PLAYFUL 2010

24th Sept 2010 at Conway Hall - here's a summary of an interesting and enjoyable event:

Clashing with PICNIC in Amsterdam - check out at http://www.picnicnetwork.org/  
Toby Barnes (Mudlark) and remotely Stuart Candy (Futuryst) introduce proceedings...
HG Wells - Floor Games and Little Wars

Naomi Alderman - narrative in games
http://www.naomialderman.com
Raph Koster - Ola's Law - http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml
Quickstart a narrative with desire, fear, secrets, character development.
Games generally written in second person, which is unusual - it happens to you - so the pleasure of getting to know a character is mitigated by giving the player autonomy over decisions the character can make; and character becomes necessarily bland or ambiguous.
Recommended interactive fiction - All Roads, Slouching towards Bedlam, The Act of Misdirection.
And games - Bioshock, Silent Hill, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia Sands of Time

Paul Bennun - http://www.somethinelse.com 
Papa Sangre, new audio game - http://www.papasangre.com/ - lose yourself in the game, freedom from the screen.

Jim - http://www.madeinme.com
Ladybird did it for books, Sesame Street for tv, so The Land if Me aims to inspire pre-school kids - without any traditional educational 'measureable outcomes'.
Toys vs. games - the game/play is not predetermined in a toy, depends who picks it up.  Where there's interest, there's learning.

Bea-Davy Sutherland - ethical games
Checks out Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin - http://vimeo.com/15278745

Nicholas Nova - evolution of game controllers
Neat tactile feedback on direction control cross.

Pat Kane - http://www.theplayethic.com/
http://oldjewstellingjokes.com/
Dispirited by Frankie Boyle's sardonic humour, but understanding its value as a social pressure valve ... temporary transcendence from routine and acceptance of life.  Also humour keeps alive the prospect of hope, represents a permanent oasis of cognitive freedom 
Paolo Virno - Wit and Innovation http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_virno13.htm

Richard Hogg - contrarian
... makes choices based on being in the minority in everything ...

Tom Muller - http://www.hellomuller.com/
Graphic design in comics.

Jonathon Smith - Lego games
Our deepest conflict - what we really, really want vs. what is expected of us.
Lego - has infinite possibilities, systematised, has both overt and discreet affordances, can attain mastery.
In video games, there is conflict between freedom and constraints.  Particularly noticeable in boys over 5 (after school kicks in) is the dramatic orientation towards finding and dealing with expectations, rather than free play, which has informed the design of the games.

Spots vs. Stripes - http://www.spotsvstripes.com/homepage.aspx

Cadbury Pocket Games competition finalists - James Wallis (FlickRacer) and Sally (Eggathon).
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle, psychogeography, 'sous les paves, la plage'

ShiftRunStop - http://shiftrunstop.co.uk/
Podcast with Dominik Diamond

Sebastian Deterding - http://cargocollective.com/codingconduct
Talking about gamification, badges and stats used as marketing tools. But real play has to be voluntary.  Theodore Sturgeon
James Carse - Finite and infinite games - http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/infinitegames.html

Margaret Robertson - Hide & Seek
What is Mindcraft?

Bertrand Duplat - http://www.volumique.com/en/
Paper video games - pawns and cards on top of ipads, iphones sailing on top of maps

Alexis Kennedy - Fail Better Games
Narrative engineers created Echo Bazaar (Fall London) and why gamers enjoy delicious misery.

Dom Hodge - Frukt -  and Dave Haynes - SoundCloud
Music mashups, smule, geocaching music, disco snake, isticks, other hack-day musical ideas

Digital Toy Design

This was the first year we taught Toy Design as part of the BSc Computer Games degree. Second year students were asked to undertake a small piece of research into toys, then produce their own concepts and working prototypes, using Arduino as base hardware development environment.  The module focused on technical aspects rather than aesthetics.

After a basic introduction to electronics - a reminder to those who had done physics at school - we launched into some toy-hacking. 

The local car boot sale provided plenty of material, including a talking Elmo, a motorised train, a dancemat game and electronic language lotto.  Our electronic labs also had a few old keyboards to deconstruct.  These all proved useful for demonstrating the simplicity of the technology underpinning seemingly complex electronic devices.

Students began to play with the kits, experimenting with sketches and different sensors. We showed them how to construct their own large pressure pad sensors (buttons), how to link Flash with Arduino, how to create simple applications using Processing, how to solder components.

Working in small teams, they came up with the following concepts: laser-activated hit-blob game; pressure-pad alarm system for a house (not really a toy); "simon says" game (match the light sequence); musical soctopus. 

For non-programmers, "simon says" game was trickier than they expected.  The alarm system cautiously worked by showing which doors had been breached on a processing application.  Jamie and Kyle's laser-target game was successful and fun to play.  Soctopus got the award for best sewing technique...

PaintJam

It started with a fishing game.  Transformed into an observation of magnets.  Became a snake chasing marbles.  Metamorphosed into an automated drawing tool... using metal balls.  Jumped out into ovenware and lost the motor.  Evolved until finally even the marbles disappeared and total human control took over.  Check the video.


PaintJam 2010 from Fiona French on Vimeo.

icould - career in video games

http://icould.com/talk/are-you-considering-a-career-in-video-gaming/

Questions answered by Laura Weir, the HR Manager for Jagex and Fiona French, Course Leader for BSc Computer Games at London Metropolitan University.

The Big Woolwich TXT Game

25th July 2009: Greenwich Heritage Centre, Woolwich Arsenal

http://bigwoolwichtxtgame.blogspot.co.uk/
Murder or misadventure? Be a time-travelling detective and contact the spirit world using your mobile phone. You have 1 day to solve the mysteries of 3 unexplained deaths at Woolwich Arsenal...
 
Commissioned by Stream as part of London 2012 Open Weekend in July 2009. This was a participatory art project that used story-telling and sms messaging to investigate the local area. Using mobile gaming technology, players took part in a game that invited them to solve a series of clues and discover an unfolding story along the way.

Facebook event: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117376467712

StreamArts Project: www.streamarts.org.uk/projects/big-woolwich-txt-game

HOW
Technically, setting up the sms system was fairly straightforward. I set up a txtlocal (http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/) account and used the developer API to send and receive sms messages using PHP CURL. The messages were then passed to an SQL database + site hosted for free on 000WebHost (http://www.000webhost.com/).
 
PHP scripts took care of all the logic - depending on which message was received, the ghosts in the machine would send back an appropriate response to the player.

The main difficulty with this sort of application is in designing the game itself. Messages sent by players need to be short and preferably one-word, aas the system uses simple string matching to discover what message has been received. Variations in spelling and lexicon are not recognised. Answers from the ghosts are limited in length by typical sms maximum - 160 characters. The system was deliberately designed to be used by anyone with the most basic mobile phone.

NARRATIVE
A huge amount of time and energy went into the story research.   Here are the initial instructions for players:

Detective, you are challenged to unravel the mysteries of three deaths connected with the Royal Arsenal over the last three centuries. You should have a map, a sheet of questions and a fully-charged mobile phone at your disposal.  There are some clues in the area, which we think may have been left by poltergeists, anxious to pass information to the side of the living.  If the spirits feel that you are a friendly presence, they may send you a message.

You can usually communicate with spirits directly, by texting a name, then waiting. (eg. BENJAMIN, GEORGE, ROSE)

They may ask you a question, in which case you should text back your answer in order to score extra points and receive more clues. They may direct you to another spirit, who you can choose to contact. They may direct you to a place where you might find a clue or provide you with useful information.


1777 Benjamin Blight died on board one of the hulks, huge prison ships moored on the Thames alongside Woolwich Arsenal. Prisoners doing forced labour were responsible for constructing fortifications at the Ordnance Storage Depot.
 
1833 George Bodle died in suspicious circumstances on his farm, but his son was acquitted of murder because of lack of evidence. James Marsh, ordnance chemist at Woolwich Arsenal, subsequently discovered a new method for reliably establishing whether arsenic was present in victim's bodies.
 
1916 Rose Clark was one of the "canary girls" who worked in munitions during World War 1 - so-called because the TNT they handled changed the colour of their skin to yellow and gradually poisoned them.