final project progress / to-do list

Some notes:

• basic directions: forward, left, right, up/down (stairs/elevator)….thought about adding reverse but it doesn’t really make much sense - you could get “stuck” if you’re told to go back a step and you’ve reached the beginning.
• basic rules: walk forward until you come to an intersection. what defines an intersection? a point where you can turn left/right or go up/down, etc. stop at the intersection and skip to another random track to determine which way to go.
• how does the game end? when you get sick of it? if the tracks are shuffling there can’t really be an “end.” maybe one is randomly an “ending,” although that wouldn’t work because it could accidentally be the first track.

Some things to do:

• finalize “rules” for movement/turning vs. shuffle function
• script out speech for audio tracks
• figure out how a story fits into this, or how to break it up so it can “randomize” and still loosely make sense

reading response 7

1. Describe 4 different ways that the game generation is different from the baby boom generation based on attitude and behaviors.

1- Pervasion. The sheer numbers of game systems produced and purchased makes it almost certain that although not every child may own a game system, they have experienced it in some way. Games are literally everywhere, selling in massive numbers. They have proven their staying power through the many various incarnations they have seen from the Atari and its fellows of the early 80’s and prior to the advanced systems of today, so the number of people exposed to this type of entertainment is huge. The article states that professionals over the age of 34 are unlikely to have grown up with games other than part of a fad, but those under 34 were twice as likely to have been exposed to video games. In this way, video games have developed and maintained a vast audience. The game generation differs from the baby boom generation in its size and the way it has been so deeply pervaded by gaming.

2- Life Experience. For members of the game generation, they have only experienced a world with games. Born after or around the creation of video games, and grown up during the prime of their development, members of this generation have never known anything but a world with games. The game generation has therefore fed on the positive aspects of technology - like storybooks, board games, and other toys traditionally experienced by previous generations, video games were a commonality for this generation. Through widespread availability, the majority of children experienced video games in some way, and so video games had a hand in shaping memories for many members of this generation.

3- Technology-Friendly Mindset. Raised on a developing form of technology intended as a form of entertainment, kids of the game generation are far more comfortable with the constantly evolving technologies that continue to further pervade our lives. Early experiences with video games like the NES built interest among children who would later grow up and adopt newer advancements in video games as the technology matured. As video games are sort of a parallel and sometimes and overlap with other technologies like computers, their comfort level allowed them to experience other areas of technology. This brings us to today, where twenty and thirty-somethings who played games as kids are in positions to change technology as we see it. With the maturation of the children of this generation, we’ve also seen other advancements like the changes that accompanied the “Web 2.0″ movement. Cell phones and iPods and other gadgets are commonplace. It’s possible that they’re equally responsible for the tech-savviness of young children today as well: there are even cell phones made especially for children now. Members of this generation are unafraid of new technology and the possibilities that surround it. Previous generations are less likely to be so open and adoptive of new technologies because they haven’t experienced them in the same way children of the game generation have. They have no personal or emotional ties to the technology, and don’t understand it in the same way.

4- Bleeding-Edge Lifestyle. In technology-related fields (computer science for example) the term “bleeding-edge” refers to the absolute newest technologies - often things so new that they aren’t quite perfected. I feel that this term describes this generation well because of the way technology has advanced as a result of their work as adults today. An example of this could be social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. Sometimes started as college projects, these websites were completely unheard of a few years ago, and are now extremely popular with millions of members. At the same time, they are imperfect because the system can be abused (underage users/child predators, people who don’t understand the system or put information online that could potentially harm them, etc.) as solutions haven’t been developed due to the infancy of the system - it’s so new that nothing like it has existed before, and solutions don’t exist yet. These types of new products (especially on the internet) are appearing all the time, and constantly changing the way we do things. Previous generations were more traditional in their approach to change - new versions of the same products. This generation innovates and looks for totally different ways of accomplishing a task.

2.  Based on statements made on their web site, how does the Go Game foster corporate team building and how is their process “unique”?

According to their website the Go Game fosters corporate team building through the experience shared by the players. “Players will realize the magic power of the team, getting to know and depend on one another as never before. Each course features diverse challenges for all personality types and thinking styles, so players will have the opportunity to show off their own unique talents and abilities.” By placing players in unusual, puzzle-solving situations, they force teams to discover what one anothers’ abilities are and how they best work together. They also state they they are different because “While other companies offer paper based scavenger hunts, we are the only game in town to use wireless-web technology. ” They also mention their use of technology (digital cameras, cell phones, etc.) and inclusion of actors in the game.

3. How does Seriousity leverage game-based models in conjunction with “gamer generation” attitude and behavior to make work both fun and efficient?

Seriosity’s “Attent” system leverages game-based models along with “gamer generation” attitude and behavior to optimize efficiency and make work fun by balancing game elements with work elements. The Attent system is fairly logical: spend credits to maximize the attention your message will receive. The system is simple and does exactly what it needs to do - prioritize email importance. The concept of using credits doesn’t complicate the e-mail process much beyond an extra click or two, and doesn’t take much time to do. It uses “gamer generation” attitude to accomplish its task by applying a new method to a long-standing problem.

4. As most of you are the “gamer generation”, do you agree or disagree with what is stated about attitude and behaviors in “Got Game”? And how do you feel about using game-based models and injecting play into the workplace?

I agree with most of what is said in “Got Game.” Games in general, whether they’re electronic or not, tend to promote the idea that “winning is good and losing is bad,” so you generally want to be the winner and reap the benefits. This isn’t necessarily an entirely bad way to approach life or problems. It makes sense to want to achieve the best possible outcome in whatever you do, so that seems logical enough to me. I also feel that game-based models and play in the workplace are a good idea, if implemented properly. I like Seriosity’s approach because it achieves the task well while also “blending in” with the environment. It’s not excessively playful, and it doesn’t distract from the primary task, but still adds a playful element to an ordinary task. I think these types of implementations for small tasks  such as email priority will become more and more prevalent. I think play itself could be a useful addition to the workplace, especially in areas where tasks are extremely repetitive.

present tense storytelling / alternate methods

“Playdate”

“A White Heron”

The Dionaea House 

usb mod project: part one

Back towards the beginning of the semester, one of our projects was to convert a USB keyboard into some type of alternate controller for a computer game. I took pictures while I was working on my project (a pair of gloves with contacts on the fingers and various other locations) but only just got them off my camera. Here are some of the initial steps in putting them together.

Here’s the circuitboard taken from the old keyboard. Getting it out was difficult because it’s important not to break it.  Click here to go to my flickr photostream where you can hover over the picture and see the various parts of the circuitboard…

In order to make contacts for the fingertips of the gloves, I needed metal. Cheap or free is best. So, I cut up a couple of aluminum pop cans into square pieces. I bent the edges over and sanded them so they weren’t sharp.

Then I sanded the coating off of each piece. Though it looks like just metal, there is a thin filmy coating over the surface. This needed to go. The dark spots on the edges in this picture show where the metal is still coated - the shiny part is clean!

This is one completed contact. The metal has been sanded and is completely shiny. Then I soldered a long piece of copper wire to it. The metal square will later be attached to the fingertips of the gloves, and the wire will be soldered to the pins on the circuitboard.

A bundle of completed contacts! They are all made the same way. I added tape to the solder point for extra strength and stability.

That’s all I have for now, but you can view all of these photos by visiting my flickr page here.

chex quest; final project notes

Today in class we discussed the modification of games like Battlezone and Doom for military purposes. Basically, the games are repurposed as military training or recruiting tools. One of the mods we discussed was Marine Doom - a version of Doom created especially for the Marines, modified to suit their purposes. So essentially, it’s just really clever product placement. This got me thinking: I remember some odd years back (way back, like, when Windows 95 was still pretty new) this game that came packed in Chex Cereal: Chex Quest. Chex Quest is a complete modification of Doom, just like the military mods. But unlike Doom or its subsequent incarnations, Chex Quest was completely child-friendly and focused on concepts like good nutrition and collecting healthy food rather than attacking demons. So while the military was busy training its soldiers and attracting new recruits, cereal companies were just as hard at work recruiting consumers via the same tactics. Hmm.

On another note, some considerations/to-dos for my final project:

• find some way to implement the “shuffle” function
• work on story concept
• determine a set of constituative rules
• research similar projects?
• maybe it’s not based in one specific area, but rather could be started from any area (based on simple rules) to create an infinite number of possibilites/final outcomes

And this is my third post here for the day. Hopefully the last one.

reading response 6

1. Give an example of an early video game that was transformed into a military training tool. Describe the process.

“Battlezone” was an early video game produced by Atari which was converted into a military training tool for Bradley tanks. Because the game was a tank simulation, the army found it suitable for their purposes. The creator of the game converted it by using real data such as the physics of real weapons, imagery which was taken from and would represent the “enemy,” and controls. The old arcade controls were swapped for an H-shaped “yoke” control, which replicated the actual tank’s controls. The game was also renamed “Army Battlezone.”

2. How do video games affect American’s perception of war?

Video games affect Americans’ perception of war by creating an emphasis on the positive aspects of war: by playing the game, you can attain glory. You can save someone’s life and defend your country. You can be heroic and respected, all without the consequences that come with being an actual soldier.

3. What is the role of fantasy in both commercial war games and military training programs?

In commercial war games and military training programs, fantasy serves to stimulate the player to achieve particular goals. They stress the importance of being heroic and part of the team, striving toward the ultimate goal. The player or participant can attain a sort of “flow” in the game or activity and become more involved - whether they actually are in reality or not, they can become a soldier for a moment and experience what life is like on the battlefield without the consequences of injury or death. In this way, the fantasy aspect demonstrates all the “better” qualities of being a solider, because the negative outcomes are eliminated. You only see the best outcomes - winning the battle, conquering the enemy - because the negatives, like death, are eliminated and quickly bypassed to get back into the game. Fantasy allows the player to start over and over and over again until they achieve the most desirable goal.

4. How do you feel about the military using video games as a marketing tool?

I am personally somewhat disturbed by the military’s use of video games as a marketing tool. I have had access to video games since I was a very young child, and for me they have always been an escape or a fantasy. Despite being twenty-one years old, they give me a purpose (or possibly an excuse) to escape into that pretend-world that children freely inhabit. So, if I want to play a relatively innocent game of Mario and momentarily slide into that world, I can. Alternately, if I want to be more aggressive and play a few rounds of Halo, I can take on that role for a time. When I feel like being a pirate, I can start up Eve-Online and ransom other players to my heart’s content. All the while, I’m able to remove myself from these fantasies at will. They’re like toys - I can pick them up and play for a while, but in the end put them back in the box and that ends the game. When the military uses games to try and convince me to become a soldier in real life, I feel as though they’ve invaded some aspect of my own private space by entering my fantasy and bringing along the real-world baggage that accompanies their message. All I wanted was a few moments of experience as a soldier; I’d never want to do this in real life.

final project proposal

Basic Premise:

For my final project, I intend to create an alternate-reality type of game based on “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” style children’s books. However, instead of written, printed stories, the story is told through a series of audio files on CD or in mp3 format on an mp3 player. Each file will give some information or directions, and then present the player/listener with a series of choices, directing them to skip to another track/audio file in order to continue the story. The story begins at a specific, designated spot on the UB North Campus, and starts when the player begins the first audio track. From here, the narration begins and the player is given basic background information, directions, and a choice about where to move to. In this way, they physically take part in the story itself. The player is given specific information about where to walk, when to pause the audio, and when to skip tracks; this information is concrete and does not try to trick the player. Less solid is the storyline itself; the player must piece together what they are told with what they see in order to make choices to continue the story/game. Ultimately, the goal of the game is for the player to form their own conclusions about what was told in the story. Whether they choose to believe it or not, and whether to let it affect them and their perception of the place they are in.

The game and story will focus around the idea of events and the place and time they occur in. Time is a fleeting thing, and we do not often step back to consider the outcome of our actions in day-to-day life. Using this concept as a foundation, the game will in some ways serve as a simulation or re-creation of a single day, or possibly the days leading up to or following that particular day as well. The story for the game itself will be told as a sort of present-tense, first person journal entry, like listening to someone talk as they tell you about their day. In this way, the same events of a single day are preserved and by putting you in the places they may (or may not) have happened allows them to be re-enacted over and over. Time and place are linked together, along with  a certain sense of identity. The story itself is rather general in some ways; although the details may be specific, the identity and role of the speaker and the identity of the listener/player are not necessarily so clearly defined. At certain junctures in the story, the player will be presented with a choice which will allow them to take one of two or more routes to advance the plot. These choices may appear as something inherently positive or negative, or possibly entirely neutral, though how they will affect the outcome as a whole are uncertain. The outcome of each choice will lead to further choices, and so on. The choices themselves will allow for a certain “shift” in the sense of time in the story: the tense may change, or the plot may advance or possibly go backwards, depending on the choice of the player. The choices given may not always be so simple as mere choice in regard to actions - while the story in present tense may tell the narrator’s actions, one of the choice outcomes may branch off toward a completely different sense of narration, possibly ranting about a related effect or feeling or other outcome involved with the present-tense plot.

In some ways it would be logical to compare the concept and function of the game to the structure of a website and the way one navigates through it. A series of pages are available, but they do not necessarily have a chronological order or subject order - the order is determined by the reader as they make choices and as more choices are made available to them. The flow of the story in the game is similar to this, but rather than pages it is based on moments or events which the player selects when given the choice. Therefore, the story of the day is told in an indirect, player-driven way.

1. Objective:

The objective of the game is to listen to a series of parts of a story (told in a sort of “journal entry” type of format, or as though you’re listening to someone talk about their day) as you are guided on a walk across campus, and make a series of choices as you progress through the plot which will affect the place and time where the story ends. The walk isn’t a so much tour in the direct sense of the word, but more or less a re-creation of one day in the life of one student, possibly/probably told from my own perspective. The game ends when you arrive at one of the endings, which vary depending on the choices you have made. You are left to piece together what you may; when did this take place? Where? Who is this person? What happened? Why? What is the significance of the event that happened or the identity of myself or the narrator or the place I’m in or being led to?

2. Audience:

The project is specifically intended to target people who frequent the UB campus. They may not necessarily be students, although students will likely better identify with the project. They also may not necessarily spend the majority of their time on North Campus. Some familiarity with the campus is a plus as the story/concept centralizes around the place itself. The story and concept are fairly abstract, so in reality most anyone could take part in the game, but the location is important.

3. Research:

In order to further research this concept, I will research similar types of stories and games. The books the game is based on were extremely common when I was a child, and there seem to be many of them, as well as more adult versions of the same types of books. There are also online versions of the same types of books/games. Websites themselves are almost an identical form of navigation, although not necessarily based on storytelling. It would also probably be worth it to research old text-based computer games, which had no graphics and were entirely played through text, essentially a similar experience. The game world was constructed by the story given and the player’s imagination.

4. Medium:

The project itself will be presented almost as a sort of derive; a live, participatory experience. In order to play, each person will need a CD or mp3 player along with the proper audio files, as well as some paper and some type of writing device. From here, the experience is between the player and the audio. Little other instruction will be given. For class, the project could be presented either through documentation or actual participation, depending on the amount of time available for presentation. I also think it could be an interesting experiment to make the rules of the game and the audio files available online so that anyone on campus could also take part in the game. It would be interesting to see what types of responses could arise from these “third party” participants with little outside instruction about the project itself.

utopian product design: the companion

My utopian product design (originally proposed here) is complete!

Go check out the Companion.

dumpsters, junk, and robots

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So, my part of the class project to build an area about “being green in second life” is to create a “dumpster dive” area. The concept for the area is to build a giant dumpster in which items can be abandoned, picked up, swapped, sold, etc. There is so much free junk available in the game that it’s pretty easy to accumulate quite a bit of stuff. This is the kind of stuff I’m stocking up on and dropping in the dumpster. I really would like to find a lot of it so it’s really like “digging” around in junk, like a real dumpster.

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Here’s the dumpster from the outside. I’m still working on the entrance, trying to make it look more like a dumpster stuffed with junk. This is harder to do than it would seem.

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This is the entrance. You drop in through a small hole in the top, and fly out the same way when you’re done visiting.

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Inside the dumpster there are a few bins to sort junk into. It neatens the space up slightly to allow avatars to move around. I had thought about just leaving junk scattered everywhere, but sometimes it’s difficult to move an avatar around an area and it made more sense to leave some more open space for walking. I might also try and categorize or color code the bins in some way so that visitors can sort the junk. Maybe they’ll just be color-coded with no other implication about their purpose just to see how people pick them up and use them without much instruction. I’ll see how it goes.

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People have left stuff in my bins! I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s not anything I put there. That is cool and helpful.

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I went out in search of more random junk to leave in the bins, and ended up on Freebie Island. So laggy! My feet were going a mile a minute but I was barely moving an inch. I picked up a few things, though.

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More junk in the bins. Bigger items make it look more full, but I want to pick up more small objects too, just to fill it out.

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I also picked up a robot outfit, which somehow seemed fitting. Maybe I can wear it to the event once the whole project is put together or something. “Junk robot.” It seemed fitting, somehow.

There are a few other items I want to add to the Dumpster Dive:

* Figure out scripting to give instructions or information when entering.
* Determine how junk should be sorted or what kind of instructions are given - some instructions, detailed instructions, no instructions? What will people do with it on their own?
* More signage.
* Find more junk!

campus derive: ub secrets

If you’re reading this (which is unlikely since I’m pretty sure almost no one does!) please go take a look at our derive project, UB Secrets!