Haphazard Journey by Starlight

I had to go to A&E yesterday. I was asked to describe my symptoms to 5 separate people over the course of 3 hours. A very interesting experience as each medic had their own take on what was wrong with me and an explanation as to why. Each to had started a new explanation, the previous medics' comments rattled around in my head and I found it very hard to stick to my original story. Other people's ideas about what happened to you, during a situation which is high emotion and rather hard to remember in the first place can very quickly have me questioning my original description. And in other ways I found myself exaggerating certain symptoms if I felt they had been overlooked in the previous consulation. It would be interesting to do a study on how a patient's memory and experience of symptoms changes over the course of a 3 hour period under this kind of cross-examing. I'll probably have to leave that to someone else but I thought there's definitely a game there too. A game with some similarities to chinese whispers, except the goal is to try and alter a players' memory of something they've had to learn off by heart. Perhaps part of a story. And other players must prod them, ask questions about the story, paying special attention to a part which was perhaps originally quite unimportant....to get them off track. The person who can most closely stick to their original story is the winner. A bit rough but maybe there's something there. I like a game that uses psychology, confusion....

Posted by Celinelj at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

with thanks to Fortune Cookie for the use of this graphic

creative commons licence details

Ron and I created a game that I hope we can play at a Hide and Seek Sandpit event in the near future. You can view the untested rules here: http://ludocity.org/wiki/Double_Agent_/_Watch_Your_Back We trying to think of games which might create a raised awareness of body language. The Ludocity site includes lots of other wonderful street games - definitely worth taking a look.

Very grateful for any feedback.

Posted by Celinelj at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As usual this is going to be a rushed post scratching out a basic idea before I rush of to try and keep my the rest of my life above water.....

whilst working on a possible piece of work for the games fringe a colleague asked how the basic game I'd designed could be made to be more "arty". To begin with i thought the answer was simple, we'd just give it an arty theme or atmosphere...

But then, being of the belief that games are an art form in themselves without having to be "arty" I started to wonder why there's an expection that a fringe game should be *more* arty. Well, this is just in the brief so no need to argue it.

Looking at much art/games, these works lack a real game structure. What I mean by this is that that the player is often thwarted....the goals and rules are purposefully unclear/broken and the game aims to produce a sense of surprise, shock and to raise questions but does not in my opinion end up achieving the flow or fun, a sense of achievement that you get from a traditional game. They've broken the game to make a statement. In my mind these aren't art - yes, but games - no.

So I went on to think about Blast Theory: in my mind one of the most successful art/game groups. Their *games* are very simple in terms of mechanics -Uncle Roy is a treasure hunt, Can You See Me Now is chase game and as such are really fun to play.

What makes them *arty farty*?

Well, they interject the experience with questions for participants which encourage reflection on the nature of their lives and relationships with others. That's pretty simple, it could be done with just about any game - the game is just a framework. And it's true to say they've used the same game mechanics and game engine to produce a number of different works. So far there doesn't seem much art involved...

However I think it's their use of technology that makes them powerful pieces, each work involves two players working together, anonymous to one another, one online one offline supports their exploration of modern society and alienation, but is there any more to it? BT use the same basic gaming structure to create a variety of diff art works...whereas Blast Theory, I'd argue are making true game art. A question of the medium is the message in this case...but is it always the case? I really don't know!

PN: Here's a great, clear article on current thinking on games as art at gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070316/ochalla_01.shtml

Posted by Ron Edwards at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chick2Go

GPS enabled East End Walking Tour

Tower Hamlets' Cemetry GPS Workshop

Dockers' Dilemma

A location-based game developed on the mscape platform with a flash interface.

Posted by Celinelj at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well here's a beautiful and deceptively simple game that plays with the idea of space and breaks the laws of physics Escher-style.

Posted by Celinelj at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really like the idea of this game: LOVE - collaborative play, in which time and effort bring rewards to you and also your friends. There's organic, generative game-play and absolutely beautiful graphics. It's still about overthrowing, control and power which in my mind are the antithesis of love but maybe I've been wrong all these years and the emotional AI will teach me a thing or two!

Posted by Celinelj at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some first impressions having viewed the five selected entry presentations:

It is interesting to see (and I think also good to see), that none of the finalists are professional game designers - there are three new media artists, a graphic designer and a lecturer. OK, so the competition is "exploding narratives" but all but Hazel chose to incorporate an element of competition into their work.

4/5 entrants were male. This surprises me as at the last mscape conference there seemed as many female delegates as there were male.

I wasn't bowled over by the designs. There were lots of nice ideas here and throughout the competition but none of them were especially innovate or made me feel especially excited. None of them challenged my concept of narrative. I feel as if the medium is capable of more.

Finally a big THUMBS UP (and I know I'm always banging on about this but...), all the winners had designed experiences that could be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their physical ability. Hooray!!!

Posted by Celinelj at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Ghayty 2005

I've been exploring possible ideas for a collaborative/co-opetition game and got really excited about all the great examples that are already out there. So I thought I'd pop a list up here to remind myself....

http://www.sissyfight.com/ Fantastic game requiring persuasive skills (bit like stratego or something like that)...I LOVE THIS GAME...

Girls TeamUp by Girls Inc - a brilliant game - simple, online and drives home the value of team work and diversity.

Guitar Hero - playing together or competing - both are fun and even when you're competing - it's better when you're both doing well so there's quite a good tension there!

Little Big Planet: http://www.mediamolecule.com/

World of Warcraft and all the other RPG/Quest-style games

Dyadin - you can download it for free...http://www.dyadin.com/dyadin.php. Game in which you must work together with a team-mate who plays in a mirror world

As I'm writing these I'm realising that ALL the best games are co-opetition games!!!!

Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mscape Fest 2007 followed on from a far more low-key, one day event held at HP labs in October 2006, which marked the end of the Mobile Bristol project (funded by Bristol university, Appliance Studio and HP Labs), and the point where HP were looking to the user community (primarily KS2, secondary teachers and artists), for feedback on how to move the project forward.

At this event, following the successful launch of the new Mscaper website in May 07, there was a real buzz about the potential of the new version of the tool, which is significantly more functional and easy to use for developers and players; with wizards, guidelines, dedicated support and a growing user community. The conference had also doubled in size; a 2 day event with 120 participants which quickly sold out. It included evening entertainment, a packed programme and a far more diverse audience than previous events, with attendees from across Europe and the US, (comprising game developers, new businesses, heritage, theatre (including the highly acclaimed Punchdrunk), arts, education at all levels, broadcasters, and others generally interested in locative media).

The primary aim of the conference: to build community, communication share practices, help the medium grow and kick-start the development of a much needed business model for those wishing to make money from the work they’ve up until now only been able to do for free on the educational licence.

I was particuarly heartened to hear about the opening of a Pervasive Media Studio; a cross-disciplinary, cross-community, cross-industry teaching and research studio affiliated to the University of West England, HP and the University of Bristol. Located at the Bristol Watershed it will pioneer new digital media through socially engaged practice and world-class research, providing infrastructure (ipaqs, editing facilities, workshops, work-spaces) and opportunities to apply for small project grants.

Day 1 focussed primarily on the designer and developer community, providing workshops around game, experience, community, content and tool development. In the evening there was a networking event at the Watershed bar and a chance to try out some of the mediascapes in Queen’s Square.

Day 2 comprised a series of presentations from a wide range of experienced locative media designers from around the world including Teri Rueb, a landscape artist whose work engages digital, architectural and traditional media, Jon Williams, Creative Director of Licorice Media, and Steve Coast, Founder and Chairman of theOpenStreetMap Foundation.

The event was enormously enjoyable and I left feeling inspired and excited about the future of locative experience and game design.

Photos of the event can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/mscape/pool/ and the majority of the presentations can be accessed from the Mscape Fest page.

Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Something I'm always struggling with: How to find the good stuff in Second Life. Surely in a play world I should have stumbled on a few unusual games by now? I haven't! SecondLife need some kind of 3D Google to help us all get around....for the moment, I rely on the 2D web, and in particular the Second Life Games blog which provides a comprehensive synopsis of all the great games you can play in your Second Life.

Posted by Celinelj at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is probably one of those times when I should think before I write......but I never listen to my own advice...so I'm just going to ramble this evening....

I've been thinking again about passing location-based data into Second Life....Is there are point? Well some of the newest SL mash-ups use location-based data fed in from the real world...you can walk across a map of the united states in SL and see live information about the US weather system directly over the top of your avatar...using SL to be able to play with the scale and then experience that data in a 3D embodied, ALMOST physical but certainly immersed way.

And then thinking about the SGI plans..I definitely think it'd be interesting to walk into the Virtual SGI and see avatars - like strange ghosts representing real people walking around the virtual building...why? I think there's an element of voyeurism there...getting to see what everyone's up to...even behind the closed doors. Or at least seeing where they are - like a security guard sitting behind her surveyance cameras. But more fun because you can walk amongst them...and they'd be totally unaware...unless there's some way using projectors or sounds to let the people in the real building know there are virtual visitors nearby.

I can see the potential for a simple "collision" game. Come to think of it, Blast Theory's "Can You See Me Now" uses this kind of model - but in a less pervasive, more event driven way.

I can also see the potential for cross-breeding style games in which virtual SGI is filled with primordial soup....the real-life people who work there are all represented in the virtual world as amoebas (I don't mean that to sound rude!) outside visitors bring in extra cross-breeding material and new exotic genes to add to the pool...maybe the structure of the Amoebas DNA is somehow related to something simple like where someone has travelled from, or the letters in their name.....and then as people's paths cross, day in and day out, the amoebas are cross-breeding, maybe inbreeding...and of course some activities in real life will be very repetitive and lead to very distinct breeds, less frequent activities would introduce new strains...and just like Spore, the amoebas are developing into races, complex beings....

OK, that's not so much a game as some kind of odd experiment or simulation but it'd be fascinating to watch the beings develop as an SLer and equally curious to see how your actions, habits, everyday behaviour as a real-life-er is effecting the development of a species...I have a feeling you'd learn something about social networks through this.

SL is always aware of every movement that every avatar makes as my last post testifies..that information is easy to get hold of. Is there any way to make a game IN SL out of THAT information? I think a better question might be...what kind of game could you create if you sometimes REVEALED data about everyone's location to everyone else in SL? And even more interesting, if you sometimes hid or offered incorrect information...

Posted by Celinelj at 08:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you read this blog, and especially if you're interested in pervasive games, then I'd like to offer you a little intrigue and innovation........If you accept...please click HERE!

Posted by Celinelj at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I didn't especially like Rag Doll Kung Foo the game, but I loved its tactility and the expressiveness of characters which always makes me giggle. It is refreshingly lacking in slickness - think Aardman versus Pixar, and by this I don't mean rough charm, I mean immediacy of vision.

Now there's Little Big Planet I'm jumping up and down with glee. The game is just as tactile and humorous but the game-play is revolutionary, offering a simple and convincing conclusion to the play versus game debate. For label lovers: it's Gaming 3.0.

So Media Molecure - can you make it available on the Wii?

Posted by Celinelj at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Something has been nagging at the back of my mind since I wrote about PerplexCity. A feeling of deja-vue. Now I've worked out why... When I was a kid I used to visit a friend who had a beautiful book called Masquerade, published in 1979. It was a children's book (but with a huge adult following), with fascinating illustrations containing clues to the location of a golden (18 carat) jeweled hare with a ruby eye created by Kit himself and buried "somewhere in Britain." The puzzle was solvd in 1981 but it sparked a huge number of further "armchair treasure hunts".

Searching for information about the book today I discovered, with pleasure, that PerplexCity was indeed inspired by Kit Williams' book. Bedtime reading then, for any budding Alternate Reality Game Designer!

Posted by Celinelj at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The website describes Perplex City as "a story, a game, and a real-life treasure hunt." It's an Alternative Reality Game with clues and information hidden in newspapers, websites, magazines, sky-writing, music CDs, phone calls, SMS messages, live events, videos, puzzles and games all over the planet.

A valuable artefact, the Receda Cube, has been stolen from Perplex City and buried somewhere on Earth. The Perplex City Academy has launched a worldwide hunt for the Cube, using puzzle cards to gather interest and spread clues. They've also put up a very real reward of £100,000/$200,000.

I like the idea that the virtual city and the game have some connection to the real world, but we aren't told how. Similar to my idea for a game where players must discover the relationship between the real world and virtual maps to win. It's not clear however if Perplex City requires visitors to explore real locations in order to solve puzzles.

The new game will launch in March this year. If you want to play - you can sign up here!

Posted by Celinelj at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Catch the Long View on Computer Games and simulations before the next programme is broadcast.

Jonathan Freedland puts the panic over video games into historical perspective by going back to the scandal surrounding the arrival of the early English novel. Echoes ideas put forward at the "Future of Entertainment". Includes an interview with Rhianna Pratchett - nominated as one of the 100 most influential women in game design.

Posted by Celinelj at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Game-on at the Science Museum claims to "Explore the history, technology and culture of computer games".

It has a really beautifully illustrated time-line snaking along one of the walls by Jon Burgerman but I didn't notice ANYONE take any notice of it over the four hours that i was there and other than that, content is limited. Instead, what makes this exhibition so worth visiting is the more than 120 playable games, allowing you to experience first-hand the history of computer gaming from arcarde games of the mid 1960's, through console games and the opportunity to play games from the many different genres, including the multiplayer games and revolutionary interfaces such as eye-toy that are making waves today.

My first viist was badly planned, coinciding with half-term so I barely got to touch any of the games and when I made it to the beginning of a queue, the pressure of playing in front of a crowd each dying for me to lose so they could have thier turn didn't make for a comfortable experience!

By luck, a friend offered me a couple of tickets for an evening viewing and I thought I'd give it a second try. What a difference! Leisurely playing my way through this history of computer games is surely the biggest buzz I've ever experienced. I couldn't sleep for two nights afterwards and the curators had to peel us away from the games at the end of the evening. There were also a number of suprising indie games such as Rez and Chillingham - with greater focus on the audio than the visual.

I was also fascinated by the SimCity visual designer Ocean Quigley's artwork which is inspirational but reminds me that the visual designers sould but the medium seems to suck it dry.

There's been a lot of excitement about improved computer graphics leading to greater "realism". In my mind that's a dead end. Let's instead get excited about the new potential for greater expression in games.

Play.tm have written a very good, detailed article on the exhibition.

The exhibition is open until February 2007. Main website http://www.gameonweb.co.uk/

Posted by Celinelj at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm so happy to find another game worth loving......I know I'm probably at the back of a long cue of people raving about Psychonauts, but I was truly surprised at how quickly I became engaged not only in the game-play but also the story.

Although there's an element of violence and the suggestion of gore....so far I haven't killed ANYONE. OK, the tale is not integral to game-play and at the end of the day, it still takes on the action - puzzle - story- action format that we've seen in the action/adventure since the start but the tempo has changed so that the irritating cut scene or puzzle in the middle of exciting action is gone. Instead story, puzzle and action rapidly interchange to give the illusion of being one and the same thing. It helps that the tale is so compelling, that you're as excited to know what comes next in the narrative as you are to complete the puzzles, and get on with the next challenge - so much so that although it's not a two player game, it was really fun to share the game controls with Ron. In addition, the characters and story are so sensitive and complex that you immediately feel emotional responses to your character, his friends and enemies.

Finally - it's feel-good, affordable, downloadable and episodic. I'd recommend this game to anyone. I'm going to see how many of my non-gaming friends I can convert with this one ;-)

Posted by Celinelj at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Held at the massive Hippodrome last Thursday; with free booze, waiters, the latest games, films on big screens, thousands of attendees, famous names (Stephen Moore of Aardman, William Sargent of Framestore, Peter Molyneux of Lionhead and David Gardner of Worldwide studios), this EA and BAFTA presentation had the feel of something BIG. But when it came down to it the big future they predicted was not a new one, and their declared enlightenment was not necessarily backed by know-how or understanding. For example their commitment to the girls games market is well-founded and yet of the 1000 strong audience; I saw about 10 girls, and presenters? None. In addition, the games proudly presented were all gun-based with the exception of FABLE II - which is still the elven/sorcerer/monster mix that most girls associate with puerile role-players. In the same way there was a recognition that games needed to have more "serious" content and yet the games paraded were considered "great" primarily for their visual and physical "realism" - the game mechanics identitical throughout.

Other projections were more interesting and included a move towards:

Multitasking games that can capture our new ADD-style imaginations including shorter levels, cross platform, musical integration, web content integration

Games with new content i.e.serious and political games

Greater emotional engagement

Real worlds, real drama

The ability to share experiences and "show off" in games in other words networked games and user created content.

The most interesting speech was made by David Gardner who gave a very convincing argument in defense of games, and against politicians who slate computer games without ever having played them. He quotes from the book "Everything Bad is Good For You" in which Johnson, the author, asks us to imagine what cultural critics might have said had video games been invented hundreds of years ago, and only recently had something called the book been marketed aggressively to children:

"Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. . . .
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. . . .
But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . . This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one"

He's joking but it makes a strong point.

Posted by Celinelj at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't get my head around the Palestine conflict. That two games have been developed to help understanding suggests I'm not the only one! I'm looking forward to trying these:

Global Conflict: Palestine

Peacemaker

Posted by Celinelj at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The next step won't be so easy.....please pick a door (it'll all make sense in a minute, I promise).

Posted by Celinelj at 07:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)