Ethan Kennerly

This is your Block on Games

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:56:29 -0800

... (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?

Responsive and rigorous

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:47:06 -0800

A couple of recent articles at Gamasutra spoke to my desire for rigor in the design of user interfaces. Mick West's experiments in correlating perceptual and absolute lag is a work of perceptual science. Garreth Griffiths dissects usability issues in boundaries with poor affordances. Their rigor transfers insight from games to most any interactive media.

Feedback wanted

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:34:59 -0800

Would you like to influence the design of a game in just 30 minutes? Runesinger, an advanced game and MFA thesis at USC is conducting a focus test. Do you have half an hour to look at a storyboard and prior language games, listen to original scores and reference songs? No experience required. Express yourself. Korean and American snacks provided. This will be on campus, Wednesday July 16 and Thursday July 17, from 1 pm to 4 pm. The focus test will finish in 30 minutes. Is there a time that is good for you? Contact me to confirm: kennerly -AT- usc -DOT- edu

Playfulness for productivity

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:04:19 -0800

Today, while websurfing, I find a cute post calling for playfulness in user interfaces. It reminded me of playfulness for productivity. While my son was visiting, we taught each other a lot. He taught me how to play StarCraft, and I taught him how to research on the web. I was shocked how error-prone most web sites, even well-reputed ones like Google, are. It was, for example, frustrating to lose the maps address because he clicked just half an inch outside the maps address text field, instead going to the Google Maps home page. (And no not the URL address bar or the Google search bar... but the maps text field. In StarCraft, I had no such problems or costly user interface mistakes.) Similar woes plagued us in Windows Explorer. It got me thinking: would a utilitarian app like Windows Explorer be more usable if explicitly mimicked a game model of UI? Could Al Yang's (hypo)thesis (of a Desktop RTS) be a boon to productivity by making stronger metaphorical models and cleaning up the widget clutter? Vista makes steps in this direction (five to ten years behind Mac OS), but I mean radical changes. Not physical simulations, but explicit game UI to the file interface, Civilization-style file management, a Professor Layton curiosity for troubleshooting error messages. On reflection, I'm sure this has been tried before... does the idea ring a bell?

Best videogame game writing

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:05:46 -0800

At 1up, is an articulate comment on the "best writing" in videogames and the state of writing in games, in general. A question the author has (and I have) is: Why do you have to be a WGA member to have your writing in a game qualify for nomination? This criterion sounds like a marketing ploy for membership. If BioShock and Portal didn't make their cut due to lack of these qualifications, then their Best Writing is not the Best.

Sircus attractions

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:32:56 -0800

Jan Sircus talks about theme parks, installations, and a hint of how he designs an architecture for a quasi-narrative user experience, he calls a "story place."

Atarisutra

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:30:22 -0800

Article on Gamasutra waxes nostalgically. By the way, another decent read if you haven't tried agile development yet, is there, too.

Wii media in $5 and 15 minutes

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:27:16 -0800

http://finegamedesign.com/wii After reading, hopefully you have enough examples to start experimenting. I have a lot more to learn, and would enjoy learning from your experiments on the wii.

What mistakes do designers frequently make?

Thu, 29 May 2008 15:35:48 -0800

David Sushil on his site and at GameCareer Guide, says their number is three:

Incompatible mechanics
Ubitquitous interaction
Story dependence

I wonder: What are other problems do designers commonly get stuck on? I've considered 69 professional mistakes that I've seen (and made) over the last decade. Dan Fiden spoke during the business of interactivity class on casual game design. From recall, the "design traps" of casual games he cited are something like:

Designing for your peers, instead of your audience.
Overloading the simulation with too many mechanisms (the kitchen sink).
Failing to accept and tune from user feedback.
Losing track of the design decisions and revisions.
Innovating design for peer reputation (from a GDC talk).
Limiting the design to your prototyping skill set.

Compared to David Sushil's three, these traps focus on the process rather than the design itself. I'll boldly step forward to list one mistake that is the most common one that I still make. It is also the most common problem that I identify in the work of beginning game designers, writers, and filmmakers:

Cognitive leap.

In a quest to make players happy, I'd like to learn: What mistakes do you frequently find when designing, or reviewing, a game?

Thesis playtesters wanted

Sat, 24 May 2008 10:41:59 -0800

Korean lunch will be served, including fresh sushi, vegetables, cookies, tea, and juice. We are looking for players to influence the design of an MFA thesis and advanced game project that practices a foreign language through play. No gaming or language experience necessary. In response to the thoughtful comments from the previous round of playtesting is a collection of prototypes of casual games: a meaningful introduction, a playful sandbox, and a series of interesting choices, none of which require use of a keyboard. This playtest takes 30 minutes. It will be offered on Wednesday and Thursday (May 28, 29) in the early afternoon. Contact me to confirm a time (even on a different day). This is at the interactive media lab (IML) at G142, the basement at the bottom of the stairs, below Carson Sound Stage, which is across the street from the Student Health Center on the north side of campus. Contact: Ethan Kennerly (kennerly -AT- usc -DOT- edu) Game: http://runesinger.com

Runesinger is recruiting

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:24:49 -0800

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?

Communication, Interaction and Social Intelligence

Sat, 03 May 2008 11:49:19 -0800

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

잘먹었습니다

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:21:18 -0800

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).

Image schema in the game

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:38:36 -0800

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.

CTIN 548: Runesinger proposal schedule

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:46:41 -0800

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.