation on guerilla user research.
My GDC Mobile 2008 proposal: accepted!
It doesn’t say so on the site yet, but I am on the program for next year’s GDC Mobile.1 Yesterday I got the email that my talk — titled Designing a Casual Social Gaming Experience for Generation C — has been accepted. To be honest I was quite surprised. I work in the blurry overlap of the interaction design and game design fields, have no actual game titles under my belt and proposed a weird subject to boot. Who in their right mind would invite me to speak? Of course I am also really excited about this. GDC is the professional event for the games industry so I’m honored to be part of it.2
My talk will be closely related to the things I’ve been working on for Playyoo. I’ll discuss how short-session mobile games and a web based meta-game can interconnect to create a social game experience that allows different levels of player engagement. I’ll look at the ways you can align your game design with the expectations of Generation C: customization & personalization, recombination and connectedness. I might post the extended abstract sometime in the future, for now I’m just wondering: Who else is going to GDC? What would you like to see me discuss?
Update: The conference site has been updated, here’s the description of my session.