Clickable Culture Official research blog of Phantom Compass: Culture, technology, commerce, and play. 2008-09-04T02:06:18Z Copyright (c) 2008, Tony Walsh Clickable Culture tag:secretlair.com,2008:09:04 SXSW 2008 Notes:  Jane McGonigal’s Keynote tag:secretlair.com,2008:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5261 2008-03-11T20:28:00Z 2008-03-11T20:45:31Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2008 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Rough notes liveblogged from Jane McGonigal's keynote presentation at SXSW...

The Lost Ring has been in pay for a week, there are already over 100 screen grabs from the game trailer posted to flickr.

We need more alternate realities... the real world needs to be redesigned as a game...

Slide: "A game designer's perspective on the future of happiness"

Research around the subject of happiness... the science of happiness... we've started to see a backlash after a period of happiness study... one area of study looks specifically at what makes us happy and function well... it's been all over the popular press...

There's an amazing parallel between what makes us happy and the core tenets of game design...


Backlash: "Against Happiness," Eric G. Wilson

This is a new kind of happiness--brain, body, high quality of life, the best human experiences possible, defined by rigorous scientific research... [examples of happiness metrics]

Slide: "Are you in the happiness business?"

Jane doesn't think most of us are. But we will be / have to be.

Slide: "Future forecast (2013)"
-- quality of life becomes the primary metric for evaluating all interactives
-- positive psychology will be a principle influence on design and dev
-- communities will form around different visions of a "real life worth living"
-- value == increase in real happiness == the new capital

Slide: "Happiness is the new capital"
-- If you want someone to value your service, it has to contribute to quality of life.
-- Happiness doesn't mean what it used to, the internet has changed all that.
1) Satisfying work
2) Experience of being good at something
3) Time spent with people we like
4) The chance to be part of something bigger than ourselves
Games gives you the above better than anything else.

Slide: "Multiplayer games are the ultimate happiness engine"
-- MMO developers are leading the interactive industry

Slide: "Signals"
-- photo: I'm not good at life graffiti.
-- games are set up to make us good at things we aren't good at in real life
-- games give us legions of allies who want to help us
-- games give us amazing visualizations of a world of data that would overwhelm us in real life
-- games give us encouragement and feedback like we don't get in real life
-- games give us a sense of progression and development we don't get elsewhere
-- games are a "better" community... intensely collaborative... we feel a part of something

Slide: "A global mass exodus"
-- towards VWs and game worlds
-- quoting Ted Castronova
-- we spend more time, money, passion, and energy in VWs because they give us the chance to succeed and learn
-- time spent in game "keeps going up"
-- we can design games to capture customers, but maybe we can take learning from game design and bring it to the real world so we don't need to escape

Slide: quality of life is better in virtual worlds than real world for many gamers

Why are we making games only for the bounds of the computer, why not use hte games to navigate and meet people in the real world.

Slide: "Chore wars"
-- parents love it

Slide: games are fun... games not so much...

Slide: seriosity, serios...
-- gaming the workplace, virtual currency
-- can visualize the virtual currency flow, could be used to improve workplace, org structure

Slide: "Signals--what do they mean?"
-- to imagine the future, we have to look back twice as far as you are looking forward
-- e.g. in 1931, LA Times headline "SOAP KILLS GERMS." The Romans had soap. I think games are like soap. We should have them everywhere. Why don't we have games everywhere to kill lack of engagement, anxiety, lack of confidence, depression.
-- ARG designers are trying to embed happiness engines in real life
-- [defines ARG]

Slide: world without oil
-- explains the premise: players co-create fiction of oil crash
-- people changed their lifestyles to play along
-- overview of extensive areas of UGC
-- we can still review all the game content, lots of ways to browse, players helped to document this
-- we can all still "play" by making changes

Silde: How ARGs are improving human happiness
Mobbability- large scale collaboration
Influency- ability to adapt persuasive strategies for a certain audience
Ping Quotient- ability to reach out and respond to people in a network
Multi Capitalism- different ways to exchange capital (i.e. carbon trading), different types of capital
Cooperation Radar- who would make the perfect collaborator in a certain context
Open authorship- comfort with giving content away and knowing it will be changed, not just as an attitude but also as a design skill (permitting multi authors)
Emergensight- you can spot patterns as they start to bubble up, you can take advantage of them, manage the chaos/mess
Protovation- rapid, fearless innovation, where failure is fun, fail quickly, fail often
Signal/Noise management- gamers can handle a lot of noise and know which bit of info is relevant
Longbroading- the ability to think in bigger systems, zoomed out
These (above) amplify our tendencies to improve human happiness.

Slide: Where do we go next?
-- Twitter is a good place to start.
-- Nike iPod
-- need more social applications for software
-- planes should be used as a game platform, what can we do on a plane
-- I need a game to fix my boredom at the dog park... there are social networks for dogs... metrics for dog travel... need an MMO where you're a dog...
-- "My Car is a Video Game" (blog)
-- trackstick (hardware)- Jane's favorite toy, tracks/lifelogs locative data
-- neurosky cognitive transmitter can read emotion, wants to destroy her enemies with this

The Lost Ring:
-- ARG for Beijing Olympics.
-- you can discover a long lost sport. in this game you can become the best at this sport
-- this alternate reality


1) Soon, most of us will be in the happiness business
2) Game designers have a huge head start
3) ARGs are important for all of us to redesign reality for a higher quality of life


[from Q&A] Lost Ring will run for 6 months, sponsored by McDonald's, Jane likens sponsorship to when Proctor & Gamble sponsored soap operas. McDonald's partnership makes this large scale ARG possible.

Comments?]]> Guy Parsons On Rock’n’Roll Storytelling tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5113 2007-10-09T13:49:00Z 2007-10-09T13:22:46Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Former Perplex City ops-team member Guy Parsons has posted a web version of a recent presentation entitled "Text, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll," wherein he engagingly argues that stories can become more participatory by injecting rock'n'roll--loosely defined in the context of his presentation as "jumping off the author's stage and diving headlong into the crowd..." -- a crowd Parsons knows (as do others in the ARG, live-game, and participatory fiction space) from first-hand experience is capable of "waiting to catch you with open arms" and co-authoring the experience.

I'd like to see more rock'n'roll in more forms of media, but I don't think that sort of mashup is necessarily a superior form of culture. I'm a bit tired of futurists telling us how one-way media is "dead," but I think Parson's barking up the right tree in explaining why participatory culture is an attractive and satisfying option for engaging contemporary audiences.
Comments?]]> links for 2007-09-28 tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5101 2007-09-28T11:18:00Z 2007-09-30T14:12:15Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Comments?]]> links for 2007-09-26 tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5098 2007-09-26T11:23:00Z 2007-09-26T23:55:24Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Comments?]]> ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ Tabletop Goes Digital tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5054 2007-08-21T14:34:00Z 2007-08-21T13:57:03Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
I first started playing the legendary tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons around 1980 with my grade-school friends, so it's with a veteran's eye I've watched the game morph over the years and through its various editions. Although I haven't been following D&D closely, my understanding is that the game has been "dumbed down" in recent years in order to lower the barrier to participation. In the last year or so, it seems to have returned to its roots as little more than a miniatures-based battle game.

Earlier this month the 4th Edition of D&D was announced, including D&D Insider, an internet-based platform for the game allowing players to connect remotely. Today, technology developer Vivox (about which I've previously written) announced it will be bringing voice communication to D&D Insider. So much for the venerable tabletop.

Maybe I'm wallowing in nostalgia, but the best role-playing game experiences usually involve face-to-face participation. I ran a 3 year-long D&D campaign using Neverwinter Nights a few years ago, and while the digital environment is great for bringing people together from all parts of the world, it lacks the visceral quality that tabletop and live-action gaming is drenched in. Scenes painted by the human imagination trump the best computer graphics any day of the week.
Comments?]]> Digital Cameras Reveal Hidden Messages? tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5035 2007-08-13T14:52:00Z 2007-08-13T14:10:59Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
David Fono introduced me to Kameraflage, a display technology that takes advantage of the fact that digital cameras can "see" infrared light. Content rendered in infrared light--normally invisible to the naked eye--can be viewed and photographed digitally.

The Kameraflage web site indicates the technology will be used in cinemas, facilitating per-person subtitling (viewers watch the movie through their camera-enabled device), but I don't think much of this application. Why watch a movie while sitting in a theater through a cameraphone? In my view, the killer app for Kameraflage is in stamping cinema screens with a geo-temporal watermark so that pirated copies of movies can be tracked more effectively (or obscuring the screens completely to digital cameras). I'm not sure why Kameraflage technology would be needed for this--if there's such a thing as infrared lasers, it'd be trivial to use existing technology to paint over the screen.

Until this weekend, I had no idea that infrared light could be photographed with an unmodified digital camera. As David points out, "The mobile phone becomes a personal magnifying glass that reveals secrets — and every object becomes a potential clue." Lots of applications here for games involving the real world. If standard computer screens and TV screens could emit an infrared layer, even more possibilities open up.
Comments?]]> ‘Pirate Master’ Walks the Plank tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.5021 2007-08-07T15:25:00Z 2007-08-07T11:44:27Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
So-called "reality" TV show Pirate Master has been fed to the sharks. While it started out promising enough, the show ended up sailed into Uninteresting Territory after a few episodes--really, it was a pity the producers didn't just mount a piratey live-action role playing game instead of a TV series.

Skotos Tech's Shannon Appelcline provides a detailed account of Pirate Master's game play, finding that the use of real money as part of the in-game rewards system invited human jealousy (creating dramatic tension) and the introduction of barter added pleasing variety to game play. Applecline's analysis pairs up nicely with a few brief observations I made about the show's design last month. I'd still love to know how games like Pirate Master are play-tested.
Comments?]]> Wii Workout tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4954 2007-07-12T15:37:00Z 2007-07-12T14:49:30Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Even a little wiggling around is better than no wiggling at all, which explains how the Wii Weight Loss guy and Wii Sports Experiment guy have melted some fat, or why the game Dance Dance Revolution was added to the State of West Virginia's school curriculum.

Adding fuel to the fat-burning fire, Nintendo has reportedly revealed new Wii hardware and software intended to increase gamer health. According to TG Daily, players stand atop the Wii Balance Board, which measures body weight and balance. The Wii Fit software will use the Balance Board to chart the results of a fitness regime over time. Nintendo will apparently be adding Wii Balance Board support to future games. I can see surfing games working really well with this, or relaxation games which require stillness, or (obviously) dancing games.

I'm keen to try out the Wii Fit system: It seems like a great example of the productive play I wish more game companies would get involved in.
Comments?]]> How Is A ‘Reality’ TV Game Play-Tested? tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4951 2007-07-11T16:35:00Z 2007-07-11T16:00:47Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Maybe this is too early to call, but it seems "reality" TV game show Pirate Master is suffering from a bit of a positive feedback loop issue--the better the leading team performs, the better the leading team performs. This apparent flaw results from the intersection of game's design with the live human and environmental aspect. What's happening is that the lesser of the two teams (the "crew") works harder, eats less, drinks more alcohol, and has drastically lower morale than the Captain and his mates, resulting in a physical and mental downward spiral for the underdogs. Perhaps this is all part of the plan, or perhaps there's a design team standing by to make changes to the game as it progresses--obviously if the show continues as it is currently, it won't be very dramatic.

I don't know a thing about how "reality" TV game shows are designed and developed, but I'm curious to know if and how they're play-tested prior to deployment. I hope testing consists of more than just a dry-run on paper--it seems prudent to involve live testers in the same environments as the game will be staged in, as environment can easily trump game mechanics. Anyone have an inside scoop on how testing is conducted?
Comments?]]> Are Computer Games Really That Different From Non-Digital games? tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4918 2007-06-25T20:49:00Z 2007-06-25T20:53:34Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Michaël Samyn of Tale of Tales (maker of The Endless Forest) lists ten differences between computer games and traditional ones. How well do computer games and traditional ones contrast? It depends on your definition of "traditional."

I always enjoy reading the Tale of Tales blog, even if I rarely agree completely with the team's strong opinions. Given today's post, I think a tighter definition of "traditional" is needed--Samyn doesn't seem to have considered tabletop role playing games, but says in the comments section of the blog that all non-digital games are considered "traditional." Although I use the term "traditional" to refer to non-digital games, I feel it would be useful to break this down into subcategories "classic" (e.g. Chess, Mah Jong, Solitaire) and "contemporary" (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40k, Magic: The Gathering, LARPs, ARGs). Faced with contemporary, rather than classic non-digital games, computer games aren't as unique as Samyn argues.

As a personal footnote for future reference, I have quoted Samyn in bold with my comments in plain text. These aren't meant to be a point-by-point rebuttal (one isn't warranted, really), just my thoughts as I move through his list...

1. Intimacy...Most computer games, including many multiplayer ones, are played by single humans behind a machine. This is one of the most unique and powerful properties of the interactive medium. The intimacy between the game and its user creates a potential depth of mental exploration unseen before in any medium. [If we're talking about "any" medium, oral storytelling and tabletop roleplaying come to mind as comparable, if not superior, to digital games in terms of mental exploration--but as Samyn points out in a comment on his blog post, solo games are technically more intimate than multiplayer ones.]

2. Stories are more important than rules... [Except when you're a rules-player (as opposed to role-player), or except when we're talking about a video game like Tetris, which has no story at all. Sometimes the "mental exploration" in a game (see point 1 above) is more about discovering the parameters and limits of a system of rules than exploring storyworlds, regardless of whether or not the story is any good.]

3. Immersion... A traditional game can be absorbing. But you always remain an outsider...Computer games allow you to step into their worlds, to become part of the events. [Pen and paper roleplaying games facilitate deep immersion. I also believe that immersion is possible with other tabletop games, even those like Candy Land which provide an inviting canvas for the imagination of certain players.]

4. Not (just) for children... [Samyn says that computer games are not the same as games for kids. I don't think computer games are all that different, which is why I think learning how to play and create traditional games is a good way to learn how to make computer games. Simple systems can grow into (or constitute a part of) more complex systems.]

5. An artistic medium...Games have their function in society but they are generally not considered very high on the cultural ladder. Computer games are different. [If that were true, Manhunt 2 wouldn't have been banned in the UK. I reckon computer games are lower than traditional ones on the cultural ladder. Chess versus Custer's Revenge, anyone?] ...What we experience in computer games, stays with us, becomes engraved in our memory, becomes part of who we are. [No argument here, except that this isn't limited to computer games, in my opinion. I bet champion Chess or Scrabble players remember their matches quite well. I personally remember certain tabletop game incidents which transpired over the last 30 years or so. My memory is so engraved with "traditional" game play that I'm compelled to write a lengthy blog post about how computer game play is similar, rather than dissimilar.]

6. Players as authors... Traditional games have strict rules. Because of this strictness, you can predict all possible outcomes of any game, based solely on analysis of the rules. [Impossible to predict the outcome of a tabletop RPG. Impossible to predict the outcome of Flux (isn't it?).] Computer games, on the other hand, are much less predictable. While many of them still contain rules (although their strictness is fading with each generation), these rules tend to create options rather than diminish them. So much so that a player can play a game in ways that surprise even its creator. [Any tabletop game with a sufficiently complex rules system can facilitate emergent play. Many RPGs and wargames fit this description.] Players can bend the rules to create new games, overcome obstacles by simply combining rules and objects in unexpected ways and they can exploit bugs for fun. [Same with GURPS, Champions, or any other complex rules system, paper or computer-based.] Many computer games take advantage of this creative potential and encourage the player to co-author the experience. [Again: RPGs and wargames. Anyone who was a "traditional" gamer in the 1970s and 80s knows what I'm talking about.]

7. Aesthetics are more important than systems... You can play a perfectly satisfactory game with a few rocks and some sticks. It’s the activity of manipulating those objects that constitutes the experience. [Part of the experience relates to the qualities of the game tokens. Another part of the experience relates to the rules embodied or affected by the use of these tokens.] ...Hardcore gamers may pretend that the looks of a game don’t matter to them, but you won’t find many Halo-owners playing Wolfenstein3D. [That's because Halo has a more complex rules system and affords a broader range of play options, not solely because of the graphics. It's also worth noting that Wolfenstein3D is a single-player game whereas Halo has a robust multi-player mode available.] We want our games to be pretty so much that competition in an entire industry is based almost exclusively on how beautiful the products are. [Sadly true. Is there such a thing as a beautiful rule? I think so.]

8. Persistent social context... A traditional game constitutes a context within which a social event takes place. Very often, games are used to create such an event. Families playing scrabble together. A son challenging his father to chess. Etcetera.
Computer games, while often played alone, have a much longer-lasting social impact. To some extent, one could say that the social element of games only starts when you stop playing, while in traditional games, the social situation dissolves when the game ends. [No offense intended to Samyn, but the lack of background in contemporary non-digital gaming is really showing through. Tabletop games, particularly repeat play or group play of contemporary games, generally includes between-session socialization. Serious gamers discuss strategies, tactics, stories, character development, rules, meta-game issues, plans for future play, etc.]

9. No losing... Contrary to traditional games, computer games cannot be lost. This is especially true for single player games. When people say they lost a computer game, they actually mean that they failed to accomplish a certain task... [Don't know if I agree here. More study needed. Cross-reference with this blog post.]

10. Cheating is allowed... In computer games, cheating is often as much fun as obeying the rules. Traditional games break instantly as soon as you start cheating. But computer games often include cheat codes that allow you to have unlimited money or be invulnerable, etc. Traditional games would dissolve instantly if the rules were broken like that, but computer games become all the more fun. [Classic games, maybe. Contemporary games, not necessarily. Certain games definitely break if cheating is introduced. On the other hand, it's arguable that the presence of a cheat-code precludes the ability to cheat (is cheating by design really breaking the rules?). I don't generally use cheat-codes in computer games because I want to try to succeed within the normal constraints of the game.]
Comments?]]> Mixed-Reality Magician Wins ‘Virtual NBC’ Talent Contest tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4907 2007-06-15T22:22:00Z 2007-06-15T23:10:52Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
SLNN reports that a magician in the real and virtual world has won a million Linden Dollars (worth nearly $4000 USD) through slight-of-hand. Avatar Tuna Oddfellow reportedly cast a quite a spell over audiences of Virtual NBC's "Avatar's Got Talent" contest held in Second Life, and wins not only in-world currency, but a chance to appear on the real NBC TV show America's Got Talent.

I saw Oddfellow's real-world counterpart "Fish the Magish" perform live during South by Southwest earlier this year. He put on a really entertaining show, very much a "classic" magician if there is such a thing. While most real magicians don't reveal their secrets, avatar magicians are a little looser-lipped--Oddfellow told SLNN that his Second Life performance combines custom visual effects and scripts with gestural animations bought via in-world merchants or donated by friends. Pity I missed his virtual show, it would have been interesting to compare it to his real-world show.
Comments?]]> I Wish I’d Had a ‘Knightmare’ tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4894 2007-06-05T16:31:00Z 2007-07-12T20:34:56Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Mr. Hon directed my short-attention-span to Knightmare, a mixed-reality TV game show celebrating its 20th anniversary this September. Aimed at and starring kids, Knightmare covered terrain well-trodden by infamous role playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

Game play was quite unique (as described by the Wikipedia). A team of kids were split into a group of guides and a single dungeoneer. The dungeoneer wore a vision-obscuring helmet, and was shown via an in-studio TV screen to the guides. Superimposed on a fantasy background, the dungeoneer relied on remote guidance to get through the adventure safely. I found the game idea really clever, with obvious links to tabletop and computer games--apparently game books and a board game were spun off from the show, making this an early cross-media experience.

I might be the only person in North America who's never seen the show, but in case you're similarly Knightmare-challenged, YouTube's got a mess of badly-compressed TV clips for review.
Comments?]]> Go, Game! tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4892 2007-06-04T04:37:00Z 2007-06-04T04:44:50Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
Today I rampaged through the Mission District of San Francisco with a team of intrepid adventurers partaking in the Go Game, a technology-driven, urban puzzle-hunt with hints of live-action role playing and alternate reality gaming. Six teams of roughly five players each took to the streets, receiving mission instructions from a WiFi-enabled phone, and documenting their follies with a digital camera over a 2 - 3 hour period.

Tasks included a mix of clue-driven scavenging, interaction with non-player characters, and creative performance. My team, for example, had to recreate a famous moment in history with 30 seconds of video footage. We chose the splitting of the atom. Reviewing the footage collected from all teams at the end of the game was good fun.

Overall, I enjoyed the game, particularly since I haven't had a chance to tour San Francisco since arriving last Friday. I found the technology aspect a bit cumbersome, though. One of the co-founders of the game told me that play via any mobile phone is planned, which would really expand the possibilities for the Go Game, although I think the ideal situation would be to play with pay phones or voice calls on mobiles as an option in addition to text. Currently the game is played via text-based instructions and responses, which has its charms, but proved a little clunkier than I'd hoped. If they're going to stick with technology, I'd like to see a locative aspect added. Here's to the continuing evolution of the Go Game, which I understand is also available in my home town of Toronto.
Comments?]]> Live-Action Role Playing Hits Mainstream TV tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4889 2007-06-01T01:30:00Z 2007-06-02T15:32:21Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
I just finished watching the premier episode of Pirate Master. Despite what you might think, it's not the latest "reality show" to crest TV's high seas. I see the show as a televised live-action role playing (LARP) game, except that none of the players seem to know how to stay in character.

Pirate Master has everything a good LARP should: A great setting, an intriguing storyline, a rabble of unrelated characters who must find a way to work with or against each other to achieve victory, some of the best props I've ever seen in a game, a solid set of rules, tests of physical and mental skill, and a games-master lurking in the shadows. Can a TV version of True Dungeon be far behind?
Comments?]]> Game Sketching with John Buchanan tag:secretlair.com,2007:index.php?/clickableculture/7.4884 2007-05-28T21:03:00Z 2007-05-28T20:31:58Z Tony Walsh http://www.phantomcompass.com/ Tony Walsh for Clickable Culture, available via Atom. Copyright (c) 2007 in whole or in part, Tony Walsh.]
While on a working trip to Tasmania, I had the pleasure of meeting John Buchanan, Director of Carnegie Mellon's ETC in Adelaide, Australia. I participated in Buchanan's demonstration of a "Game Sketch" system he's working on with his students. Game sketching is a method of pre-prototyping the basic interactivity for the purposes of playing with game ideas. Although technology-independent, Buchanan and his students have developed a 3D tool where simple interactive systems and play modes can be toyed with. Using this tool, any simple 3D object can be made into a controllable game piece with rudimentary functionality. The tool is destined to be distributed free, without a license, from what I hear.

As with any kind of sketch, the purpose is to boil a concept down to its essence by removing distractions. The multi-user tool actually relies on live puppeteering and moderation--not unlike tabletop or live-action roleplay. In this way, play situations can be changed on the fly without downtime resulting from having to create new assets or scripts. The demonstration in Tasmania actually involved live performance (I played a ninja!) as a substitute for the tool, which was having trouble with limited network bandwidth. The experience was a bit similar to what I know as "paper prototyping" which often involves sketched elements moderated by a human controller.

I plan to add game sketching--without any kind of computer-based tool--to the game design courses I'm teaching. I already focus on a series of basic interaction design exercises, but I think sketching would be a useful bridge between these and full-fledged game prototypes. It's important for students to understand that good games boil down to good game play, regardless of presentation. Thanks, John, for introducing me to game sketching!
Comments?]]>