Category: Links

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

“The Eye­Writer project is an ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive research effort to empow­er peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing from ALS with cre­ative tech­nolo­gies. It is a low-cost eye-track­ing appa­ra­tus & cus­tom soft­ware that allows graf­fi­ti writ­ers and artists with paral­y­sis result­ing from Amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis to draw using only their eyes.” Well-deserved win­ner of the Prix Ars Electronica.

“By slosh­ing, squish­ing, pulling, punch­ing, etc, in a tub of mud (yes, wet dirt), users con­trol games, sim­u­la­tors, and expres­sive tools; inter­act­ing with a com­put­er in a new, com­plete­ly organ­ic, way.” Mud, I won­der how that idea came into being.

This looks incred­i­bly use­ful. Too bad I did­n’t have it at my dis­pos­al while at Layar.

Had a chat with some of the guys behind this com­pa­ny at Thought­Made. They showed a bit of pat­terned foil that you could print and stick on a reg­u­lar screen, mak­ing it work with their dig­i­tal pens. A cheap way (com­pared to Wacom’s Cin­tiq, for instance) to make big screens with pen based interactions.

Ran into the peo­ple behind FIELD last fri­day, who were in Copen­hagen to present this video that was com­mis­sioned by Net­film­mak­ers Gallery: “In their video Muse, FIELD is remix­ing their pri­vate dig­i­tal scrap­books from the last 3 years. A flood of inspir­ing images and ref­er­ences is trans­formed into an ocean of colour, fuelled from Ever­note, our blog field.io/process, our favourites on Google Read­er and Flickr, and oth­er sources.”

““The use of cer­tain prod­ucts, such as kites, moun­tain bikes and GPS mon­i­tors, has a bear­ing on the way in which land­scape is under­stood.” The land­scape is instru­men­tal­ized, we might say, dis­tilled through dense lay­ers of tech­no­log­i­cal abstrac­tion to become, once again, a place inhab­it­able by human activ­i­ty, how­ev­er pathet­ic or impres­sive­ly per­sis­tent it might be.” Which more or less sums up what I find so fas­ci­nat­ing about work­ing in new urban devel­op­ment areas such as Lei­d­sche Rijn. To see if there are ways to trans­form in between spaces into social places for play.

“The New Weird has come into being, such as it is and what­ev­er it should be, on its own and not by dint of any deci­sion or pro­gram, so the attri­bu­tion of deci­sions and schemes to it ought to be seen as pre­scrip­tions rather than as descrip­tions.” This pas­sage, from a slight­ly con­fus­ing essay on the con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary fan­ta­sy scene, got me think­ing about dis­cus­sions about inter­ac­tion design and this exact kind of con­fu­sion that often hap­pens. Peo­ple express­ing a hope or a wish about it, but pre­sent­ing it as an objec­tive fact. Where­as, for instance, what we are try­ing to do with This hap­pened is to just show the work and in doing so, just describe what is going on.

A clever lit­tle Pro­cess­ing project that lets you paint with light.

““One free inter­ac­tion” is a prospec­tive design pat­tern that gives soft­ware and hard­ware a more humane feel. It exists out­side of task flows and the con­cept of users as task-doers. Instead it sits in the “in between” spaces, suit­ing users as fid­geters, com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and peo­ple who play with things.” Nice to see cham­pi­ons of util­i­tar­i­an design embrace play­ful­ness in inter­faces. I’d go fur­ther than encour­age just one inter­ac­tion that is slapped on and sug­gest it should be one of the aspects that is baked into the design. A first principle.

Alper’s notes on This hap­pened — Utrecht #6 in sound­bite form. Real­ly cap­tures the spir­it of the thing. (Too bad Haas got left out.)

Anoth­er report on our last edi­tion of This hap­pened – Utrecht, this one focus­ing most­ly on Keez Duyves’s talk.

“We can imag­ine lead­ing school bus­es of chil­dren to observe a road cut, reveal­ing the stra­ta of var­i­ous epochs: Eocene, Oligocene, late Miocene, Pliocene, Pleis­tocene, Holocene, and, now with­in the Holocene, the mil­i­tary lam­i­na.” I don’t know what to make of this (is this sup­posed to be from the future?) but I loved read­ing it.

“Each school sum­maris­es the sta­tis­tics in straight­for­ward, nat­ur­al Eng­lish. There are well over 20,000 state schools in Eng­land that we do this for. We got a com­put­er to do the work. A jour­nal­ism robot.” Love­ly work from the guys at BERG. I’m curi­ous to see how they’ll decide to com­mer­cial­ize this.

“After acci­den­tal­ly wip­ing out the whole human race, hero Ben and his side­kick Dan go back in time to stop coathang­ers being invent­ed and, in turn, allow Hitler to take over the world with his army of Nazi dinosaurs.” A must-play, in oth­er words.