20th August, 2008: design fragments #1
Recently, I rewatched Makoto Shinkai’s Hoshi no Koe (‘Voices of a Distant Star’), for what may be the five billionth time. I find it incredibly touching, it’s probably one of my favourite pieces of anime, and along with the extra short on the DVD, Kanojo to Kanojo no neko (‘She and Her Cat’) has always managed to make me feel very emotional and pensive afterwards. Anyway, I had this thought afterwards: “I want to play a game that can make me feel how that film makes me feel“.
My next thought was what if a game were actually adapted from Hoshi no Koe – would the play experience elicit the same emotions as the watching experience? It does have elements which would traditionally work well in a game (mech space battles anyone?) – but really, that’s inconsequential to the point of the film. Therefore, the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of the game would have to be huge cut scenes, would they not? And, whilst I haven’t quite figured out where I ultimately stand on cut scenes (though don’t mind playing games where cut scenes are used sparingly), having huge great big stonking ones are not where games should be headed.
Okay, so what if the interactions between the protagonists (Mikako and Nobaru) were, well, interactive? Could there be some sort of manipulation of choices one or the other makes? Well, the answer to that, if we’re trying to end up with “a game that can make me feel like the story of Hoshi no Koe does”, is no. This is because to get those emotions, the choices would have to lead to the ‘correct’ ending, thus, you’re only providing the illusion of choice. Which, although it is a typical concept in many games, is again, not where games should ultimately be heading. You’re left with this entirely linear experience which really has no point. In short, you might as well just watch the film, right?
So this then got me thinking – moving away from the direct story of Hoshi no Koe, how could a game “make me feel like that”? There needs to exist something in the play mechanics itself that can give rise to those particular dynamics. Of course, part of this involved breaking down what emotions the film was making me feel, exactly. Good thing my research makes me think about emotions a lot; I’m getting quite good at doing that! Anyway, so I started writing some brief private notes about what could give rise to those emotions and that experience.
(I just realised what I’m describing here is a kind of crazy internalised version of the MDA process where I’m both the designer thinking about the mechanics and and the end user looking at my aesthetic experience wondering how to work backwards towards the dynamics. Hmm.)
Then tonight in my procrastination, I re-happened upon Steve Gaynor of Fullbright‘s Call to Arms 2008 to design a game to convey some kind of meaningful experience or expression. Therefore, I’ve decided I’m going to not only design but also actually prototype a game to do just that. I took my existing brief notes and reshaped them slightly (it’s not necessarily that Hoshi no Koe-esque anymore!), and wrote some more ideas down.
I’m not revealing exactly what the theme is yet (and I realise I’ve been very fluffy/fuzzy/whatever in describing what I’m trying to convey – but that’s intentional!), but I will do soon enough.
My working title is Collide.
Posted at 2:08 am | View Comments
19th August, 2008: Late Night Round-Up
So once again, I am at the mercy of this vicious cycle:
Oh, PHD Comics, how do you know me so well? Indeed, I also just updated my ‘about‘ info with some PHD Comics action. It’s true, you know.
Anyway, so I suppose this is the part of the model where I’m ‘goofing around a little’. This also meant I jumped on the Face Your Manga bandwagon that seems to be travelling around Twitter. Here’s me as a result of 10 minutes of procrastination earlier:
Stuff that actually matters:
Anyway – other than that, I was interested to read this press release just now that came out of the American Psychological Association’s 116th Annual Convention, which was held over the past few days. Building on existing work on the positive benefits of games in terms of improving manual dexterity and problem solving skills, it covers a study researching the benefits for surgeons:
A study of 33 laparoscopic surgeons found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures and made 37 percent fewer errors compared to those who did not play video games, said Gentile.
A second study of 303 laparoscopic surgeons (82 percent men; 18 percent women) also showed that surgeons who played video games requiring spatial skills and hand dexterity and then performed a drill testing these skills were significantly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 trials than the surgeons who did not the play video games first.
I was also particularly interested in the summary of this study:
In one paper, Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD, and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, examined 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders’ problem-solving behavior while playing a video game that they had never seen before to show that playing video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills.
As the children played the game, they were asked to think aloud for 20 minutes. Researchers assessed their problem-solving ability by examining the types of cognitive, goal-oriented, game-oriented, emotional and contextual statements they made.
“Younger children seem more interested in setting short-term goals for their learning in the game compared to older children who are more interested in simply playing and the actions of playing,” said Blumberg. “Thus, younger children may show a greater need for focusing on small aspects of a given problem than older children, even in a leisure-based situation such as playing video games.”
[Emphasis mine. Note to self, read said paper. Also, write something more about this soon.]
Anyway, the story seems to be being picked up at various places around the internet too. Here’s a snippet:
From: Video Games Learning Tools? [courant.com]
Parents, don’t put away those video games just yet — today’s gamer may be tomorrow’s top surgeon.
Researchers gathering in Boston for the American Psychological Association convention detailed a series of studies suggesting that video games can be powerful learning tools — from increasing the problem solving potential of younger students to improving the suturing skills of laparoscopic surgeons.
One study even looked at whether playing “World of Warcraft,” the world’s biggest multiplayer online game, can improve scientific thinking.
The conclusion? Certain types of video games can have benefits beyond the virtual thrills of blowing up demons or shooting aliens.
Always good news, of course.
Posted at 1:25 am | View Comments
18th August, 2008: Hope ya like jammin’ too!
Excellent. I only just found out about the Global Game Jam 2009, (set up by the IGDA Education SIG). What does it involve? Teams of people will band together all over the world at special jam sessions on the weekend of Friday 30th January – Sunday 1st February 2009. The idea is that teams have less than 48 hours to make a game. Fun!
I’m really keen on organizing a jam session here at the University of Portsmouth – I have emailed a few of my colleagues already proposing the idea. Let’s see where it goes from here.
Posted at 4:55 pm | View Comments
18th August, 2008: Meaningful Play 2008
I’ve just been notified that my poster submission for the Meaningful Play Conference 2008 has been accepted for presentation, hurrah. (This was my first submission as a PhD candidate; so far, so good.)
The conference is in East Lansing, Michigan, USA from October 9-11, and I’m very interested to see what else will be presented and discussed there. Let me know if you’re planning on being there, too.
(Sidenote: Hmm, my charity half-marathon is on 12th October in London. So I may have to leave the conference a day early to fly back to the UK in time and get at least some rest before race day.)
Posted at 11:42 am | View Comments
17th August, 2008: Mitu.nu, 2.0.
Welcome to a new and revamped Mitu.nu – vee two point oh. Yes, I’m back here, and, thanks to the mad skillz of the lovely Vixx of Geek Goddess, with a brand new design. I was toying with the idea of getting rid of my old WordPress installation, as since the inception of this blog a year ago, all I’d been doing was vaguely reposting links and apologising for massive gaps in updating. Well that is, no longer, my friends.
Especially since I’m now back into the full swing of being a doctoral student – this means that there’s lots of procrastination to be done, and it shall be done here. Oh yes.
So, apart from this lovely new redesign by Vixx (she conceptualised this whole thing from my few vague details – she knew what I was after even better than I did. Now there’s a good designer – and a good friend!) I’ve also switched the comments system over to Disqus, deleted all my old outdated links and imported everything straight from my latest Feedreader OPML file (look over there in the sidebar), and rewrote the section about me. And umm, that’s about all the content there is for the moment. So there.
Posted at 6:45 pm | View Comments