gewgaw

I was hanging out by the office kitchen, waiting for my bagel to finish toasting, when I came across a dusty old copy of AI magazine – Volume 6, No 3… from the fall of 1985. Talk about a trip down memory lane!

At first, I figured it was a collection of magazines… because it’s so thick! Paging through it over my snack, I realized that a lot of the magazine’s content was actually advertisements – everything from software to hardware, corporate job advertisements and branding efforts. 1985 was a hot time for AI research – with programs and companies springing up all over the place…

Check it out. Here’s an ad from ExperTelligence, Inc – located in lovely Santa Barbara. Their tools will “transform your Macintosh ™ into a powerful Artificial Intelligence work-station”. Texas Instruments (”the company that pioneered the transistor radio, integrated circuit, electronic calculator, integrated-circuit computer, computer-on-a-chip, microprocessor, and synthetic speech”) was leading the charge in R&D. In answer to this question, AT&T ventured: “Not yet – but we’re working on it”.

How strange. Looking over all the advertisements is interesting (so many white male engineers!) – but the articles (first title “I Lied About the Trees”) are also quite educational. Discussion of issues in Knowledge Representation and Robotics, reports on research at UCLA, General Electric and Mitre – right there next to a summary of Drew McDermott’s “Dark Ages of AI” panel at AAAI ‘84 . A snip of his intro:

“In spite of all the commercial hustle and bustle around AI these days, there’s a mood that I’m sure many of you are familiar with of deep unease among AI researchers who have been around more than the last four years or so. This unease is due to the worry that perhaps expectations about AI are too high, and that this will eventually result in disaster….

To sketch a worst case scenario, suppose that five years from now the strategic computing initiative collapses miserably as autonomous vehicles fail to roll. The fifth generation turns out not to go anywhere, and the Japanese government immediately gets out of computing. Every startup company fails. Texas Instruments and Schlumberger and all other companies lose interest. And there’s a big backlash so that you can’t get money for anything connected with AI. Everybody hurriedly changes the names of their research projects to something else…”

The times were changing even then.

—

When I was in the bay, I visited with Craig Reynolds at SCEA’s R&D division. Craig passed these early years working for Symbolics, (where he generated that awesome flocking code). He still has one of the old keyboards in his office – paint worn away at the bottom where his wrists once rested.

As we talked about my prospects after graduation, I worried over the state of academic “game research” and the usefulness of my degree. “That’s ok,” he said. “When I graduated from MIT, computer graphics wasn’t even something you put on your degree.”

I wonder. In 18 years – will I look back on yesterday’s post, and feel the same way I do looking at these old ads and articles?

Today I had a long meeting with Ian, where we discussed the final scheduling of my thesis, committee stuff, and graduation timetables. It will be a long hard haul these next six months or so – but I feel like finally, its happening. I’m setting the wheels in motion and making the plans that will propel me into the “real world”.

It’s strange – when I was too busy working to notice, everything just sort of started to come together. I finally began to see the connection between all the reading, musing, and prototyping. Feedback on my most recent paper has been really positive. AAAI workshop stuff is going well (we’ll have two days, a lot of great speakers from both industry and academia, and will open registration to the public!). Old projects keep generating good results (Tokyo University has started a program using the curriculum framework) and new opportunities keep popping up (I’ll be editing the AI section for the Game Programming Gems book this fall).

It’s… kind of creepy, like I’m suddenly succeeding at a very long game of “hot and cold”. Guess I’d been getting steadily warmer all the time…

—

And I keep reading/hearing about the problems of player enjoyment, dynamic difficulty and game adjustment – which is really heartening! In this month’s Game Developer magazine, for instance, there’s an article on “flow” (way to go Noah!), complete with a photo of the book’s cover and the “flow channel” diagram (if I had a dime for every time I’ve put that diagram into a PowerPoint presentation….)

Also – there’s a great quote from an article on “the future of game development”, courtesy of Checker:

“If games are really going to reach their potential as an art and entertainment medium over the next 20 years, we have to focus on characters, emotions, and drama, and we have to do it in a way that embraces interactivity, since it is the key differentiator between games and other art forms. Having amazing characters and dramatic tension in your cutscenes, but having the interactive sequences of your game be just another button-mashing fighting or shooting game is just worthless – go make movies if that satisfies you.

Really embracing interactivity means developing a ton of technology over the next 10 years. We currently have no idea how to write code that manages a player’s dramatic arc through a non-linear story. We have very little idea how to write subtle NPC AI that tailors itself to the player’s behavior to ensure he or she is having the kind of experience the designer intends. We don’t even have a model of what kind of experience the players are currently having while they’re in the game – are they bored, overly challenged, or what?

I think in the future, there will be subsystems in games that watch and gather data at runtime to make a constantly updated player model. Then other systems, like a drama manager, will query the player model and make decisions about how to shape the game to increase or decrease tension and so forth. These systems are risky; both in the sense that they’re unknown technical research problems, and also in that they make designing games harder than if you’re doing linear “theme park rides.” But the potential is there for truly interactive dramatic stories that empower the player. We have to stop calcifying with sequels and gameplay rehashes and go for it.”

Hooray!

I’ve spent the better part of two years thinking about the smallest step in this process (measuring engagement given real-time game data). At times, it felt like even trying to do that tiny piece of analysis was useless – either because it was too hard to quantify “enjoyment” or too easy to “handwave” the specifics of designing for dynamic difficulty. Making it into a thesis that would pass in computer science circles but still acknowledge the design problems felt, at times, foolhardy.

Was I abandoning my goal of building deeper, more involved narratives and dramatic arcs in games? Had I sold out on the “real AI problem” by choosing to look for a mathematical solution to a problem that was clearly grounded in design? A sub-system for estimating player engagement in Half Life? Bah-humbug.

How nice to see the problems of my work listed in the larger chain of innovations – that is – in something I didn’t write myself!

—-

Having said all that – it is a *tad* disappointing to see that along with the re-design of features and news coverage, GDMag decided to grace the cover of the 10th anniversary issue with a busty, low-poly fantasy-babe (alternate title: The Busts of EverQuest… Revealed!).

I wonder: how many years into “the future” will we have to go before ridiculously-proportioned (but high-poly) models of *both* sexes are featured popping out of their costumes on our trade mag covers?

A nifty visualization of my US Orkut network, by way of Jee, who I met via Souris, who I met via Jane who I met via games. Click on the “lines” button to see the people who helped create each person’s map.

While in the bay I chatted with Austin over lunch about some of the writing he’s doing on his latest project. It was interesting to hear him talk a bit about the struggle to integrate plot with game action, motivating a coherent catharsis that is also player-driven.

At last year’s GDC, Austin led the on-site meeting for the IGDA writer’s sig, which Jason recently blogged about while covering this story on the current quality of game writing. I remember him being nervous about it – but so far, they are cranking along. Go go go, game writers! We need you!!!

When was the last time that a game moved you just as much as it entertained you? Check out the sig’s Guide to Game Writing – and pass it on!

I am in the bay area this weekend, on an impromptu trip. Relaxing mostly down in the “Shallow Alto” area – soaking up sun, marveling at the affluence around me. Porche SUVs!?! Could there be anything less necessary?

The weather was beautiful today, and everything here is in bloom. I had to resist the urge to take out my camera every 5 seconds and snap a photo of someone’s beautiful shrubs, be-vined fence, or walkway garden. I feel like such an out-of-towner.. taking every excuse to be outside on the patio, walking in the sun, strolling the avenue, window shopping. Or maybe it’s just what’s expected? When in Rome?

—

I think about living in a place like this – one of many places in the US where one can walk to work every day and never see a poor, destitute person. Someplace where there are no foreign-language signs, where nearly everyone is white. It weirds me out.

How does one keep in touch with reality in such a manicured, sunny, quiet place? Would I find ways to stay involved in other cultures, meet new people, and have fresh experiences? Or would I just turn into a big ball of middle-class goo?

I spent my teenage years in Central Florida – the very place considered in my Thursday entry. It was basically a cultural vacuum – a void. I passed the time by avoiding the sun – cocooned in my room, listening to the Smiths, watching old movies and reading. I didn’t even have a computer – just an old Super Nintendo (which was actually my brother’s machine and in his room). It was not a pleasant time, and even now I kind of shrink at the thought of living in a warm-weather place, which is illogical, but somewhat ingrained at this point.

For a long time, I had California down as just another Florida. After many many trips here (to both the bay and LA) I can see now that in some places, this is not so true – but out here in the burbs, it is hard to shake the feeling that I’m just around the corner from my high-school.

—

And speaking of my childhood – today is my mom’s birthday… she is 56(?) today, and has a super long name:

Happy Birthday, Linda Bernice Rose Grace Wise Hunicke! Whew!

From Justin’s recent entry – the 5th sentence of the 23rd page of the nearest book to me at this moment:

“Shifu, screw the factory, now that it’s turned into this.”

- from Shifu, You’ll Do Anything For A Laugh by Mo Yan (which, according to the introduction, means “Stop Speaking” in Chinese.

According to the AP, Florida legislators are trying to entice Electronic Arts to expand upon their Orlando base (Tiburon).

Of particular interest: Over $4 million of the $41 million dollar package would be earmarked to help “launch a specialized program at the University of Central Florida to train prospective employees”.

In my Friday post I briefly mentioned the death of a colleague. At this point, some of his family has still not been contacted, and out of respect, I’ll refrain from announcing the details here until I am sure that it’s ok. But I have been thinking a lot about the circumstances surrounding his death, and wanted to write about it.

In a nutshell, he died of a stroke. Two Fridays ago, after some strange symptoms, he went to the hospital and was diagnosed with serious arterial blockage. He scheduled an angioplasty for this past Friday, so that he could take the weekend off and recover.

But on Thursday evening, he began to experience the symptoms of a stroke. A co-worker walked him outside for fresh air. They called the paramedics, and he went to the hospital – but “insisted” on taking his laptop with him, so he could work from there.

He died en route.

—

At GDC, I spoke with Greg LoPiccolo (of Harmonix) about the whitepaper that the Quality of Life committee just released. Some stats:

• 34.3% of developers expect to leave the industry within 5 years, and 51.2% within 10 years.
• Only 3.4% said that their coworkers averaged 10 or more years of experience.
• Crunch time is omnipresent, during which respondents work 65 to 80 hours a week (35.2%). The average crunch work week exceeds 80 hours (13%). Overtime is often uncompensated (46.8%).
• 44% of developers claim they could use more people or special skills on their projects.
• Spouses are likely to respond that “You work too much…” (61.5%); “You are always stressed out.” (43.5%); “You don’t make enough money.” (35.6%).
• Contrary to expectations, more people said that games were only one of many career options for them (34%) than said games were their only choice (32%)

ding up to this sudden (yet possibly preventable) death, I couldn’t help but think of these results. I thought about all the people I know who have let work stress and exhaust them beyond reason – a set that often includes myself.

And we know who we are – spending long hours in front of the machine, away from friends, family, exercise (or food!) and sleep. This takes a toll – individually, and collectively. While the whitepaper (which emphasizes best practices) is a start, each of us will have to make an effort to become part of the solution.

I will celebrate this man’s contribution and inspiration: he was a dedicated person who strove to better the field in all his efforts. But I will also mark his passing as a warning. For without balance, the very best of our efforts may never come to pass.

—

Also: I received news today that my good friend Ken’s sister-in-law passed away on Friday, after a 5+ year battle with brain cancer that began shortly after she conceived her first and only son. My thoughts are with Ken, Steven and the entire family – I know she will be missed.

Rest in peace, Adrienne.

Last night I packed up all my stuff before going to bed, sent myself email reminders for all the things I needed to accomplish, set my alarm for “early” (before 10). I made a plan to be productive. Lots to do, little time to waste… the usual grind.

Today I got to work just in time to find techstaff freaking out over the .Net server in my office – mumbling about viruses. Apparently someone got at the domain controller last night and as a result, everything was down. No way to check mail, no way to get code off the VSS server… a disaster!

Nothing to do but play :)

—

Vern and I spent the day fooling around with Atman’s physics engine, setting up one of the simulations I’ve been thinking about. It was slow going at first, and just before dinner I really started to scold myself for not sticking to “the plan” and getting on top of the to-do list. Why indulge my curiosity about this silly thing when I could be working on my dissertation, or another paper, or.. something important?

Blood sugar may have been a factor.

After dinner I found a bug (definitely blood sugar) that was causing a snag, and things started to look up. Then – Jack (one of my favorite profs) came by. He stopped in to show us a crazy Siggraph paper, staying to give a few ideas for transforming the bodies in our simulation… and to amaze us with his expertise on dirigibles.

I showed him my physics spirograph thingy, and he told us about his student’s knot-visualization tool – which mathematically transforms a cross-sectional image of the ropes and their connections into a constrained, closed-loop, 3D knot. Slightly more complicated than my stuff (she says, grinning sheepishly). When this goes up on the group’s pages, I will definitely post it!

Eventually, we got to talking about harmonographs – dual-pendulum drawing devices that make beautiful spirals. Apparently, Jack discovered the harmonograph while avoiding reading he was supposed to do for a math paper. Instead of doing the paper, he built one himself – and got an A!

What kind of student spends all their time on these side-projects, gadgets and fiddlings? Once again, Jack had the answer: “A gradual student!”

—

Vern and I worked until about midnight, and then I left for the train. Of course it was raining, and of course, I missed the train. Exhausted, cold & hungry, I decided to spend $12 bucks on a cab.

Riding back, I was glad to have the quiet, derelict-free space to think over the meandering path of my day. Somehow, everything seemed to go wrong – and yet, I felt better for it. It’s important to remember that there’s a big difference between staying focused and slaving yourself to a schedule.

Maybe I should send myself a reminder?

After a week of watching the new tank, I decided to move the turquoise monsters back into the old tank, where they can dominate and terrorize without disrupting the mating cycle of my parrot fish. I cleaned the tank up, started it running, transferred some water and eventually made the switch.

A trip to the pet store was necessary – my pump crapped out and I needed some plants for the new habitat. Because there is no omnivorous snail in there, I got some lovely hornwort. I know it doesn’t *sound* lovely, but it is. Sways in the water like a fern or a pin tree. Green!

The fish are scary to move. They shake and rustle in the net and I fear they will hurt themselves. But they seem happy now. I fed them, they ate, they nestled into nooks and crannies. I put a beautiful old abalone shell in with them – it sparkles and twinkles under the lights.

I am thinking a lot about fish. I want do build some simulated fish and play with them. This is now on my short list of weekend projects. Weekends are going to be playtime again, for a while, now that the pace has settled into a low-grade frenzy.

PS: I posted the photos from my mental-health day. Still daydreaming about those sneakers….

Saturday night – after mucho cheap Indian buffet, Seth and I headed over to the Bottom Lounge for Version Fest festivities, which featured one Tall Pepper – aka Paul, my roommate.

Paul is a drummer – and a human beatbox. He was in 3 bands in college, playing drums – but the beatbox has always been a sideline. He’d performed a bit in school, and then in Scotland (can you imagine?), but hasn’t ever been part of a real “act”.

A few months after he moved here, Paul went out drinking one night and met Ben (who goes by L’il Woodgrain) at a party. Ben started freestyling, Paul was beatboxing – and the rest, as they say….

—

Ben has a crazy weird flow – grim stuff about homeless folks, girlfriends, fear and drugs mixed up in a style that resembles my West Coast favorites (Aceyalone, Abstract Tribe Unique, Del, etc). One night, they got drunk and crashed a Lumpen party at the Buddy gallery – performing on stage with a third guy on upright bass. The organizers liked it so much that they asked them to perform at the festival.

Now – I hear Paul beatbox all the time: in the shower, waiting for stuff to cook in the microwave, sitting in the car at a red light. Most of the time I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it. At first, it seemed odd. Performative, I guess. But now – I’m used to it.

Seeing him on stage, tho – wowing the crowd with his crazy mouth-sounds – that was really awesome. With the microphone, and the crowd’s responses – it has a *completely* different energy.

Paul’s talent is a combination of speed and creativity. Right now he’s working on a couple of tricks: one (the sickbox) involves lots of sniffling and snorting and coughing – kind of nasty, but also fun. The second (the sexbox).. well, you can imagine. I think they both have real potential.

He’s also perfect for Ben – whose flow tends to speed up to incredible paces over the course of the performance. Keeping up with Ben on turntables would be – difficult. This way, they can improvise, setting a new pace for each verse, alternating the sounds to match that pace.

—

Sadly, I didn’t bring my camera to the show – no photos of Ben (shirt off, tie on) and Paul rocking the crowd. But those of you here in Chi-town can check it out for yourself this Friday, as the Version Fest winds up for the wind-down at the super hip Pilsen party: 9:00 @ Lamprey/Bruner & Bay.

After a long stretch of work and concentration, I decided to take Friday off – a “mental health day” as Rob calls them. I’d been meaning to go downtown to see the Lee Bontecou retrospective – the warm weather and news of a respected colleague’s untimely death steeled my resolve. Life is just too short to spend a beautiful Friday indoors.

I was not the only person with this idea. By noon the sidewalks were crammed with people – jackets in hand, smiling in the sun, trying to stay on break just a little longer. After a quick snack and some window shopping, I’d had enough of the crowds. The museum’s cool interior and quiet patrons were a pleasant change of pace.

—

How can I describe this retrospective? Celebrated in the 60’s for her early canvas and iron-frame sculptures, Bontecou left the New York art scene for a quieter life. She moved, with her husband, to a remote farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania – where she raised her daughter, grew vegetables, and made art. Teaching was her only contact with the outside world – and even so, she was all but forgotten.

Only after falling ill with a rare blood disease did Bontecou agree to let MCA curator Elizabeth Smith put together the retrospective. “I thought I was a goner,” Bontecou told Vogue magazine. “And then poor Val and Billy would have been left to deal with all this work. That’s what I didn’t want.”

And the work, in a word, is phenomenal. First, bird forms in iron and terra cotta, then the gaping, threatening maws of her aggressive, anti-war box-sculptures. Moving into the second half of the exhibit, naturalist epoxy sculptures of fish and “flowers on life support”… then, strange space-station landscapes and spectacular constellations of mesh, porcelain and wire.

And all around these works, drawings; sketches and plans, studies of birds, fish, eyes and stellar constructions. To be honest – I found it almost impossible to concentrate on the later half of the exhibit for want of disc space. I had to sit down and write in the atrium, and then return to view the final pieces. It is still in my dreams.

—

Now that I’ve had some time to process the visit and look over the catalog, I’m not sure what I like more about the work – its versatility, breadth and imagination – or the story behind it. To think of this tiny woman, alone in the wee hours, surrounded by nothing but the sound of wilderness…. working….

I am not a solitary person; like most people, I use others as a sounding board. The thought of writing or building in a relative vacuum really intimidates me. Which I suppose is why I find her solitary vision and focus so inspiring.

I also like the idea that she chose to create on so many fronts – living a country life, raising a family on a lean budget, and working long hours at drawing when she didn’t have the time, energy or materials to do full-scale sculptures. She was driven, but found so many outlets. And it was a deliberate choice – a mission:

My most persistently recurring thought is to work in a scope as far-reaching as possible; to express a feeling of freedom in all its necessary ramifications – its awe, beauty, magnitude, horror, and baseness. This feeling embraces ancient, present and future worlds; from leaves to jet engines, landscapes to outer space, from visible nature to the inner eye, all encompassed in cohesive works of my inner world – 1963

My thought is to work in a scope as far-reaching as possible… biological worlds, aircraft-train systems, landscapes-space, world events (I’m afraid mostly the underbelly of human nature and the horrible global mess this little planet is in ) and of course, one’s own inner world mixed in as well as imagination. I always find search and experimenting the most exciting.

– 2002

I thought, as I read this. I do too.

The retrospective has been extended through May 31, after which it moves to the MOMA in New York.

Tonight on the way to dinner, Mahk and I stopped off at EB to look at games. Saw the empty boxes for Thief 3, picked over the GC titles (Wario Ware Mega Party = wacky!) and marveled at the sad state of PC gaming. While perusing the PC section (almost half the titles under $20) I found Republic… which I have been meaning to pick up for ages.

“We have that one pre-owned, if you want it..” said the salesgirl. (Yes, the EB near my office has a girl on staff who is actually pretty cool – way better than eye-patch dude, who is a snob). Hmmm – tempting. How much would I save?

5 bucks.

EB buys games for about $10 a pop, and then sells them “pre-owned” for $20-$25. And when you buy a “pre-owned” game – the profit is all EB. Mahk held up the box, pointed at the bright yellow PO sticker and suggested that we make our own stickers – stickers that say “Developer Gets Nothing”.

I get why they push the PO titles – new boxes are a loss leader for them after a few markdowns. Looking at the shelves, which are flooded with half-price titles, I understanding the business of selling used. But for $5, I’d rather support the developer.

Do your part – buy new!

Paul sent me this link the other day – photos of people on trains, in stop-motion. Observing small human signals in contrast with the rapid motion of the train – you realize how broad our incoming bandwidth really is.

Checker sent this one – a cosplay site where people pay to see folks dressed up as game and fantasy characters.

I wonder if they ever ride the train?

Mahk is here this week – we are teaching a miniature version of the Game Tuning Workshop to Ken Forbus’ games class.

It is interesting to see the workshop play out with the students – definitely a different feel than at GDC, where the participants are (mostly) employed, experienced developers. I took some photos with Mahk’s camera in class today, as the students were playing SissyFight 3000, which I will attempt to post tomorrow.

—

Last night, after diligently working on the lecture and format (*cough*) we played a bunch of Lifeline – the new Konami game where you control a character (Rio) in a Resident-Evil-esque horror-adventure setting, via voice. Thanks to Karoke Revolution, I had the mic already (you’d think they were trying to capture a market here or something…), and was excited to see how the game worked – even tho I had suspicions that it would suck.

And basically, it sucks. I mean…it sucks in a bunch of ways that are not really surprising – as when you have to get her to remember the phrase “Molotov cocktail” in the infirmary. We said that phrase several times (after confirming it with the walkthrough, which if you play the game is pretty essential for staying sane) and she had real problems recognizing it.

But it also sucks in ways that were totally avoidable. For example, you are supposed to guess all the names of the objects in the space. You can see what you want to name – it is highlighted to indicate that it is “checkable” or “namable”. But you have to get her to refer to an object in order to see it’s name, or guess the name yourself. So there are a lot of “Check Blue Object” “What should I do to WHAT?” interactions.

Making the player guess these object names seems really arbitrary to me – and turns the non-combat portions of the game into a “find the word” game which is not unlike playing Zork. Why not just give me the words and focus my interactions with her on direct combat control and things like the “memory jogging” activity? Translation is a big issue here as well – as when you are looking at a suitcase and supposed to call it a “trunk”. Walkthrough time!

But there are some seeds in there that have potential. For example, she gets scared and you have to coax her though the scene… telling her it will be ok and the like. The combat is also pretty good at evoking the “oh shit” feeling that most horror-adventure games get at by giving you poor character control and really ugly, huge, slimy enemies. Watching the combat, it seems very turn-based and slow. But when you’re commanding her – due to relatively clear and constrained vocabulary choices & frequent “tells” about enemy attacks – it feels just about right.

Of course you have to give it a lot of slack – it’s all the same adventure game shtick that you’d expect. Lots of puzzles and examining things and so on. But that part is mostly ok.

—

The question we found ourselves asking was: what were they thinking? Or, using the workshop’s MDA framework: What were their aesthetic goals?

In many ways, this game stands as an example of what the MDA framework urges against: a feature-driven game. It looks and feels like: “Ok so we have microphones out there and we can do some crude command vocabularies. Let’s do a game with that. How about an adventure game? You have to look at stuff and walk around, and the character can be kind of weak.. ok go for it!”.

What would this game be like if it was driven by the aesthetics of command-by-voice? Clearly the coaxing thing works in interesting ways – maybe a hostage negotiation or rescue game? Something where you’re helping people stay calm as they navigate out of a trap, or a precariously balanced, just-bombed building? Some kind of “calm, suggest actions, repeat” kind of game?

Or perhaps saving a child? Or getting a rescue dog to a hidden, helpless person? Anything where the feedback you get from the avatar makes more sense and is easier to forgive! Rio’s pithy lines are funny when she hits (as in “Take a shower!” “Not in YOUR lifetime!”) but really poor when she’s off (as in “Examine Green Object” “I already did that. It’s useless to us. You sure do take your time!”).

If she were *more* scared, *more* helpless – or spoke a foreign language – or ANYTHING that supported the actual dynamics of speech recognition game control – it would be a huge improvement. This is what Mahk would call a requirements-driven game.

—

Ico was a requirements-driven game. Jurie’s post on the Ico design talk at GDC sums it up pretty well. They demonstrated, clearly, through the use of images and short movies, how they were able to state, visualize and stick to a simple but meaningful aesthetic requirement: the connection between a boy and a girl.

The “subtractive design philosophy” espoused in their slides may not sound brilliant – in fact, the K.I.S.S. method of software design (whether you are a Worse is Better kind of person or an Extreme Programming person or a Rational person) is pretty popular and reasonably straightforward. What is not common is actually sticking to it like you say you want to.

For Ico, that meant steering away from features that didn’t support the boy-meets-girl connection. It meant a streamlined plot, simple character abilities and a string of relatively simple puzzles in a contained environment. But it also meant emotionally rich landscapes, intense feelings, and memorable, evocative storytelling. Not for every game, as Jurie says, but certainly in line with Ico’s overall requirements.

Looking at the paintings of David Palmer I feel a similar sensation. Single stroke painting is not something that I’d like to see a bunch of people doing. It’s a simple iteration of the form – but its powerful, when well done. Beautiful, even.

—

There have been a lot of discussions (post-Jam, post-Panel, post-EGW) about how to make, support and share innovative work. Some folks feel frustrated that more innovation isn’t happening, or that it’s so slow, or so incremental. I look at Ico, or Lifeline, and I see valuable lessons and important steps. Games may not be going where we want them to, or quite as fast as we’d like – but they are definitely moving forward.

Almost forgot: photos from the Tuning Workshop are now up – as well as general pix from GDC. General pix includes a sub-rant on gender at the show. Forgive me for flogging the horse twice.

Justin’s jam gallery is also up. Sean and Thatcher have also posted some pix. This one is my desktop… was trying to inspire myself with shoes. The orange blob and monkey with fez are birthday toys from Justin!

Last year at E3 I took a bunch of photos and put them together in threes – trying to capture some of the gender/power/perspective politics that the show brings to mind. It is getting close to the show again, and I’ve been thinking about posting to GGA, as a follow up to my previous piece.

It’s hard to write about gender – especially if you have a sense of humor. On some level, anything you single out can appear totally absurd and laughable – but on another, it’s often just sad and upsetting. When I consider games and gender, I try to walk this thin line – somewhere between being funny, pointed and pissed.

—

When I went to GDC this year I really didn’t expect to have much to bitch about. The overall trend towards professionalism has helped squash a lot of the sexist and baffling advertising that one finds in games – even at shows like E3, babes are less and less prevalent.

When I saw the Microsoft flyer in my bag for their “women in gaming” event, I wasn’t sure what to think. Why did they put a guy on the flyer? Was it a cross-dressing party? A matchmaking event? Then I saw the babe from the “Main and Unexpected” campaign, and it all clicked into place.

I get that they want to show off their new tech, and that bootygirls are all the rage for this kind of stuff. I understand the idea, I sympathize, even, with the marketers. But for a conference that is supposedly about “evolving” – promoting the best ideas, to the broadest selection of game developers, I think it’s in incredibly poor taste. Embarrassing, even.

Cutouts of this babe were on all the tables in the Microsoft Wireless area – and her silhouette was on all the pillars, just like the girl-with-gun from last year. A giant 8 foot version was also present, looming over everyone with pouting, blood-red lips.

How was this faceless, nameless object of busty, grayscale glory supposed to help make a place for MS’s XNA tech in the minds of their target audience? No slogan appeared with the cutouts – no name for the company OR the product. Just the image of this totally absurdly-built woman. Was she there to give the pathetic, hard-up nerds something to talk about? It’s like we’re being marketed to by a bunch of hooting frat guys from an 80’s teen film. “Take a look at THAT – you sorry ass DORKS!”

Apparently, during the demo MS gave mid-conference, Laura Fryer got on stage and talked about the detail in this character’s feet. Feet? I imagine that she was just reading what was on the teleprompter. But still. Her FEET? Don’t we deserve a little more credit?

I say that, but looking over the commentary and photos that were posted to the WomenDev list, I guess not. Witness the smartie handout booth bait from the fine folks at Maxon. Apparently they were also inserting candy between their butt cheeks (while clothed, but still) and asking developers to BEND OVER AND TAKE IT OUT WITH THEIR TEETH. Someone please tell me: what kind of message does this send at an expo where half of the floor is devoted to hiring booths? Are we *trying* to drive women and non-goons away?

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I am not a frigid or uptight person. I see links like this as essential & thought-provoking explorations of prOn and power in media images. I see stuff like this and think it’s a waste of our government’s time and energy! I’ve read a lot of books on feminism, gender, and the politics of representation. And as an AI researcher, I think a lot about our brains, our behavior, and the things that we struggle with in coming to terms with our basest instincts and urges.

Generally, I’m pro-sensuality & pro-expression. And if the MS campaign, or the NVidia campaign, or any of this other crap were equal-opportunity, or DIVERSE (the glare at GDC is unbelievable!) – I might have more patience for it. But it’s not. And there is a point where endorsing this one-sided view of what is sexy or desirable (by covering it glibly in your articles, designing it into your game characters, pulling candy out of a girl’s ass, etc.) is just a bad idea. Harmful, even.

The next time you have the opportunity to criticize something like this do us ALL a favor, and register a complaint with the booth manager, the show, the editor, head marketer or developer. Just say “You know – as a person, I find this kind of sad. And really – what does it say about your products? How am I supposed to evaluate your game/solution/technology when your spokesmodel’s be-smartied tits are poking my eyes out?”

Ok, ok – maybe not exactly that. But something like that. Anything would be better than just pretending it isn’t there.

It was beautiful outside today, and so I took the afternoon off and ran some errands. Among other things, I stopped off at Target to replace my microwave (about a month ago it started sparking and smoking at random intervals…!!!) and went to the pet store.

I picked up some filters and a bottom feeder for my new tank (they’re so creepy looking!)… but resisted the urge to buy a turtle. I also resisted the call of baby hampsters and cute, chirping birds. Could I resist the spot-tail Zebra cichlids in all their golden glory? No, no I could not.

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I recently migrated my fish to a larger tank… it was something I’d been meaning to do forever. I have two crazy orange blood-parrots, two turquoise severums, and three white princesses.

Before the move, the princesses were “caving” most of the time. Due to the size and layout of the tank, they basically tunneled under rocks and came out only at feeding times – and even then, only sporadically. And yet – they did not breed. The guy at the fish store told me they’d be “perky” and “active” but they were mostly “oppressed” and “hidden”.

The parrot fish had the opposite problem – holing up in one corner and laying batch after batch of sterile eggs. Did I know when I bought them that they were a man-made breed, that some fish-lovers consider them an abomination because they cannot breed themselves? No! Why, why do I ever listen to the guy at the pet store?

To top it all off, the severums (which I bought to keep the parrots company) grew at a stunning rate – eclipsing everything in the tank. The larger (male) fish is a hog that swallows 2/3 of the food at any feeding. And then… they spawned – oh man. Watching him bully the other fish back into hiding was like seeing a bizarre, aquatic episode of “The Prisoner”.

So I got a bigger tank, moved the rocks around so that there were some larger, but visible hiding places, and let the fish loose. Immediately, there was a difference. More area for Mr. Badass to patrol, so the parrots could eat fairly safely. The small fry swam low, among the plants, and the big’uns hung out near the largest collection of stones. Fed and happy – and room to grow.

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I got home with my new purchases and set about letting them loose in the tank – excited to see how they would fit in.

And you know what? Those princess fish turned out to be a bunch of greedy little bastards! I watched the yellow Zebras dart frantically from rock to rock, cave to cave… looking for territory that hadn’t been claimed. Hounded! Chased! Harassed into some distant, high corner of the tank by the (now menacing) trio of white fish.

Even the littlest white dude was on their asses! In fact – he was the worst! How was it, I wondered, that I’d never noticed the similarity between the princesses and… killer whales? Jesus, they were mean!

I thought about this for a long time. How flexible and illogical our taxonomies are. What was once cute and sad was now Machiavellian. The princesses even look mean to me now. And I’m sure, that if given the chance, those little yellow guys will probably do the exact same thing.

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Last night Justin asked “Are you going to enlist?”. He wanted to remind me that despite the endless and absorbing problems of our daily lives (and the ecology of our fish tanks), there is a hellish, explosive war going on – a war that “we Americans” have a responsibility for.

I don’t watch the news because it upsets me to think about people killing each other – but even walking to the train I can see from the covers of the papers that we’re in a big pile of shit. Apparently, more informed folks have come to the same conclusion.

Am I going to enlist? Hell no. If anything, I’m more likely to expatriate. The day this whole thing started I gave up on it, and I don’t expect anything good to come from it. And like most people, I don’t know who to blame, or what to do. Where are the bad fish? Where are the good ones? Who is big, who is small? Who is feeding, or starving, who?

What small, soft vulnerability does each new report bring to light? How are my sympathies being enlisted? Yours? As information surfaces or sinks, and the landscape changes – I think of my tiny fish… and wonder how we could possibly hope to improve things with our meddling.

I went to see Stereolab last night, now touring after the tragic loss of singer and collaborator Mary Hansen late in 2002. I remember, at the time of her death, wondering if they would keep on performing without her. Images of Mary and Leatitia swaying in time to the bubbling, droning, soothing or charging sounds of their band-mates filled my mind. I went home, listened to “Emperor Tomato Ketchup”, and cried.

I often cry while listening to music – I feel it deeply. Opera, yes – but rap, noise, and pop songs, too. Some of my fondest memories of live shows involve crying. Listening to Jeb play the trombone one lonely winter night. Front and center at my very first Stererolab show, as Contact built to a huge, crushing peak. Or at a Sigur Ros performance – where the combination of lights, film and sound drove me into a reverie about suicide. Missing my friend – while silently berating him – and loving the music… all at once.

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Last night’s performance had a complex shape. Most of the music was rather “upbeat” – a phrase you will hear connected time and again with their latest recording. And yet – it was a sober affair. Without feeling like a wake, it evoked the spirit of mourning. Simultaneously, with poise and energy, it celebrated life.

It was… high contrast. When the music was lively, the projected visuals were often strange or brooding. Time slowing down, people seeing themselves visited by Death, transformations performed over and over, fast forward and then reversed. When the music was slower, the accompanying images were often abstract. Loops of vintage mod animations or spiraling trip-out reels.

One particularly stunning moment involved a pulsing, waveform backbeat and the looping (simulated?) image of rectangular openings in a black surface passing over a brilliant white light. Behind Leatitia’s soaring vocals, echoes of French horn and keyboards felt like a fitting tribute. Tears rushed to my eyes – and I felt grateful. I felt present for the first time in weeks.

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Good role models are hard to find, in general. But it’s especially difficult to look at the entertainment culture (or the business that surrounds it) and find positive images of women. Most pander, and those who claim to be “feminists” or “pro-woman” often project confused images of what it means to be strong, successful, professional, and female.

What a breath of fresh air Stereolab was for the 20 year-old me! Women and men working together to create beautiful music… communicating positive and liberating messages, without the glibly rebellious trappings of some movement. Less than a manifesto, but more than good vibes. Standing tall, swaying to their own beats and melodies – they totally blew me away.

How uplifting to know that their music, in the face of such loss, can still give so much. Kudos and many more, Stereolab! Rest in peace, Mary Therese.

GDC is always a bit of a balancing act for me. Which talks to propose? Which to attend? How to communicate ideas to a small working group, a lecture-sized audience, or a 300+ crowd? How to best organize presentations, drinks, dinners and discussion?

Getting in touch with the right people is hard – getting them to listen (to me OR each other) is even harder. Opinions, goals and experience (especially negative experiences – which abound) can get in the way. I like to fancy myself an interdisciplinary thinker – someone who can be positive about industry and academia both. But even I get stuck in a loop sometimes.

The best way for me to keep things in perspective? Practice, practice practice! I speak and teach and participate because it is through dialog (and often, disagreement) that I learn best. Talking with all of you keeps me focused on the boundaries, and helps me get across them.

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This was at the heart of my goals for the collaborations panel. I wanted to discuss both sides of the games research fence. Before GDC, I put together a list of topics and questions – something to help frame the discussion in terms of previous community discussions. While far from exhaustive, it gave us plenty to consider for the actual panel.

Discussion higlights:

• Will was especially positive about the impact of internships at Maxis. His point: students coming out of school right now are very DIY – the fish who swim upstream. They are ideal candidates for creative problem solving – and a valuable resource. He also talked about using the academic network to explore new ideas, and encouraged developers to read in a variety of fields.
• Raph emphasized the importance of “keeping it relevant” – especially for people at companies where (unlike Maxis) interns are rare. A spinoff point from this discussion: Most developers read about games research in the NY Times – and what rises to the top in the popular press isn’t always applicable to shipping games. As researchers, we should be working to promote our ideas in development-related venues (such as Game Developer and the GDC) as well as journals like the Journal of Game Development.
• Mark stressed the importance (and difficulty) of evangelizing cooperation from within corporate structures. He encouraged developers to share knowledge, and to publish in the existing games literature (Game Programming Gems, etc). He also pointed to Sony’s PS2 Linux kit price drop as a step in the right direction. Making tools available and affordable will foster indie and academic efforts.
• Mike talked about his experiences with funding – and suggested some strategies. One idea: summer internships where schools (or grants) pay for room and board, so that students and faculty can “sit in” on a development project for a few months, observing and participating when possible. Costs the developer a little time, a terminal and some desk space. I still think this was one of the best ideas to come out of the panel.

Overall, I considered the experiment a success. While we are far from solving most of the problems discussed, each panelist had a unique and valuable contribution and good ideas were generated. Students seemed especially enthusiastic about the session – which is important to me. As the next generation of artists, writers, programmers, designers and producers – these kids are our key to a broader market and more diverse workplace.

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Reading the GDC wrap-up on GTxA, I felt that familiar tugging – various perspectives pulling me in different directions. On the one hand, I agree that it’s an uphill climb (or upstream swim) for games researchers – and sometimes, it really sucks. In an ideal world, innovative and “out of the box” research would be supported by *all* industries, and education would be a priority across the board.

But that’s not the kind of world we live in. In discussing the post, Rob reminded me of this Bell Labs talk on innovation, industry and academia. Are game researchers in the same boat as systems researchers? Sometimes it’s hard to see it any other way.

And like the systems researchers – we can give up, or work with what we got. For developers in the business of selling games, this means building the products that people want (and will pay for) – on budget, and on time. For academics in the business of promoting their programs and schools, this means attracting the right kind of attention from the development community – and placing students.

So – turning out students who are aware of practical business constraints, and who can contribute to current development and marketing efforts is a must. And in the end, programs with these goals will support the following pipeline:

academics -> students -> internships/jobs -> developers

This creates opportunities for change. It might not lead to immediate, blockbuster innovations – but over time, more and more educated, creative, forward-thinking folks will contribute. We might even see this:

academics -> students -> internships/jobs -> developers -> academics

Here, those very first fish swim back down stream, to chill with the next generation of creators. It will take time, and patience – and humility. In this model, academics do not get credit on the back of boxes, or see royalties for ideas or systems. Innovation is a collective, gradual, evolutionary process.

But in the long run, perspectives will change. Dialog and debate will prosper, and the games as a medium will grow. Isn’t that just what we want… on both sides of the fence? It doesn’t look like such a bad place to go, from here in the middle.

I finally went through my GDC photos today. I have so much to post about GDC that it’s hard to know where to start. And some photos were requested, so I decided to start there.

You can now see my game jam page, along with a page of screenshots from my nebulae program.

I’ve also posted images from the EGW… tho sadly there are no photos of my demo (spaced) or my talk (was otherwise occupied). If anyone has a pic of me speaking at the podium – please send it in! All I got next to my blurb on the EGW pages is .. the title slide from my lecture!

Buzz is that the Game Jam and Workshop will be covered by G4 soon – I cringe thinking about how tired I was when the interviewed me. And no lipstick! What was I thinking?