Tag: play

Possibility spaces and algorithmic architectures

A screenshot of Sim City.

One of the concepts I plan on exploring in my talk at the Euro IA Summit in Barcelona is ‘possibility spaces’. It’s a term used by Will Wright to describe his view of what a game can be – a space that offers multiple routes and outcomes to its explorer. That idea maps nicely with one definition of play that Zimmerman and Salen offer in Rules of Play: ‘free movement within a rigid structure’. Some examples of possibility spaces created by Wright are the well-known games Sim City and The Sims.

I think the idea of possibility spaces can help IAs to get a firmer grip on ways to realize information spaces that are multi-dimensional and (to use a term put forward by Jesse James Garrett) algorithmic. Algorithmic architectures according to Garrett are created ‘on the fly’ based on a set of rules (algorithms) that get their input (ideally) from user behaviour. The example he uses to explain this concept is Amazon.

I’ve found myself in several projects recently that would have benefited from an algorithmic approach. The hard thing is to explain its charms to clients and to get a unified vision of what it means across to the design team. I believe games might be a useful analogy. What do you think?

Slides and video of my Reboot 9.0 talk

So I’ve been busy uploading stuff. The slides to my Reboot 9.0 talk are up at SlideShare. I uploaded a video recorded by Iskander with his N70 to Vimeo. Finally, since SlideShare still doesn’t import the notes that go with the slides in PowerPoint, I’ve also put up a big PDF (almost 50 MB). Please refer to the notes in the PDF for all the Flickr photo credits too.

Slides

Video

Mobile Social Play @ Reboot 9.0 from Kaeru on Vimeo

Notes

  • There’s a bit too much um-ing and ah-ing for my tastes. I need to do more practice, practice, practice before these things!
  • This will be the last time I use Darth Vader as the opening slide, I promise.
  • It’s too bad I didn’t have more time to go into the examples that go with the last part. Next time: less stage setting, more meat.
  • Still, I had fun. :-) Thanks again to Thomas for having me, and all the cool people at Reboot for going easy on me.

Reboot 9.0 day 1

So here’s a short wrap up of the first day. I must say I’m not disappointed so far. The overall level of the talks is quite high again. Here’s what I attended:

Opening keynote – Nice and conceptual/theoretical. Not sure I agree with all the claims made but it was a good way to kick off the day on a gee whizz way.

Jeremy Keith – Good talk, nice slides, didn’t really deliver on the promise of his proposal though. I would’ve really liked to see him go into the whole idea of life streams further. The hack day challenge sounded cool though.

Stephanie Booth – Very topical for me, being a bilingual blogger and designer often confronted with localisation/multilingual issues.

My own talk – Went reasonably well. I guess half of the room enjoyed and the other half wondered what the f*** I was talking about. Oh well, I had fun.

Ross Mayfield – Could have been much better if it hadn’t been for technical screw-ups and perhaps some tighter pacing by Ross. Still the work he’s doing with social software is great.

Matt Jones – Very pretty presentation, nice topic and Dopplr looks cool. I’m not a frequent flyer but I can see the value in it. Still not quite sure it will improve the consequences of air-travel though.

Nicolas Nova – Came across as the high concept, theoretical twin to my talk. Lots of cool pervasive game examples. Nicolas always boggles my mind.

Jyri Engeström – Cool to see how he’s developed his talks throughout the past Reboots. I guess he delivered on his promise and stayed on the right side of the ‘I’m pushing my product’ line.

The evening program – No micro-presentations (which to be honest was fine by me, being quite exhausted). Good food, nice conversations and plenty of weird generative art, live cinema etc. All good.

On to day 2!

See me talk on mobile social play at Reboot 9.0

I got awesome news the other day: my proposal for a talk at Reboot 9.0 has been accepted. I’m very honoured (and a little nervous) to be presenting at a conference with so many smart attendees. Now to get my act together and create a kick-ass presentation.

If you have anything related to this (pretty broad) topic that you’d want me to address, please do leave a note in the comments.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll try to build upon what has gone before at previous Reboots, such as Ben Cerveny’s mind-blowing overview (MP3) of how play is essentially becoming a new language for us to communicate with and TL Taylor’s great talk on the dynamics of virtual worlds.

What I will be addressing is still slightly unclear to me, but the direction I’m headed is:

  1. Games can be social play, which means they can be used to forge and experiment with social relations in a ‘safe’ way. This happens whether you design for it or not, but can be nurtured.
  2. When games go mobile, the borders of the space and time in which a game is played are blurred. In this way, games bleed over into culture in a gradual way.

Enough to chew on for one talk, I guess. Again, any questions, comments and suggestions are more than welcome. See you all at Reboot 9.0.

Mobile Social Play — my Reboot 9.0 proposal

Vadr

I’ve just submitted my proposal for a talk at Reboot 9.0. It’s on the three areas I am most fascinated with at the moment: mobile, social software and gaming/play. After attending this great conference twice it’d be really cool to get the opportunity to present there.1

Take a look at it and let me know what you think2, I’d love to get some feedback up-front so I can maybe work that in there. What do you want to know about this topic?

Curious what this might be like? Take a look at the Pecha Kucha I delivered on mobile gaming for a taste of what’s to come.

  1. If it doesn’t work out I can always turn it into a micro presentation.
  2. If you like it, vote it up!

Surprises in Animal Crossing: Wild World

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So I’ve been playing AC: WW for over a weeks now and I must say it has lived up to my expectations. It’s a cute and quirky game that does not follow conventional game design rules. There is no way to die, no (real) way to loose or even win. In a sense it’s more like a toy than a game; you can play with it endlessly, there is no goal to reach (apart from discovering all it’s little secrets).

Cockroaches

One of those secrets was particularly fun to discover. After a few days of play I convinced my girlfriend to give it a try. So she put the cartridge in her pink DS Lite. While I was cooking dinner, she went through the beginning stages (driving to the town in a taxi, getting a job with Tom Nook). A bit later, I picked it up again and went about my business (I think it was fishing, I still have a large loan to pay off after the first house expansion).

After a while I went back into the house and found (shock! horror!) a bunch of cockroaches running around my carefully kempt interior. “We have cockroaches!” I shouted to my girlfriend while running around the house trying to squash them. The apparent source was some apples lying around. “Didn’t the animals tell you don’t leave stuff lying around the house?” I asked her. They had, but where should she put them (the apples) otherwise? Good point.

We had a good laugh after that episode. Be careful who you play this game with; it might be a challenge living together in the real world – Animal Crossing is no different! But the real genius of the game is in these things. It’s a rules based world for sure (leave apples around the house, get cockroaches) but the mini-narratives that it allows you to build in this way is crazy.

Letters

Another example is the letters I find myself writing to the animals. I’m sure they’d be happy with any kind of letter, as long as I mention some specific words maybe (like ‘happy’ and ‘friend’). In stead, I’m writing fully formed sentences, and include little details that would be appreciated by real people. In that way, it’s allowing for subtle role-playing.

Charity

On the subject of role-playing (and there not being a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ way to play the game); I know I should be hard at work paying off the aforementioned loan (to progress to the next ‘level’). But in stead I find myself spending a lot of time and money on present for the animals, and donations to the museum. That might be role-playing (or that might be my real personality influencing what I find pleasurable in the game) but the coolest bit is that it doesn’t matter; any way of playing is valid.

Have any other people had similar experiences with the game? Are there ways to apply this logic (the patterns inherent in the game) to other domains?

Some closing links:

Rough notes for T.L. Taylor – Play

MMOGs have roots in RPGs and MUDs.

Software and service.

Ultima, EverQuest, Wow…

Social contexts

MMOGs isn’t anti-social. Social isn’t icing on the cake. Social is the substance of the game. It’s key.

On- and offline connections mix.

Emergent social activity. E.g.: “guilds”; trust, responsibility, reputation.

Game devs aren’t giving players the tools to be social. Focus is on artefact first.

Rough map of guild – connections between players are offline

Transcript of in game chat. Lots of offline connections.

“Friends are the Ultimate Exploit”

EULA: sharing accounts is not allowed (in EQ).

Collaboration and teams:

Complex coordinated actions.

Co-creative culture

Players also produce and design. Emergent culture and technologies that change the game…

Players change the product in deep ways.

Game in box is just part of larger game space.

WoW opens up UI for players to change. Big differences between players.

Cheating – modification of game is debated.

IP – who should be the designer, what’s play?

Selling avatars on eBay. Game companies own the avatar so it’s not allowed. Embodiment – you don’t own your body!

In EQ there was a lot to do about fanfic.

WoW in game protests. “Protesting in game is not a valid way to give us feedback.”

Are game worlds public space? Or not because they’re corp. owned?

Commodification of culture. Designers want control over players / users. Let go!

Things that are happening in game are examples of bigger issues such as: UX, IP, mash-ups, P2P, etc.

Book: Play Between Worlds, T.L. Taylor.

Questions:

What about scale? Do these thoughts apply to smaller games? We need smaller games to experiment with governance and such.

Is there an end to the game? “End” is player-defined… Games should be better at helping people leave.

Can these games become the new platforms for productivity? There’s a lot of mumbling, but no-one knows. You pick up valuable skills while playing.

Does this apply to alternate reality games? E.g. ILoveBees… She did a piece on Majestic. Beta during 9/11. It was mixed with reality.

How can we use traditional ethnographic thinking? The work isn’t comparative enough to make any strong statements.

http://reboot.dk/wiki/Play