in light of yesterday's Processing workshop, i'm posting a link back to my first experiments, done last semester after our one-day workshop. i also did some vision-tracking sketches which i'll post soon.
« January 2004 | Main | March 2004 »
February 25, 2004
February 18, 2004
September 12th is a very interesting and simple little "game"/simulation from the producers of newsgaming.com. it clearly demonstrates, with emotion, how you may shoot your missile at the bad 'guy' based on current intelligence of her/his/their whereabouts, but by the time your weapon hits, it may or may not hit your target, and, it may or may not hit other non-targets as well. this was for me a very succinct example of 'meaninful play' in that the action i decided to take created a direct and immediate system-response loaded with meaning. "The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome" ("Rules of Play" by Salen and Zimmerman, pg. 34). the player-action to system-response relationship in this game is not at all complex, that is, there is no question about your action's consequence - it is a simple design. yet, the choice to outcome relationship is a meaningful one beacause the complexity is on entirely another plane, one dealing with culture and the state of the world. it made me feel like i made a terrible mistake when non-targets fell dead to the floor and homes were destroyed. this concept was no longer, for an instant at least, something outside of myself, something i would never deal with personally, something i would never have to decide and be responsible for, and the point was emotionally learned. if there is one inadequacy to the simulation that i felt, is that i inevitably felt like i just shouldn't do anything - don't disturb this world at all. the terrorists don't seem to do much, if left alone all they do is walk around town like the civilians do. why hurt them (and risk hurting others) if they clearly present no threat? would the simulation be a more engaging/meaningful one if your choice to kill COULD prevent some 'worse' or further evil, if your choice to kill was a decision you REALLY had to weigh seriously because not only would the result be uncertain (as it is now), but also because inherent to the game would be diverse definitions of 'success'?
February 17, 2004
From the new Experimental Game Lab at Georgia Tech (first open house later this month). Projects such as:
Drama Management - A central problem in creating video games with engaging stories is balancing interactivity and authorial control. While the author of a book or a movie can control the sequence and timing of events which the viewer experiences, a video game author does not have such control. While such control may be necessary to create an artistic experience, it competes with one of the strengths of the medium - the ability of a user to do what they like, when they like. I envision the creation of a new component to interactive stories, called a Drama Manager, which is responsible for balancing interactivity and authorial control. I am considering this problem from an Artificial Intelligence standpoint. [uhmm... "Drama Manager"... sounds like the perfect position for me.]
GameLog - GameLog is a website where gamers can keep track of the games that they are playing. In addition, they can maintain a GameLog (or diary) of their game playing experience. This repository of experiential information helps augment the power of word of mouth by providing instant access the thoughts, feelings and overall experience that someone has had with a game.
Triad - The American game industry has been searching recently for ways to engage women and casual gamers more fully in the game market. One of the reasons women and casual gamers cite for not taking to mainstream games is the focus many games place on violent action and an absence of games that focus on building relationships. Triad addresses this perception by providing a gameplay experience that focuses on the interpersonal relationships of the game characters, building upon the models of currently successful relationship-based games.
To do this, Triad provides an interactive environment for the creation of short love stories. Love stories are created in Triad through collaboration between the user and a story scenario made of a number of plot fragments, thus the user joins the system in a game of creating romantic stories in the style of Japanese popular romances as they appear in comic books, animated television shows, and interactive games.
And more.
The 400 So Far is an in-progress list of "The 400 Rules of Game Design". This week's CTCS 564 readings dealing primarily with rules, I thought these were quite interesting to look at, though they strictly speak to the designers of games and not the players. Practical advice such as: Concretize Ideas, Make Subgames, Add a Small Amount of Randomness to AI Calculations, Make the Game Fun for the Player, not the Designer or Computer, etc. - but also not so obvious, more esoteric ideas such as: Begin at the Middle, Creat AI in the Mind of the Player, Maintain Level of Abstraction, Use Real-World Formulas and Minimize Cheating with Simulations, etc.
From iDrama:
"iDrama is a discussion list for concepts in Interactive Drama. We're a group of people who want to take computer games beyond the current trends towards hack and slash or "choose your own adventure" branching movies, and explore ways to improve storytelling and drama using the computer as a medium.
It grew out of a discussion group that wanted to build commercial technologies around interactive storytelling, but we eventually decided that those who'd been thinking about the problems longer than us had some neat technology, but still hadn't answered the questions of how adding interaction to a story was going to make it more compelling.
My personal attitudes about the subject change regularly, but as of this writing I'm convinced that interactive drama isn't about the players or audience being in direct control of the characters, but about helping the audience to better explore and under- stand the emotional states of the characters, and about tailoring the presentation of the story to the audience."
February 3, 2004
"Pacific Coast Wedding" - a panoramic narrative short inspired by J.D. Salinger. Currently brainstorming how to make this narrative more interactive (that is, more interesting interactivity than its mere visual navigation).