Licence to Roam » games

SXSW: Andrea Phillips ARGS and the hot Brunette

Rachel — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:56:29 +0000

LIVEBLOGGED: taken during talk, so any mistakes are mine.

Andrea Phillips
ARGS and Women

A freelance game designer and writer, involved since they started. Also Chair if IGDA SIG ARG argology.org One of community moderators of Cloudmakers, one of the key moments in ARGS, when we recognised that something had happened. One of the ingredients of the community experience was the Hot Brunette, Laia Salla, the one who had a problem. Her friend, she thought was murdered. She needed your help! In context, 2001, Buffy was on air, last season of Xena, then Alias and dark Angel, with Tomb Raider. Our cultural experience led to the hot brunette. She was influenced by culture, and bin turn influenced on. Also, this year, internet use by gender was equal. In 2001, the internet did not feel completely safe, it was common to hide your agenda. In Cloudmakers, however, it was not long before we saw there were a lot of women. We wondered why there were the women, was it the format, the role, the community. Only statistic I had was 28% of the voters for a final vote were women in this fame. As the AI game was widely known and successful, it came the model for future projects; who tried to unravel that review and repeat the experience. And in marched the hot brunettes. They were young, attractive, smart, funny. The kind of girl a geek may fall a little in love in.

A difference btw the video game and a ARG, you are not the star of the show, you are not the main character. The star is usually an attractive brunette. She is not the one doing stuff, you still are, she is something between a role to achieve and someone to help. In the 2012 experience, the 2 white guys were very unusual in this genre. There is a trend, we have made a new archetype, so we need to understand who she is and what she means. So let’s tale a look at the history?

Do girls play games? Yes, of course they do, why are we even discussion. 40% of all gamers are female, 52% of PSP owners are female. Women over 25 play more games than any other group. (Neilson figures)

So why are games ‘for boys’.. why do we still have this idea that games are a boy thing. Was there something about Pong that was hypermasculine? was it the marketing. (see 1976 ad for Pong) But there are girl and boy games – lots of the over 25 games, are casual games, or social games. They are not really the big AAA titles, which are what ‘press’ call games, When we think of video games those err the games that comes to mind. Farmville with its 100m users is not what you think of when you come to a gam, not what a gamer plays.

Games are marketed towards men…straight men. The Sin to Win campaign…for Dante’s Inferno. So if you committed an act of lust at (E3) you could win an evening with 2 hot girls in a limo. There was a protest over this campaign, and the winner rejected the prize. Look at Evony -marketed with boobs. There are no girls (or characters) in the game. (Video of E3 09, lots of girls). You could say it was bad this year – and that was toned down. As a women, what E3 is telling me is that the game people don’t like me, that they don’t want my money, that I am not a real human being.

Games are Made by Men. Another cog in the machine that keeps games a boy things. there are 3 % in programming. Women in game make less money. On (Andrea) ARG teams, there have been more women on them than men. Recent results from an IGDA survey, a third of ARG builders are female.

Female Characters in games suck: classic role for female is the damsel in distress. You are supposed to rescue girlfriend wife, sister, princess etc. Often for some unknown reason. In Zelda, she knows everything, she disguises herself as a ninja – why does she need rescuing. Why isn’t Zleda a playable character. Even when playable, it does not go well. SO Super Princess Peach. Her superpower – MOOD SWINGS!!! When she is happy she flies, she drowns enemies with her tears. Bayonetta is in a category all by itself for its depiction of girls. The art director has talked at length at getting her arse correct. The ‘wins’ are ‘climaxes’. Her costume is made from her hair, that needs concentration..which falls when she is doing something. So her superpower is getting naked. One on 5 characters on a game box is female. In an industry fixated on realism, in light on water, in the action of dust. If they are after realism, they are not really getting there.

So What?? Why does this matter, why is it that girls play games, boys play games, It is not an academic question, it is a real problem. I could give you pages on sexual harassment stats. instead I’d give you info on my first brush of sexism. At 13, I moved schools; in my old schools I was studying literature, in my new one, I was in a class that had to underlined verbs. I approached the teacher to ask for more advanced work…the teacher replied that I had the most beautiful blue eyes. I learnt that being pretty would not help me. So i learnt to remove the markers of being feminine, I considered myself not a real girl…they like shopping and gossiping etc. At some point, you have to ask yourself where i got the idea about. So I had to ask what was wrong was me? My daughter likes girly things, and pink etc. I had internalised the message that girl things suck, so challenged my daughters choices. She was better than that. We have stigmatised femininity. We are cool with a women surgeon, but don’t like a man that collects unicorns. Girl stuff, means soft, pretty, in a culture…Girl Stuff sucks! the message in ads often convey this. If you repeat it, it becomes the norm.

A study has said if you consume a message, even if you disagree with it) you will end up adopting it. this is about the THE SLEEPER EFFECT. once info is in your brain, even if from a distrusted source, it becomes part of your world view.

PRIMING – behaviour and performance can be affected by situation and environmental cues. If you remind a girl that she is female before she takes a maths test, her scores are worse (as girls are ‘worse’ at maths). So who are responsible. the media. But WE ARE THE MEDIA. We are the media just as much as they are. As the media, we make culture, we put ideas into peoples heads. We have to think about what we are adding to the collective consciousness. So with our collection of brunettes in the ARG, we are saying women, even smart, competent women, need help to solve their problems. But why do we use them? What makes them useful. A lot of them come from the point of wanting to put in strong characters? So why young, brown hair. Writers are very lazy, building complex characters are hard. A mass market game want smart, funny, and vulnerable, Female means vulnerable, brown hair means smart (it’s a short hand)

When you start a character, you have a neutral human. But even so, there are defaults for a human – male, white, young etc. Look at a stick character, then most people will assume male, I’d be surprised if you look at a stick figure and not think of a gender at all. We think in genders..parents can get really angry if you misjudge the gender of a 2 month infant, even though it does not really matter until puberty.

We look at stock characters. they are easy. when you want to make a mad scientists, you take an actor and put him in a white coat and mess his hair. It’s easy, but simple, predictable and very boring, ad you can get offensive very quickly. so what is a writer to do? You can’t leave it at a stock character. You end up offensive and boring and which one is worse depends who you are talking to. So to make interesting, you pick an archetype and give them atypical traits. Mix and match. You need to avoid obvious, easy and predictable.

So, there’s nothing wrong with casting cute brunette as lead. But if it just for people to look at and there is no control, that is slipping into bad territory. So here’s a list of things to think about.

1. pass the Bechdale test. 2 or more women who talk to each other about something other than men. There are few that pass this test.
2. Give her agency. Give her the power to change the world. Lack of agency is one of the places ARGS fall down; although if there is two much, the players are short changed. If you give her free will, you can drive the story. make her unreliable, keep info to herself.
3. Diversify. add other dimensions. however, if you are not careful, then you get a cast of white people with different colours of skin.

The brunette is often a guide to the game world. You could skip this, let the players decide and explore.

There are a lot of bad characters, but lets look at what works. Faith from Mirrors Edge. She is conceived a human being first, who happens to be female. The female hero in Fable 2 – although he story is the same regardless which character you play. I though they used the same body model, so the female was strong and muscular. And in Fable, when you die, you scar. and there is no way to get rid of it. I liked that remaining pretty was not one of the rules. Then you have Shel in Portal you can argue that she is not really a character, as there is little about here. But it was cool that she was a girl and it was no big deal.

STORIES ARE TRUTHS: the truths we tell ourselves as a society, crime does not pay, love conquers all. Also girls like shopping…etc. the deep truth about ARGs is not hot brunettes need help but that there is someone on the web who will help you when you need it. This culture of helping people is the one that I want to build. you need to build the culture you want to be living in.

SXSW – Bringing TV to the Web

Rachel — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:58:45 +0000

This is an advanced session from Six to Start and Roo Reynolds and Jo Twist from the BBC – learn how broadcasters and new media companies work in bringing about the intersection of broadcast television and online both now and in the future.

Claire Bateman Jr Games Designer, Six to Start
Adrian Hon Chief Creative, Six to Start
Daniel Hon Ceo, Six to Start
Roo Reynolds Portfolio Exec Social Media, BBC
Jo Twist Multiplatform Channel Editor, BBC

RR: TV and the web…so ask audience, how they watch the TV and do they use the web. Is it linear – when it’s on. or in catch up, with an online surface. Most of the panel play catch up TV with live news/sport. Most of the room are Cs. For me, Most of the stuff about TV on the web is really quite boring – the video bit on the web. i think there is more
DH:TV on the web is done. we can do something more interesting now. Linear video on the web is just a matter of streaming.
JT: it is important not to underestimate who important web stuff is. But as a commisioner, I challenge production companies to fill in the creative gap
AH: video on the web is done. It’s the things that surround it that make it interesting. Eg the MTV back channel. You can gossip about the show
DH: we have got distracted by the wrong thing. It’s not about delivering video; yes shorter episodes are different. It;s just slightly cheaper as it’s not broadcast quality. We can do far more than that – it’s still just broadcast.
JT: what I like about the backchannel it;s about how bitchy can you be…people do like to be cleverer than what they are watching and that is a mechanic useful to multi-platform
DH: a lot of people talk about the mobile web and web as different, that is stupid short term thinking, You should be able to develop for the same whatever. Mink says that when you are out and about, you carry a story in your head. With always on you are surrounded by this fictional field. I like to e able to access content where ever you are. So shows could exist anywhere and be always evolving
JT: we want mainstream numbers…the majority of audiences want to be entertained. they are online to be with friends, so how can we play to that, that does not require much effort and still be involved.
RR: when you are in a gamespace,
CB: the golden circle..you want barriers to having a game being everywhere, you want borders, that what you are doing is within a world that exists. If the story/game can be anywhere, you still need structure and the boundaries to choose to be in a space and behave appropriately. On public transport, you ignore people, if you are in the game and you see somewhere you recognise, you can talk to them in the game. The fictional field has some kind of shape around it. A lot of tools in trad Tv, the construction set, are good for this
AH: something like Lost does not scale easily on web for all tv.
JT: when we talk to our audience, it depends on genre, eg with a drama, the 16-24 don’t what to engage – or they say that. But when you get really compelling drama (eg Being Human), we did a lot of behind the scenes things, getting fans closer to the mindset of the world. We are thinking of making that stuff into a TV show. Another example was Briony Makes a Zombie Movie, which was a documentary about making a crowd sourced Zombie show. It was TV reflecting the web/ We’re not challenging enough
DH: you are taking a dominate media form and supporting it online, but you are not creating a new form. So what is TV good at and what can online learn to create qualitative new experience.
AH: there is now a real spectrum of interactivity; the spaces inbetween are interesting
JT: to think of TV is a red herring…it is a device and a platform (DH..but where the money is). I’m interested in much more connected entertaining experiences. Again, what can you do in crafting different experiences? TV is a product that has a beginning and end and then you leave it/
DH: when we started working with TV companies, we introduced agile processes…which to us TV did not really do. It’s a gamble to out something out there and improve it over time.
AH: look at what we have done – wetellstories.co.uk, Net Native fiction. different forms. this is making entertainment for the web, that can only be done on the web.
DH:to pre-empt..we don’t know how it is going to be monetised,. It is so early in the game, but there is so much potential, we have to try things,
AH: wetellstories got 300k uniques, not that many compared to a tv show. there are few online stuff that attracts numbers.
Q: will you release your measurements..the engagement metrics as well as audience
JT: we have a lot of data like that and I think it is really important. How is the impact, how is it changing how people are thinking. We have no understanding how the culture of thought is changing as the result of a show etc. Those measurements we have are TV, but we are getting better.
AH: Ch$ did Sexperience. it was about Sex education, they got 50k+ to do STD tests.
DH: we look at time spent, it is at least 10mins a session
Q: you know something that will be useful to us, so how can you release
Q: How did you feel about TV etc…working with them
DH: some of them are great to work with. We get involved with some at the concept stage, before they have even pitched. So it’s integrated. Then there are the TV production companies…they ‘get’ the web..which means they put video on it!
AH: while some broadcasters are funding stuff like ARGs, they underestimate the effort and budget required. TV is where the money is…
Q: how do you achieve the culture shift
DH: you do stuff like this and wait
JT: you work together (in her role) with the TV commissioners. you have online people in the teams. the best example are around kids..Briony makes a Zombie..
DH: Jeremy Ettinghausen had access to an innovation fund with the express interest to try things. We worked with the creative talent and got them interested in what can be done. They get excited about other ways of telling stories.
Q: Not seen many things online that are Lost like..they are doing shiny things, we shoul be past that
JT: i see people putting things online that won;t fit into the Tv /it’s not good can we put it online’
DH: we can do some seriously good stuff! We tell stories is like a multimedia CD rom…tech speaking we are way past this point…
AH as the guy who made it….the stuff we do could have been done a long time ago. But it’;s the accessibility…that is an issue.it is diff for anyone to get into an ARG..
Q: What about local access, community etc.
CB: local community is not the same on the internet, it’s just community.
JT: it’s reflecting your cultural world..it does not have to be local, it can be. I’ve seen local project fail so many times.
Q: The strength of TV is it can make us eyewitness to events. The weakness is it’s linear. Why aren’t we seeing less linearity?
DH: it is difficult. We’ve tried doing non-linear and it works in some cases. Linear is easier to follow, people don’t ness want to work at it
AH: Linearity is not ness a weakness, it is just a property.
Q: TV can be repackaged..the web stuff can have a shorter life – it’s PR/marketing etc? is that how you do things?
AH we’re not maintaining them (no budget) but it’s not how we ness think
JT: you want to create an ecosystem that allows people to create. It’s a cultural shift, just because the TV show is over does not mean the story is over.
DH: an current traditional ARG is not repeatable, they run live. It limits audiences, it is liked massive primetime tv that you can’t record nor can you buy box set. We don’t have replayability.
Q: How is UGC video impacting?..web creation impact
JT: it;s difficult…it’s interesting when they have a following. It has to be really known talent or really good content. Or we document the process of cultural process.
Q: how can ceative people use the web more?
CB: just find some geeks!

SXSW – What can we learn from games

Rachel — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:31:28 +0000

Experts from three different (bit connected) industries talk about game design, learning theories, collective intelligence, transmedia entertainment, and the value of play in a participatory culture.
Henry Jenkins Co-Dir CMS, MIT
James Gee Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University
Warren Spector GM Creative Dir, Junction Point – Disney Interactive Studios

JG: my 6yo got me into games. I realised that I had never learnt anything that new for 30ys. I realised that games use learning as a gateway drug. I write books about it and why I play games.
HJ: at MIT, going to USC in Sept. Blog etc. I’ve been part of Education Arcade, how they put into practice educational value of games. Alos workign with Macarthur foundation, looking at learning.
WS: believe I’m the oldest still making games. Started in 70s, did Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Worked at Origin.
HJ: worked with son, on the Sims, who had to manage his budget. His son bought all the big ticket items, not about doing plumbing and eating. It applied to his life and he ‘got it’
JG: the Sims is often looked down on. but it brings a lot. The Sims players often give challenges..eg simulate what it is to grow up poor. The game itself is not too good at this, it lead to thinking about how the game was put together. It is digital, thinking about the world, thinking about how the simulation works
WS: games are good at problem solving, how to think about things, how to solve issues
JG: you discover think about yourself as a learner. When I started I tried the same thing 300 times until 6yo suggested I try something else.
WS: I’ve been making games that are about problems not just puzzles. We had to train players…to be able to make choices and solve problems In video game sit is infrequent that we ask people to think There is this movement now of getting players to think.
HJ; we are learning to depend on others for advice and gaming, though the networks etc. Schools only recognise only autonomous problem solvers, any kind of collaboration is seen as cheating, there is a different style of learning through the games
JG: the Sims example show emotional intelligence and a social intelligence.
HJ: the Lure of the Labyrinth is a game we are developing. We set it up so that kids have to communicate to others about solving the problems, It is abut strategies of solving problems not the answers they have to share.
JG: so many games are saying you have to be designing part of it,
WS: I’m a little of a luddite, a little more into a traditional narrative and how it combines with gameplay. I’m willing to give up control of gameplay but not the narrative. There is a thriving community of Spore players, making stories etc. The most wonderful experiences for me, about the last games I did, if you look at forums, the conversation is different about hwo they talk about my games. It is not about saving puzzles, it is about the narrative, how could you have killed this guy, how could you have done this thing. A community came to me, at a conference, we went to the bar….and some of the guys started an argument about the a game..it was about politics and ideology, that is the power of interactive narrative it is is about letting you behave one way and seeing how it plays out.
JG: narrative acts in many different ways in games. Doesn’t the narrative in the game have to fit in the gameplay, it can’t just be an addon. Look at Braid, it has a weird story and a weird gameplay, making people think about how thay match. It’s just a 2d gameplay….there’s a lot of theories about the story.
WS: it’s a very lets deconstruct the medium approach, it is very off-putting. Games are about what you do, so it has to be about the mechanics.
HJ: the games come out of a school of theory, people who had gone to game school. You had the same with film, a group of people who had the same language, You are going to get the same in games, designers who are schooled in the theory and can talk the same ideas and the audience who understands this and is seeking content out and can educate themselves.
JG:you can have a good story, but the player is in the middle of it. These themes can float around, you see pieces of it, you see bits at ta time. The player can take the themes and make something of it (Deus Ex)
WS: with Deus Ex i tried to make the most accessible mainstream game (it failed though). It gave you the chance to try different ways to solve problems. Pick the way you want to play it. I also let you ignore the story if you wanted it. Games are work and I wanted to disguise this fact, masking the work is something that games to really well. There is a world work out there that happens online, or just doing your taxes; a more gamelike account could help ease past the work
HJ: teachers don’t always recognise the work in a games. The key word is engagement when it comes to games. A good game makes us engage in a task that may be frustrating and long and boring but will keep involved.
JG: when the initial work on Flow, it was about work, the flow state, to make it more engaging.
WS: we take things that in other times would be boring and hard and we make them fun. Some games have control schemes that are more complex than Turbotax -we should be able to make these fun. Find a way to apply game paradigms to real world of work
HJ: games to a spectacular job of introducing complexity, spreadsheets etc. Teachers have not yet caught up this.
JG: you play some of these games, pore over the graphs of the results and plan the next strategy. This is valuable skill.
WS: this is what the tabletop games do well, give you a framework to build things and learn about stuff. I learnt about medieval Japan, how to run a castle, WWII espionage.
JG: you see something as a system and how the systems interact, it teaches you about science and thinking about systems
WS: I agree, and I look at most games..they show the world as a system but often a simple system that could mislead you. So thanks that Will Wright exists that show you simple solutions can be a bad thing,
HJ: research shows that kids learn a lot of things from games, but don’t look at the game structure. We have to couple gamespace learning and media literacy. Learnign this, thinking critically, gets people to be able to design themselves etc
WS: most of peers believe their work is ideological pure, that they are not defining a world view but this is wrong.
HJ: as an artist you have to have a world view…we may not be preparing kids adequately for the Apocalyse but we should be making them thinking about stuff!
JG: there’s a whole space their to connect at an emotional level.
WS: we have an indi game industry, with skills and distribution etc all that helps. This is great..
JG: serious games have not taken off with a speed that was hoped. Niche games, such as Flower etc, have taken off, I don’t think serious games have been good enough.
WS: one thing that games can do well is teach process. That is not what games do fundamentally. But serious games have tried too much for process and not fun
JG: what is good about the games is the engagement, the ability to make choices et. Game designers are trying to model the system, and that is what scientists are doing. We have wrong education theories and that is why we make bad games.
Q: What thoughts about how games can be used to get people to think different about their world context?
WS: that is what games do, you can walk in someone else’s shoes. It is an experience of being in another place. It is what we do everyday
HJ: games are the only media that lets you feel guilt – if you do something bad you have a stake in the consequences (quoting Wright again).
WS: my wife has never finished Deus EX as she killed a dog in the beta.she felt such guilt she never went back
Q: Do you see development of narrative of games to problem solving? and is there real support to keep them out of classroom to reinforce accidental learning
JG: game sin classroom are often to support text books, We have to change theory of learning before we can do this…put different games in classrooms
HJ: Labyrinth is not about beng in the classroom, it is to be played outside but then discussed.. Games in schools does not work – the timeframe does not fit in the lesson. It is not the efficient way of using time. Students look to knowing what they need to know to ge the test. School is not seen a place to play and we have to change this. Until we expect responsibility, then games will not be properly used in classrooms. But how do we give kids without computers at home access to the skills that game players will have.
Q: is there a distinction for difference in narrative between a novel and game? I call it contextual narrative.
WS:we don’t have consistent terminology, I call it shared authorship
HJ: it is a form of narrative based on world building. Scifi and fantasy os often this. Worldbuilding narratives invite creativity in a different way to plot driven narrative
Q: so how can brand use game theory and gameplay to engage audience in social media.
WS: hire a game designer for a few weeks.
HJ: it is huge growth area, that appears to a different type of players. I would be wary of learning too much from current theory. Hire female designers etc, bring diff types of social expertise to the table, who understand the networking.
WS: Read Rules of Play, has a lot foundational work. Tracy Ford Game Design Workshop, It will give a vocab to discuss.

SXSW – Dead Space a Deep Media Case Study

Rachel — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:22:11 +0000

This in-depth case-study reveals the method and the madness behind Electronic Arts use of cross platform marketing to communicate separate, self-contained elements of the much anticipated release of their first survival horror game, Dead Space. For this release, EA packaged a comic book, a prequel DVD, and an online experience in order to build, create, and cultivate an audience around the Dead Space brand prior to the official ‘street date’ launch.

Ian Schafer CEO, Deep Focus
Chuck Beaver Sr Producer, Electronic Arts
Andrew Green Online Mktg Mgr, Electronic Arts
Frank Rose Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine
Ben Templesmith Dir, Singularity7

Some live blogging from the panel

FR: it’s a successful video game but more than that – Deep Media, (deepmedia blog). we’ve had linear story telling and now the web is encouraging a new story telling. To watch and participate. these are entertaining and immersive. eg BSG, Dark Knight. EA entered this wih Dead Space – allowing stories to be told elsewhere. It’s not about doing spin-offs. It’s the same story told across a panoply of different media.
CB: it’s a 3rd person scifi survival horror. In the future, a lone protagonist. Similar to Alien, isolated, alone. Isaac has been sent out to correct a communication blackout on a ship. It’s not a blackout. It’s not licensed, we did it ourselves. When we started, we were steeped in licenced games. We were interesting in doing new IP, to own the properties. It took about 18month to get greenlit. The dismemberment was from Glen Schofield, our exec producer, we had to rein it back a little. It fits with zombie law. Some games don’t consider story as essential, we thought it was. We wanted to have a natural story, took it very seriously. We watned to dev a frnachsie so did a whole canon.
AG: it was not just a marketing tool ,We got involved early on, about 16months before. It was the first timeas a marketing team when we got involved with passionate devs. We got 500yrs of back story, a comic book etc. We had to figure out what to do with the great assets, create a strategy around it to build an audience that would be with us to game launch. It’s a new ‘paradigm’. We wanted to make sure all the products lived on their own. The customer decides what they want to do, you have to give them a reason to come through the door.
BT: I got a strange email, I replied that this sounded interesting. I said that I’d do a comic to do with the game. I expected it to be like previous ones, a sideline, or just the game story. But as I got further in, they wanted to tell the story from the beginning, this really appealed to me. Usually I get told what to do, it’s restricted. But here, I had tremendous free rein within our part. It can stand on its own or you can follow to other parts. The visual style was ‘me’ I’m known as the horror guy in comics. That they got me, with my reputation, meant they were taking the comic side seriously. Feedback is great, that they did a complete story.
CB: we had enough story to allocate bits to different media, the comic, the animation and hte game. Then on the web we had other stories we needed to propagate. This was driven from Glen; I was in charge of the production. These were rolled out over a period of months. We worked with the structure of each media; eg comic books can have a 6 month run, 1 per month, others driven from timing. How did we keep the story straight? We had a big master timeline, we segmented the story so they would not overlap too much. A lot of co-ordination. We had to make the universe.
FR: how do you know the property will support all of this stuff? Did you seed it with takeoff points?
CB: yes. We tried to focus on not having a one time event story. We established the canon document, with a centralised universe story.
AG: the document had lots of stuff that was nothing to do with the story, but lots of details about the world. We could create new stories and characters from the details.
FR: How did you draw the line between defining the canon and overdefining?
CB: we did not want the team to feel they were just filling in blanks. We gave the story and feeling. they did all the story development. We had little to show BT, just concepts.
BT: there was a lot of art, I had to extrapolate from that, had to make it work in the civilian setting. Got to create own assets. Got a little disappointed that I could not draw all the cool stuff?
AG: accessibility was a big thing for us on the web, so you would not have to buy a book. We created new assets, which could spin off new stories. We took print assets and created comic book videos, pulled the images together and added VO. We got lots of views in these.
FR: So how do you build something like this in the web.
IS: the previous story were linear, on the web we launched noknownsuvivors.com, it was far more fractured. you had a different experience depending on the decisions. Based on original scripts and then extended. We had to keep aesthetic similarity, we had to ensure it went well in the flash environment. We had to go to studio and get all the assets, 3d renderings etc. It was not just tech, the tech served the story. It was to facilitate a connection between the brand and the people who wanted to play. To share the experience, to take the content onto their own spaces. It was a week experience, each week another chapter. We had to roll it out slowly., About 500k, site visit 10min on average. A fair few said it was a key driving factor in the game.
CB: the animated feature, it was sort of between comic and game in the story.
FR: how did Deep media benefit the game?
AG: you got a lot of people engaging with the world, they came and asked questions, it generated excitement. It gives people a reason to want to interact with brand.
IS: it’s how people want to interact; we did some research about a tv show – the brand of the tc show is more than the show on TV - it’s about what you share with others. I did film marketing before, you can’t market too early as by the film comes along they think they have seen it. With this, you got people into the storyline, deeper an deeper.
AG: I think the comic book/videos were the most successful. The web was deep and rewarding but the comics took advantage of dissemination, easier to port videos everywhere. the liner narrative is only one type of content, you will only get so much punch. But it was only one part of a stockpile of ammunition. Each played for a different audience.
FR: what was the biggest surprise?
CB: we were surprised at how difficult – we’re a game maker, not a comic publisher. It was new, we were making up the rules and trying to hit the quality bar.
AG: an observation but could have been why it was successful. It was team of people wanting do something well. Everyone interacting, pushing through the late nights, like it was the own pet project.
IS: it was visible to end user that it was telling not selling, people respected the credibility of a good story.
CB: with EA, for them to treat these not just as marketing one-offs, not just as selling channels, they understood that they were valid in of themselves. We established quality throughout
AG: that is the test of deep media, that it’s not just marketing. It has to be about the passion, give the story tellers the freedom.
IS: in context of advertising. When money spent on impression, it could not compare to the hours spent interacting with the content. It’s not impressions you can buy, it’s about creating lasting impressions. Allow you to spend less on paid media, more on earning respect.
FR: what next?
CB: it would be great to be able to produce a live action movie, nothing is in the works yet. We have a new story line for ‘Extraction’ out this fall. New story, in the world.
Q: do you need a lot of budget? Do you need all these pieces to do it well? What resources are required?
AG: You need a passionate creative centre and give it to the community, you can create a deep media experience that could grow. It is all about starting. You have to create.
IS: it’s about the expectations of the sale. if you are launching product, budget accordingly.
Q: Would you do the website again?
AG: yes. from an ROI the engagement was huge. You also got analytics (which you can’t necessarily get from other networks. The data set is taken away on ning etc. I could change content on the microsite based on analytics.
IS: from a world of mouth it helped to have something people could be worked through. it build buzz etc.
AG: Deep Focus drive a lot of editorial hits etc. Got people viewing it.
Q: for web site what were the biggest traffic sources? What was traffic after 6 weeks?
IS: Many by editorial mentions, from blog mentions.
AG: getting hits from right blogs, eg Kotaku, Wikipedia was the biggest one. We have a link on official site, tht gets 100k/200k. upwards of 10k new a week. they can jump in many places.
IS: a fifth is after the game release
Q: Dead Space came to me via PS3, all the downloads. I slowly got into it, even though can’t stand horror. We played the game…we got to the end and thought ‘what did that mean’. So was there any plan around the ending
CB: that’s a fairly delicate thing for me to talk about. The ending does have a structure, has meaning, and I hope to be able to explain in the future.
Q: how important is premium downloadable content after the game?
CB: it’s a consumer expectation, so you have to do it or it’s a negative. we have to figure out how to make it happen as it is a drain on dev team
AG: the economy and expectation of it is driving a new way of selling games. Expansions are good. Stprytelling is about blocks of content I guess game makers are going to be planning and budgeting for this.
Q: you talked about dolling stories in bite sized..did you give away too much? how did you recover?
CB: the final trailer…the marketing wanted to show the final boss. The devs did not want to this. The PR team wanted this…the rest of the story was fine
Q: what did theis process show you about new IP?
CB: it is so risky, that is why EA did licensed IP, it’s a safer model. We have been critically rewarded from this, I think you will see more from this.
AG: Ben you create new IP all the time
BT: putting on paper is easy. But in this, it was good as they did not drive changes, I’ve had more control on others, eg Marvel and DC. there is more that you cannot mess with. So Dead Space was part of a larger thing, but free rein.
IS: it was pretty ballsy, about placing control in other hands about telling the story. It was amazing, eg bringing in Ben.
AG: budget levels, for games etc, it is a sequel business. When you are up against sequels, it is a difficult game. The deep media elements all helped, bridged the value over to us.
Q: Where is this going, what is the potential
BT: for me, it’s animation. Comic books should stay static, but will turn online as well.
AG: you’re going to see every kind of media feeding the other media, based on resources, ability around it. It is easy to get seduced by idea of your creativity becoming something else. Trying to create something for a commercial reason is the best to make it fail.

Jane McGonigal Keynote at SXSW

Rachel — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:43:17 +0000

Jane McGonigal Keynote.

The Lost Ring Video played. A call for help. Being going a week – are you in?
going to talk yo you about alternate realities. instead of trying to make games more realistic, trying to make the real world more like games. we need more alt. realities and the real world needs to be changed to function more like a game. it will start on a game designers perspective on the future of happiness. I work at the Institute for the Future. we look at interesting things that are happening today and imagine what the future will be like.
Happiness – the last year has seen a lot of growth and attention to happiness. there has been the launch of a new field – positive psychology, to look at brains working well, the good stuff. what makes us happy, what is the best case scenario. good books, one thing that really interests me, is the parallel between what makes us happy and the core tenants of game design.
Last month, book Against Happiness came out. this is not about warm fuzzy feelings, it is about the trying to capture the best experience possible and using research to define it, how to make lives more worth living
there are many metrics for measuring, to implement and insert happiness making things in your life.
what i wanted to ask if you think you re in the happiness business.? I don’t think we are quite yet imaging product as happiness, but you will be in the business very soon.
It’s coming faster than we think.
Predictions – quality of life becomes a primary metric,. Positive psychology will be used to design tools; communities will form around different visions of a real life worth living. Value will be defined as a measurable increase in real happiness or well being – the new capital.
Happiness is the new capital. you need to be explicitly generating some positive well being for them. happiness does not mean what it used to..the internets has changed. Happiness is not a warm puppy.
researching for a while..so will distill the 4 key principles
- satisfying work to do
- the experience of being good at something
- time spent with people we like
- the chance to be a part of something bigger.
nothing in the world gives you these things better than games,
Multi-player games are the ultimate happiness engine. as the rest of the community starts to catch up, then more of us will be in the business of this happiness venture/
Signals for things changing? Some graffiti in my town…’I'm not good at life’. for a lot of gamers their experience of life is that it is not sufficiently designed for them to be good at. we can be really good at them, at games. In real life there is not the collaboration as there is in the games. you get visualisation in WOW of all the data, help that you use ingame. you don’t gain speaking points for presentations in life. you gain points in game.
- So you have better instructions in games.
- Games are giving us better feedback all the time. we know how we are doing.
- games have better community. shared rules and story give you better time.
there is a global mass exodus..started in asia…towards virtual worlds and game worlds. I’m not critical of the mass exodus as I understand it. it is a rational decision to spend time and money in virtual worlds as those environments are set up better for them to succeed. there is a better chance for them to learn. An MMO players spends 16 hours a week and that is average.
we could make better and better online and console games to take what we have learnt from there and do something in the real world. for many people, quality of life, virtuality is beating reality.
us here are lucky compared to many who play the games we do, real life is not as exciting as virtuality, it does not make them as happy. if I was as good at life as I was in my games, what would it be like.
I think games are awesome..it is like we invented the writen word and we only write books. why are the games not in the real world, to use the games to navigate, meet people…
ChoreWars -experience points for housework. you get to claim XP for chores.
zyked – in alpha. exercise is the target, give points and skills for working out
Seriosity – for games at work. an overlay of virtual currency for work. you have to pay people to do things at work. you can set priorities. it creates flows of virtual currency, you can watch it. you can see who is important, connections.
Citizen Logistics – missions to help other people. knows where you are because of GPS etc, people can tell you what to do. mobile co-ordinations.,
Good news as some people are trying to make the world into a game.
What do they mean? to imagine the future it is important to look backwards at least twice as far as you are looking forward. the best analogy is soap, in 1931. ‘Soap kills germs’ was a headline. games are like soap..we should install them in every building, in our pockets we are killing boredome….games Kill boredom, alienation, anxiety, depression,
AR designers are trying to embed these happiness engines in everyday life.
So, AR comes from Science fiction. the community names it. it is not an alternative, it is an alternate way of experiences this reality, these are immersice experiences in this reality. one of the earliest OED entries for AR is 1978 – another way of experiencing existence. they sit and exist in your real world, the game is there at the street corner.
World Without Oil – won an award at SXSW. we told the players that we had run out of oil and they players had to run real life as this was true. we would give you updates in your area about the gas and process and impact on food etc. levels of chaos, misery etc. you would know what the fictional parameters and you would document what it was like. we had a soldier in iraq on LJ about what it would be like it would be like without oil. people changed trucks, people were interviewing non players. it’s all archived. it lasted 32 weeks, it got really dark at times, then the players got it together and kind of fixed things. there;s a lot of info all still there. worldwithoutoil.org. still have people doing it.
so how do args amplify happiness., they deliver 10 superhero capabilities to people who play. 10 kinds of happiness that match up with research.
- mobbability. the ability to collaborate and co-ord really large scales.
- cooperation radar – the ability to detect who would make the best collaborator for any given mission.
- Ping quotient measures ability to reach out and respond to other people in your networks
- influency – the ability to adapt your persuasive strategies to individuals and media and environments….understand communities require a different motivation.
- multi-capitalism – understand that people are trading in different capital systems. so how do you get the different capitals trading?
- Protovation – big companies get scared of this. rapid innovation, that failing is fun and that is when you are learning the most. fail rapidly and often…
- Open Authorship – naturally to blogger age. comfort with giving content away and knowing it will be changed. it’s a design skill about creating something that won’t be broke by others changes
- signal/noise management. he ability to handle noise and know which clue is relevant.
- longbrading – the ability to think in much bigger systems – the zoom out.
- emergensight – this is the trickiest. the idea that you can spot patterns as they come up, comfortable with messy complexity.
- lost ring game is in 8 languages…a lot of content, players will create more. it gets really big, so how do you spot opportunitiy etc.
they amplify our tendency towards the optimal human experience doing lots of research.
so how can interactive systems amplify happiness?
so where to next?
- twitter is a good place to start, a natural interface.
- the nike ipod. I love it. want to make a game.
- planes – comms sytems. would love to play a game on a plane.
- dogs..need a game to fix it….i feel guilty for playing. how about an MMO when you avatar is your dog. you have to get them all working together.
- a friedd said – ‘my car is a video game’..a Prius using games
- trackstick – records GPS every 5 secs and follows you.
- neuro detector, hook up to games. an idea for a game about people I don’t like and using my brain to destroy them
the Lost Ring is for the Olympics. we are going to give people the opp to have an AR at the Olympics. a game that no one has played for 2000 years. thelostring.com. learn a lost sport and be an olympic champions.
The important stuff -
- I believe that most of us will be in the happiness business, study it and be ready for when the public demand it
- game designers have a huge head start. we have been trying to optimise human experience.
- AR signal the desire, need and opp for all of us who design interactive systems to redesign reality for real quality of life.
- jane at avantgame com

Questions. DOD/war…using gaming language. do games help prevent wars
- i would want to differentiate the types. games make soldiers easier to fight. that’s not the best direction for blurring the line between reality and games. it is extremely powerful ..do we design games to draw people to benevolent action., i think game devs should be trying to win noble prize by 2032. if we are playing games together than much harder to hate each other.
to what extent that gaming etc are substitutes to things that are missing..
- for some things..blogs can work better than conversation for many people. games work better for some people. not everyone who plays games has a life that needs fixing. I do worry that some gamers do replace, and it is something we should talk about. we need a real conversation
interested in the idea we have more forms but a lot less social. ARGS narrative story and not necessarily with people.
- a lot of the press for args are online…but they have a real history of real life stuff. ie SF0. all mission in real world. a lot of stuff going that way
args..successful ones are productions, narratively intense. they are temp and they go away how do you…when do have continues things
- business model needs to get fixed. it was seen as marketing and budgets fixed. tried as pay to play, lots of people trying to figure out new models. it has to happen, i want my nike+ to run for my life
I’m interested in the whole business model things….Macdonalds is one of the sponsor for lost ring..how do you reconcile that with the game considering the relationship with mcdonalds
- we don’t actually have a sponsor, we had a group of people who wanted to get involved..IOC, McD, AKQA. it’s a different model, it’s like P&G when they invented soap. I’m thrilled to be working with orgs that are big enough to get the game in may places. it’s going to be tricky to walk the line…where do you get the money,.it is moving more to TV…it is the ecosystem…
i played the game to reclassify books.and when i go to bookshops I do the same things. is it changing how people look at the world (ministry of reshelving)
- its one of the most powerful things…we had 40k people doing this. I love Tombstone Holdem, we designed games that allowed people to play serious with tombstones…
SF0 does a geat job of balancing creativity and real life..how do you script vs openness
- it’s a combination. if you are trying to solve world problems, you need a bit of a harder top down approach at the beginning
- The x2 project, with scientists, playing games about future of research and science. we use real world science scenarios. our players inhabit the AR. we guide it with a story, we are interested in a particular reality. do research first, get people to solve the problem, then let them figure out of you are right or wrong.
The Game – pick up artists…evolutionary pyschology…people are gaming each other in life…
- it is important to define the game you are playing. any game is collaborative as you are playing the same rules. in real life is they do not know there is a game playing then a problem. AR announce them selves as a game, it is better. rules are explicit.

Jane’s post on the speech, also Slides on Slideshare

Tags: jane mcgonigal, args

SXSW – ARGS and Games

Rachel — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:28:14 +0000

Dan Hon, Tony Walsh and Dee Cook

Tony Walsh, Phantom Compass, Toronto, Games design. Fallen, Regenesis.
Dee Cook, working on ARGs, since 2003. Worked on World without Oil
Dan Hon, Six to Start. worked on Perplex City, working with Channel 4 education

DH: ARGS are a new way of telling stories, using all forms. People consume lots of different kinds of medium, there is a different kind of narrative and gameplay experience that you can give people. You don’t have to learn a different control scheme. Interactions are typically the same things you would do in everyday life. you use text and emails.
DC: There are no rules about what an ARG is, it’s like playing a murder mystery dinner theatre, for weeks and months, online, in person, on the telephone etc
TW: the players can be extremely voracious, hungry for content and always coming up with things that designers may not have expected, coming up with the new story lines.
Q: who are the players?
DH: the demo data (Perplex City) was 12-80 year old, 50/50 male/female. Live events were surprising, families, etc, the typical audience is not the hardcore gamer.
TW: there are different elements that appeal to different types.
DC: skillsets can be different for each game,
DH: they are a form of entertainment, so the broad questions can be answered in many ways – a broad classification
TW: videogame players are very different to ARGs…args can be research based
DH: there are differences between the types of gameplay. ARGS can be more predominately storyline based, punctuated by game-like play.
TW: so what are they looking for in an ARG that they are not getting in a videogame.
DH: a lot of the successful ones have been toed in with deep brands, deep stories. Halo 2 (with I Love Bees) can be looked at as a FPS or as part of a real deep story, really good world building. For those that buy into the world, they get passionate about finding out anything about it.
DC: In ARGs, people feel they can affect the game world, they can interact with a ‘real’ person. An ARG is often a one shot, have memories and history.
DH: WOW as a single player is a very boring game, but playing with friends is a completely different experience. ARGs is similar – large groups, social gameplaying mechanic.
TW: so can we talk about some early ARGS
DC: Majestic – EA, they started to advertise the game that played you, how it was going to become part of your real life, shut down
DH: the Beast – from Microsoft. tied into AI the spielberg movie. it set some principles which some people still think control what an ARG is. It did not say it was a marketing campaign. The game created a universe online. In terms of gameplay, there was not really any traditional gameplay mechanic in there. There’s puzzles and collaboration,. the gameplay that tends to emerge is very social based, than conventional console games.
DC: a big community builder.
TW: the form is always evolving.
DH: ILovebees was more of a radioplay, that seemed to be the intention of the writers. it was an audiodrama.
TW: a promotion for Halo2. MS did try to do something with Halo3,
TW: there’s a huge grassroots community that produce their own games. barrier to entry is a lot lower than computer and videogame development.
Q: what’s the reach and success of ARGS. What are the business models.
DH: a lot of the examples have been marketing for brands. Majestic was a subscription model. Perplex City had a series of collectible cards, which would have clues etc. I think that everyone is still trying to work it out, there is a lot of scope for brand sponsored content. In terms of self-sustaining independent it is something that we are working on
DC: we still run into the internet should be free idea, so subscription based anything on the web is a dicey problem.
DH: it is possible to do so when people spend a lot of time.
TW: a lot of teens are looking at free to play games, that can be a model, say in Korean.
Q: is what teens expecting in terms of free to play, is paralleled by people wanting to find themselves in a game, eg Lonely girl
DH: it did not start out as an ARG, the whole suspense was ‘was to real’. the follow up is Kate Modern on Bebo. the back and forth of setting up tasks, and responding can add a lot of value to the entertainment. Viral marketing will not get you your mass audience, you have to push people there [RC: it's my understanding the ARG was started by a fan and then adopted by the creators]
Q: How are they useful
DH: with channel 4 we are doing an educational game, for 14-16 yos, around online identity and privacy. they can learn important skills.
Q: I research storytelling; I look at what is going on with ARGs, what concerns me, is the freakiness of ‘stalking’. blending reality with fiction you get into sueable area. there is a huge community of susceptible people
TW: this question comes up everytime. there is are fine line. It’s up to the game designers to think about how the game mechanics work. you can’t control, you also need lawyers. It’s what insurance is for,
DC: you can’t anticipate everything, but you can be prepared to react.
TW: in videogames you can predict, but the more massive MMO become then less controllable.

Tags: dan hon, tony walsh, dee cook, args

The best games console

Rachel — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:55:31 +0000

I spend time in Chris Pirillo’s chatroom and one of the endless topics of coversation is which game console is better – PS3 or XBox360. It always seems to be a 2 sided debate between those, with Wii only entering rarely. I’m just thankful that Apple do not make a console. However, I think this video from The Escapist sums up the argument better than anything I’ve seen to date.

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Ultimate Frisbee

Rachel — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:26:13 +0000

Eric’s being twittering about Saturday Frisbee for a few weeks now so on Saturday I decided to join in. About a dozen people turned up and had a great game before retiring for celebratory drinks. Bill has a great set which includes some in-action shots as well as just the drinking ones. Here’s on of my favourites from the night, from Grace.

SXSW – Will Wright Keynote

Rachel — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:30:36 +0000

These are the live notes from Will Wright’s Keynote. no context or analysis yet.

Some insiders believe that SPORE may be the most ambitious most highly anticipated computer game in history. USA Today calls it “gaming’s giant leap.” The New Yorker says it explores the “limitless possibility of life itself.’ And the New York Times, suggests that SPORE ‘deserves to be seen as a work of art.’ Drawing on inspirations that range from the SETI project to the Eames movie, The Powers of Ten, SPORE takes gaming to an unprecedented scope and scale to the concept of life itself. You begin as a microscopic cell struggling to survive in the primordial soup. If you can evolve, growing and gaining intelligence, you can travel a vast galaxy deciding the fate of entire planets. Join us as Will Wright, the visionary game designer behind SPORE and arguably the most celebrated game designer of our time will discuss his plans to bring to life vast beauty and possibility offered by our universe, and create a game that encourages every player to consider his or her place in the galaxy. He will also address the challenges of developing a narrative in non-linear and linear mediums, and explore his inspirations for the game. This session should not be missed.

I was not intending to present Spore, I was preparing a presentation of story. But then read the speach notes…so I will mash them up.

I’ll tell you I hate the stories my computers try and tell me. Novels have been the model, I’ll tell you about the nature of story. I look at the world as a simulation, things cause changes in other things, a dense web events, but a story is a causal chain. stories are unchanging and linear. games are mesh, many interactions. movies are visual, games are interactive. when we take control away from player we take the most important thing away. moving interactive to passive. games are a branching tree. we try and find the compressed rule set to give all the possible options when we design and build games for computers.

There is topology difference btw games and story – dense to open. you can present a dramatic arc with movie when all viewers feel the same. the game arc is very different, it is not a dramatic arc, you can repeat things all the time. we think linear drama is more compelling than interactive.

Stores based on language, empathy, imagination.

actors are emotion-sims, emotional avatars

Film has a rich emotional palette as they have avatars – joy etc, games appeal more to the basic instincts. pride accomplishment, guilt, expression.

Appeal is empathy for film whereas games are agency, i can chose what happens in games. both build models on different ways empathy vs agency

you are stuck in a timestream but we want to move experiences outside either outside place or time. story allows learning

experiences – play or story – an abstraction – models – help predict further and change behaviour

the best way to prevent the future is to predict it

stories start out, with characters, the structure is fuzzy at this point. once it starts you see the sequence and all acts narrow the range of possibilities. In your head you imaging eh the possibilities whilst watching films,

at the end, you start amplifying, dramatic amplifications, at the end of start wars there are 2 major possibilities. – will the rebels be blown up or the Death Star.

the biggest obstacle in interactive is that in linear the director knows the end state; interactive you don’t they are chaotic systems, Stories show causal chain as it is relevant, with interactive you can’t. film makers are playing with this causal chain; much in literature, films such as magnolia or timecode show multi threads. I like films that take a massive left turn, change the expectations. Momento plays with causal chain. each point causes you to reevaluate what you know. deeper in the story you were having to reconstruct what happened.

Groundhog day is a brilliant film, it felt the most like a game. goes through he same things again. with restarts. the director knew future and past, you could skip over things you filled it in. we should do this in games. let players skip levels if they keep failing. The real world does not have a restart, but it makes games interesting

Game stories can be branches or gated; early adventure stories…pick your pages. branching models. they get expensive if you deepened the story

Gates – within level have freedom, then have to get to next level etc. have different topologies. you have subgoals etc. and you have hybrids btw gated and branches. all of these things just throw data at problem.To double experience you need 4x as much work

New approaches are generated stories, have story fragments, have a trigger and result conditions, you can put the bits together to put story together. got more potential than has been explored; not clear what level we want to do.

Player stories…they are unintentional, subversive, expressive. players have stories about how they were playing in a game, describing what they did. Players come across bugs etc and they make the back story for it. Subversive stories are where players are trying to push out the envelope. they get excited about finding exploits. Expressive…they are like the sims, they have an intentional message, I developed a character in GTA, I hung around, finding what I wanted. I did not like messages, just wanted to hang and tell stories

With Sims, players they would be verbalising the story as they played it. they were dealing with parallel simulation but turning into linear stories. players were good at creating stuff and showing off; we put a site to collect the stories. they were like small novels. Then there’s the whole machinima movement. They are entertainment and meaningful stories, allowing people to express what is happening in their life.

so we have storytelling and story listening. with interactive entertainment, it’s more interesting to me to think about listening to stories, teaching computers to listen. let computers get understanding, understand the theme. the computer learns the story that is in the players head. you can look at stories at different levels, have the computer understand, is it girl meets girl or teen slasher etc. if we know the goal states we can present obstacles, to amplify the drama. if we can parse, present, influence/assist and then replay as a movie. we can change the the environment, drive events to clarify he story. I suspect this is more likely to happen with a lot of parallel learning, watching millions of players. this is close to truman show. the computer is like the director of the truman show. It can control environment but not violate freewill. the truman show and groundhog day are both closest to games,

Looking into the future there is this concept called the magic circle; everyone respects the rules of the game, those outside the circle do not ness respect the rules. in the circle you agree to follow them.

stories are similar, they sit around together and have similar things. storytelling has evolved, as has story.

We went from small groups, to epic with films and then started circling back to home, ipods etc, back to being a small group. we can do fractal stories, 3 min things from YT. stories circles change in time space. diversifying across platforms. there are many game niches and story niches.

Linear entertainment is watched at a fairly similar percentage across ages; interactive participation has a strong peak in the younger groups. Games are not just about story and sports, are now evolving as hobbies, tools are increasing and we start to fulfill design aspirations. players love making content. They like making, sharing and collecting, people like organising the power of collective effort is amazing, there is a quality vs quantitative; most is crappy, some OK, some great. as tools be better we should be able to increase the quality of what they are doing.

Players are building mental models in their head and we now have chance for the computer to build models of people, how they play, what they do, how they move, what they buy, what networks do they do.

We can build fairly elaborate models predicting behaviour. give tools when they can build things and then get the computer to amplify…the asset they build has value.

So take what they have made, see what other things they may like and bring it back into he world. move player away from being Luke Skywalker and playing a role and to George Lucas and making a story.

With Spore, we wanted to make the universe a game. There has been a lot of friction for players to create, so in this case the process of creating is the process of playing the game. we want the game to share automatically. we can build an infinite sized worlds.

[there followed a demo of the world, building, creating, moving between the dimensions of gameplay]

i want the game to bring up issues for players, history and future of life. philosophical implications are huge. i think of the games as elaborate montessori tools. how can they learn. this is a phil tool so that you can think about life. so what happens when you have your planets – we have weather, geology. climate etc. you can terraform. and you can destroy. game play at certain levels based on my favourite science fictions, eg the monolith tool from 2001 to raise intelligence etc. As I travel I can build up an encyclopedia of everything I have seen. over time you can explore larger and larger areas, se the entire galaxy, things are built b the players.

technology is an extension of the human body, computers do a lot of things, but importantly they extend our imagination. we use for entertainment, education communications, etc. so how does this impact? we go through a major shift every now and again, social changes, etc technology is driving paradigm shits more often, the rate is more frequent, political changes, social issues, environment issues, warnings etc about what is happening,

games have a reputation as a time waster, but they can much more, they can change how we see the world, how we behave. we can navigate the future with a little more intelligence than we could before.

Spectrum Emulator

Rachel — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:42:39 +0000

Ewan has just shown me the Sinclair Spectrum emulator on his Nintendo DS and I’ve just been playing Jet Set Willy. My sisters and spent hours playing this as kids, so all the memories came flooding back when faced with the music and gameplay. Now I want one