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GDC Day 1: A glass of wine, golfed from my hand

Mar
10

I can’t blame the girl who swiped the rich and earthy Beaujolais blend from my hand. She was just doing her job. Then again so was I.

She was arcing into a powerful backswing in the latest iteration in the Tiger Woods Wii game, I was doing the journalist thing which was prowling a painfully well designed wine bar in downtown San Francisco, eating appetizers, drinking booze and looking at games.

Sometimes the collision of PR and newsgathering can end in a splintering clatter and a big mess.
Picking through the pieces of my first few hours at the show, there’s already a few juicy bits worth pulling out.

This year, the show has self-organized its annual theme of greed around social gaming, as in: Hey! Look at all the money Zynga is making with Farmville, and Farmville isn’t even that interesting of a game. Apparently, after watching Club Penguin, then iPhone and now Facebook games earn insane margins, the game industry has decided to lump over to the casual game market and leave Call of Duty to stew in its own billions of dollars of earnings.

Themes, it seems, are always important. Because it tells you were the attention of the industry—a dull beast easily distracted by a crop of grass on the side of the road—might lumber. Remember a couple of years ago when MMOs would change everything? Yeah, I remember that too.

So without a more exciting big idea to run down, what’s a reporter to do? Talk to people, look in less likely places for stories and listen in the hall for the good idea that might actually be the next big thing.
Which is why I found myself a suite at the St. Regis Hotel checking out yet another Guitar Hero/Rock Band clone.

“Make yourself at home,” the press guy urged, even thought it would be impossible for me to ever feel at home sitting on a couch that probably cost more than my car. But I obliged. That way I could get a good look at the half dozen ¾ scale guitars sitting in front of an Xbox.

That’s weird. Those are real little guitars. They hand be a bright green one and a fiddle through a couple of riffs dimly remember from my days playing guitar in college.

“Not bad. This actually works pretty well.”

The developers nod. That’s the point.

Their new company is called Seven45. It was launched by parent outfit First Act, a company that makes the low cost starter instruments you might scrape your pennies together to buy at Target or Walmart.

A demo of the game play shows something that looks, at this point in development, a lot of Rockbandguitarhero. You match notes by strumming the strings and pressing down on the correct—and colored—fret. A small damper keeps the strings from ringing in game mode. But otherwise, it’s a functional, if awkward hybrid of real guitar and game controller.

Upping the difficultly, players have to match the correct string and the fret. Keep it up and pretty soon you are actually rocking out the light rock of Third Door Down. Plug the guitar into an amp, lower the string damper and you can strum out the basic power chord of some mid-tempo pop hit.

But just because you can maybe learn a little about guitar—build up some finger strength, develop a callous or two and just groove on the feel of holding a real instrument—don’t think this is some learning toy.

“We are not pitching this as an educational tool. This is about entertainment,” they tell me.

OK. But yeah, it’s a learning toy. And from the looks of it, one that just might work.
Remarkably, the game will be sold as a band game—meaning it will come bundled with guitar, microphone and drums—and it will retail at a price competitive with current band games. In other words, Power Gig: Rise of the 6 String will most likely cost something around $200.

Would be garage rockers of the world rejoice.

As for my wine, after grabbing another glass compliments of EA Sports, I noted that Tiger may not be out of the woods in his personal life, but he seems calm, cool and collected still fronting his videogame. And a new mixed martial arts games from EA has people all excited. Why? Well, there’s nothing quiet as exciting as a little videogame violence, wine or not.

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Understanding Place: Game Studies as a System of Knowing

Jun
09

Below is the full text of a conference proposal I submitted to the upcoming DiGRA conference . Unfortunately, the proposal was rejected, at least in part for being confusing. Fair enough. But I am posting it here is the interest of gaining additional comments and feedback, either public or private. I think the epistemological underpinnings of game studies is something I'd like to keep exploring, confusing or not!

Games can teach, but what can we learn from game studies beyond their application to games?

Much has been said about the mimetic potential of games to represent reality. The Serious Games movement models an ontological approach that sees games as a mirror creating a reflection of real world phenomenon and constructions. The presence of a game’s sense of reality to a player borrows categorically from real world phenomenon giving it a “half-reality”, to borrow Juul’s conception. Thus, a game object or action has a being tied, to some degree, to a transferable experience between the real and the virtual and allowing for a systematic criticism and exploration of these linkages.  This critical dialog may be considered the heart of what we call, “game studies”

In this view, games can speak about the world because properties of the world are embedded inside game systems and game content. Further, games allow us to generate ideas inside the virtual space of the game system and narrative open to judgement by real world criteria.

Taken together, these perspectives may best be considered games-as-model approaches, where the virtuality of the game is constantly held in strict ontological relationship to the real world.

However, a converse proposition receives less attention—the idea that knowledge about games, rather than knowledge of games provides a framework for talking about things outside of games. The body of knowledge described as game studies has a use beyond talking about games. Following the same ontological bridge that links games to the real world, we can traverse it in the opposite direction using game studies as a method for talking about specific non-game, non-virtual reality.

This paper considers the broad notion of games as epistemic systems capable of generating knowledge and understanding of the world, or at least, cultural views of worldly phenomenon. Game studies, in this mode, turns from its internally focused critical practice, here framed as an ontological practice concerned with the nature of being in a game, into a method for understanding things outside of games. The specific goal of this paper is to illustrate the potential for using games as a system of understanding through the application of the game studies concepts of “ludology versus narratology” and Caillois’ distinction between paidea and  ludus as means for understanding real world places. The first case maps the notions of a strong a ludological notion and a narratological notion to the environment of the children’s playground. This case illustrates how strengths and weaknesses in playground design can be clarified by a discussion of the inherent contestation and productive tension found in the narratology versus ludology debate (or non-debate) inside of game studies.  The second case maps the concepts of ludus and paidea to two natural places, Carlsbad Caverns National Park  and White Sands National Monument, in the United States, arguing that the management of leisure space mirrors the division proposed by Caillois and further elaborated in game studies literature. Using these cases as an initial foray into the method, this paper demonstrates the feasibility of applying game study concepts to the understanding of non-game, real world environments.

Partial Bibliography
1. Ang, S.C. Rules, gameplay, and narratives in video games. Simulation and Gaming, 37. 306-325.
2. Bogost, I. Persuasive games : the expressive power of videogames. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007.
3. Bogost, I. Unit operations : an approach to videogame criticism. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.
4. Borries, F.v., Walz, S.P. and Böttger, M. (eds.). Space time play : computer games, architecture and urbanism: the next level. Birkhauser Verlag AG, Boston, MA, 2007.
5. Caillois, R. Man, play, and games. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2001.
6. Frasca, G. Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place Level Up Conference Proceedings, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 2003.
7. Frasca, G. Ludology Meets Narratology: Similitude and Differences Between (Video)Games and Narrative, 1999.
8. Gee, J.P. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2003.
9. Newman, J. Videogames. Routledge, London New York, 2004.
10. Nitsche, M. Video game spaces : image, play, and structure in 3D worlds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.
11. Pearce, C. Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the so-called Ludology/Narratology Debate Changing Views: Worlds in Play, University of Vancouver, Vancouver, 2005.

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Architects and Game Designers: Articulate Builders

Feb
17

“Architects are builders who theorize – articulate builders.”

— Mark Wigley, Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University. (From an interview in BLDBLOG)

Not only do I think this is a tasty quote about the nature of architecture, I think it would serve equally well for a game designer.

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Architecture, stories and the importance of characters

Jan
15
The idea of a narrative environment isn't new. For as long as designers have considered the symbolic potential of landscape and architectural designs, the foundation for seeing space as story were in place.
So, it's pretty common to for architects to discuss the program of a building, for instance, in terms of its dramatic pacing or a facade in terms of its literary possibilities. What you don't hear much about are the characters which make literary storytelling work. Stories have characters. So don't narrative environments need them too?
I suppose the assumption is that the building's viewer is the character and the design of a place seeks to embody the viewer into a specific, designed role–shopper, tourist, voyeur, adventurer, explorer, etc.
Then you encounter the well-known, but less-scrutinized character mechanics of the Disney parks. Sure, Disney is about as narrative as any designed place can be. And part of the reason why just might have to do with the odd use of characters.
A site that collects the various character appearances and rates them according to frequency provides a glimpse into the attraction and power of costumed characters wandering in a heavily themed storybook world:

http://home.att.net/~disneysue/characters/wdw/disneyrare.html

Some key things to consider about the Disney park characters:
  • They all anchor specific stories, or story arcs in the Disney world.
  • Most of the costumes are so elaborate and sculpural that they qualify as a sort of architecture in their own right
  • The locations and frequencies of the character appearances are tightly managed, or maybe more percisely scripted, So, for example, don't expect to see Captain Jack Sparrow wandering in Tomorrowland (unless as a part of the time-space rupturing parades that allow the entire Disney subconscious to flow, temporarily, throughout all lands).
  • All of the characters will sign autographs. So, while most Disney attractions stand mute, providing only pictures, the characters give a script, a symbol of materiality more personal and seemingly more rare than any other Disney souvenir. In this way, the character autograph is the most perfect tourist memento–something intimate but ultimately fake and removed–a pretend signature of a pretend person written by an employ temporarily inhabiting a portable structure.
In terms of videogames, that most environmental form of storytelling, you can see a similar reflection in the use of character, and some opportunities:
  • Game characters are as much a part of the gameplay as the game story. Interactive characters that only exist to forward the plot have fallen out of favor in terms of characters that both advance the plot and provide interactive possibility. Fallout 3 stands a perfect example here, where you talk to characters to forward the plot, and the game.
  • As a result, the characters in a game work much as the architecture does, limiting action, providing focus and allowing opportunity. In every game that asks the player, "Go find person X" could easily be replaced with "Go find place Y".
  • When characters are done well, they are placed and paced as carefully has the locations they inhabit. Finding the hermit on the hill or being sent to look for the princess in another castle.recognizes the inherent spatiality of character in an environmental story.
  • Game characters may not sign autographs, but they typically grant players information or items key to a quest.
Where does this lead? Well, Disneyland and videogames both integrate character into place by way of making the narrative ahere to the place. Is this something other narrative environments could model? At the very least, it does seem that it would make architecture more fun if they did!

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Art Gallery Game

Dec
03

From the always remarkably smart and interesting Life Without Buildings blog:

A sculptor with a sense of humor (“postmodernist fun,” some have said), Chris Saucedo creates site-specific work that transforms galleries into gameboards and back again. In the above image, a small scale-model of the New Orleans art gallery, Good Children, has been built in the form of one of those get-the-ball-through-the-hole games. Installed next to the model is a scaled depiction of the game’s “ball.” Thus, space becomes an unplayable, implied version of the carefully crafted “game” where visitors actually occupy the board. Saucedo’s installations repurpose and reprogram architecture without actually building anything or changing the space.


What's most interesting here is the implication that a place can be turned into a play space through the manipulation of spatially anchored signs, and even more odd, that the final space becomes "playful" even though you can't actually play with the space, only in the space. This isn't a particularly unusual move, either. When someone decorates their home office after Disney's Haunted Mansion, for example, you don't turn your desk into a ride, but a sign for the ride. The desk becomes playful even though you can't ride it.
The implication here is that we have a set of signs for play and for fun. And despite some notion that play and fun are activities, it seems pretty clear that they are also strong concepts. Putting a poster of some idyllic beach on your office wall isn't just about daydreaming, it is also an invocation of the fun, an invitation to let the mind play at the notion of leisure.
This also reminds me of an event a few years ago promoting Second Life. We were at a bar in San Francisco. On screen was a virtual version of the bar, recreated in Second Life, with various online avatars partying along side in parallel. The superimposition of the real and the virtual was a happy co-incidence rather than anything jarring or stupidly fake.


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