Ethan Kennerly

Several smart theoreticians associated with artificial intelligence (and me, a designer) will be presenting papers.

Hear about:
How AI of Thief could be modified to incorporate belief about other people's beliefs.
How Civilization 4 was modified to score citizen health and happiness.

July 12, in Pasadena

Workshop: "Logic and the Simulation of Interaction and Reasoning 2"

09.05-09.15 Opening
09.15-10.00 Michael Young: "The Representational Challenges of Fictional
Worlds"
10.00-10.30 COFFEE BREAK
10.30-10.50 Amitabha Mukerjee: "Discovering symbols from interactions
- easier than explaining interactions via symbols?"
10.50-11.10 Nadine Guiraud, Andreas Herzig, Emiliano Lorini: "Speech
acts as announcements"
11.10-11.30 Break
11.30-12.15 Lenhart Schubert: "From generic sentences to scripts"
12.15-14.40 Lunch Break
14.40-15.00 Jos Uiterwijk, Kevin Moesker: "Mathematical Modelling in TwixT"
15.00-15.30 COFFEE BREAK
15.30-15.50 Rafael Pérez y Pérez: "Emotions in Plot Generation"
15.50-16.10 Ethan Kennerly: "Computing Quality of Life in a Social
Management Game"
16.10-16.30 Ethan Kennerly, Andreas Witzel, Jonathan Zvesper: "Thief's
Beliefs"
16.30-16.50 Break
16.50-17.10 Martin Magnusson, David Landén, Patrick Doherty: "Logical
Agents that Plan, Execute, and Monitor Communication"
17.10-17.55 Leora Morgenstern: "Traveling Through Time and Logical AI:
Toward a Formal Theory of Time Travel"

http://www.illc.uva.nl/GLoRiClass/index.php?page=8_2

If you're interested, for better rates, register by June 12, 2009 at http://ijcai-09.org/

Alexei Othenin-Girard, game designer and fan of Japanese culture, discusses design at the Pacific Asian Museum during their Samurai Re-imagined series.

Saturday, March 21, 2-5pm. It's in Pasadena, four blocks from the gold line.

What makes a storyline interesting? What makes a reaction natural? What role do emotions play in game decisions?

These are some of the motivations behind the second workshop of Logic and the Simulation of Interaction and Reasoning (LSIR2). On July 12, this is part of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Pasadena. IJCAI is sponsored in part by USC's Institute for Creative Technology (ICT) and Information Sciences Institute (ISI).

Have a well-articulated opinion? This July, want to speak in Pasadena? Submit your abstract by April 3.

Robin Hunicke, Malcolm Ryan, and Ben Smith are hosting a design workshop. In it, Marc LeBlanc's mechanics-dynamics-aesthetic's (MDA) framework is applied to a practical (and fun) design challenge. Essentially, MDA relates rules to play, and play to feelings. Being keen on this framework, I'm assisting the workshop, and we would be happy to help you there: GDC, Tuesday at 10 in Room 2002, West hall. See details.

And for those of you that rehearsed one of the exercises, thank you!

A post for an anti-valentine's party reminded me of my character in our global game jam, "heartbreaker": the anti-cupid.

Have an idea? Want to prototype it in 4 hours?

In this workshop, you and a partner learn to program Python, the playful way. We will explore unfamiliar software, the lazy way. We will experiment with rules and user interfaces, the interactive way. Bring your own idea (or your homework). In just one workshop, you'll make a new prototype, and you'll make a new friend.

No programming experience (or partner) necessary.

Monday, February 9, 1pm to 5pm
Zemeckis Media Lab (RZC 201)
Please RSVP kennerly (AT) usc - edu

Last night, Eric Zimmerman suggested that we live in the "Ludic Century," that games are a model for "literacy" for future generations. Years ago, Greg Costikyan has also suggested that games will be one of the Seven Lively Arts of the Twenty-first Century. In 1991, I was a hobbyist RPG designer when Civilization was released. When I saw "history" play out on screen, I swallowed this belief and convinced myself to see the precursors to systems based learning in Civilization and SimCity. Having devoted my career to it, I drank enough of this kool-aid to see the human condition in Go, Chess, Spades, and Poker.

From playing games with others, I've learned a lot about psychology, ethics, and politics. Game playing has permanently erased from my mind the viability of impartial advice or impartial information. Whenever I hear something, I ask "who benefits?" I don't believe political ideologies or predictions about education in the twenty-first century are immune (no matter how much my survival instincts infect my consciousness). To paraphrase, Timothy Leary, even idealism implies: What's your stake in the game? (The irony of this in relation to this article has not escaped me.)

So after Eric Zimmerman's lecture to a roomful of mostly interactive designers and students, some of us say, "Okay, we're on your side! Now, how can we do it?" The daydream is easier to puff out in white clouds, but how do those dreams tether back to the Earth we stand on?

I don't know. As Zimmerman relayed Salen's suggestion, I agree that an understanding of mathematics is a start, especially discrete mathematics. In "Dynamics for Designers," Will Wright lectured (and his work expressed) the study of complex adaptive systems, such as system dynamics. He introduced designers to dynamic topologies of agents, networks (or discrete mathematical graphs), layers (especially cellular automata). SimCity and The Sims (among other Sim games) neatly put those principles into practice. A year ago Don Hopkins, the programmer of SimCity, published the source code, so an inspection of the code alongside the lecture may be a practical and free introduction.

One way to refine the question is to answer: Which games teach systems? And: What systems are they teaching? My experience playing games doesn't touch the tip of the iceberg, but here's a few of my opinions:

• Go (-2000?) (圍棋, 바둑, 囲碁): Planning. A group survives only by liberty, efficiency, and foresight.
  
• Poker (1810): Psychology of American business. I believe you're bluffing that you believe that I'm bluffing that I believe ...
  
• Spades (1938): Psychology of American labor; cooperate and do not excel.
  
• Diplomacy (1956): International politics; alliances are never permanent.
  
• Risk (1959): Mobilization of armaments lead to conquest, and only one will win.
  
• Starflight (1986): Our planet is just one of the potential configurations of life in the universe.
  
• SimCity (1989): Urban planning and environmental engineering. A city needs a good architect.
  
• Civilization (1991): History. Religion and science are different technologies to expand one's dominion.
  
• I'm the Boss (1994): Psychology of negotiation. You need me to win, right?
  
• For Sale (1997): Real estate. Spread your bids just above the rest of the market.
  
• Lost Cities (1999): Entrepeneurship. Risking a new project requires knowing yourself, your team, and your competition.
  
• The Sims (2000): Environmental psychology; happiness comes from consumption.
  
• Diner Dash (2003): Psychology of food service; stall the customers for just a few seconds longer.
  
• Democracy (2005): politics; divvy up the loot to those who will support you.
  
• September 12th (2005?): Retaliation begets terrorists.
  
• Ayiti: The Cost of Life (2006?): A poor Haitian family can hardly survive four years without help.
  
• KarmaTycoon (2007?): To get a grant, spend money on anything and apply for every grant.
  
• PeaceMaker (2007): Israel and Palestine are in a dysfunctional feud.
  
• The Redistricting Game (2007): Gerrymandering a border influences an election.
  
• Stop Disasters (2008?): Civil engineering. The End is near, are you prepared?
  

1. Which games taught you a system?
   
2. And, what lesson did it teach?
   

Jesse Schell, game design professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote an introductory book that was published in August, titled "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses." The back overleaf quotes Will Wright saying, "Easily the most comprehensive, practical book I've ever seen on game design." I will try to briefly state why I agree and offer details to help you decide if this book is for you.

Each chapter of the book adds a node to a network of relationships between the designer, the game, and the player. Throughout, Schell boxes 100 tips, with questions that induce a novel perspective on the design. He calls these lenses. I applaud the volume of diverse traditions, such as: psychology, storytelling, engineering, business, and management. They are so diverse as to change not only perspective, but also target. "The Lens of the Puzzle" looks at the mechanisms of the game; whereas, "The Lens of the Team" looks at the developers of the game. This is an eclectic approach that distills many abstract tips on what to consider when designing. Some experience and diligence with most of the 100 lenses would almost guarantee the reader is a competent designer.

Most lenses seemed crystal clear and provoked thoughts. Oftentimes, Schell deploys the wheels that others have invented. Many lenses refer to prior literature, such as Barry Boehm's spiral model of development (82), Scott Kim's thoughts on puzzles (209).

Furthermore, Schell gives us some original gems on the psychology of games that expanded my mind. He touches on the tactile aesthetics of the Rubik's cube (213), the learning curve of a jigsaw puzzle (215). He has some tips on personal communication that, upon reflection, exposed mistakes I have made, and would be more likely to continue to make had I not read Schell's advice. For example, in "Coping with Bad Suggestions," rather than agree or disagree, he advises to "understand why the client is making the suggestion" (417). He gives similarly important advice for playtesting (389).

Perhaps the inevitable danger of writing a comprehensive book is that one's own rough facets become apparent when placed side-by-side with one's brilliance. In a few spots, I would like to see wheels being reused rather than reinvented, such as mathematical graphs (132), epistemics of players (139), military tactics (141), risk and return (181), interface affordances (212), models of human-computer interaction (225), and plotting interest (247). I don't disagree with what Schell wrote there, but would rather dive deeper by leveraging prior literature (as he did in other lenses).

The book is well-presented with modest illustrations and easy to read from beginning to end. On an editorial note, although I affirm Schell's eclectic approach to game design, after reading the book, I wish it were easier to find the information I wanted to refer to. The table of lenses at the front of the book was not enough for me. The lens titles are not always evocative and distinct.

To summarize:
* What you will find in this book: informal habits of a professional game designer.
* What you will not find in this book: details or examples of designs and their implementation.

Game Developer magazine nominated The Art of Game Design for the Book of the Year. It got my vote.

Four years ago, I wrote an instructor's manual on interface design for videogames. Around that time, I was also scribbling critical studies articles about text, graphics, and idioms. Many are part of discussions on MUD-Dev. If you want to listen to a few of these far out, opinionated articles, Ryan Wiancko reads these user interface articles and many more by other designers.

In the last two weeks, while listening to a lecture by Jeffrey Kaplan and another by Ethan Levy, I realized the principles of analyzing how players use your game will remain relevant for years to come. Ryan Wiancko reads aloud an article on analyzing gameplay metrics from an online game. This spoken article and other designers' are free to download at Industry Broadcast.

Ryan Wiancko reads aloud, "Fun is Fine: Toward a Philosophy of Game Design", which inspired my research into serious uses of games. Ryan's serious voice is particularly appropriate for this topic: Some games are important cultural experiences that portray the human condition and elevate the minds of their players. You may listen to this and other lucid designers, free to download at Industry Broadcast.

(The author's introduction causes me to chuckle and blush, because 2003 was before World of Warcraft and many newer MMOs.) The article grew out of a dialogue on MUD-Dev, so I'd be happy to hear your opinion on the topic.

While no lawyer, I've worked on a few videogame contracts, full-time positions, and written briefly about IP for negotiating a contract. So I find Jim Charne's conclusions reassuringly counter to the rumors that sometimes surface in the labs about a school, especially to whom we pay a high premium, owning our work. If anything, rather than asking if a student owns his labor for which he paid the privilege of sharing it with others, since we are paying the school, the more fair question is: Who owns the teachers' and administrators' work? Do the students (or their financiers), the collective clients that the school serves?

And yet it would be mean-spirited to ask such. No less mean-spirited is the question that the school snatch up the work from those who are sharing their ideas in its halls. I have heard in the cinema school there might be a case in which the school is investing heavily into a project, but unless there is equitable compensation, transferal of ownership seems like double payment (first in collecting the fees from us and second in taking the freedom to use).

Pascal Luban predicts evolution of casual games and educational games.

Okay... my worst title mashup ever, but the best of Gamasutra's articles this week:

Ian Bogost writes about a different mashup, which has been in the back of my head for years, games that comment on the dynamics of politics.

Paul Benjamin and Rodney Gibbs write about a designer leveraging GameMaker to get the idea of Hulk smashable.

For AIIDE, Andreas Witzel, Jonathan Zvesper, and myself wrote an article on social reasoning, in which artificial agents model the beliefs of other agents. We aim to enhance the user's enjoyment through exploiting these models. In our article, "Explicit Knowledge Programming for Computer Games," I hypothetically enhanced a common scenario in Assassin's Creed. Pseudocode describes a guard's social reasoning, for the player exploit.

I found this interview with the game writer Susan O'Connor refreshingly frank, reflective of my own problems in design.

I'm actually going to put an ad in Craigslist, because I live near campus, like "Wanted, Dude or Dudette who blazes through games. I will provide console and titles. Come over." And pot. [laughs] Just come over.

Having studied for 2 years at USC's 3-year MFA in Interactive Media, 75% of my time to study is in the past. To appreciate the remaining 8 months, I am considering what types of activities seem to have taught me the most, so that I may add more of those to my "diet". From Fall 2006 to Summer 2008, the following categories summarize what I have done to learn (or reinforce) the design of interactive media. I ordered them by an estimate of my design education: #1 being greatest, and #13 being least.

1. User tries my proof-of-principle prototype
2. User rehearses my visual prototype
3. Peer reviews our interactive media
4. Peer reviews my screenplay
5. Read theory that applies to a current project
6. Play a game
7. Peer reviews our non-interactive images or film
8. Peer reviews my design document or presentation
9. Listen to interaction design lecture
10. Peer reviews my presentation on a non-interactive topic
11. Vacation, exercise, or chill
12. Critique published non-interactive images or film
13. Listen to lecture on non-interactive topic

I then estimated the time I spent during each semester in these activities (including summer), using the semester credit as the unit. "#6 Play a game" and "#11 Vacation" are baselines for activities that are obviously not school-related. However, since I design games, playing them is a research activity, so this is only to say I learn more about interactive media (including non-games) from playing games than items 7 through 13.

Click to view image

During each semester, I was either spending time on a required class for the Interactive Media MFA (blue), a screenwriting or game development elective (red), or my free time (yellow). The average is for four semesters, since I didn't take courses during the summer.

I have usually learned rapidly from items #1 through #4, but I haven't spent much time on item #1. So, this final 8 months, I'll see what happens when I: (A) Add more prototypes to my diet. (B) Cut out fatty documents, presentations, lectures, and non-interactive media.

------------

Although the learning value is my personal self-assessment, for what it's worth, I'll briefly discuss how I estimated some preferences.

1. When a user tries a prototype, in which I focused on a particular principle (or feature), I witness if my design hypothesis holds up. I draw conclusions, refine the software's requirements, and iterate the design. Since my educational goal is to master the design of interactive media, the user's behavior is the best fitness function to evolve the design.* With such a prototype, I get to avoid many low-level tasks that are necessary for production. So, I learn quickly.

2. I can iterate much faster on the story, user interface, and look and feel of a visual prototype (with manual interactivity) yet target graphics. But manual behavior compromises relevance of feedback to software behavior.

3. I would rather have a user try our interactive media, but iterating of production software is slow, and users are scarce. Yet, peers are the next best thing to users. By peers I mean fellow students and faculty. We have the very un-user-like trait of a strong interest to be affiliated with this program. (As far as I have experienced) that subconsciously biases all our responses to our peers' works.

4. I incorporate screenwriting into my design. I write the user's story in screenplay format and apply storytelling principles to their interaction. Screenplays omit user interface, look and feel, yet they capture the story perfectly, and express some of the simulation. At USC, the screenplays I'm referring to are for non-interactive screenplays, for film or television. It would seem odd that I stress interactivity as my goal, yet value screenplays so highly. Well, in the course of having aspiring screenwriters review the words, except for the dialogue and the writing style, what they are mostly reviewing is the dramatic experience of the user. They are, in a sense, user experience designers. And obviously, iterating in text is quick.

5. When I intend to entertain a user, I care about the principles behind their interest and attention. With my particular thesis, I also care about their use and acquisition of language, and cognitive exercise in general. So, having those kinds of questions makes the answers that I find meaningful.

6. My weakpoint used to be not playing enough games. (GameFly turned that around, since I don't have to buy everything I want to try.) Games comprise the plurality of interactive media, and a lot of user interface, look and feel, and simulation (but not story) innovation came from games. I look forward to productivity software, websites, electronics, and architecture catching up to some of the stellar videogames.

7. Much of interactive media of course is decomposable into non-interactive elements (audio, images). And, by analogy, entertaining with interactive graphics means understanding how to entertain with non-interactive graphics. Yet understanding non-interactive graphics is not sufficient to understand the psychology of interactive graphics.

8. I started college in English Literature. I enjoy reading. So of course I enjoy other people reading my words. But there's a huge cognitive cost to constructing a mental model of interactive media from a written (even an illustrated) document. I can't accurately evaluate a doc, and frankly, I haven't met anyone who can. What I can do is compare it to interactive experiences that I have, but that isn't sufficient to evaluate innovation--something new. It's really easy to sell yourself, or your peers, that your document could be the seed of a great game. But what's the test? How do you prove it on paper? If I can't connect a hypothesis to a conclusion (if all I have is a hypothesis), then I haven't learned about interactive media and further iterations would be off into some nebulous, self- (or peer-) aggrandizement.

9. I respect theory. I'm an INTP (intuitive-thinker). So I should respect lectures on interaction design. I do and listen to a lot of them. But it is secondary to experiencing roundtrip responsibility. All I can do with a lecture is consider and agree or disagree. All I have learned is someone's opinion. I can't try it out and see (if I'm just listening).

10. Presenting on a general topic can be indirectly enlightening to designing interactive media. But so far, it has been incidentally so.

11. Lao Tzu said the emptiness makes the vessel meaningful. A vacation, or just anything I choose to do for no other reason than it makes me feel good, has been the only cure I know for burnout. It also puts the other learning into perspective.

12. I have respect for all media. I wish I had enough mindpower to learn it all. But since I've specialized in interactive media (which is broad enough for several lifetimes) critiquing other media has been useful to understand people's opinions and to experience general culture, but critiquing it has not empowered my work.

13. Listening to lectures of general interest or other media has not empowered me to design.**

* I'm reminded of my first videogame job. I directed the US version of Nexon's first two games. For these I had roundtrip responsibility. I had an idea; I scripted it and edited the data and maps; I tested it; I operated the live server; I answered customer support and bugs; read the forums and directly observed. It was extremely educational to get feedback so quickly.

** Some have lectured that media, such as a book, a hallway, a film, or a painting, is interactive media. But in my opinion, the interactive agent in those examples is the human. Just because humans interact does not make everything that humans use interactive. To be INTERactive, two or more systems change another system. In the case of most books, hallways, films, or paintings, changing them is not a use case for which its author had designed. The book (or this post) may change the reader's thoughts. That only means the reader is subject to change, and says nothing about changing the book. Granted, a human can write on the book's pages, rip them out, or make art from them, but that kind of arguing is sophistry. If everything were a work of interactive media, then "interactive" would be a redundant adjective, and the term "media" alone would suffice.

Eat vegetarian for less than $10. Each is in walking distance of USC. I usually eat vegetarian when I can find decent food. That was a lot easier in Berkeley and San Francisco. But over the past two years, I've found vegetarian fare within walking distance of USC.

I myself am not vegetarian, but when I can eat happily, then I prefer that other intelligent life can enjoy their lives, too.

According to an experiment on a bird called a budgerigar, the bird finds it easier to learn by imitation than by ignoring observed behavior of another bird. Automatic imitation has been accepted in humans, but the authors claim this is the first evidence of automatic imitation in birds.

This suggests to me that many tasks can be learned by observing others perform the same. In my thesis, I had been presenting behavior to imitate, so that users could begin to pick up elements of a foreign language without verbal instruction. The technique prompted me to look for exemplary cases of priming player behavior through imitation in videogames.

Last week while I was playing Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3), I arrived where my plane had crashed. From the overlooking cliff, I noticed one of the thugs, in the distance, sliding down a rope. It struck me as an odd way to set the scene of the thug's camp. After I wiped them out (actually I didn't want to kill these anonymous brown-skinned fellows, but that's the only way the game taught me to progress the plot), I was stumped on how to trigger the next encounter or cutscene. Then I saw the rope. With little thought, I climbed. I had imitated the distant rope climber. Through storytelling and animation, my behavior was artfully directed to discover the next scene's trigger volume. And rather than distract me, as most hints in games do (including the L2 button in Uncharted), this subtle display of a behavior to imitate suggested a solution without breaking my belief in the narrative.

... (in theory).

In Sande Chen's interesting article, there are passing references to Stephen Dinehart applying Block's visual intensity graph to Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Jenova Chen applying Block's emotional intensity graph at thatgamecompany. Examples of cinematography are mentioned from Star Trek: Armada, Assassin's Creed, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

This is your Block on games. For USC alumni, this lineage of graphing intensity and correlating graphic design to story intensity stems from Bruce Block. Deeper than a passing reference, anyone to suggest: This is your game on Block?

I read the interesting examples of cinematography (which I'd also like to see screenshots of). On page 2, the article whets my appetite for holistic user experience design: Brian Hawkins cleverly crafts a literal cliffhanger when a user barely jumps over a chasm. As a game designer who holistically designs story, simulation, user interface and look and feel, I'd like to read about an example of graphing gameplay intensity. The article goes into a little more depth on symphonizing look and feel and story. As we know, games (unlike movies) also require simulation and user interface. So a holistic approach must integrate the abstract rules of play and the human-artifact interaction. Hawkins' jump is one holistic example. Can you suggest a second videogame example that symphonizes the emotional arc of all the channels of game design: simulation, story, user interface, and look and feel?