Haphazard Journey by Starlight

About a year ago a fanatstic MMORPG expert spent a day with Ron and I initiating us into the ways of World of Warcraft. I was impressed by the beautiful landscapes, especially the detail and the level of social interaction that was going on between guilds but I had two reservations. The fantasy and the look and feel were still very much of the elves, dwarves and *lands of yore* that I'd come to recognise from the RP table-top games I was introduced to as a teenager and the primary game-play involved battles. I've looked for alternatives, but unless you call Second Life and other MUVEs "games", there was nothing else out there.

Ren Reynolds of Terra Nova just drew my attention to a new virtual world in development, which may yet fulfill my desires for a really unusual, beautiful, mind-expanding, non-combative MORPG: Lila's Dreams.

It has the same surreal "inside your head" approach that so appealed to me in Psychonauts. The graphics are expressive and loose (let's hope they can hold on to that when they get converted into the digital - there's a good possibility since they'll be flash-based), the game-play involves monsters and some combat but the designers talk about they wish to avoid it where possible, and alternative activities include growing a garden...

A short quote from the blog

" There are no elves, dwarfs, or other Tolkien-derived player races. There are no dragons, orcs, or other Tolkien-derived creatures. There’s no magic. Well, there are “powers” that might be analogous to magic spells, but in terms of the setting they are psychic powers and not spells. So, there’s no magic. :P

There is no level grind. Level grinding is when you do boring tasks like killing cellar rats over and over to watch your game character become more powerful so you can kill bigger cellar rats. I personally do not like level grinding, and I think that it puts the focus of play on the experience of grinding rather than on the experience of the game world. I am working hard to design systems that do not require grinding so that the game world itself is the focus of fun."

Posted by Celinelj at 02:22 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)

The more I think about augmented reality and location-based games, the more I believe our eyes are going to have to lead us through our physical world and we'll be depending on entering the virtual world through hearing and touch. In addition to fundemental health and safety (even Hiro protagonist turns off his distracting visual displays when he needs to concentrate), AR headsets are prohibitively expensive and cumbersome, handheld devices still have screens almost unusable in direct daylight let alone sunlight. So I wasn't sure how useful a book on Character Design for Mobile Devices would be to a budding location-based game designer. However it had an extremely relevant section on CRT and LCD screens, an overview of the history of mobile devices and an excellent glossary for anyone who knows little about mobile hardware.

Posted by Celinelj at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)