Layar – Page 2 – Leapfroglog

Week 140

Is it march already? Time flies.

I’m on my way to Amsterdam again. Around 10 hours earlier, I was in a train in the opposite direction, coming back from Visible Cities #02. This turned out to be an evening well spent. Some nice examples of AR projects were shown but in particular Ole Bouman of the NAi’s perspective on the changes architecture will go through under the pressure of new technologies was enlightening. He came across as both critical and knowledgeable, passionate about the field with a solid grounding in its history. Inspiring. Finally spending an evening in TrouwAmsterdam – eating a burger and drinking a beer in the space where printing presses used to run – was another plus.

I’m at Layar a lot this week again. Still can’t tell you too much about what’s going on there. But it continues to be both a challenging and fun engagement, so that’s good.

Apart from this, I spent a day brainstorming new game concepts for one of the Netherlands’s big lotteries, with which they’re hoping to reach a younger generation. It’s always a challenge to immerse oneself in a new context that fast, but it went well. Lots of nice ideas came up and the workshop was facilitated in a tight manner. Participating in these things always results in useful insights for when I run my own sessions.

I do feel slightly exhausted from all this, not in the least because what should have been a two hour review of proposals on monday morning with my students turned into a three-and-a-half hour marathon session. They’ve had to submit their graduation project proposals now, so I’ll soon sit down and do a final assessment of them. Then they’re good to go.

And so will I.

Week 139

The previous week seamlessly flowed into this one when on saturday I sat down to finalize the deck of slides for Raum Schiff Erde. On sunday morning, I grabbed a train and five hours later I was in Stellwerk, the conference’s lovely venue. Kind, clever people, a nice relaxed and friendly atmosphere, interesting talks, all in all a good event. There is more about what I talked about on the Hubbub blog. It wrapped up with some music and then we were off to dinner. Turned in late and got up early the next morning for another train. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed this short in a hotel, didn’t even manage to squeeze in breakfast.

On the train ride, I managed to review all of the graduation project proposals of my students. These were first drafts, next week they’ll need to submit a final version after one more round of reviews. Some have lovely, curious topics. (A satirical newsgame, anyone?) I’ll share some of them with you sometime soon.

I had a few hours to take a breather when I got back to Utrecht and then it was off to the HKU Academy Theatre to prepare for This happened – Utrecht #5. This was the first edition of the new year, and also the first in a new venue, which made it kind of scary. But everything turned out great. (Read a few reports to get a sense of the evening, if you’re interested.) We had possibly the best series of talks so far (although, of course, they’ve all been great) and a great crowd. I’m already looking forward to #6.

As if two of these challenges weren’t enough, on wednesday it was D-day for project Tako (which is part of a bigger plan that is locally known simply as PLAY). I presented the results of my research to a room full of cultural event organizers, games developers and assorted luminaries of the Utrecht city scene. I managed to wrap up the sizable stack of sketches only hours before in a final adrenaline-fueled design sprint. The responses were encouraging, so it seems we can start exploring the next stage. But before this I’ll need to annotate the deck of slides, include all the feedback and then we might have something we can publish.

In between and after, it’s been more work at Layar. I’ve been digging into the specs for several prototypes – lots of sketching there, too – forcing myself to consider multiple paths. Some of the output has been handed over to engineers. I can’t wait to see the results of their development efforts.

Even though all of this is more fun than is legal, I can’t wait for a work free weekend, too.

Week 138

Last evening I was on top of the Neudeflat, to review a draft of a presentation I’ve prepared as part of project Tako.¹ Earlier that day and monday I talked to the last two participants: Culturele Zondagen (a producer of frequent city-wide cultural events that always take place on sundays) and Habek (a producer of local hip-hop events and projects). Most of the presentation is in place – lots of rough concepts for playful cultural projects – it just requires some last additions and tightening up to be ready for the city lab session with all participants next week.

On tuesday morning I found myself in a room filled with students, who gave short presentations on the results from the initial field research they performed over the previous week. Some had interesting insights to share, ranging from the experience of story in single player versus multiplayer RPGs to the effects of a playful UI on the perceived effectiveness of information appliances. Others were really struggling with the development of a brief for their own work. Next up for them is to write up a proposal for their graduation project. We’ll review a first draft of those next week.

As I’m writing this, I am on my way to Layar again – who had some exciting news to announce this week and won a few awards in Barcelona too. Most of my time this week will be spent on a design sprint outlining a new product offering. We’ll do a review of that somewhere this week, and take it from there. Iterate’s the word. Thinking through making.

In the time that’s left, I’m chipping away at the talk for Hamburg this sunday. The rough silhouette is there, now it’s just a matter of building a deck. Should be doable, right? Right.

The promotion department of the city of Utrecht has its offices here, with stunning views. [↩]

Week 137

I was out of the game for a day this week due to a cold. Back in the saddle now, off to Amsterdam for more work at Layar. I’m going to pick up where we left off last week when the workshop with BERG finished.

It’s less than two weeks to the next This happened – Utrecht. On monday we opened the registration and even though we had twice as many spots than last time, we ‘sold out’ in half the time. One minute. Crazy. I met up with Alexander and Ianus on monday evening to go over the last things that need to be done. We had a look at our new venue too, the HKU Academy Theatre, which I think is real nice.

On tuesday I went over to Codarts to give a lecture on games to music students (producers, composers and songwriters, mostly). I was invited by Daniël Hamburger, whom I collaborated with on the Monster game opera. I wanted to provide the students with starting points for collaboration with game designers. So I decided to focus mostly on the notion of player experience, and how game designers contribute to this, and how music and sound can. It went OK. I started by chatting with them about the games they play, so that I could use those as examples in the rest of my talk. That’s a trick that works well, I’ll be sure to use it again.

There’s some more speaking on the horizon. On monday I booked my train to Hamburg, for a talk at RaumschiffEr.de; a sort of mini-Reboot taking place on february 21. Read a bit more on that at the Hubbub blog. Perhaps I’ll see you there?

Week 136

On a train to Amsterdam again, extra early so that I am on time for the second day of a workshop we’re running at Layar.¹ It’s being facilitated by BERG‘s Schulze and Jones, which is a real treat. Without giving too much away: we’re working on new product concepts. Can’t wait to see what results from this session, since it looks like I might be developing them further in the months to come.

I was doing some work this weekend, mostly planning the upcoming months since there’s so much interesting stuff on the horizon. I also popped over to Hilversum for a look at the games created during the local Global Game Jam.² Some 170 people participated and I think around 40 games were created. The general quality was quite high. Some of my favorites included:

So It Floats, which features gorgeous watercolor art and a biblical theme. You’re a monkey trying to get Adam and Eve to leave paradise. The gameplay resembles […]()’s games.
SSSSSOS, where you control a tiny space ship trying to survive a massive battle between two armies consisting of swarming space ships. You can get them to engage each other in stead of you by attracting and repelling them. It’s all driven by nicely tuned Newtonian physics and is accompanied by adaptive music.
Resonance, which was strikingly well-rounded for a 48-hour game. I’m not a huge fan of puzzle games, but this had a good learning curve spread across 14 levels. The musical theme was a nice touch too.
Save Your Souls, a frustrating experimental game you control with two mice, each tied to one character running down a track. From playing I’ve decided bimanual input devices are not for me.
What The Faql?, which I liked for its interesting social mechanic. Four players collaborate to get a cart from one end of a mine to the other, but one of them is a ‘mole’ whose goal is to sabotage the whole operation. This player gets a small jolt of force feedback from his controller at the game’s start.

All the games created in NL and across the world can be found at the international Global Game Jam website. Have a look.

Most of the conversations with project Tako participants are now finished. I had one more this monday, with the people who organize the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition.³ Not much else will be done this week, but I’ll need to start processing all the notes in the coming period.

Now that the EMMA group projects have finished the next phase for graduate students at KMT has started. They have four weeks to develop their graduation project proposals, which includes a research component. This phase was kicked off with a symposium on monday about creative processes in multidisciplinary teams. On friday, I’ll meet with the group of students I’m coaching (together with Irene van Peer) and review their plans for a short field study, which they’ll need to complete the next week. The results from this will feed into their final proposals. Can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Getting to a train on time is not without its hazards these days, snow and ice make biking to the station extra interesting. [↩]
GGJ NL is organized by my friends at the Dutch Game Garden. [↩]
Where, incidentally, I finally learned the meaning of Lisztomania. [↩]

Week 134

I’m writing this in the morning on a train from Utrecht to Amsterdam. I’ll be making this trip more often the coming weeks, since I signed a contract with Layar on tuesday. I’ll be reinforcing their UX team, doing interaction design on existing and new parts of their service. As is often the case with these kinds of engagements, there’s not much more I can say at this time. I’m sure there will be interesting things to show and talk about later on though.

In the time that’s not being taken up by Layar this week I’m getting going with project Tako. I’ve been calling the organizations selected for the project and scheduling meetings. The first one – with the people behind Uitgekookt; a culinary festival – is set for this friday. It’s a rare opportunity to talk about how you can bring a playful perspective to (in this case) cooking and food, I’m really looking forward to it. More meetings will be happening next week.

Also on friday, I’ll attend an evaluation of the Mount Everest project, which was wrapped up last weekend. I went over to the faculty to see the pieces the students had created and was blown away by the creativity and talent on display.

If I had to pick one favorite it’ll have to be the group that set up a spoof shop – called Extremely Safe – where you could come in and have your picture taken at a hazardous location of your choice. It was a playful service – you really did get that photo, plus a sheet of helpful pointers for telling the tale of your travels to friends and relatives – but once you were in, an impromptu performance took place too, commenting on contemporary obsessions with breaking rules and pushing limits.

Good stuff.