Ethan Kennerly

Our MFA thesis and Advanced Game Project is recruiting. Runesinger is a videogame to practice Korean through play. We are seeking three creative coders and many more playtesters. Do you know someone interested?

Proceedings from the April 2008 conference, entitled "Communication, Interaction and Social Intelligence" at the University of Aberdeen are now online. The scope of the proceedings is broad, as the titles to the twelve volumes reveal. Many of the symposia of this AISB conference are of direct interest to designers of interactive artifacts, such as virtual creatures, brain computer interface, and multimodal output. For example, Diana's thesis of a plush interface suggested to me that Probo's trunk and padding design is relevant: the design of the head and an emotional interface for the huggable robot.

Of course, my motive in posting is that I'm happy to see my paper included: Open Problems in Simulation and Story Analysis

Maya Churi displayed in rich, traditional Korean color of umber, commonly seen in charred wood-engravings from centuries bygone, the verb phrase in full 3D: 잘먹겠습니다. This is a short, highly formal sentence that I would analyze as (잘) "well" (먹) "eat" (겠) "will" (습니다) politely spoken to an honored person. A translation might be "Sir or madam, I will eat well." A phrase similar to this is commonly spoken when food is offered.

And that is why Maya is a genius. Her evocative knowledge object displayed traditional Korean grammar, stroke formation, color, and even on a wooden grain similar to the popular antique plaques in Korea, while the words themselves were made of brownies. The medium was the message, artfully executed. It was multisensory, with its primary sense, taste, being the salient verb 먹다. And its delicious taste lived up to the promise that it literally embodied. Maya: 잘먹었습니다 (잘) "well" (먹) "eat" (었) "did" (습니다) politely spoken to an honored person. "I ate well."

And so I'm led to I wonder about other graphical, object-construction, and multimedia techniques that I can employ to artfully compose the meaning of the words into their embodiment. Maya has gone beyond visual alphabet techniques that compose the shape of a letter in a word into an memorable object, which is a popular mnemonic for teaching alphabets of many languages. She has embedded the meaning, the intention, and even the affordances of how to use her evocative knowledge object into the medium. I'll have to digest this inspiration during the summer, and explore how I can emulate the perfection of this piece.

The class recognized the care and brilliance of the work, and they wanted very much to learn the language from the object itself, but as far as I could detect, even among those that asked to learn about the meaning or pronunciation, language learning was fleeting and the inspiration to practice was absent. So I'll also have to contemplate the additional requirement of inspiring the user to practice a language with which the user is not yet competent. Maya's work inspired me to redouble this pursuit. For that, Maya: 감사합니다 (There is humble appreciation).

Continuing my infatuation with the method of loci, I presented a walk around panorama that introduces the image schema for user interface design of videogames. Here are the slides for the 14-screen panorama. Compared to my previous panoramas, I think the parsominious and iconic content and black background avoided the problem of overloading the user with multimedia. As you might guess, all slides were composed of copy-and-pasted shapes from Pac-man and Ms Pac-man.

If you are curious (and contact or comment), then I'll decipher the images by writing the verbal content of my talk. In any case, below are links that I found illuminating.

The term "image schema" itself makes more sense when an applicable etymology (or at least a mnemonic device) is teased out. Schema in psychology refers to plans derived from patterns that will lead to behavior. I suspect, but am not certain, that "image" in image schema most closely matches the meaning of image in mathematics, and has no other meaningful association with pictorial images. An image is the target of a function for mapping one domain to another. Domain mapping is one popular frame for discussing conceptual metaphors.

Last summer, while researching theoretical foundations for my thesis, I became introduced to image schemas in Jerome Feldman's excellent summary of the state of research in embodied cognitive linguistics, From Molecule to Metaphor. The notion of an image schema first became popular among cognitive linguists, for its nearly comprehensive ability to decipher how humans think about words. In the linguistic context an image schema explains how abstract concepts are mapped onto a template scenario that may be physically simulated. A handful of image schemas can explain how your mind processes much of the conversation that you listen to and generate.

But image schemas explain even more than language; they explain many kinds of symbolic behavior. Image schemas may be observed in the interface design of virtual reality and has framed the design of some tangible interaction. The artful application of appropriate image schemas can enhance concept communication in graphic design. Since I design games, I noticed a spooky parallel between image schemas and user interface design, such as the primacy of the source-path-goal in the level design of Super Mario Bros, the in-out schema in Go's territories and Diablo's health display and inventory system. I suspect that many effective user interfaces leverage image schemas to communicate efficiently to the user's subconscious mind.

Yet I'm a designer and not a cognitive scientist, so would appreciate your comments and corrections that lead to a more accurate understanding of how to apply image schemas to the design of interactive media.

Per Peggy's assignment here is a posted schedule:

At this time I have prepared for my thesis such that I need: a second IMD advisor, a proposal document, and a polished presentation. This week I did:
3/26/2008 Present work-in-progress to first potential IMD advisor. Construct alphabet prototype. Build installer.

Next week I am speaking at AISB in Scotland on simulation and story analysis in game design.
4/3/2008 N/A (present simulation and story analysis)

The following weeks, for the proposal I am doing the following:

4/10/2008 Present work-in-progress to second potential IMD advisor.
4/17/2008 Draft proposal. Submit to Advanced Game Project.
4/25/2008 Revise proposal. Prepare proposal presentation.

Thanks for hosting Ian!

There, we brainstormed for an hour or two. One of the ideas we brainstormed was Stock Surfer, in which you surf the value of a stock.

The simulation sounded similar to the simulation mechanics of Trip on a Funny Boat. That game's Python code is an excellent example of how to program a simple, yet well-organized and easy to modify game. So excellent, that we modified it.

After three hours that night, mostly by Ian and myself, we had working code for seeing data-driven stock waves.

After two more hours on Sunday, I put in a crude shark and drag when climbing a steep wave.

Charlie Silver also contributed Friday. He drew the surfer and shark jaws.

Ian, hope you host a jam again soon!

Here is a timeline that I presented on the panorama in ZML.

And here are the notes that informed that presentation.

Here is the website for Runesinger.

Thank you for your comments!

According to last month's news, forwarded by fellow INTP Morris Cox to MUD-Dev...

NASA is requesting information to potentially develop a virtual world for education.

NASA has had an eye on virtual worlds for a number of years and purposes, from simulation to enterprise.

I was going to comment on each person's blog/thesis site individually, but as I scrolled through the entries on the Thesis Preparation blog, this became a daunting and intractable task. Noone (not me either) has a recent post whereat comments may be posted. So, I'll just make a post here based on the 5-10 minute presentation from yesterday's class before the weekend erases my impressions.

These are short impressions for short presentations. To start off with, I personally would benefit from studying each in detail, rather than making a short-attention span traversal of 11 projects in 110 minutes. In my personal opinion, such rapid fire presentation and comments leads to hasty and shallow feedback, low investment by both the presenter and the audience.*** I apologize if I criticize something that you already have, but just didn't have time to delve into within the 5-10 minute constraint.

Here they are, not with the title given by their presenter, but with a word that I remember about the project; I mean all of them respectfully as feedback on what echoed in the mind of one listener. Roughly in the order of what I remember of the presentations.

Jamie Antonisse - "Story collector"

+ The prototype is fully interactive and testable.

+ The mechanics combined adventure game key/lock mechanics and set collection.

- In the current incarnation, I'm intimidated by the time investment-to-emotional payoff ratio of playing.

- I'm not yet associating the mechanics with any story.

RJ Layton - "Walk to the death chamber"

+ You evoked a psychoanalytical experience that reminds me of Timothy Leary's Book of the Dead audio recording, or one of the death pseudo-rituals of Carlos Casteneda, or shamanistic traditions from ancient times to modern LSD trips.

+ The prototype was rehearsable.

- Partly, because of the identical user interface for each decision (yet disregarding the paper prototype's construction), the consequence of the decisions felt like one of those folded paper flowers, capricious.

- As presented, I suspect that you'll face a combinatorial explosion of assets that plague branching narratives.

Andrea Rodriguez - "Cardinal poses"

+ The cardinal colors, symmetrical architecture, ritualistic compass, and mysterious user expectation evoked a mystical, almost religious, mood.

+ The prototype clearly indicated a space and an artifact.

- If dance is essential to your thesis, I did not associate this with dance.

- As presented, the technology of interaction seems nebulously defined.

Maya Churi - "Face/displace"

+ Familiar faces are visually and socially engaging.

+ The prototype clearly showed an example configuration.

- As presented, I wasn't sure what my motivation as a user would be to interact with the piece. Many ideas were brought up, but nothing stuck in my mind.

Mike Rossmassler - "Time sink"

+ Novel mechanics of space-time.

+ The visual cue helped me correlate avatar time-rate to virtual environment interaction.

- The presented prototype did not evoke the visual cue.

Andre Clark - "Panorama stick figure war"

+ The stick figures provided entertainment in their own form. I had fun with a shadow puppet play.

- The mechanics of flag capture felt ill-defined. Overall, I wasn't convinced what depth of tactics the simulation would support.

Al Yang - "Casual MMO team alchemy"

+ The focus on casual MMOs made sense.

+ Research was authoritative.

- I didn't understand what the mechanics were, so I wasn't confident they'd be more fun than the mainstream class models.

Jack McMahan - "Sound sniper"

- There's no protype in the core modality: audition, so if someone asked, I wouldn't be able to say what the audial experience is. Even a manual rehearsal or recorded sound would provide a low-fidelity aural experience.

Diana Hughes - "T-shirt display"

+ The diagram of the t-shirt drew my eyes in to its technically-motivated grid.

- I haven't heard what emotional or social problem the t-shirt solves better than an alternative portable device in a way that motivates me to wear one.

- I can't currently imagine an example of the user experience.

*** Looking forward, I've had positive experience with a class that focused on each project for at least half an hour each and required the presenter to have submitted documentation 3 days before class, which the was class was required to read before discussion. Taking turns, only three works were due each class.

Today while playing Puzzle Bobble around the corner from me, I noticed that my loss felt a little bit random, even though playing it convinces me it is deterministic. The sense of randomness, yet with exposed mechanics, reminded me of RJ Layton's gumball pachinko prototype, which I played with and was wondering what about its design inclined me to play. I saw the buckets below the pegs, wheel, and bumpers. I speculated on how I could land a gumball in the highest scoring bucket (in the center, flanked by the losing buckets). I could choose which horizontal position to roll the ball down, and I had a little influence on making a low risk play on the side or high risk in the center (which Masahiro Sakura discussed much better than I can).

To speculate as conjecture, I'll hypothetically suppose that part of the motivation to interact with RJ's pachinko prototype was an illusory belief about the control over the outcome. From events where control really does exist (such as tossing a ball in beer pong at the beginning of an undergrad party), to where it doesn't (such as tossing the ball at the end of the party), there seems to be a feeling that if you can observe the results of your input, then there is a subconscious assumption of control.

The phenomena of illusory control through perceptible dynamics seems to have plenty of ubiquitous examples, from the flip of a coin (when its result is called in the air) to a fair game of rock, paper, scissors. In dice games, such as Craps or Dungeons & Dragons, the players have a superstitious belief in the user's influence on the die roll. In card games and even non-game card rituals (such as Tarot card divination), there is a subconscious sense of either control or destiny, too, but it is not as strong as the feeling that particular gesture on shaken fair dice (barring barrel rolling techniques) will have a significant influence on the result.

If this hypothesis were broadly applicable, one would expect that systems of chance, where the mechanisms of chance were exposed as a visually and aurally consonant dynamics with perceptible origins with the user's tactile input (such as the roll of dice or bounce of a pachinko ball) then the user would be more invested in the outcome than if the mechanism were unexposed. In casino slot machines, the spinning of the wheels might inject a sense of control. In roulette, the bouncing of the ball (unless you're Hiro Nakamura) is outside of control and designed to be unpredictable.

Psychologists have posited that random reinforcement schedules elicit trained responses. Some, such as John Hopson have suggested the application of the theory of reinforcement schedules to designing reward mechanisms. Psychologists might say that such superstitious belief in control is due to the neural mechanics of learning, whereby results are causally associated with behavior, even when the results are chaotic.

While visiting my son in Kentucky, his little sisters of ages 5 to 8 would engross themselves for several minutes with Cascade on my Psion Revo. The game can be played skillfully, but only the oldest (Nature) would play it that way sometimes. The youngest (Eudora) would stipple the screen with the stylus until some adjacent balls popped. She kept at it earnestly for several minutes, in hopes of a high score, and yet poking almost randomly, game after game. Her and her sister Haven would apply such sincere determination to turning over the cards in Sorry Junior, giving the act of turning more attention than the shuffle. The behavior of such children, I believe, illustrates principles of the subconscious psychology of adults; in this case, focusing on interactive dynamics, deterministic or not.

It's ironic that one company, such as Crow River, services parts for pachinko, pinball, vending machines, and trade simulators. What could be closer to laboratory operant conditioning than a candy vending machine?

Around the block, I often see children and young adults manipulating a crane to to fetch a stuffed animal. As a function of the crane's starting horizontal position, I've thought the outcomes were close to chance. But there seems to be a commercial connection. As an example, Birmingham Vending is the same company that offers slot machines, popcorn machines, and pool tables.

It seems that not only is the apparent nature of the mechanisms--or more precisely the methods by which the user interface represents the simulation--it seems using a mental model that humans can subconsciously process with high fidelity (such as kinetics), that then even random results can mistakenly feel controllable. This is not news to those familiar with superstitions of boxers, baseball players, businesspeople, gamblers, and medieval medicine. But it suggests to game designers that visualization of quasi-stochastic simulation mechanisms through the user interface can impact the player's belief of control, and therefore their investment in monitoring the result of their input. If the user feels an illusory sense of control over the outcome through visual, aural, and tactile perception of the dynamics of seemingly deterministic system (such as the toss of a die), then the user is rewarded by observing the procedure that creates the outcome.

The Price is Right (of which my grandmother was a devotee and audience member of, even though she lived in North Carolina) offers other examples, from Plinko, a derivative of Pachinko, to its big wheel. Speaking of wheels, Wheel of Fortune offers its own example of perceptible dynamics for a stochastic simulation. From the spinning wheels of slot machines to the Mario Kart 64 power-up spinner.

In WarioWare Smooth Moves Darts, there is a bit of randomness to the dart toss (displayed as a pulsing circle), which is mostly skill based, yet with some perceptible randomness. This randomness is more of an edge case. What is a closer to a confirming example is cutting the yellow or red strings at the end of the lifeline race, when they are all the same color.

While considering the gulf between aesthetic requirements for educational versus entertaining software, I considered that Guitar Hero is effective and entertaining because of the illusion that the user is controlling the song, that the user is responsible for more of the music than she has control over. It is this illusion of control that both encourages play through rapid rewards, and short-circuits the difficulties and precision-tuning exercises of guitar playing. Rock Band extends this thesis from the guitar to drums and vocals: make believe is enhanced through perceptible interactive dynamics of tracks and forgiving feedback.

What are some more telling examples in videogames, and even better, what are some edge cases or counter examples?

In the USC Game Innovation Lab, there are Game Developers Conference audio recordings for 2003, 2004, and 2005. Around November, I happened to be showing someone around and looking on the shelf and found this treasure trove. Over the course of the next three months, I listened to all of the game design lectures and a few of the production, programming, visual arts, audio, and business lectures.

There were many good lectures from GDC 03-05. Out of about 120 hours of game design and 30 hours from other tracks that I've listened to so far, here are a dozen of the cream of the crop, which I would recommend listening to, if you don't have time to listen to them all. It's my personal take, but these are the lectures that educated me the most about design of interactive media; not just games, but interactive media for a variety of aesthetic requirements that lie outside the domain of videogames.

A few of the lectures were not audible, so if your favorite is not here, I might not have been able to hear the recording.

It was tough to pick just twelve; there were twice as many that have changed my opinion on an aspect of design. In terms of mastering the fine art of designing interactive media, I found a lot of gems in the following, listed roughly in ascending order of elucidation:

What Makes Music for Games "Music for Games"?
Chuck Doud, Clint Bajakian, Jack Wall, Jared Emerson-Johnson, Peter McConnell
Game Developers Conference 2005 Audio Track
How to map music for interactivity, such as layering, recombining, sequencing, and the genres of music prevalent during play.

Interface Design: Don't Make Them Think or Read
Brent Fox
Game Developers Conference 2005 Visual Arts Track
Usability for beginner and expert users, menu design, applications of cognitive load, how to acquire attention, and button design.

The Early Months of Spider-Man 2: Using Preproduction to Invent Gameplay
Jamie Fristrom, Tomo Moriwaki
Game Developers Conference 2005 Production Track
Great designer is probably right 2 times out of 5, so is probably wrong 3 times out of 5; therefore, prototype. Prototype risky features first. Mark Cerny production method helped.

Orthogonal Unit Differentiation
Harvey Smith
Game Developers Conference 2003 Game Design Track
Units, or actors in a game should have qualitative, non-substitutable differences. To deepen tactics, alternate units should be independent variables.

Killzone's AI: Dynamic Procedural Combat Tactics
Arjen Beij, William van der Sterren
Game Developers Conference 2005 Programming Track
Evaluating cover points, waypoints, potential paths, based on cover, shot availability, and risk.

Intuition and Intellect: Deconstructing the Design of Oasis
Marc LeBlanc
Game Developers Conference 2005 Game Design Track
Select a thesis of design. mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics. drama decomposed into uncertainty and inevitability.

Dynamics for Designers
Will Wright
Game Developers Conference 2003 Game Design Track
Stocks and flows, cellular automata, and solving the right aesthetic problems.

Leker 20-20 Design Vision
Game Developers Conference 2003 Game Design Track
Fail fast. Fail often. Construct a hypothesis and draw conclusions in order to make changes that evolve the design.

Mano a Mano: A Primer on Melee Combat in Videogames
Luis Barriga, Rob Gallerani
Game Developers Conference 2005 Game Design Track
Time stun and animation sequence. Chain interruptible combos together.

Game Design: Risk and Return
Masahiro Sakurai
Game Developers Conference 2005 Game Design Track
The aesthetically effective mechanics of gameplay balance risk and return. Salient example of Smash bros knockout and fireball versus jump on turtle and goopa in Super Mario Bros.

Anatomy of a 2D Side-Scroller
Luis Barriga
Game Developers Conference 2004 Game Design Track
Conventions of damage models, such as collision and damage over time. Speculations into psychology of 2D versus 3D.

Bossy Behavior: Patterns and Techniques in Boss Design
Luis Barriga
Game Developers Conference 2003 Game Design Track
Function of bosses as climactic antagonists and checkpoint of user skill. Make vulnerability feedback obvious. Tune waves of attack. Avoid dominant strategies in safe spots. When observing test, assume boss is broken.

There you have 'em. And no, I'm not sleeping with Luis Barriga.

There is one last one from GDC 2006, which was one of the most relevant to all forms of interactive media. The Game Innovation Lab doesn't have GDC 2006 or 2007 audio recordings yet, but I hope this post echoes the other students who have pointed out their cost-effective educational value for the program.

Advanced Prototyping
Chris Hecker, Chaim Gimgold
Game Developers Conference 2006 Game Design Track
Pick a precise, testable question. Avoid making things. Do in content. Code little. Prototype to change opinions. Prototype the risky items first. Avoid frameworks and infrastructure. Getting feedback frequently increases the designer's autonomy.

I started this post as a short resource report on videogame design from the GDC audio CDs that the interactive media department has, but in review, about one-quarter of the content is just videogame design. Most of the content above applies to interactive media for a variety of aesthetic requirements, not just games. So if your focus is more fine art or serious than commercial play, I still suspect some of these lectures will help you understand how to design interactive media.

For my taste, these are exemplary lectures. I'd be happily educated if I hear more of their caliber (especially while attending graduate classes in interactive media at USC). So, while you're reading this, I'd like to learn from you. Whether GDC or elsewhere, why don't you comment on what lectures or other media that taught you the most about designing interactive media?

Perry and I (and maybe you too?) are starting to develop test cases for a Wii Media Lab. Toward that end, here is a proposal for some uses, risks, and plans for the lab. Your comments, especially CRITICAL problems are most welcome. Thanks already to Mark Bolas, Marientina Gotsis, Perry Hoberman, and Lily Cheng, for their advice.

Last semester, I had made models for the panorama presentation of the story bible for my thesis in Google Sketchup.

In the course of making the models, I fell into an infatuation with Google SketchUp, but using a mouse to model was like modeling with a bar of soap. So I began imagining a one-to-one correspondence of physical pointer position with a virtual cursor. My first sketch was for webcams, but then I remembered Ken's post.

Ken Leung posted a link to a novel Wii input device probject, by Johnny Lee. Johnny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon University prototyped a low-cost whiteboard and finger-controlled user interface using a Wii mote as the camera.

and so an idea began for a...

Wii Media Lab

• utilize the room
  • to present interactive media
  • to navigate an virtual environment objects
  • to model objects
• low cost
  • $50 to $100 per station.
• available hardware
  • Wiimote
  • bluetooth port
  • infrared LED
• multipurpose
  • easy to recreate for future users
  • easy to apply to other artists

2D pointer + 6 DOF device

Traditional Wii remote and sensor bar configuration. Application: Collaborate while developing interactive project, such as ZML Spaceship, and intuitively note item on screen. Most any motion mapped in WarioWare Smooth Moves could be programmed by a skilled engineer.

2D multipointer

2D multitouch whiteboard

3D multipoint tracker

Risks

• Engineers (such as I) are unfamiliar with programming input devices.
  
• Several Bluetooth connections interfere with each other and slow down data transfer.
  
• Cameras can be confused by multiple points of light from neighboring input stations.
  
• User may be confused by six degrees of freedom by moving in 3D space.
  
• User becomes fatigued from maintaining limbs away from body and supporting devices after several seconds.
  
• User may be confused by ubiquitous shape of wii mote.
  
• Adapting device drivers and user interface control maps to software applications may be time consuming for each application.
  

Precautions

1. Test Wii remote on a Mac and Windows machine.
2. Test operation of standard Wii system in Zemeckis Media Lab.
3. Test previous implementations of Wii input device for PC that have similar objectives.
4. Scan heat sources in Zemeckis Media Lab. Test range and field of view and field of emission of camera and infrared LED. Direct camera away from heat sources in Zemeckis Media Lab.
5. Minimize number of bluetooth devices in use, by starting with a single wii remote.
6. Employ a real-time introspective development language that I'm familiar with, Python.
7. Start development in an OS that I have access to at school and home and the most experience with: Windows XP.
8. Establish unit tests to quickly confirm operation of camera, wii remote, device drivers, and other units that are developed.
9. Roleplay rehearsal of input device manipulation to detect fatigue, disorientation, confusion, and lack of affordances.
10. Test simple cases of system operation and functionality for usability.
11. Cite adaptation required to modify system to control novel software.

System Architecture

Hypothetical stages of signal flow on Windows XP for simple motion test:

1. Raw image in physical space.
   
2. Blobs of infrared light on photocell array of wii remote.
   
3. Two dimensional points within wii remote.
   
4. Bluetooth encoded 2D points from wii remote transmitter.
   
5. Bluetooth encoded 2D points at Bluetooth-USB adapter.
   
6. Bluetooth encoded 2D points in Windows PC.
   
7. Wii 2D points decoded by pyBluez, Python binding to Bluetooth drivers.
   
8. Wii data decoded by wii.py script, adapted from Wiiewer.
   
9. Matrix transformation of 2D input to normalize plane of 2D points.
   
10. Simple gesture recognition, as jestur.py.
    
11. Inject input to mouse movement through windll.py.
    
12. Display device shows mouse pointer moving.
    

Test case requirements

To evaluate the potential, a prototype is suggested as a test case. This test case:

• Renders simple 3D scene.
  
• The input device enables the user to translate, rotate, and scale an object in the environment.
  
• With 15 minutes training, a graduate designer is faster at performing these manipulations with the input device than with a mouse.
  
• The prototype can be developed by a couple full-time graduate designers within their technical knowledge set in a couple weeks.
  
• Prototype costs less than $200 in hardware and software.
  

Here are some test cases. At least one of these will be functionally prototypedduring the experimentation class.

Test case: Chopsticks

This prototype uses Python-Ogre to render a simple 3D scene. Python-Ogre is free, open-source, and interpreted, for real-time editing. PythonCard is used for tool user interface.

Test case: Model manipulator

Test case: Free paint

Paint on 3D environment by wii remote input by generating objects lights and particle systems along path of motion.

Technical Requirements

I am designing a language learning videogame to teach Korean in order to explore the cognitive potential of games. (That's for you, Peggy.) And so, Runesinger is a videogame to teach elements of the Korean language through play.

Loosely speaking, Runesinger is edutainment or an educational game. Considering what Runesinger is brings up potential to discuss and even to brainstorm a few things that Runesinger is not. By looking at the negative cases, one can avoid them.

Peggy Weil suggested two categories of negative cases, which I shall call: (1) Education without Entertainment and (2) Entertainment without Education.

In an article on evolutionary psychology of videogames, Noah Falstein quoted Marshall McLuhan as saying "Anyone who thinks there is a difference between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either."

If I am aiming for the intersection of Education and Entertainment, then a Venn diagram covering the features that comprise both education and entertainment can help us visualize the issue.

If Education and Entertainment happen to be independent aesthetic outcomes, then one may expect, given no further information, that the probability of creating edutainment to be the probability for the intersection of possible permutations of a design. Simply put as probability functions:

p(edutainment) = p(education) * p(entertainment)

This suggests the likelihood of achieving those aesthetic requirements can be abysmally low, by pure chance. For example, suppose there is a 10% chance to meet the entertainment goals. Suppose there is a 10% chance to meet the educational goals. Achieving all goals is expected in 1% of the cases.

0.01 = 0.1 * 0.1

Those odds are not encouraging, but notice that any additional uncertain and independent requirements also lower the probabilities. It is not just the problem of edutainment, the intersection of education and entertainment, any uncertain and independent requirements make the occurrence of such a work small.

Some of these are reasons are from lack of experience on the part of the developers. There is a smaller set of educators with entertainment experience as there are a smaller set of entertainers with education experience. There is some of this due to a lack of interest. Educators snub their noses at entertainment. Entertainers also hold their low in the dungeons of glamor, not the ivory towers of academia.

Some of the reasons for the improbability of edutainment are from the divergence of the psychology of entertainment and education. In many cases, one aesthetic goal is sacrificed to better serve the other. Guitar Hero is more fun by tricking the subconscious into thinking it is mastering more than it actually is.

On the side of Education: Titles like Typing Master provide an ergonomic introduction to typing in top form. Titles like My Spanish Coach provide recreational word translations. But they are still entrenched in the tradition of educational exercises: multiple choice, flash cards, word find. Rosetta Stone has several multimedia flash card drills, and association exercises.

On the side of Entertainment: Titles like Guitar Hero create the enjoyment of being a lead guitarist without the fine tuned controls and feedback that takes years of practice to achieve the results that in Guitar Hero only takes weeks. SoulCalibur has hidden button combinations. God of War has on screen button combinations.

Without Education or Entertainment: So what would it be like to design something explicitly aimed to avoid entertainment and yet be educational? I'm reminded of the Latin flash cards I programmed in Pascal in high school, or the flash cards I used for Kabbalistic and Cube of Space correspondences, programmed in JavaScript while at San Francisco State. Or the morse code programs that were part of my military intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. These drilled you, eliciting a response and providing feedback on the response. They taught you, structured you by stimulus and response, by nearly operant conditioning, minus the bit of candy. It was so simple a chimp could do it.

I'm also reminded of dull infomercials, seminars, sponsored articles, books, and lectures on sundry topics from various sources, such as late nights of childhood TV, preemptive counseling in the United States Army, most every political speech I've heard from anyone of any affiliation, a few lectures at Game Developer's Conference, and some class sessions in the interactive media graduate program. Some, like the infomercials provided information to elicit a sale only, and not to empower the audience. Some, like the sponsored seminars, were not much better than an infomercial for the speaker or their association. Some, like the lectures, looked educational and sounded educational but the audience was no better equipped to do anything or think anything than if they had skipped the lecture. Some even went so far as to convince the more foolish members of the audience that they were becoming educated, in the sense that Ambrose Bierce meant when he wrote, education is "That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."

Peggy asked us to post our areas of interest in regards to our thesis. I had analyzed my area of interest in Spring 2007. The answer goes back to then.

In Spring 2007, I was leading an advanced game project for a procedural musical shooter (Euphonics), a maze game about the horror of factory chicken farming (Free Ranger), an epic action-adventure game, Tree of Life, a 70's pizza driving game, a notion for a public policy simulator with mechanics of ethical calculus, and had just revisited a notion I've had for since 2002, a game that teaches the Korean language through casual mini-games.

My life is limited and I recognize that everything I want to do before I die, even when I force myself to choose, will not get done. My time in grad school is even more limited. I recognized that each of the ideas had issues. Procedural graphics is cool, and is my curiosity, but others have already done it much better than I can. Free Ranger garnered no interest. Tree of Life and Pizza Driver are conventional; I'm not interested in a portfolio piece. The public policy simulator is important, but no one would play it. The Korean language game is the most difficult and academic of the concepts.

Because of my multi-disciplinary interests in embodied cognitive psychology, my experience in autodidactic learning, and my experience in crafting games, edutainment is a field I believe I have a chance push the envelope on. Although it's risky and difficult, and the project is likely to fail, the experiment would teach me more about aesthetics of play and other forms of cognitive interaction than any of the dozen or so projects that I've considered for this thesis. And when I die, if I have contributed to the advancement of enjoyable methods for mastery of a necessary skill, then I believe the world is better off. Anyone who has been around kids, knows humans must learn; and anyone who is learning wishes the process to be enjoyable.

This was a glimpse of my thoughts in Spring 2007. That summer I created four typing prototypes. Only one was fun. But my summer's research into neurolinguistics and cognitive science of vision uncovered new possibilities and a deep coupling between learning in general, language in particular, and the cognition of playing videogames.

My foundational hypothesis is: A videogame teaches skills, so can a videogame teach a skill that is transferable to high-level tasks in an academic, business, or artistic setting? If a videogame can teach a language whose basic phonemes are foreign, then all easier skills can also be taught through edutainment. Therefore, if I can solve a subset of the hard problem, then we can solve many cases of the intrinsic motivation barrier to education.

Last summer I began employing agile software development methodology and tools in Python. It improved progress, which being computer-based, is dreadfully slow, yet still better than any of the other methods and tools I've tried (C++, Flash, Processing, Ogre, custom scripting languages for PS3 and MMORPGs).

For the story of my thesis, Runesinger, see the pitch: http://runesinger.com/pitch.doc For other information, see the site. http://runesinger.com

I have investigated and been enriched by multiple disciplines, so when referring to a user of this edutainment software, I use the term that invokes the discipline that the listener ought to consider. When discussing gameplay, I say "player"; when discussing graphic or cinematic design, I say "viewer"; when discussing sound design or public presentation, I say "audience." When discussing overall human-computer interaction, I say "user." If I am referring to the story in preproduction or design document or any literature, then I say "reader." If I am referring to a psychological test (such as of educational value), then I say "participant." I do so out of respect for each tradition that has advanced my understanding, and to invoke in the listener that same tradition's treasure of insight.

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Peggy requested:

This is Part 2, the final phase of this assignment, please post your answers, as well as emailing them to me Look over your analysis, let it sit long enough to answer: 1. An area of interest you've identified.

2. A couple of questions (stated in the form of a question) and opportunities suggested by your area of interest. What do you (or a potential viewer) want or need to know about this area?

3. Identify a method or process that can be used to explore your question.

4. One to three actual topics or subjects that address your interests/questions. (Not ‘a game’ or ‘experience’ or ‘interactive film,’ find a subject/setting/character/narrative.

5. Pair your topics with a genre and an audience: Not just "a game" but the type of game and the type of player you envision. (Expert? General? Student? Adult? Child? Casual? Obsessed? Fan? Animal, Mineral, Vegetable?)

6. Commit to a term (participant, viewer, player, reader, user, audience) that you will use throughout the project. (If you feel this is restrictive, or want more than one term, this is the place to state your view, the important part is to begin to define, and address, your reader.)

Last semester, I had made models for the panorama presentation of the story bible for my thesis in Google Sketchup. By the way, this week, Perry asked us to produce a panoramic image. I found this ZML panorama template for Photoshop (CS2+) very convenient. This template made the two panorama presentations I did for CTIN 532 (Method of Loci, and Monkey Monastery). With this template, Photoshop automatically slices a large image into 14 images for the 14 continguous projectors in ZML. And creates an HTML file, too.

In the course of making the models, I fell into an infatuation with Google SketchUp, but using a mouse to model was like modeling with a bar of soap. So I began imagining a one-to-one correspondence of physical pointer position with a virtual cursor. My first sketch was for webcams, but then I remembered Ken's post.

Ken Leung posted a link to a novel Wii input device probject, by Johnny Lee. Johnny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon University prototyped a low-cost whiteboard and finger-controlled user interface using a Wii mote as the camera.

and so an idea began for a...

Wii Media Lab

Use infrared camera and infrared LED to intuitively control the cursor of a variety of applications while being free from the keyboard and mouse. These are input device systems for the Zemeckis Media Lab. My requirements for these input devices were:

• utilize the room
  • to present interactive media
  • to navigate an virtual environment objects
  • to model objects
• low cost
  • $50 to $100 per station.
• available hardware
  • Wiimote
  • bluetooth port
  • infrared LED
• multipurpose
  • easy to recreate for future users
  • easy to apply to other artists

2D pointer (wii mote and sensor bar) $50 hardware. Application: Collaborate while developing interactive project, ZML Spaceship, and intuitively note item on screen.

2D multipointer (wii mote, infared light pen, by Johnny Chung Lee). $50 hardware. Application: Control multiple points for scaling or rotating on 2D plane.

2D multitouch whiteboard (wii mote camera). $100 hardware. Applications: Draw on the wall. Control multiple points.

3D multipoint tracker (2 wii motes, $150 hardware. Applications: Model 3D image. Navigate cursor in 3D environment.

According to Peter Preuss, who had also mentioned Johnny Chung Lee's prototypes in the same class, each station requires bluetooth to talk to wii mote.

I had such promising results from the second-phase design chat for the second gameplay prototype of my thesis today, that I'd thought it would be most useful not to ask for support, but instead to brainstorm the problems in these ideas. To criticize on the grounds of not meeting the requirements put forth in the preamble. So: What's wrong with any of these ideas? What are the problems? What will cause this experiment to fail?

Will you help me by pointing out the defects in regards to meeting the above requirements?

This is in response to the assigment (appended below).

Like: Psion Revo
Inspired by: The Illustrated Primer in the The Diamond Age
Proud of: HeroCard Nightmare

Psion Revo

This is a PDA, designed and manufactured by Psion, which was a pioneer of PDAs. The Revo is a clamshell design, and folds to fit in the pocket. The keyboard, until recently, was large enough for me to type 20 words per minute. I got through analysis of algorithms, taking notes that served the whole class on it. The device turns on when you open it. It easily switches between open applications. Even though it only has 16MB of RAM for operating system, files, and applications, the file formats are compact. The features were just enough and optimized for use. The outline allows quick searching of word documents.

I used to write my ideas down and notes I needed to remember in highschool on a pocket notebook, but it got to be a hassle to retype notes and find them, after generating so many words a year.

Although they stopped making Revo in 2000, I kept using it until only a couple months ago when with age my fingers began cramping. I miss it though everytime my Palm keyboard freezes up, and every time I have to assemble the keyboard rather than simply open the clam shell.

I'm curious about the conflict of usability and presentation, which Donald Norman brought to my attention in Design of Everyday Things. He noticed that appliances received confusing and unnecessary features or less usable control maps, because they looked better, and it wasn't until using the object for a while that the usability became an issue. Palm PDA and cellphone/PDA have caught on but a better solution to my use cases, and probably to many wired writers is presented by Psion Revo. I can't find a PDA that meets my needs, at any price. It's not a tech limitation; Revo hit it in 2000. It's a design decision. Why? Can the niche I belong to be served?

Diamond Age, Or The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

A tycoon commissions an artificially-intelligent educational computer book for his granddaughter. A copy of the book falls into the hands of a street urchin. The book adapts to her story and raises her from pauper to princess.

This book teaches the child through interactive fairy tales and games. It teaches the finest quality material in an entertaining format, adapted to its user's personality and environs.
This was a part of my personal statement. If I can craft software that both entertains and educates in the direction of the Illustrated Primer, then my life has been meaningful.

HeroCard Nightmare

Players and developers praised the scary artwork of HeroCard Nightmare. But the simulation and story channels of its design were not that consonant with the art. The project was cancelled. I didn't want to see Gregor's chthonic art be buried forever. So I offered to redesign the simulation and story while preserving the look and feel. I designed the simulation as inverse Clue, you start knowing where you will die and who will kill you. The story of a cursed camera that takes prophetic photographs and a nightmare from which only one, the murderer of all the others, wakes up raised eyebrows.

Out of the three published boardgames and a few unpublished ones, Nightmare is my best design. Everyone I've played more than one game of mine with agrees, including my most brutal critic, my son.

Confluence

Together these items form an odd triangle. The Psion Revo and the Illustrated Primer have obvious connections: A PDA is a predecessor to the fantastical Primer. Nightmare is a game whose simulation and story are consonant; in fact all of its channels of game design (simulation, user interface, story, and look and feel) are consonant. They all contribute to the "Nightmare".

My area of interest is making an edifying videogame. This requires a well-designed game with consonant channels of simulation, user interface, story, and look and feel. Additionally it requires each channel is consonant with learning a skill or principle useful in an artistic, business, or academic pursuit.

Having written that, I can't help feel I've cooked my conclusion. Those are honest articles and the motives are pure, but because I've been prototyping and designing my thesis for the past six months, I can't disentangle my current direction from this conclusion.

---
This is in response to the assigment:

Part 1: Pick 3 objects (You've done this already)

a) Something significant from your childhood, something important to you - a toy, a talisman a momento.

(don't think too hard, just pick something)

b) An inspiration - a quote, a song, a book, a lyric, a piece of art, an experience, a philosopher, a scientist, just ONE.

c) Something you've done or pursued on your own initiative (scholarly or otherwise) that is deeply interesting/satisfying to you.

Part 2: Questions (Take some time to do this properly, post it.)

a) Why this item is interesting/meaningful/important to you (or universally)?

b) What are the issues, concerns, principles, processes or attributes that surround each item?

c) How is each item relevant: socially, technically, politically, phenomenologically?

d) What do you not know about the item, and would like to investigate?

Part 3) Step Back (Post this as well.)

a) Look at your three items as a whole and see if you can discover similarities (literal or abstract), are there intersections?

b) Does your analysis suggest an area of interest, or (series of) questions?

Nintendo DS
Majesco Entertainment, December 2007

Well, I both had a few of the most enjoyable gaming moments of the past month and yet had the shortest total gaming experience. I started at level 5 of LB:RB and got 83/100/100, and then the second time, 93/100/100. 93 being on writing letters. I'm not ambidextrous. Since the Army I ate with chopsticks ambidextrously. Since working on Warhawk, I use my mouse ambidextrously (it only takes a week to be up to speed; mice are terribly unwieldy input devices). But I write awkwardly and slowly with my left. So unless there is a level I'm missing that's above 5, I'm 85% ambidextrous in half an hour. Can't say that ratio, even if shared with friends, makes up for a $20 or so pricetag (Thank you Gamefly, no thanks Majesco).

I'd like a second opinion, though from a doctor or neuroscientist about the neural benefits of practicing these following exercises through the 1px resolution stylus (which is far from pen on paper).

Here are the synopses of the channels that comprise its design, of which I enjoyed all at level 5 for an hour. I'd do them longer if there were a higher level of mastery.

Overall
Simulation: Accuracy, speed, motor control and hand-eye coordination exercises (but does it go all the way to writing competently)?
User interface: I really liked flipping the handheld device when switching from Right to Left hand.
Story: You are playing various minigames to improve your left-right brain connection. Drab and thin as memos.
Look and feel: Sparse, minimal. Cute hand drawn (though uninked) cheerleading hand.

Write the letter!
Simulation: Match image of a capital English letter with a standard bold san-serif font.
User interface: Write a capital English letter with a plastic stylus on a small touch screen about 2 by 3 inches. How helpful is the tiny eye-straining letter size for testing purposes?
Story: Write the letter the hand tells you to.
Look and feel: Minimal black and white.

Trace the shape!
Simulation: Compare image to stroke sequence.
User interface: Draw contour of an irregular figure with a plastic stylus on a small touch screen. Black and white is clever at indicating how close one traces the figure.
Story: There is a shape. Draw it. Get praised by the helping hand.
Look and feel: Minimal shades of brown.

Navigate the maze!
Simulation: Collision detection of circle to solid concave walls. Collide circle with goal without colliding the walls.
User interface: Trace a wide path through a narrow maze. What is cool and eerie, is seeing your other hand as a red dot racing your black dot.
Story: Get a ball through a maze quickly.
Look and feel: Minimal red and black dot, white floor and teal walls.

Psychologists, may I ask you, how much benefit do the above exercises have on "whole brain" cognition?

I decided to search a for a review to see if I had missed something. It seems I'm not alone in my feeling this game falls short of its promise. But that also there are others who say they liked it. In the end, a status quo site such as GameSpot rates it 6/10, and its users rate it 5/10. Disappointment abounds.

Here are the references from my paper to appear at the AISB symposium. The paper itself is under review, but after the formality of citing the 74 references, I thought they were worth a post. As per their style guide, these references are listed in the order of appearance in the body of my paper titled:

Open Problems in Simulation and Story Analysis

REFERENCES

[1] Nobelprize.org, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2007/press.html (2007).

[2] Interview with Sid Meier, R. Rouse III. Game Design: Theory & Practice. Wordware, 40 (2001).

[3] D. E. Kennerly, Fun is Fine: Toward a Philosophy of Game Design, Joystick101.org, http://finegamedesign.com/fun_is_fine.html (2003).

[4] GDC 2008 Tracks, Game Developers Conference 2008, http://www.gdconf.com/conference/tracks.htm (2008).

[5] Go, Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28board_game%29 (2008).

[6] J. J. Garrett, The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web, New Riders Press, 32-34. http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements_ch02.pdf (2002).

[7] Narbacular Drop (2005), Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop (2007).

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[9] H. Jenkins. Game Design as Narrative Architecture (2004), The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, 670-689 (2006).

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[11] HeroCard Nightmare, BoardGameGeek, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/29415 (2008)

[12] L. van der Post, Jung and the Story of Our Time, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Jung (1977)

[13] D. Church, Formal Abstract Design Tools, Game Developer, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990716/design_tools_01.htm (1999).

[14] M. LeBlanc, Designer Perspective: Marc LeBlanc, T. Fullerton, C. Swain, and S. Hoffman, Game Design Workshop, CMP Books, 62-63 (2004).

[15] R. Hunicke, M. LeBlanc, R. Zubek, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf (2004).

[16] P.-A. Garneau, Fourteen Forms of Fun, Gamasutra.com, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011012/garneau_01.htm (2001).

[17] Malone, T.W. & Lepper, M.R. Making games fun. A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivation for Learning. in Snow, R.E. & Farr, M.J. (ed.) Aptitude, Learning, and Instruction. Vol 3: Conative and Affective Process Analyses, EA (1987) cited in [18].

[18] T.D. Henriksen, Dimensions in Educational Game-Design - perspectives on designing and implementing game-based learning processes in the educational setting. Nordic Playground, Reykjavik, http://www.dpb.dpu.dk/dokumentarkiv/Publications/20070104094423/CurrentVersion/Thomas_Duus_Henriksen___Dimensions_in_Educational_.pdf (2006).

[19] O. Sotamaa, Perceptions of Player in Game Design Literature, Situated Play, Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference, http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.59383.pdf (2007).

[20] L. Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives, Simon and Schuster, New York (1946, 1960).

[21] M. LeBlanc, Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics, The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, 438-459 (2006).

[22] S. Bjork. Patterns in Game Design. Hingham, MA, USA: Charles River Media, 219 (2004).

[23] D. Freeman, Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering™, New Riders (2004).

[24] R. McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, ReganBooks (1997).

[25] M. Mehring, The Screenplay: A Blend of Film Form and Content, Focal Press (1990).

[26] L. Seger, Making a Good Script Great, 2nd Edition, Samuel French Trade (1984, 1997).

[27] God of War (video game) (2005), Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War_(video_game) (2008).

[28] Half-Life (1998), Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life (2008).

[29] Ico (2001), Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico (2001).

[30] M. Mateas, A. Stern, Interaction and Narrative, The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, 642-669 (2006).

[31] Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2004), Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_&_Clank:_Up_Your_Arsenal (2008).

[32] How to Stop an Exploding Man, Chapter 23, Vol 1, Heroes, NBC Universal (2007), Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_%28TV_series%29 (2008).

[33] Civilization (computer game) (1991), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_%28computer_game%29 (2008).

[34] C. Camargo, Interesting Complexity: Sid Meier and the Secrets of Game Design, The Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds13-2/sidmeier.html (2004).

[35] M. Sakurai, Game Design: Risk and Return, Game Developers Conference 2004, http://store.cmpgame.com/product.php?id=865 (2004).

[36] R. Harrison. Super Mario Bros. For the NES FAQ/Walkthrough. Version 1.4. Gamespot GameFAQs, http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/file/525243/18922 (2006).

[37] Super Mario Bros. (1985) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros (2008).

[38] Lost Cities (1999), BoardGameGeek, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/50 (2008).

[39] Reiner Knizia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiner_Knizia (2008).

[40] B. Guerra, Dungeons & Dragons: A Simulated Fantasy, Compute! Issue 123, November 1990, 64, http://atarimagazines.planetmirror.com/compute/issue123/P065_1_DUNGEONS_DRAGONS.php (1990).

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[43] T. Fullerton, C. Swain, and S. Hoffman, Game Design Workshop, CMP Books, 81 (2004).

[44] R. Garfield, The Design Evolution of Magic: The Gathering (1993, 2003), T. Fullerton, C. Swain, and S. Hoffman, Game Design Workshop, CMP Books, 182-195 (2004).

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