Playful
Friday was Playful09, a day of talks about play, games and related subjects. The tagline was "a day of cross disciplinary frolicking" which sounded fun, whilst leaving me without much idea of what to expect. It turned out to be around 16 talks, of the "no audience questions" format which allows good content to be packed in, in the relaxing setting of Conway Hall. The audience was almost all white, mostly 25-40 I would say, and at least 2/3 male, which was a worse proportion than I might have anticipated, for an event with a strong design/art/play theme. There were 4 female speakers out of 17. And there were balloons.
Kareem Ettouney spoke about leading creative teams, and I have blogged this separately - it was one of the best talks of the day.
Roo Reynolds spoke about the difficulty of converting games into films - and the comparative ease of the opposite path. It's all about storylines, and one's ability to dream about playing another character: to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, and in a movie-of-a-game the character does their own thing, without the viewer necessarily feeling a part of it. The highlight was the Minesweeper movie trailer which reminds me of stolen moments procrastinating, many years ago.
Daniel Soltis from Tinker.it talked about hardware and the delight of physical objects connected to games - unsurprisingly for a Tinker.it hacker - and the areas he thinks games will go next, and be most interesting. These will be games with a social aspect - the best games always are - and ideally those without a screen/keyboard interface. Daniel pointed out the absurdity of urban games, where players walk along streets peering at their iPhone screens. Spaces are also important - games that are about spaces, or distributed across large areas (or the world). Asynchronous gaming is intriguing too, the idea that one might dip in and out of a game, and interact with others playing at other times. Games which can accommodate a changing pool of players are a particular challenge to create, but very interesting if you can make it work. Finally, Daniel showed the GPS puzzle box (which has been doing the rounds online this month), which beautifully illustrates several of his points.
Matt Locke interviewed Robin Burkinshaw, a student at ARU whose experiment with homeless characters in Sims3, Alice and Kev, has become an unexpected forum for discussion around homelessness and support. Robin's skill at in-game camerawork, and his beautiful storytelling on the Alice and Kev blog, stood out at least as much as the ability of the game to simulate a situation surely not anticipated by the game's creators.
Tassos Stevens, from Coney, spoke about cricket. Whilst this may not have been a subject the audience felt much connection to, Tassos's identification of key elements within the cricket-watching experience which engage the observer was compelling. A key part in cricket is not the game itself, but the pauses which punctuate the game - a great deal of the enjoyment Tassos derives from a match is the commentary and activity during those pauses, such as debate around cake at tea time. The imagined outcomes of the match, combined with the uncertainty around the result, can leave the audience in suspense not just for hours but for days, and also add to a playful atmosphere - alongside the tribal team aspect, and the general ambiance. Tassos's points clearly translate to other game spheres, and resonated with me strongly, especially as Michael and I played (and I won!) the QNTMFSLC game at the Hide&Seek weekender earlier this year. QNTMFSLC was a game which fitted around other activities, was uncertain, had a sense of tribe and ambiance, and engaged one's imagination, and was one of the best experiences of the weekend.
Molly Range (from Fabel) shared a Scandinavian view of the world, and how playful experiences are increasingly being used in a variety of spheres there, from campaigning to education. She had a wide range of examples to share, but pointed out the huge challenge around wider engagement. These individual projects are successful in their way, but each is created from scratch, and this simply isn't sustainable. Molly identifies a need for standardised ways to prove the value of play in these areas, so that proper investment can be made.
Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu seemed astonished to have won an Olympics-linked art grant for London in 2012. They will be installing monochrome LED panels on top of 40 London bus stops, where they will be visible from double deckers. The panels will have some kind of public API so that artists and others can use them for internet-connected display. Technically, this seems fine, but I imagine issues around selection of content for the displays, and moderation, will be exceedingly tricky. Nonetheless, they have several years to figure it out, and are just starting a long planning phase for the Bus-Tops project now.
Simon Oliver highlighted a couple of challenges of game design which might be particularly useful for indie developers. Firstly, how do you design fun? Probably not using a top-down methodology... He recommends lots of rapid prototyping, and using this to find out what gems emerge. You don't need everything to be incredibly fun, but a handful of great interactions will be enough to engage a player. Another challenge is interfaces and controls - in conventional computer gaming, these started simple (a stick with 4 directions, and a button) and got more and more complex (eg. Playstation3 or XBox360 controllers), but may now be getting simpler again (with WiiMotes and Project Natal). Human short term memory will hold only 5-9 items, so your control system needs to have no more than this number of aspects for people to be able to get to grips with it. If the first page of a game manual contains 30 or so different controls ("Button B + Left Top Trigger: second alternate melee weapon") then you have probably gone wrong. He recommended three things for new developers: box2d, Bullet Physics and Ogre Forums. Don't reinvent the wheel - there are lots of useful toolkits out there, and people ready to help; the indie community has the right blend of collaborative competition.
Tim Wright spent the summer walking the walk of the protagonist of Kidnapped (by Robert Louis Stevenson, but of course you knew that already). He followed the route and timings of the original book, and video-blogged the whole thing: Kidmapped. I was pleased to be able to identify many of the "maps from novels" shown during Tim's book, including Riddle of the Sands, which clearly defeated most of the audience (unlike Lord of the Rings) - this probably tells you everything you need to know about the Playful demographic.
To wrap up, Chris O'Shea presented a wide range of conceptual and art projects which have brought playfulness into the lives of people, in many cases those who would not venture into an art gallery. I was sorry to have missed the Hand From Above when it was live in Liverpool in September. His work with people-tracking and responsive clusters of objects was particularly compelling (Audience being a beautiful example of this).
Although the event overall was entertaining and a welcome creative break, it wasn't as energetic as I might have hoped, and the audience wasn't very lively. In the afternoon teabreak, it was suggested that the audience might run around the block; instead we walked around Red Lion Square (taking Robin Burkinshaw with us, possibly because he was simply too polite to refuse), and we were the only ones to move at all. Some games in the background or in the breaks would have gone down well.
Relaxing at home yesterday, in a mildly playful way:
To thine own self be true (as Conway Hall has over the stage).
Kareem Ettouney spoke about leading creative teams, and I have blogged this separately - it was one of the best talks of the day.
Roo Reynolds spoke about the difficulty of converting games into films - and the comparative ease of the opposite path. It's all about storylines, and one's ability to dream about playing another character: to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, and in a movie-of-a-game the character does their own thing, without the viewer necessarily feeling a part of it. The highlight was the Minesweeper movie trailer which reminds me of stolen moments procrastinating, many years ago.
Daniel Soltis from Tinker.it talked about hardware and the delight of physical objects connected to games - unsurprisingly for a Tinker.it hacker - and the areas he thinks games will go next, and be most interesting. These will be games with a social aspect - the best games always are - and ideally those without a screen/keyboard interface. Daniel pointed out the absurdity of urban games, where players walk along streets peering at their iPhone screens. Spaces are also important - games that are about spaces, or distributed across large areas (or the world). Asynchronous gaming is intriguing too, the idea that one might dip in and out of a game, and interact with others playing at other times. Games which can accommodate a changing pool of players are a particular challenge to create, but very interesting if you can make it work. Finally, Daniel showed the GPS puzzle box (which has been doing the rounds online this month), which beautifully illustrates several of his points.
Matt Locke interviewed Robin Burkinshaw, a student at ARU whose experiment with homeless characters in Sims3, Alice and Kev, has become an unexpected forum for discussion around homelessness and support. Robin's skill at in-game camerawork, and his beautiful storytelling on the Alice and Kev blog, stood out at least as much as the ability of the game to simulate a situation surely not anticipated by the game's creators.
Tassos Stevens, from Coney, spoke about cricket. Whilst this may not have been a subject the audience felt much connection to, Tassos's identification of key elements within the cricket-watching experience which engage the observer was compelling. A key part in cricket is not the game itself, but the pauses which punctuate the game - a great deal of the enjoyment Tassos derives from a match is the commentary and activity during those pauses, such as debate around cake at tea time. The imagined outcomes of the match, combined with the uncertainty around the result, can leave the audience in suspense not just for hours but for days, and also add to a playful atmosphere - alongside the tribal team aspect, and the general ambiance. Tassos's points clearly translate to other game spheres, and resonated with me strongly, especially as Michael and I played (and I won!) the QNTMFSLC game at the Hide&Seek weekender earlier this year. QNTMFSLC was a game which fitted around other activities, was uncertain, had a sense of tribe and ambiance, and engaged one's imagination, and was one of the best experiences of the weekend.
Molly Range (from Fabel) shared a Scandinavian view of the world, and how playful experiences are increasingly being used in a variety of spheres there, from campaigning to education. She had a wide range of examples to share, but pointed out the huge challenge around wider engagement. These individual projects are successful in their way, but each is created from scratch, and this simply isn't sustainable. Molly identifies a need for standardised ways to prove the value of play in these areas, so that proper investment can be made.
Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu seemed astonished to have won an Olympics-linked art grant for London in 2012. They will be installing monochrome LED panels on top of 40 London bus stops, where they will be visible from double deckers. The panels will have some kind of public API so that artists and others can use them for internet-connected display. Technically, this seems fine, but I imagine issues around selection of content for the displays, and moderation, will be exceedingly tricky. Nonetheless, they have several years to figure it out, and are just starting a long planning phase for the Bus-Tops project now.
Simon Oliver highlighted a couple of challenges of game design which might be particularly useful for indie developers. Firstly, how do you design fun? Probably not using a top-down methodology... He recommends lots of rapid prototyping, and using this to find out what gems emerge. You don't need everything to be incredibly fun, but a handful of great interactions will be enough to engage a player. Another challenge is interfaces and controls - in conventional computer gaming, these started simple (a stick with 4 directions, and a button) and got more and more complex (eg. Playstation3 or XBox360 controllers), but may now be getting simpler again (with WiiMotes and Project Natal). Human short term memory will hold only 5-9 items, so your control system needs to have no more than this number of aspects for people to be able to get to grips with it. If the first page of a game manual contains 30 or so different controls ("Button B + Left Top Trigger: second alternate melee weapon") then you have probably gone wrong. He recommended three things for new developers: box2d, Bullet Physics and Ogre Forums. Don't reinvent the wheel - there are lots of useful toolkits out there, and people ready to help; the indie community has the right blend of collaborative competition.
Tim Wright spent the summer walking the walk of the protagonist of Kidnapped (by Robert Louis Stevenson, but of course you knew that already). He followed the route and timings of the original book, and video-blogged the whole thing: Kidmapped. I was pleased to be able to identify many of the "maps from novels" shown during Tim's book, including Riddle of the Sands, which clearly defeated most of the audience (unlike Lord of the Rings) - this probably tells you everything you need to know about the Playful demographic.
To wrap up, Chris O'Shea presented a wide range of conceptual and art projects which have brought playfulness into the lives of people, in many cases those who would not venture into an art gallery. I was sorry to have missed the Hand From Above when it was live in Liverpool in September. His work with people-tracking and responsive clusters of objects was particularly compelling (Audience being a beautiful example of this).
Although the event overall was entertaining and a welcome creative break, it wasn't as energetic as I might have hoped, and the audience wasn't very lively. In the afternoon teabreak, it was suggested that the audience might run around the block; instead we walked around Red Lion Square (taking Robin Burkinshaw with us, possibly because he was simply too polite to refuse), and we were the only ones to move at all. Some games in the background or in the breaks would have gone down well.
Relaxing at home yesterday, in a mildly playful way:
To thine own self be true (as Conway Hall has over the stage).