gewgaw

Super news from the world of Noby Noby Boy (have you read all the DIY stuff???) – they have reached Jupiter!!!

This means that Saturn is … just around the corner! When was the last time you stretched your Noby? Head over to the PS3 and check in – craziness awaits!

Brian and I were chatting the other day about mindfulness and how critical it is to successful creative practice (especially group practice) – and I was reminded of this post which I made while I was still up at EA in Redwood Shores.

At the time, I was very, very busy making my first “real” game – and struggling with the politics and pressures of group work. Going from graduate school (highly constrained, mostly solitary work) to development required adjustment… and then, going to a huge new IP team (70+ people!) took yet another leap. I look back at those long days, and feel a mixture of relief and resignation. They were not easy – but I wouldn’t be here without them. Every trial has it’s purpose.

I have become increasingly interested in myths of trial and transformation since my trek to Bhutan & subsequent changes in my work and personal life. I’m currently absorbing all manner of info about the creation of characters and worlds – thinking about how we transform, and tell stories about it. This includes reading about Disney and the creation of the original Disney park here in CA, a mishmash of early anime from Japan, The Power of Myth, and academic writing about UI and early computing.

Despite similar threads – I’m in mind state exactly opposite to the one that generated the early post. It’s a beautiful, open period of cross pollination, where my daily practice (which is in a large part about structuring and strengthening the creative energy and output of our team) is generating myriad connections to a superstructure of meaning deep in my core.

This core is comprised of thoughts about narrative, social learning, creativity and myth that I’ve been weaving together since my first visit to Cambridge, in high school. From Blake to Buddha – it is this feeling of “finding the thread” that keeps me learning and creating. It is the feeling… the moment, that I live for.

This state of mind – and all that supports it (family, friends, team, community) is what I’m most thankful for this year.

Gama posted an in-depth interview with Keita re: the Nottingham park project. It does a great job of capturing his current state of mind.. especially as it relates to his feelings about being a “game” designer.

I liked this part especially:

After the press conference, one of GameCity’s organizers drove Takahashi to the local art store where he filled his basket with crayons, stickers, pens, sheaths of paper and, of course, a coat hanger. Then they took a taxi to this room, and closed the door behind him.

It’s hard to shake the feeling its precisely this sort of largely directionless creativity, free from the constraints of financial targets, demographics and brand-building that has brought Takahashi to this unlikely nook on the other side of his world.

In answer to his deflected question about what I think makes a good playground, I suggest that I’ve always enjoyed a sense of progression, where one object leads to the next, giving the participant a sense of journey, like a playful assault course.

Takahashi doesn’t respond at first, mulling it over, perhaps masking a sneer. “If there’s a pattern embedded in the design of a park, the danger is always that all of the kids just end up doing the same stuff…” he murmurs.

It’s this sort of aimless approach to game design that frustrated some players and critics with regards to his most recent title, Nobi Nobi Boy, a game that’s difficult to articulate within the usual parameters of success and failure. And yet, this dislike of the order and rigid structure of mainstream games seems to imbue every aspect of Takahashi’s approach.

It’s hard to put a project like the park into words.

I spent most of Sunday with Keita at the park site & studio – and I still am not sure how to describe it. After exploring the grounds, reviewing his sketches, drawing, playing with clay and then discussing the whole thing over ramen… I felt like I had a strange, foggy tangle in my mind. So many things to consider! Days later, that sense of … complex hugeness, is still with me.

Over the last few years, what I’ve come to appreciate most about Keita is his enduring patience – and ability to calmly contemplate huge, tangly messes. What makes me anxious and compulsive… he can sit with, quietly. Stuff that’s chaotic and overwhelming washes over him – and is transformed into something better. In no small way, it is this patience that makes our friendship even possible.

Walking back from the studio, we talked about this: the quiet center of his style (slow burn… gradually coming to an idea) the loudness of mine (flashes & sparks… an explosion from compressed inputs). He likes to tease me about my brashness… and I, his silent brooding. But in the end – these are strengths, too.

And for the park… an open-ended, visionary task – a designer like Keita is the perfect fit. Because the inputs are overwhelming, chaotic, fuzzy, strange. And you just have to be one with the space and all of its possibilities – until the idea emerges from within.

I was genuinely touched to read this interview, which gets at the heart of Keita’s gifts – and challenges within the context of our industry and even, this project. It’s nice to see a piece describe his process (and its context) with such tenderness and respect.

Thanks to Ross I’m totally falling for Pomplamoose. So genius!!

What did it for me, really? It was her singing in French. Happy Wednesday!

Warren’s new game is now officially announced, and on the cover of this month’s Game Informer. Fantastic, fantastic news!!

In addition to coverage of the game in the mag – GI has posted a piece on Warren’s relationship with Mickey (includes a great video interview) which is EPIC in and of itself. Watch and you’ll see that his dedication to creating a fantastic tribute to Mickey comes from a deep, deep love of the character and of animation, in general. Yes, really, seriously!

On a recent trip to the park (to see the re-vamped Fantasmic show), Warren shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the company, characters, films and rides. What’s more, his genuine enthusiasm came through in every interaction with guests, staff and the park itself. Browsing pins near the Haunted Mansion, stopping to admire the afternoon parade, cruising through It’s A Small World… nothing passed without insightful, passionate comment. I can not *wait* to play the finished game!!!

So excited to see this awesome effort finally getting out there in the press. Congrats to Disney and the whole Junction Point crew!!!

We did it! IndieCade 2009 was a resounding success, full of awesome games, laughter, clowns and balloon animals.

Ok, maybe not clowns and balloon animals – but… chalk drawing, full-contact stick figures, poetry, creative shouting (”F*** You, It’s Art!!”) and of course, miles and miles of Indie developer love. Beginning the the super-fun Micro-Talks session at our opening party, through the awards, conference and closing party – it was a blast.

And who do we thank? The amazing, talented and inspiring game creators who made our celebration possible. Without you it would just be beer and finger-darts.

Presentation coverage includes a write-up of the Fresh Perspectives for First and Third Person Shooters” session, the iPhone Art Showcase, as well as some great coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

And on top of all that? Noby Boy decided to stay with us in sunny California! Visitors to TGC will find him swimming around on my desk, amongst all the toys and to-do lists. So best!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out – and for all the fantastic support from our local friends and devs. You make it easy to love being Indie!!

I’ve posted my last two talks, with notes and a few fixups for broken or missing fonts/pix. These are both works-in-progress… UX is the more polished, I think… but time will tell. I learned a TON in the process of writing them, delivering them and discussing them with the UX community.

Both trips were wonderful, especially the part where I got to meet and exchange ideas with people who are not in my own industry. Special shout-out to everyone who wrote following both talks – nothing is better than hearing from people as the ideas evolve in their own heads – especially when they continue the dialog with refinements, suggestions and questions. If I haven’t written back it isn’t because I’m not going to – it’s cause I’m busy with upcoming IndieCade events – and just plain old work!

For those of you who don’t have time to download and page through all the slides – the gist is that being at TGC has exposed me to the idea of “juicy feedback” – a squishy term that feels fun to say and is even more fun when in the game. The first talk explores my search for a way to relate “juicyness” to the MDA framework, and the second blends this more with notions about how UX & Game Design are converging.

A huge bonus for set of trips was that I got to spend some quality time with the folks from Stamen and BERG (formerly known as Schulze & Webb). Ben, Mike, Webb and Jones each had very interesting and helpful things to say – and speakers/attendees from both events (including folks at Last FM, Sifteo, Mint.com, Adaptive Path and Nokia) gave me a lot to look forward to.

I’m really grateful to live just a short distance (in the design continuum) from such wonderful people. Thank you for being so “juicy”!

In prepping for my UX talk, I came across this great post on what it takes to be a great UX designer. Concidentally – this is *also* what it takes to be a great Game Designer.

I get asked about this topic often – especially in email, from aspiring designers & students.  So – here is a slightly streamlined version – with a few key edits to emphasize the connection:

#1: A Deep Understanding of People
If you don’t understand people, you won’t be a good game designer. It takes talent and empathy to understand how people enjoy playing – and to play with them! This isn’t something just anyone can do.

#2: Competence in the Basics of Procedural Design
Designing a process/system of rules is difficult! You need tools to help you define and structure your work. For me, this means breaking designs down into three elements: mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. For you – it could be just about anything! Whatever works: find it, and get comfortable with it. Procedural Design is an art – but it is also a science!

#3: An Awareness of and Interest in Technology
It isn’t essential that you code every day – but it is essential that you are fluent in the tools and technologies of your medium. Period.

#4: Verbal & Visual Communication Skills
Game Design is all about abstractions… until suddenly they are concrete and very expensive to fix. You must be able to clearly communicate your ideas and the research findings they’re based on before that happens.

You must be able to verbally describe everything from squishy player motivations to rigid, detailed sequences of events. But words can have different interpretations – so you should be able to supplement verbal communication with visuals. You don’t need to be an artist, but you do need to be able to sketch your ideas on a whiteboard and create clean, clear prototypes on paper.

#5: Moderate Familiarity with Business, Deep Familiarity with Your Business
You need to understand the basics of how the business world works in order to effectively elicit and understand business goals. On top of that, you need to be familiar with why your customers find your games valuable. To do that, you must deeply understand the commercial context in which they are acquired, shared, enjoyed and discussed.

#6: The Ability to Quickly Learn a Subject Matter Area
Game designers must understand and craft the player experience from multiple perspectives. Deep knowledge of relevant subject matter creates context for that understanding. Read widely, experience widely – and you’ll often have good backup material in a pinch!

#7: Mediation, Facilitation, & Translation Skills
While player goals can be uncovered through empathetic, open-minded research, business goals are often much harder. Different disciplines & departments often have different or even conflicting goals. Keeping these groups on the same page is critical. On top of that, then you have to make it work in whatever technological context is required. This job is not easy.

#8: Curiosity, Creativity & Vision
You need these 3 skills to innovate consciously and (more importantly) to encourage innovation in others. This means having an ability to envision the big picture and the drive to craft details – from system designs to tuning targets.

#9: Passion
Game Design is a worldview – something you just can’t turn off.

Passionate Game Designers constantly watch people & analyze their behaviors. They can’t help but redesign bad experiences in their heads after suffering through them – or sifting through good ones to find key learnings. Obsession with details, especially the “why” of things – this is what ties it all together.

If a passion for Game Design is all you have, that’s a good place to start. That passion will drive you to cultivate the rest and success will soon follow.

I ended up using this example as a key point in my talk – to underscore how UX designers and Game Designers are essentially the same thing. It created a great launch pad for the dialog I had in SF about why “juicy feedback” isn’t just a game thing – and why being a “gamer” is actually crucial to good UX research. So lucky to have found it!!

Huge kudos and thanks to the original author, Fred Beecher who took the time to write these down in the first place. You are a fantastic communicator!!

Looks like I will be in SF for “Park(ing) Day” – a celebration of parks taken to the streets. I’m going up to the city for the UX Week conference – and attendees have been encouraged to submit a design! The park should take up 2 parallel parking spots for $200 or less.

Here’s what I submitted – inspired by a desire for something simple & thrifty, contemplative… with minimal water requirements:

Transient Bonsai Appreciation Park

Flooring: Soft, earth-toned cotton sheets, held down along edges with smooth river stones.

Content: Small bonsai placed at measured intervels within the space, at ground level. In front of each bonsai is a large, soft pillow that you can sit on, so as to appreciate the bonsai’s smallness in the scale of the city.

Requires: a few modest but beautiful bonsai (can be purchased in Japantown), cushions & some flat sheets, 1-2 bags of river stones.

• Bonus #1: Sand can also be poured inside the sheets, in a rectangle below the bonsai to create a zen-garden feel.
• Bonus #2: Extra stones can be used to create a small sculpture near each bonsai, or be given away as totems from the experience.
• Bonus #3: Bonsai can be donated to conference organizers post-display, to encourage continued focus on small, beautiful, living designs!

Looking forward to the trip, and the UX park designs!!!!

Silvio’s team has gone live with their latest project – now available for the iPhone!

Do you love vinyl toys? Do you love having fun? Then what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Kellee went to GDC Europe last week – where discussion of TGC’s Flower began with the David Cage’s keynote talk on meaning in games:

Cage said, baldly: “Most games have no meaning”, and games don’t generally have anything to say — “you just spend some time getting excited shooting and jumping”, most of the time.

The Quantic Dream head added that he believed that games’ narrative structure is broken. As opposed to simultaneous narration and action in movies and books, cut-scenes split up the action in games. So, Cage concluded: “No-one cares about the story because nobody is there for the story.”

He added that most game characters must be close to caricature — to look like what they are. They also tend to need a simple goal, and need to look good for a teenager. In contrast, many movie characters have a background, a motivation, have relationships, and are created to generate empathy.

In further controversy, Cage suggested that, most of the time, game art is mediocre compared to other art forms. But some games can compare because they have “developed the emotional side”, he said, citing Ico, Shadow Of The Colossus, Rez, Katamari Damacy, and Flower.

So, said Cage, we have some decisions to make. Shouldn’t we start thinking about social emotions, if we want to evolve? “Do we want to be toys, or art?”, he asked provocatively. “Maybe there are books that you’ve read that have changed who you are.” Shouldn’t games do similarly?

How about the sandbox versus the rollercoaster? Contrasting with CCP’s EVE Online talk earlier in the day, Cage feels that, since “nobody conceived this experience for you,” it may fall flat. Whereas, in the rollercoaster, you can’t go wherever you want, but “someone designed the experience for you to be optimal.”

These are two different approaches, and Cage believes that the rollercoaster is the one he tends towards. Why? Because people want to play for just 20 minutes at a time, not necessarily for many hours or to find there’s nobody in the sandbox to play with.

How about journey vs. achievement? Cage said he believes many adults care more about the journey, with emotional highs and lows carefully mapped out, and cited Flower as a great example of that.

Kellee continued this discussion in her own talk – a postmortem of the Flower development process that highlighted the team’s search for meaningful gameplay that provides players emotional shelter – instead of the typical frustration/reward cycles in many game designs:

Santiago said that what the team found out is that “sometimes, hard fun is the enemy”, and going towards known mechanics can actually be a handicap. She said that fun is just a small subset of possible mechanics, and that Flower was carefully tuned to give the player an engaging journey.

This in-game journey that players took in the downloadable PlayStation 3 game wasn’t necessarily a conventional one, but was carefully managed to heighten emotional intensity by the game’s end.

The conclusion was that extremely rapid iteration and playtesting — whether in Processing, Flash, XNA, or PS3 — was what really helped to hone PSN standout Flower.

Great to see that the team’s efforts at pushing through a variety of mechanics to find the ones that supported their aesthetic goal has paid off – as it did with other games Cage mentioned in his talk (all personal favorites, as regular readers know). Three cheers for iteration, subtractive design, and the focus on player experiences! Here’s to continued efforts and new adventures!

:)

Type for yourself!!

PS: It runs in real time!!

Jeff’s posted an article on the profit margins for indies across platforms.

Awesome Sauce!!

I might just marry the reverend.

:)

This response is also interesting… kind of like ‘Yeah, art games that are good are hard’ – which we all know is true. My take might be that ‘I look forward to seeing them evolve’ rather than ‘Most of the pitches out there suck’…. but at least the dialog is happening!!

Great to hear people discussing the value of games-as-art up on Destructoid! Go go go!

“So in conclusion THIS GAME MUST COME OUT”

(GI piece here) (Joystiq here) (Kotaku here) (Escapist here)(1Up here)

Early this September, I’ll be heading over to the UK to speak at dConstruct in Brighton. This excursion, a talk at UX and potentially Picnic, as well as a visit with Gonzalo in Uraguay (November) will give me an opportunity to continue the thread on UI and play activity that I began earlier in the year with my GDC Micro Talk on game layer designs for HOME.

While developing the ideas for that talk, I had the opportunity to speak at length with folks all over – from Imagineers to academics to developers – and beyond. This trend continued – as conversations about the design of public space are incredibly engaging to people from all walks of life, and central to the ongoing debate about regional development, public transportation, economic trends and ethical consumer behavior.

In the past, I’ve blogged about Christopher Alexander (I still read Timeless Way every year or two) and Jane Jacobs, and Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyper Reality. Now, I’m looking into books that explicitly focus on the design of entertainment landscapes: theme parks, urban entertainment centers, and the like.

This reading frenzy began with Designing Disney, which Warren got me on our last trip to the park here in Anaheim. Walking the ‘Land, talking about its design is always fun – but was amplified by his encyclopedic knowledge of Disney lore. And, as he suggested – there’s a wealth of information in Hench’s book which makes it essential reading for any game designer.

Digging around in leaf-node literature on park and entertainment construction – I’ve found interesting nuggets in unlikely places – like Developing Urban Entertaninment Centers – a late 90’s adver-book on “category killer”, megaplex retail design by the Urban Land Institute. While creepily capitalist in its language, the scholarship within it is sound – echoing theories that Jacobs, Alexander others presented decades ago. What’s more – it contains a lot of the same arguments for iterative design that you see in traditional game design tomes. (For a special treat – try replacing the phrases like “destination” and “retail” with “MMO” and “boxed-game”):

In large part, the distinctiveness of a destination development derives from the design of environments that create a sense of place for patrons and a strong presence for tenants. Rather than the predictable interior courts and shopping corridors that characterize malls and retail centers, destination developments have reintroduced the streets, piazzas esplanades and variations in facade that are the sine qua non of great cities…

…There is greater complexity in shaping the distinctive environments that define destinations. Developers must address the individual demands of retail and restaurant tenants for a wide variety of presentations that permit street front access, strong brand identity, and multilevel spaces. Creating engaging public places and overall identity and sense of cohesiveness while trying to meet competing tenant demands not only requires a skillful development team but a whole new approach to design.

Developers of destination projects engage in an interactive design process, adjusting and readjusting plans throughout the predevlopment stage to address the various requirements of tenants percieved consumer preferences, the particular demands of the site and often the standards set by public codes.

The soft costs associated with creating the sense of place that contributes to a project’s distinctiveness are considerably higher than those for the formula-like configurations of malls and shopping centers. In addition to the design costs related to an iterative process, the design team often is expanded to include scenographic artists, landscape achitects, special effects designers festival planners, graphic artists and branding consultants.

The hard costs associated with common spaces, tenant facades and store interiors are also higher than those for other forms of retail development. A central challenge in making these projects economically feasible therefore becomes the assignment of costs among the developer, the tenants, the public sector and in some cases even the corporate sponsors. Most of the forerunners in creating destination projects have seen these costs pay off in increased rents and sales.

In other words – when it comes to user interface and experience design, you get what you give. We really believe this at TGC – and design accordingly.

I happen to believe that presentations follow the same input/output model applies to presentations – so I’ll be thinking a lot about these ideas over the next two months! Have suggestions on books I can dig into along these lines as a I prep for my talks? Call, text or email me. I’m game!

… from his trip to Develop – where he spent some time talking to folks about the benifits of “soft fun” and emotional gameplay:

“Most games provide only primal feelings—and in general, power fantasies,” said Chen. “I loved these feelings when I was younger, but as I get older, I start to wonder about the other feelings I can have.”

The evolution of games experimenting in a larger emotional spectrum was something Chen hoped would be analogous to the early film industry. Originally fixated on thrilling the audience with footage of speeding trains, as the audience grew it became necessary to offer more involved and subtle productions.

“This is a time when user experience innovation has much more potential to develop video games than technical,” explained Chen. “If the feelings that you provide in your game are unique, then your game will be unique.”

As advice, Chen offered some lessons he had learned from the development of Flower, such as the discovery that in the attempt to make a “fun” game, the team had blunted the emotional impact.

“Sometimes hard fun is your enemy,” said Chen, “but it’s too easy to try and make a hard, fun game, as it’s almost all we know.”

Instead, developers are going to have to look at games as art if they want them to be treated as such, he said. Though Chen admitted that this was a topic about which many in the industry are “jaded,” he concluded that it was important that designers think as deeply about “what they wish to share with the audience,” as an artist would.

“Artists draw on their life and time, and reflect on that,” he said. “As designers, we have to think about what we want to share with our audience, what we want to tell them, otherwise we’re only wasting their time.”

Jenova also acknowledged our new project, which continues to develop these ideas – and gave a special shout-out to Sony for all their support and encouragement. Yay!

Interesting article on teen media habits includes comments on how kids interface with music, games and film as well as news, television and social media like Twitter.

No teenager Robson knew reads a newspaper regularly since most “cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV”. The only newspapers that are read are the cheaper tabloids and freesheets.

His peers are also put off by intrusive advertising so they prefer listening to advert-free music on websites such as Last.fm to traditional radio. Teens see adverts on websites – pop ups, banner ads – as “extremely annoying and pointless,” Robson said. However, “most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing, as often it creates humorous and interesting content”.

He stressed that his peers were “very reluctant” to pay for music and most had never bought a CD, with a large majority downloading songs illegally from filesharing sites.

Money and time are instead devoted to cinema, concerts and video game consoles. Downloading films off the internet is not popular as the films are usually bad quality and have to be watched on a small computer screen and there is a risk of viruses, Robson said.

What’s interesting is that aside from the comments about Twitter & music, I’d have to say my buying habits are similar. And even those first two categories lag in comparison to other peers, generally.

Maybe I’m devolving?

:)

DP’s latest venture could be the solution to piracy and resale that the industry is looking for! Comments in the thread re: performance seem short-sighted. However – it is interesting to think about the implications for “flash developers” as Dave points out in the demo. What would one-click access to AAA games (many man-years invested in the content/scope) do to people’s perceptions of the standard PopCap or iPhone fare?

More importantly – how can smaller, more agile devs take advantage of the opportunity, when streaming finally hits big? If we can create new experiences that also harness the amazing look & feel (and SOUND!) of giga-team games… we might just get to have our cake and eat it too!

:)

Danah interviewed on the concept of an “email sabbatical” impact of email on relaxation and vacations – and life, in general. What’s so interesting is that it really does surface the tension between email for connection vs. email for work vs. email for obligations in the future – as she says “getting into the queue”.

Very similar to sentiments expressed at Lift, in and around discussions of technology addiction – such a phenomenon that you can get some pretty neat stuff out of the phrase on Google Images.

:)

Once again, Jones is bending and reshaping the mold of minds with his preso on The New Negroponte Switch. Included is new excitement from Shulze/Webb re: mapping and visualization. Now, everywhere I look I’m seeing adventure! New perspectives, new ways of seeing – new messages for a new time.

It’s funny how things work out. Images from HOME burned into my brain yesterday, and today it turns out I’ll be seeing it premiere here next week, thanks to Hollywood Hill. It’s easy to get sad when thinking about how much work we have to do to fix the bugs we’ve introduced in the last few generations – but at least we know now that the bugs exist. Maybe it’s the producer in me talking – but I feel hopeful, and inspired! Creativity at the office, brainstorming with the Impact Lab, IndieCade planning, new pets, happy garden, loving friends & family – there is just so much to be connecting to and grateful for.

Thank you, universe. I am working to give back as hard as I can!!