School addicts

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:26:42 +0000

If school was as addictive as computer games, would that not be a good thing? The Digital room project is an example of this, where the pupils wants to be in school, even on holidays. They have become school addicts.

Eyeborg vs Deus Ex

admin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:09:03 +0000

If you like to get an idea of how far bionic technology has come, see this video comparing today’s progress with Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Keynote speech

admin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:24:01 +0000

I will be giving a keynote speech at the “2nd International Conference on Video Game and Virtual Worlds Translation and Accessibility”, March 22-23 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.

HCI International 2011

admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:01:29 +0000

I will present a paper called “Advances in Game Accessibility from 2005 to 2010″ at the HCI International 2011 conference.

First Lego League

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:35:21 +0000

DSV will have a “First Lego League” competion for kids in the nordic countries, on November 13.

Gamex

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:32:35 +0000

I was managing the booth for DSV at Gamex - the entertainment show this weekend (November 4-7). We had an “Avatar Factory” where kids could make avatars in plastic clay which we scanned in 3D with a ZScan. It was very popular. We also had games made by our students for visitors to play.

MS Kinect access roundtable

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:36:58 +0000

I will participate at the Microsoft Kinect Accessibility Roundtable in Redmond, Washington

Endnote: number of authors

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:54:00 +0000

Finally got a solution for how to fix the number of authors shown for references made with Endnote:

Edit/output styles/edit XX. Then select Author Lists under Bibliography.

(Thanks, Alfasoft!)

Live GDC 2010 blog

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:16:15 +0000

These are my live notes from the GDC 2010 in S.F.

Wednesday

Unity on MySpace (Tom Higgins)

Tom Higgins presents Unity3D
- 20 M active installations
- 500 Apps on App store - dominant middleware for iPhone
A guy from Cmune talks about their integration of Unity with Myspace and other social networks
using the Unity .NET backend and MySpace ID SDK to create what they claim the first “social shooter”, Paradise Paintball.

Picture the impossible: creating a city-wide ARG on a shoestring budget

Liz Lawley from RIT Lab for social computing presents

Activities connected to Rochester area events

Collaboration between newspaper and the RIT

Newspaper plan A: content & marketing, plan B: drupal website, server space, puzzles, news, photo content
RIT plan A: game design & tech, plan B: flash games, achievements DB, geo ocal activities, fundraising, gala party

Plan B was how it actually turned out

Documentation and collaboration, what worked well:
Design wiki to track the update instead of static design doc
Mailings lists
Face-to-face meetings

Colaboration with local charities (children hospital, food bank, single parents + kids)

Games: Local challenges, Newspaper puzzles, Flash web games

E.g.
- “take a picture and send them to us” from a list of items (e.g Rayban shades etc) - picture in the paper - social drive
- “scavenger hunts” to trail friends etc; 300 active phones each week. “E.g. go to the back of the museum” and then ask questions and take pictures

Entire back of sport pages devoted to the game

More examples:
Video based games, to learn about something and come back later to learn more
Map based games

2000+ players (registered) - through a survey 2-5 people shared the same account

community: 6500 posts, 907 threads, 0 trolls/flames

The games had 66% female players

150 photosynths were uploaded (MS Photosynth); contacted by MS afterwards to know where all these photosynths came from

Total budget: 49.000 USD (sponsoring from newspaper, Bing, RIT summer students, Kodak, local foundations)

Reached older people to start using digital tech through puzzles etc - to go to use Youtube, twitter etc

Serious uses for Playful worlds: University of There.com

Celia Pearce, Georgia Tech presents

In world observations of There.com

>50% women
age 15-70, concentration on older
1/3 disabled, due to older concentration

Using the avatar as a teaching tool. E.g. showing how texture are made, you walk around in the virtual world together with students inside the world or teaching a tool like gmax and the interface of that tool

Global game jam

A number of speakers presents different game jams and ideas of how to use them in education

Game jam = 2 days to make a game; design, feature lock, iteration

10 ways to use GGJ in education
- post mortem analysis: find patterns in what went right and wrong in articles on gamasutra etc; e.g. scope, communication, engine issues etc
- game analysis: use game jams as they are small compared to regular games
- minimum bar: if games made in 2 days has a certain qulality, games made with more time should be at least as good
- achievements:
- fix a broken game: fix a game jam that doesn’t work

Example game: GalaxyKate.com

Thursday @ Expo floor

Got little time for lectures today, I’ve been at the GDC Expo floor (talked to Unity, Nordic game program and others) and at the IGDA luncheon to network. Will meet Adobe over dinner tonight. Finally catched one interesting lecture:

Why some Wii games are more fun than others

Social game lab socialgamelab.bxmc.poly.edu
isbister@poly.edu

Movement is a radically new design issue

Wiimote is possible to cheat by just moving the wrist but people don’t play it this way, for psychological reasons

Reason#1Imitating real-life movement is a double-edged sword
- only a metaphor with limits and workarounds of imitating real-life movements; pick what is loved about the movement itself
- real movement has to be blended between existing control schemes
- pick moments where movement feels right
-preserve the core fun of the imitated movement
- keep the control scheme simple and consistent
- minmal button presses and complex combos

Force unleashed for the Wii vs Double edged sword
- FU too realistic which doesn’t work well due to the limitation of the accelerometer

Succesful examples
- Shaun white snowboarding
- Boom blox
- Wii Cheer
- Boogie superstar not so good

Conclusion
capture the joy of the movement
risky to combine tight button-press with broad movement

Reason #2: Movement cause emotions
- physical feedback loop, e.g. force someone to smile give a better experience

Example:
- Flower
- Wario Ware Smooth moves
- Urban spoon (rapid, tight movement) iPhone app. Creates an anticipation.

Conclusion
- realize you evoke emotions through motions
-learn about Laban Movement Analysis (movement taxonomy)

Book: Acting for animators

Reason #3: Showing what do to do is tricky

E.g. Showing how to dance with a written description of how to dance

In Boogie superstar a little figure showed up when you did wrong, confused the player

Force unleashed: the wiimote and nunchuck showed on the screen which worked well

Conclusions:
- use instructors observable actions
- try filming someone teaching someone else how to do these movements, to see what need explaining
- you cannot overcome bad metaphor by extensive tutorials

Reason #4: Awareness of feedback about play is different

Wii sports boxing: not waiting for point tallies; they’re waiting for the knockout

Game: Remote impact. Shadow boxing over a distance

Conclusions:
-create pleasurable, peripheral feedback can be more appropriate and satisfying
- the moment to moment plleasure is the important thing not the point tally
its a visceral immediate experience, not a heady strategic experience

Readon #5: Movement is Deeply social

- we love to move together (e.g dance)
- co-movement builds trust and connection
- we ‘catch’ feelings from one another
- doing embarrassing things together creates trust
- playing out social power dynamics and rivalries in group of friends is very fun
-consider the over-the-shoulder emotional experience
-consider the relationship qualities you want to create or enhance between the players
- experiment with new mechanics that really push this

Bok: Emotional contagion

Practical tip
Use “body storming” etc from the HCI community
Have a clear target experience in mind that drives the movement design; e.g Guitar hero - feeling of being a rockstar rather than simulating a guitar
Movement is more than icing on the cake
Use the strengths of movement (immersion, emotion, over the shoulder appeal, social bonding). Take calculated risks that exploits these strengths.

Friday

Tech art techniques

Speakers from Bioware, Autodesk (Maya), MS game studios and Volition

Tech animation, e.g. morpheme mocap procedural ani

maxscript to automate rigging based upon points where the bones should go

skin tools in maya 2010 too many button clicks and menus and popup tools, simplified in Maya 2011

3dsmax is used at bioware, where they export to morpheme and setup the anim state machines. Morpheme allow animator to implement animation, but takes one extra step in the pipeline

make requests to tech guys to simplify tasks, remove button clicks

naming to put properties to things
use userdata for markups

facial animation

tag bones for letting the simulation do it in the game

math expression on joints eg stay parallell to the ground, to have more IK than FK. The math helps blend and follow through between animations.

puppetshop 3dsmax script

resources:
tech-artists.org
cgtalk

3-6 animators per tech animator

optimization: minimize deformer, maya 2009 colored graph of performance bottlenecks

AAA titles accessible through controller hacks

At this poster session the IGDA Game accessibility SIG presented ways of making AAA games accessible through various controller hacks. About 30 people attended.

Expo floor: Gamma IV One button games

Art direction of Batman Arkham asylum

darkness enables play with light

Keypoints
-distinction
-true to the comics
-stylization (comics)
-colorful, close to comics
-dark gothic mood, shadows etc
-living character, historic environments
-realism, feel of

Hyper real
-more real than real (in painting)
-inability to distinguish reality from fantasy (semiotics)
-e.g. fotomodeller som är retuscherade

Merge comics style with hyper real

The characters
-keep true essence
-layer of realism
-enhancing
-merge

In the model
- skin
-eye
- hair
- lighting (e.g ögonen, blank)

In the emotion
- virtual makeup
- hollywood actors
- alteration

in stylization
-improbable cast
-comics style with an edge
blending fantasy and reality

advantages
- uncanny valley

Winning formula
-beautiful vs ugly

The environment
- variety
- gothic styles
- victorian

Primnclples
- perspeective
- verticality
- crooked
- mix styles: contrasts between different places (color, theme, element,atmosphere)

Visual narration
-pacing te environment - e.g med ljussättning, titta här
-emotional rollercoaster, contrast in environment - due to normalization, you get used to it
-point of focus (player attention, few elements, lighting, framing
-warm and cool colors (readability, contrast)

Advantage of lighting
-composition
-show and hide
-save time, framerate, memory

Athmospheric perspective
- nonlinear fog

Saturday

Designing Shadow Complex
Donald Mustard, ChAIR

Making a commercial downloadable game in the 15 USD range

Embrace the limitations:
- genre: differentiate from AAA games
- budget: no market, no PR –> unique enough, find what a small game can do that a big budget, retail game can’t
- tech: don’t just a cheap version of their favorite retail title
- team
- memory: max 150 MB

Planning in gestural prototyping
-plan but plan smart: no lengthy documents - create game play
-know the end from the beginning: find the core and stick to it; all features must support the core
-gesture it all in: get the whole game up and running fast, focus on the core loop, once core is fun you can make smart cuts. The opposite of a vertical slice.

Used Illustrator to lay out an entire 2D side scroller version of the game with a character to “play” it directly in Illustrator using social interaction. Defined the core game loop. Then went into the Unreal editor. Pace it out with signs such as “Boss fight” or “Cinematic”. Combat was used as contrast to the core game loop.

Find the fun
-boil it down to the pure essence of fun: memory restriction to focus on what is needed for the fun. Once fun, easier to polish and production value.

Cut early, cut deep
-identify smart cuts early before you invest significant time or resource

The fully integrated experience
-features - core fun, interact with or enhance every other feature

Game accessibility roundtable

The IGDA Game accessibility SIG held a roundtable

Speaker at CGAT 2010

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:11:25 +0000

I will present my paper “500 gamers’ access” at Computer Games, Multimedia and Allied Technologies, Singapore 2010.

Thomas Westin @ DSV