Wow…. WOW. This is really amazing:

Solve Puzzles for Science | Fold It

Synopsis via Kotaku :
“Could you win a Nobel Prize in Medicine for playing a computer game? Foldit is a game for the PC and Mac that takes the Folding@Home concept and adds a more human element to the mix. Instead of having a network of computers work through all of the possible shapes for folding proteins, a problem so huge it could take centuries for all of the computers in the world to solve, Foldit presents unfolded proteins to the player in the form of puzzles, on the basis that human intuition could tackle the problem much faster.”

The presentation is very tidy, the tutorials effective, the difficultly curve smooth, and even if they do go a little too far with the whole PopCap “stars bursting all over the screen makes a player feel good” mantra, it is actually a joy to play. More comments to come as I get the chance to really dive deeper into this brilliant initiative. But a question in the meantime:

“Is this classed as Collective Intelligence??

I ask because it seems this isn’t as much collective problem solving and design here as it is just brute force utilisation of a niche problem solving skill across a global population.

Remember that “game about making games” that I was gushing over during GDC? I finally found the video that they showed during the presentation online:

There’s also a nice writeup on the design process from Greg Trefry at the GameLab site:
Greg Trefry on the process of developing GameStar Mechanic

I really seriously want to get my hands on this thing.

The Guardian have a nice interview with Will Wright up that discusses his approach to game design, in particular the empowerment of the player through the provision of tool-sets and simulations that act as a platform for expressive play.

Unlocking the power of parallel play

He says of his experience designing Sim City:

“I had this little guinea pig city which I could do experiments on, which made the subject so much more interesting than reading a book. So the process of discovery, and getting other people to enjoy discovery has always been a part of it.”

I think we could probably consider all of Wright’s games Meaningful Play to varying degrees. I’m certainly keen to see whether his new Spore game can capture the imagination of the masses through its ambitious attempt to simulate ”...life from a single cell to a solar empire.”

Ian Bogost throws down with the UN in response to their latest political / activism game Deliver The Net

Considering they’re about to hit the 2,000,000 net mark, I think we can consider the initiative as a whole a success, but it’s well worth considering the role of the game (which has only delivered ~7,000 of the total nets thus far) within the scope of this rather epic endeavour.

My questions would be thus:

• Would that number be higher or lower without the game?
• Does the game actually leave the player with any new knowledge or perspective on the African Malaria crisis?

Without actually getting into an in depth analysis, my assumption would be ‘higher’ and ‘no’ respectively.

I completely agree with Ian’s position that “There’s little sense of the lives of Africa either under normal conditions or under the suffering of malaria.” It’s essentially just a tarted up action game with posterised , malnourished Africans standing in the place of cute vector aliens.

Here’s an interesting question: Do we think that games like this keep coming out because the organisations funding them aren’t giving the developers room in the budget to actually design the things, or are they just being implemented by lazy developers who would rather get the job done so they can hurry back to their sci-fi shoot-em-up?

Brenda Brathwaite has a great article over at The Escapist that aims to uncover the source of widespread disdain for videogames amongst “non-gamers”

Myth of the Media Myth via The Escapist

A really frustrating aspect of this debate is no matter how reasonable the game advocates seem to be, the debate too often falls prey to the Fox News effect. Ultimately I think the industry is still largely to blame for giving these people far too much ammunition. The increasing costs of game development in the PlayStation era have forced a cheap focus on the core male demographic that will effect the industry for years to come.

We will continue to see comments like ‘There is no redeeming value to be found in gaming’ until we can give more concrete counter examples. Ultimately people need to be given more reasons to actually respect the medium, more examples of that “redeeming value” being represented through Meaningful Play.

First it was the Yahoo executive that got hired for being a guild leader in World of Warcraft, and now the XBOX Rainbow Six community is responsible for this little tyke:

The Power of XBOX: It’s an XBOX Baby!

Who said all those hours spent in the dark living out fantasy realities couldnt result in something possitive eh?

Questionut from the BBC

This game is pretty neat. When I saw it’s quirky mystical graphical style and it’s exploratory, intuitive interface, I immediately had very high hopes. Too bad those hopes were almost completely dashed when I was halted by none other than the infamous Multi-Choice Challenge! This is a fantastic example once again how far too many developers are interested in making things visually intriguing, and then running out of time to actually think about how to integrate the educational content into actual gameplay contexts. The actual learning component always seems to be retrofitted, like all the ugly rusting air-conditioning units that line the exterior of Shanghai apartment blocks.

However! I do like this more than Brain Age for a couple of reasons:
– There’s a world which you can escape into and visually it’s really neat, so it doesn’t feel nearly as much like work.
– They mix knowledge testing with skill testing and intertwine both with the visual surrounding.
– They also place many of these multi-choice questions in real life contexts.

It’s just such a shame as I just don’t see how they failed to connect together all these things into a cohesive experience.

P.S. There’s a big difference between learning games, and testing games. Where are all the learning games!?

Yahtzee really has emerged as the reviewer of the people, unreservedly tearing apart the industry’s biggest titles with a unmatched honesty and brutality.

The great thing about his reviews is that not only are they incredibly entertaining (as long as you’re not easily offended), but littered with concise insights into some of the glaring flaws in the games’ core mechanics. He really does a great job of making the industry seem quite infantile, setting a challenge to all developers to take note of our past mistakes, and get on with evolving as game designers as opposed to loosing ourselves in the war for prettier visuals.

This week he deconstructs Burnout: Paradise to brilliant effect, but I’m posting the video here to reference one of his opening lines: “One of my measures of a good game is one that teaches me something.” Quite relevant I thought.

P.S. I saw the guy at GDC while coming out of a session and he looked positively terrified. I would be too if I was suddenly surrounded by all the people I’d been tearing to pieces behind the safety of the internet for the last 6 months.

Cool stuff from GDC:
– More thinking is being done around the interaction between games and serialized content (e.g. TV programs and comic books). In particular, Larian Studios have a really cool online world for kids in Belgium which interacts with a TV program and shows off kid-created content.

– Microsoft are using a game called “Bug Hunter” to increase productivity and reduce bugs in its Windows Defect Prevention team

– Games in academia, in particular the adoption of tools such as XNA in the Computer Science classroom, are proving fruitful in attracting and retaining students, as well as pushing up grades

– “Emotiv Systems”:http://www.emotiv.com/ unveiled the next generation of human-computer interaction with their headset controller that allows you to play games with your mind! While it seems the hardware needs a little tweaking before being released to the public late 08, their demo successfully showcased the ability to move objects through 3D space just by thinking about it (support for The Force Unleashed must surely be round the corner)

– Havok are releasing the binary version of their physics suite for free, allowing unprecedented access to an industrial strength physics solution for the independent game dev community

– Portal rightly took home top honors at the Game Developers Choice Awards. The line for their postmortem on the game engulfed North Hall at 4pm on Friday, which was novel considering the final sessions of the conference are usually quite a docile affair

So we’re here at GDC and its kicking off brilliantly with the Serious Games summit in West Hall. I’ll try to give updates on talks, people, and general discoveries that have relevance to the Meaningful Play message throughout the conference.

I was really looking forward to the opening talk for the Summit by Ben Sawyer and Peter Smith that aimed to look at the current state of the Serious Games industry, and the way we define the scope of the field. While they gave quite a nice overview of where games are being used for applications other than pure entertainment, they didn’t actually make much progress as to whether “Serious Games” is in fact the best definition for what we’re trying to do. For anyone that’s read our paper on the issue, you’ll know that we’ve put that definition on our blacklist for bringing up way too many negative connotations when presented anyone outside the industry.

On a lighter note, it’s not even lunchtime yet and I’ve already seen what is sure to be one of the coolest things at the show. Katie Salen (Parsons School of Design) and Greg Tretry (GameLab) presented their quite stunning game about making games: Game Star Mechanic.
Aimed at children in the 10 – 15 age group (I think), the game is presented through a beautifully rendered stream-punk-esque Anime World, drawing in any kids who might even be slightly interested in the YuGiOh or Pokemon franchises (which I think must make up around 70-80% of American kids). The story revolves around warring factions of Mechanics, who each think they know how to design the best game (each represents a different style or genre). The player is tasked with exploring these worlds, and fixing broken games. As they use subsets of the tools to make broken games playable again, they’re introduced to new elements of the game construction system. Before they know it, they have all the skills to start making their own games, without a single piece of code, and all playable by simply flicking a big EDIT / PLAY button always present at the top right of the screen.
Unlike other “simple to use” game creation tools (like Game Maker) this game doesn’t require a single piece of code to be written, and is all driven by and drag-and-drop, slider based interface.

Really quite amazing, and from the videos they showed us of the game’s in use in the classroom, the kids absolutely love it as well.
Other interesting developments of the day include Submarine training simulations, an open critique for a redistricting game, and a meditation game that you play with your heart rate!
Neat stuff. More soon.

Creator’s of America’s Army, Virtual Heroes, have used their platform to create a virtual training environment for customer service:

HILTON GARDEN INN® UNVEILS ULTIMATE TEAM PLAY

Besides the fact that they chose a terrible name for the game, and made a dubious claim that their game is the first application of games in the hospitality industry (how about The Kitchen guys!), it’s good to see big players like this break out of the military space and look at more mainstream applications for their technology.

It will be very interesting to see how their branching dialogue system pans out, as simulating realistic human behavior is just a little tricky. I’ve got to say I was pretty impressed by Mass Effect, but I’m assuming this scenario will call for more direct repsonces quoted stright out of the Hilton 3-ring binder.

As much as mainstream media beats up on violent videogames, I’m not sure they could find a negative angle on the following story:

America’s Army Player Saves Life

Now I can’t say I’m falling over myself to promote America’s Army as a squeaky clean exemplar of Meaningful Play, as its primary purpose is still to recruit into military. An application such as this makes really awesome press, hence why we should milk it for all it’s worth when promoting the effectiveness of games for training. This is a particularly great example of how practical, contextual (simulating the real world application for the knowledge / skill) training can build up an ingrained automatic response to a crisis scenario.

This news also comes at a time where the art and science of habitual training is moving towards a focus on prevention, as opposed to care. Pity that accident prevention isn’t nearly as exciting as a somersaulting SUV.

Happy New Year! We’re back and set for our biggest year yet.

As a really interesting start to the year, I thought it would be worthwhile sharing an experience quite unlike anything I’ve seen before.

The following link is to a game called Passage. Before you read the rest of this post, play the game, and make sure you read the developers guidelines on how to play it before loading it up.

Passage: a video game by Jason Rohrer

... played it? ... Okay good, pretty interesting huh?

There’s been a huge amount of commentary about this round the net (which is all linked to from Jason’s site), so I won’t go in too deep, but I will say one thing slightly profound: This is the first game that I have ever felt comfortable calling art. While thousands of years have still not provided a literal definition of what art is exactly, I think we all have a feel for what we individually see as art. While some would argue that all games are art, I’m personally in the camp which says that most games are shallow as the paddling pools in drought stricken Australia. I got the same feeling playing this game as I did when I first walked into a display of modern art. It challenges you, it’s not immediate, you have to work your head around, try opening up to what it has to say.

And then when suddenly you get it, the emotion present in this game is quite intense. I personally wanted to undo all the stupid things I’d done having not read the instructions. It’s weird that something so simple, so quaint, could be some disturbing.

This definitely qualifies as Meaningful Play. In fact I think it’s the epitome of the Perspectives level. We really need more of these things coming out. Maybe if our government funded creative agencies would actually start classifying games in the same category as Short Film and Sculpture, then we might get some more traction.

P.S. Reading more about Jason is quite insightful in terms of “getting” the mind that made the game. We need more of these people pumping out sprites.

P.P.S This game could have been made on the NES. So why did it take us 20 years to even start realising the potential of that pixilated medium!

In my opinion the best book out there on game design right now is Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen. The heavy yet somehow still refreshingly succinct text lays out the most thorough and consistent framework for the analysis of computer game design today.

With the creation of Meaningful Play as a strategy, we scoured many texts on games and learning to figure out what two words we could use to describe our philosophy. By the time we came round to actually figuring it out, we realized it had been staring us in the face for a while (albeit in need of some reworking) right out of the pages of Rules of Play. You see Eric and Katie are also big on the concept of Meaningful Play, which they define on three different levels, according to the relevance or impact of an interaction which takes part between the player and the game:

Rules: An action is immediately interpreted and fed back by the system
Play: That action has a consequence within the closed game system
Culture: That action has a consequence to the player outside of the game

So we’re thieves right? Well I suppose we are actually (although not purposefully) but I’d like to think it’s in more of a Remix Generation context than outright snatching. Our definition of Meaningful Play sits within their Culture layer, requiring that the player walks away from the game with new skills, knowledge, or perspectives.

So thanks for the awesome text Eric and Katie, hopefully we havent butchered your brilliant framework

While reading through my daily rss feeds today I came across this wonder…

Technology Review – Virtual Labour Lost

Basically the idea was to study the way people interact, from economics to the spread of diseases using an educational MMOG about a Shakespearian bard.

The researchers behind it have hit on an important truth… Not only do people involved in play learn a lot, but people can learn a lot from other people’s play.

Unfortunately in this case it didn’t have the results they thought. Why not?
The researchers themselves admit: “It’s no fun.”

Why on earth would you make a game that isn’t fun? Their software would be more appropriately named a Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Educational-Research-Survey. Not the title you would expect to attract a large base of players needed for the study.

I tried to imagine myself being a participant in this experiment. I enjoy role-playing games, and I have had fun playing MMOG’s like WoW(http://www.worldofwarcraft.com) in the past; because the experiment is pitched as a game, I come to it with similar expectations. But what I find is a virtual world where I can talk to medieval people about their social environment and take trivia quizzes. This would probably hold my attention for an hour or so, and maybe it would entertain a Shakespeare buff for longer. However, the purpose of the experiment was to study very large groups of people over a sustained period of time!

I think it’s odd that sometimes efforts to ‘educationalize’ play also suck the life and fun out of the activity.

It doesn’t have to be this way! When we were young, play was what taught us the most. There was a sense of wonder and awe in the way we tried to find out more about the world around us.
Software developers of the world… Make your software fun to use! Play is not the opposite of ‘productive’, ‘educational’ or ‘meaningful’.

It’s all that and more.