Tag: HKU

Week 174

STT again

This week on Wednesday I found myself in the lovely KNAW building to talk about the far future of applied game design. I was invited to do so by STT, together with David Shaffer, Jeroen van Mastrigt and Jeroen Elfferich. I talked about the incapacity of design as well as science fiction to effectively imagine a future, how to deal with that as a designer, and two areas that I see as truly virgin territory for applied game design: the new type of city we’ve seen emerge in the East, and synthetic biology. I got some nice responses and some challenging questions from the crowd, so I guess things went OK. The annotated slides will find their way to the Hubbub blog soon.

Aside from this, I spent the week working on PLAY Pilots – continuing work on the next pilot for Le Guess Who? together with Monobanda. And at the HKU, working with my students on the Pampus project. Finally, my interns have kicked off their third game at the Learning Lab, this one running on their internal blog platform. It involves monkeys and a blind dragon. Looking forward to the writeup for that one.

Quite a few bits of content found their way online too, by the way. In case you missed them the first time around, here they are:

Plus a video of the Bocce Drift session Hubbub ran a while back:

Week 171 & 172

I have a lot on my plate at the moment. A bit too much it seems. So it’s a good thing I got to wrap up a few things in the past two weeks…

Most notably Maguro, for which we presented our design to the client last wednesday. We gave away quite a show, including music and spoken word performances. The whole thing was well-received.

Another delivery of a kind was This happened – Utrecht #7. Never before did it take us so long to complete our speaker lineup. It’s an experience I would like to prevent in future, but we couldn’t really help it. As a result, I had very few expectations about this particular one, but it turned out great. We even managed to try out a few new things. A new clock, and a new “badge” (actually a button). Good stuff. Some nice reports have been written about it, too.

More deliveries, at the Netherlands Film Festival we had a good run with PLAY Pilots live game number two: De Stereoscoop by Zesbaans. We managed to get some nice publicity, we had it set up at the closing party and lots of people played on it. Good stuff.

Apart from this I have been busy finding projects for Tweetakt 2011’s interactive program, and managing the Pampus group project at the HKU.1 My interns at Hubbub are also plugging away at the Learning Lab games, they delivered their second one last week.

Good grief. No wonder I was a little sick and had to take a day off yesterday. I’m hoping to take a it a little bit easier the coming period. No idea how, though. Any ideas?

  1. The group is blogging, too, by the way. [↩]

Week 169

Fiona Raby once told me that the majority of her work with students at the RCA was about psychology. After a week like this, I can see where she’s coming from. Without going into too much detail, I had my work cut out for me with a new group of students who I will be working with on a design research project at the HKU. After a first meeting with the team and a kick-off with the client the next day, it became clear I was dealing with a group with some serious motivational issues. The trick was to figure out where it all was coming from. To do this it was vital to try and see things as they really are in stead of as they were presented to me by the group. After several additional sessions (messing with my schedule but that comes with the territory) I had it figured out more or less and have formulated a plan to deal with it. Psychology.

In between all that craziness my week consisted of:

  • Working with my two new interns at Hubbub. We reflected on their experiences at the Natural Networking Festival and presented a post-mortem of the first game to Thieu after attending one of the Learning Lab meetups.
  • Sketching out additions to the PLAY Pilots website necessary to support the Zesbaans installation for the Netherlands Film Festival. These will launch next week in time for the installation’s unveiling on Thursday.
  • Presenting my preliminary list of interactive works suitable for next year’s Tweetakt festival. This is my first time curating an event other than This happened. I am keen to mash up playful interaction design with the fringes of game design and it seems Tweetakt are up for it too. Happy days.
  • Another full day of work on Maguro. Best part of which was a few quiet hours to bang out a first playable paper prototype of the game. Convergence is a bitch but always rewarding when it happens.
  • Today, I hung out at BUROPONY and took care of a few odds and ends for their website. In return work has started on a last bit of Hubbub corporate identity: a design for the box to hold our business-slash-collectible playing cards.

And with that I am signing off. A train is taking me from Rotterdam to Utrecht, perhaps I will be in time to catch the tail end of friday drinks at the Dutch Game Garden. Never a dull moment there.

Week 166

This week was all about frantically getting things sorted so that I can completely disconnect for a week on starting friday (tomorrow).

  • Putting up the scaffolding for project Fugu; a collaboration with River Institute on an experiment in higher education at the UvA. Hubbub will be designing some ARG-ish additions to its program. I am bringing on board two interns to work with me on this. I’ll have them introduce themselves at the Hubbub blog soon.
  • Final exams at the HKU which is best described as a roller-coaster ride of draining and exhilarating moments. I judged the work of 10 interaction design and game design students, including those I coached myself. Some were very good. There is a show at the faculty on september 10 & 11 called EJECT.
  • Had some meetings about yet another project which I have decided to codename Ika. This is a mix of me coaching a group of HKU students and doing design research in the cultural heritage domain. A hybrid educational model.
  • Various management-type activities for PLAY Pilots. Mostly aimed at helping the Zesbaans / NFF pilot make it into the world and getting the Wip ‘n’ Kip additions for the site up.
  • This afternoon we’ll kick off project Maguro which is about using pervasive games for internal training purposes at a government agency.
  • Tomorrow at 12:15 I will get on this boat to this island and will be very hard to reach for a week. I plan to do a lot of reading, cycling and walking and not much else. Well, sleeping probably. Lots of that too.

So, don’t expect any notes for week 167. I’ll be back to report on #168.

Week 165

So week 165. One of those old-fashioned fragmented weeks that reminds me of why I decided a while ago that I should stop having more than two meetings on one day. Anyway.

Following the weekend of Stekker Fest craziness I had a bit of an off day on Monday. Tuesday I sat down with Ianus and Alexander to make plans for the next This happened – Utrecht. We’ve had a bit of trouble finding a venue, getting financing and everything but it looks like we’re all set. Monday 4 October at Theater Kikker in Utrecht, NL. Save the date.

From Amsterdam I traveled on to Rotterdam and spent some time at Simon’s sketching out the additions to PLAY Pilots for the Wip ‘n’ Kip game data. I also dropped by BUROPONY. They might make something cool for This happened attendees…

Wednesday I had coffee with Thieu and Godelieve at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam to talk about a new project which I’ve dubbed Fugu. It deals with experimental (game-like) new forms of higher education. I am taking on board two interns to help me out with that. That’ll be an interesting new experience. I also hooked up with Peter, who is now at Adaptive Path Amsterdam. Cool building, they seem to be doing well. Nice.

In the afternoon on Wednesday I was back in Utrecht to talk to Ezra, who is involved with some interesting research into cycling. He’s based in Copenhagen. We discussed ways in which we might use low-tech pervasive urban games to shape cycle use. Who knows, Hubbub might venture there to do some experiments in future.

I finished that day off with a review of a student presentation. Final exams is next week; that’ll eat up a lot of my time.

Ah what’s more? Thursday, more educational work, I attended a kick-off of the new academic year at the HKU‘s school of art and technology. I liked the fact that all teachers were there and sat down to sync their classes and assignments in such a way that they all connected to projects students would be doing. Proper project-based art education. Good to see that happen.

And today I am reviewing one more student presentation and am spending some time with Alper on PLAY Pilots and related bits.

Looking ahead, next week will be about the aforementioned final exams and also the kick-off of project Maguro. I have to say I am running on fumes a bit and can’t wait for next week because on friday I will head to Terschelling for a week and unplug completely.

Almost forgot about Bocce Drift this Sunday. Come along and play.

Week 161

This past week, again, was mostly about project Ebi. We kicked off the third iteration on monday with a review of the version we delivered the friday before. What followed was a heated discussion about the ruleset. I felt it needed a bit more depth so players would have more interesting choices. The trick is to not go overboard with the complexity, because we want the game to still have immediate appeal.

By the way, project Ebi has a name now and it is PLAY Pilots. The site is still cloaked but the process blog – where you can find many wonderful weeknotes by FourceLabs and Zesbaans as well as ourselves – is public. We’re also on Twitter and Facebook. Keep tabs on those channels to get early access to the BETA…

On tuesday I headed to Amsterdam for a taste of Stumptown‘s coffee – something Alper had been bugging me about for ages – and a trip to Pristine for some accessories for my new bike. I spent the rest of the day at Alper’s studio reviewing one of my students graduation thesis. She’s designed a point-and-click adventure game with an intersex protagonist, an attempt to critique gender conventions through gameplay. Interesting stuff.

On wednesday I continued work on Ebi with the team. It was Bernard‘s last day before his vacation so we wrapped up an important part of the copy. In the afternoon I headed to the Nederlands Film Festival‘s office to kick off the second pilot that is part of Ebi, which will be created by the awesome crew at Zesbaans. They have posted their first weeknote over at the project blog.

Thursday, I met up with a few of my students. Some still require help, but a few others are at the point that they looked apologetic when I asked when they would like to meet again. They’re in the final phase of their work, and I’ve done what I can. We’ll see each other at the finals, which will be in august.

A first for Hubbub, I had a chat with an possible intern on thursday too. I’m still not sure if we’ve reached the point where we can offer a good environment for interns (I take the educational responsibility we would have quite serious) so we’ll have to see if we take one on board.

On friday, I was back at the soon-to-be new Dutch Game Garden on the Neude square – we’re moving next week – to work with the Ebi team. Alper was mostly hacking away at sign-in stuff for Twitter and also the new version of the game engine. Simon made good progress with the designs for the game interface and I was surfing for fun customizable gadget to hand out to our players during the first festival we’ll appear at; Stekker Fest 2010. Would you fancy an eighties style suncap?

Also, a few of our FourceLabs friends dropped by to discuss technical matters dealing with how we’d integrate the web game we’re building with the physical one they’re doing for Stekker Fest. They also showed some awesome mockups of the whole setup made with LEGO. They’ve also been playing around with high speed cameras, yielding awesome footage. I’m sure they’ll share more details in their next post.

Week 160

So here we are at the end of week 160 which has been mostly about project Ebi. Today we’re wrapping up the second iteration of the project. It’s crazy to think we have been going for only four weeks in total now and at this point we have a a first software version of the game running with copy and design shaping up nicely too. My personal contribution hasn’t been that huge, it’s mostly been about making sure the killer team I’ve assembled (if I may say so myself) can do its job.

In between writing this, me and Bernard are playing with the prototype, as Alper is hacking away at it. Meanwhile Simon (back from a vacation to Austria, his fatherland) is back in Rotterdam polishing some of the new screens we’ve identified after settling on a ruleset.

Aside from this I’ve spent some time again at the HKU talking to students. This included a live demo of a game a few of them are working on that involves brain control. They’ve gotten their hands on an Emotiv BCI and are figuring out ways to make mastering thought patterns as a player actually doable. Students have all the fun these days.

Week 155 & 156

I have some catching up to do with these. What can I say, things got in the way of writing last week’s notes.

These past two weeks I have been pushing to get a new project, codenamed Ebi, off the ground. It is the next step in my involvement with the PLAY project in Utrecht. I’ve put together a team consisting of Alper, Bernard and Simon to build a game that will tie together several other playful things that will take place over the coming months at several Utrecht events. We’ve had our kick-off and are now in the midst of the first sprint, with delivery of a first rough system by the end of next week. Copy is being written, software is being developed and designs are being made. It’s a pleasure to see this ad-hoc team coming together so fast and getting down to business. That takes real skill, in addition to the craftsmanship each brings to the table.

Other than that, project Buta (another codename) started this week, which is a research thing at the new Design for Playful Impact group at the HKU. We’ve been doing field research and have been sketching and prototyping initial ideas. The subject matter is kind of controversial, so I can’t share too much about it, other than that it involves pigs. Yes, pigs.

In between, I dropped by the presentation of the U-turm project, a student project where I acted as advisor on. The demo worked nicely. With some additional work on the game design I am sure it will be a hit in Dortmund. I also attended Layar‘s one-year anniversary event, where several things were unveiled that I had some part in, such as the all-new floaticons.

Looking ahead, I’ll be busy with Ebi for the next month or two and will also have to take some time to move into a new studio, that I will be sharing with FourceLabs in the new Dutch Game Garden on the Neude. Ace location, nice space, can’t wait for that to happen.

Week 154

A very low-key, quiet week this was. Partly due to the fact that I took the Monday off (gasp!) And partly due just to the fact that it’s one of those in between periods. Old projects winding down, new ones starting up.

One of those new projects I’ve codenamed Ebi. It’s the next step we’re taking with the thing called PLAY that I’ve talked about here before. I’ve been building a team and we’re ready to kick off next week.

I’ve also seen my students again, discussing the aftermath of their mid-terms. Some are moving ahead without trouble, others need some help. The trick is to figure out which student needs which kind of feedback.

And finally, you might like to know I met with Ianus and Alexander to talk about the next batch of This happened – Utrecht events. There, it’s a challenge to balance our urge to make each edition better than the next one with the fact that, essentially, we’re doing it all for the fun of it, not for business.

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:

  1. 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)
  2. 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.