Matt McLean: Blog

Books and eBooks

2011-12-27T17:21:00.005-05:00

I was perusing Metafilter the other day, and in much the same way I will gravitate toward a bookstore while walking down the street, I was drawn to this post about Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Though I can’t profess an interest in owning an e-reader, I’m always fascinated by discussions surrounding them. For every person who swears by their e-reader, there’s another who refuses to concede their affinity for the smell, weight, texture, or not-stored-in-a-Cloud-ness characteristics of printed materials.

Indeed, these discussions tend to circle each other equally. There are many reasons why both books and their electronic counterparts are great ways to read, and you won’t find me complaining if more people are reading in general, regardless of the way in which they choose to do so. One of the nicest things I’ve noticed about e-readers is the ability to download books from your local library. Yet one word that popped out at me in the aforementioned post got me thinking, and that word is consumption.

Galactus, Devourer of Worlds: 'It all started when I got a Nook for my birthday..."

To be brief, the strength of the Kindle Fire was described by its function as a media consumption device. This is evidently a market segment between a calculator and a tablet computer, and while tablets are certainly media consumption devices it can be said that they are also good at a facilitating a wider variety of activities. Anyway, media consumption devices enable and are devoted to the consumption of media: the devouring of books, magazines, videos. Devices that are perfect for our ‘consumer culture.’

When I was a young pup, my mom frequently took my sister and me to the library. We were voracious readers, and on a warm summer day there was an equal chance that I’d be inside reading as there was that I’d be outside imagining that I was a part of the worlds to which I’d been introduced via those books. To this day, I recall strong memories associated with reading books, the same way a particular scent or the opening phrase of a song can transport us to another time or place.

For me, it comes down to quality of experience. I still read a lot, and I do it in different ways – but personally, it’s the online content that runs the risk of over-saturating me. Due to the ease of access, I find myself reading through so much stuff so quickly that the content starts to lose meaning and become undifferentiated as it all slops around in my head. The volume of content and how frictionless it has become to access it are what make living in the future so great – and that goes for even the simplest eReader devices, on which you can store many books and periodicals – but, it would seem, at the cost of allowing ourselves to carefully consider the material.

By embarking on the journey of reading a physical book, we build a relationship with it. Some of my favorite books are ‘discoveries’ from my local used bookstore. Books are tied to specific periods in our lives. They accompany us on our lunch breaks and on buses and planes. They are not interchangeable. It was this book that I took with me on last summer’s road trip. It was this book I was reading when I was looking for jobs. I like to read these when I’m in bed with a cold. Even looking at the cover of a book of an edition you once owned causes a spark of recognition, reminding you of that companionship. Is there any feeling that’s more satisfying than reading a chapter at the coffee shop and allowing yourself to pause and contemplate what you’ve just read, without any distraction other than the environment in which you sit? Perhaps it’s telling that ‘reading’ is the last activity to be mentioned during recent advertisements for the Kindle Fire.

How delightful!

2011-05-10T01:37:00.002-04:00

You may remember the fun I had writing a Dinosaur Comic several years ago. Here's another one I wrote for a CBC contest... before I realized that it was only open to Canadians, of course.

Top Albums of 2010

2011-01-24T19:06:00.016-05:00

The following are the albums I loved most in 2010. Here's last year's list.

Javelin - No Mas
I first heard "Intervales Theme" on a WPTS broadcast in Pittsburgh. With the city blinking out of its eyes the sleep of a long winter, the song seemed to give shape to the freshness of a new season. I was compelled to pick up the album as soon as it was released, after which point it became the soundtrack for my spring and summer. The disc is characterized by the same optimism and distant sense of longing as that first song that I heard - memories filtered through sun-bright days at the beach or the park with friends.

Now that I live in San Francisco, I miss the hibernation of winter and the resultant deep breath the entire world takes when spring arrives - but this album will always remind me of that feeling of warmth and possibility.

Standout Tracks: Intervales Theme, On It On It, Off My Mind

Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
I thought pretty hard about whether to include Phantogram here, but the bright spots are irrefutable. One of the first albums I acquired after moving to San Francisco, it seems to capture the wistfulness I experienced in leaving behind the familiarity and security of home. Phantogram combines with ease an ear for catchy melancholy melodies (like those of The Xx) with the textural trip-hop popularized by Massive Attack.

Standout Tracks: Mouthful of Diamonds, As Far As I Can See, Bloody Palms

Hans Zimmer - Inception
I caught Inception fever this summer, resulting in my first soundtrack purchase since I was in, like, the eighth grade. Soundtracks are always most effective when, upon listening, they transport you back to the same places that the movie showed you. The Inception soundtrack takes this to the max, with a simple (and thus very memorable) two-note theme and the clever use of Edith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." In addition to reminding you of the fantastic places its movie takes you, a great soundtrack also makes you feel the associated emotions - this album is both painful in its tenderness and towering at its epic best.

Standout Tracks: Time, 528491, Dream Is Collapsing

Underworld - Barking
I'm the kind of Underworld fan that prefers A Hundred Days Off to their earlier work, but Barking is an interesting amalgamation of both (and thankfully, nothing longer than seven minutes). I like the general sense of optimism, and the video for "Always Loved A Film" is representative, for me, of the entire album - the feeling that we are all to some extent ageless, that there is always some vibrancy in us our entire lives.

Standout Tracks: Always Loved A Film, Hamburg Hotel, Moon in Water

Baths - Cerulean
Despite some of the songs containing vocals bearing a strong resemblance to Passion Pit (I'm looking at you, "You're My Excuse To Travel"), Cerulean is full of solid beats, glitches and dreamy-eyed reflection. When it's a rainy day and you need a little lift, this is a good album to put on.

Standout Tracks: Lovely Bloodflow, Aminals, Hall

Honorable Mention
The Black Keys - Brothers
I love these guys so much, and it's awesome that this album is garnering them a lot of notice, but I feel that this isn't their best work and just wasn't exciting enough to make the main list. The best thing about the Black Keys is that they bring the rock and they bring the blues. The raw soulfulness of their music and the authenticity they bring to their work and sound sets them shoulders above most.

Standout Tracks: Sinister Kid, Ten Cent Pistol, Next Girl

The Art of Re-imagining the Past

2010-11-21T13:37:00.004-05:00

One day last year, David Wright visited our project office in the Entertainment Technology Center where we were working on Toybox Futuristi. He was friendly, curious, and explained that he was intrigued by how the digital puppetry software complemented Depero's original work, as well as theater in general.

I hadn't realized the depth to which David had been exploring the challenges in a project like ours, so I was pleasantly surprised when friends from the project forwarded this article in Carnegie Mellon University's interdisciplinary studies electronic journal:

http://www.cmu.edu/interdisciplinary/creare/issue4.html

The piece is well-written and covers a lot of the challenges we faced as an interdisciplinary, collaborative team. I definitely recommend reading it!

Game Narrative Review: Windosill

2010-05-20T22:49:00.005-04:00

Game Title: Windosill

Platform: PC

Genre: Casual indie abstract adventure puzzle

Release Date: January 1, 2009

Developer: Vectorpark

Publisher: Vectorpark

Game Writer/Creative Director/Narrative Designer: Patrick Smith

Overview

Windosill is a short, absorbing abstract experience from artist Patrick Smith, who is known for making Flash “distractions” that encourage exploration and amusement. The adventures of an ambitious steam engine in the game manage to extend the best of Smith’s distractions into a longer play experience while maintaining their whimsical, exploratory nature. Smith’s excellent use of physical responses to player interactions gives Windosill a novel feeling of authenticity and elasticity that imparts an absorbing sense of connection to the virtual world. This feeling of tactile response is supplemented by the unique visual style, a surreal yet accessible mix of the familiar and dream-like drawn in the same delicate, spare nature of cut-out art. Smith’s work is meant to be approached and played with, almost as a toy – and intriguingly, this allows each player to bring their own unique, imaginative interpretations to the events in Windosill as they unfold. In the game, the steam engine reaches for freedom from the collection of oddities of which it is a part, moving into a strange, beautifully ethereal dream world that demands interaction.

Characters

Steam Engine – Small, blocky and simple, the steam engine is best described as the player avatar. Its only indication of happiness is a periodically exhaled puff of steam emitted as it rolls to interesting new places. After escaping from the carefully segmented and contained shelf that is its home, its desire is to move through its new, boundless world of discovery and become truly free.
The Boy – This small, unassuming figure - that nevertheless draws attention due to the fact that he seems quite ordinary - hides from the steam engine at first, but exudes a feeling of innocence and curiosity. He also functions as a common thread through the seemingly unrelated worlds of Windosill.
Collection of Oddities – The shelf-mates of the steam engine figure significantly in its journey through the dream world, usually in an altered manner that echoes their original forms.

Breakdown

Above all, Windosill feels like a game that is describing a dream. It delivers on this idea in every aspect, including its disjointed, spare narrative. The opening scene is in darkness until the player discovers the light bulb; and in this same way throughout the experience, every scene begs to be explored; every object begs for interaction. This area - a large shelf upon which many strange and interesting objects lie - imparts the basic rules of the game: click, explore, and find the white cube. That cube will fit in the slot above doors that allow the steam engine to move to the next scene. With this context-less - but beautiful and effortless - exploration, the initial interest in the game is high, and encourages the player to find out more information.

Upon escaping from the shelves housing the collection of oddities, the steam engine finds itself in front of a curtain. Pulling the curtains open reveals a grassy knoll upon which the blocky word “WINDOSILL” is situated. A small figure peers out from the “O” – this is the Boy. He hides when the cursor nears him, but it is clear that he is interested in the steam engine.

The next few scenes each have a clever solution to allow the steam engine to move forward and their unique visualizations and interactions establish their own vignettes, for example, a chick who wants a worm; and a series of plant-like devices that can only function with pill-shaped insects (an interesting representation of real-life plants and pollinators). These bite-sized narratives begin to combine in a way describing the journey of the steam engine, like episodes in an adventure saga.

The idea of these small stories linking together loses its strength when the steam engine confronts a brown monolith in its path. Containing no real narrative of its own and requiring no particular investment on the part of the player to move forward (since the interactions don’t contribute to building the story as in other scenes), it causes the overarching journey narrative to lose momentum.

However, the Boy soon appears again in a carnival-like level, peering from the edge of a circular swing. Again he hides, but the effect is that the beginning of the steam engine’s journey is now tied to its present. There is a general feeling that the Boy is watching the journey with interest, or watching over the steam engine as it moves through its trials. After another comparatively uninteresting scene – an abstract sea where the player simply waits for the key cube to appear – the Boy is used again to grab interest. A whimsical blue planet hangs in the sky, and upon being spun, its small moon-like satellite appears. After spinning the satellite a balloon begins to orbit it, and inside is the Boy, who waves amiably. The key block hangs from his balloon, and it can be dragged to the lock. Then the balloon can be used again to lift the steam engine over the crevasse and release it on the other side. While there is no information about the Boy, there is a good feeling associated with knowing he was watching out for the steam engine, and it encourages the continuation of the journey.

The next room is a bit more menacing, containing three creatures who can’t keep their hands off the steam engine. This is the most surprising part of the game, as they prove they can interact seamlessly with an object that was exclusively under the influence of the player. They interact with each other, as well, and the solution to move past them is the stuff of every great adventure story – like outsmarting a troll guarding a bridge, or figuring out a riddle that opens a sealed door. This distinct echo of an adventure tale solidifies the feeling that there is in fact a subtle narrative in the game.

The game ends with the steam engine reaching the top of a tower that doubles as a Rube-Goldberg device. Here, a window opens in the starry sky, and tracks descend to the tower. The steam engine rolls up the tracks, into the portal - and vanishes only to reappear racing among the stars and constellations, truly free at last.

Strongest Element

The best thing that the game does is to allow its narrative to be discovered. Windosill could easily become a footnote in gaming history as a visually appealing puzzle game. Indeed, it is easy to overlook the idea that the game has a narrative in the first place because it is so appealing and playful by itself, and doesn’t provide background information, tutorials, or verbal cues. Instead, the game relies on its excellent artistic vision and player feedback to provide the context, and on interaction to provide the scaffolding of a story. The strength of that scaffold allows the player to bring their own imagination and experiences to the game for the generation of something altogether unique.

The game also connects scenes with several threads. For example, the Boy’s appearances end up being significant when he directly helps the steam engine. In the same way, all of the objects seen on the shelves in the opening scene make an appearance in other scenes, giving the impression that the dream world is incorporating things from the steam engine’s past (as dreams often do).

Few games – if any – that are considered short, casual experiences offer the same value and subtle complexity in terms of narrative.

Unsuccessful Element

One act of Windosill stands out as particularly unusual from the rest. In this scene, the progress of the steam engine is hampered by a large, brown monolithic surface. Clicking on the surface opens doors of various sizes that each contain a different object (strange rolling eyes, a jittering set of teeth, a bugle). The only option is to continue clicking until the white box that acts as a key for the next door is revealed behind one of the doors. While Windosill does an otherwise fantastic job of making the player depend on themselves to move forward through its puzzles, this particular scene was confusing and didn’t feel like a cohesive part of the story with the other scenes.

Since the story takes place in a dream world, it makes sense that there are unexplainable phenomena present. Additionally, scenes in Windosill definitely tell their own stories and aren’t bound by any particular rules – each one has its own rules and own method of clever puzzle-solving. In this context, perhaps the brown monolith is not so out of place among a gallery of scenes whose only shared thread is the journey of the steam engine; but it doesn’t match up to the cleverness of the other scenes, some of which are quite striking in the stories they tell solely through interaction. This scene managed to be particularly unsuccessful in forwarding the story through interaction, something at which the rest of the game excels.

Highlight

Close to the end of the Windosill experience, there is a truly remarkable scene that reaches through the boundaries of the game. The steam engine finds itself in a room with three ominous dream creatures (who look suspiciously similar to objects from its old home, the shelf). At this point, an unexpected occurrence amounts to one of the best moments in the game.

The first creature grabs the steam engine with its fingers and rolls it along the ground as if it were a toy. After helping the engine through the game to this point, it is quite easy to view it as one’s own toy. To have a creature begin playing with it without permission feels like some sort of transgression. The player has been through so much with the steam engine that it seems wrong that it is “just a toy” with which these creatures feel the need to play. Even so, an interesting boundary is crossed: the steam engine is now an object that both the player and the virtual characters can interact with, when previously it was exclusive to the player. They play with the engine with a strikingly child-like curiosity, and their interactions are so smooth, that it feels spontaneous and exciting.

Luckily, the player gets a chance to play with something of theirs. The white block which functions as the door key is underneath the hat of the small creature in the middle. He seems also particularly fond of the engine – but not enough to ignore the fact that the player is trying to remove his hat. He will constantly grab it and pull it back to his head. However, if the player submits and allows this creature exclusively to play with the steam engine, he will become distracted enough to allow the hat to be removed. The third, snake-like creature dives for the hat and is thus distracted as well, allowing the player to grab the block key and yank the steam engine from the grip of the center creature.

This sequence creates an intense feeling of drama. Who are these creatures and why won’t they leave the steam engine alone? What does the player have to do to get out of there? Interestingly, similar questions are often asked when one is having a bad dream. The interaction with the creatures – who are so enraptured by the steam engine – and the boundaries they cross contribute to this in a significant way. The scene also requires that the player sacrifice control of their steam engine, but allows them to feel clever in freeing it from the clutches of the creatures. For these reasons it is overall the most memorable scene, and the most powerful example in the game of storytelling through interaction.

Critical Reception

Windosill, despite being a short, one-man Flash production, has received positive acclaim. Reviewers were impressed by the smooth animations and whimsical visual style, as well as by the sense of playful exploration inherent in the game. Because of the spare nature of the story itself, reviewers tended to focus on other elements of the game that performed well, taking it in stride that there may not have been a narrative at all.

Games Radar praised the game, saying “Vectorpark’s Flash-based games raise the bar with their mix of beautiful art, exploration, and a strong sense of glee.” Naming it their Indie Pick of the Week for May 14, 2009, IGN was enthusiastic if not a bit more conservative: “Solutions to the game's puzzles don't necessarily make sense but you'll likely be fascinated by the strange scenarios.” Review blog Jay Is Games specializes in casual experiences and gave the game a rating of 4.9 out of 5, remarking “This game will reward you and intrigue you, inspire you without preaching, leave you wanting more.”

Lessons

Less can be so much more. This game contains no text or verbal instructions and no expository tutorial. Rather, it allows the player to discover the world and its rules and build a narrative based on spare, clever interaction.
Storytelling through interaction is a novel and powerful method of building a narrative that lends itself particularly to video games.
A lucid, communicative artistic vision and clear player feedback relay important information to the player in the context of the narrative; extra effort to ensure these things goes a long way to enabling the interactive construction of the story.

Summation

For such a short experience, Windosill still manages to be touching and impactful; this reason alone makes it worthy of further analysis. It forges a direct connection to the player through its playful vignettes and surprisingly tactile responses. Watching the steam engine race among the stars, its dream somehow fulfilled with your help, is a powerful moment linked to all the memorable encounters preceding it. Additionally, no detail is overlooked - even if the player knocks over the letters forming “WINDOSILL,” a helpful hand appears to re-arrange them neatly, acknowledging the presence of the player in the world. As noted, critics and reviewers often skipped over the idea that there may have been a story at all; indeed, the game does little to give context. However, there is a narrative inherent in its interactions, but this, like everything else in the game, must be discovered by the player. This gives each player the opportunity for a unique narrative experience synthesized with elements in the game and their own imaginations. Games are the only digital media capable of this type of interactive narrative construction, and Windosill is an excellent example of how effective it can be in a short period of play time.

Notes from GDC 2010

2010-03-31T17:28:00.002-04:00

Here are my collected notes from this year's Game Development Conference.

Beyond Scrum: Agile Project Management for Games

Speaker/s: Clinton Keith

Clinton Keith is pretty much the agile game development guru, and he definitely makes a good case for the process. The talk focused on applying project management practices where needed, using common sense with the transparency that Scrum provides, and filling out the Agile framework.

He described the main challenges in game development as managing fixed ship dates, maintaining minimum feature sets and avoiding crunch. Scrum, as a tool for transparency and in providing velocity, helps show where you’re coming up short in time for you to do something about the problem. Clinton talked about some scoping tools to help deal with the challenges outlined above aside from deadline shifting or velocity forcing (crunch).

1. Organize features using MuSCoW Analysis: Must have -->Should have-->Could have-->Won’t have. The Must-haves are standard features while the Should-haves and Could-haves are novel features.

2. Backlog prioritization: reveals the value, cost, and risk of features and provides knowledge.

3. Critical path: Identify dependencies that must occur in sequence.

4. Critical Chain Staffing: Identify stuff doen in the past, how many people/how long did that feature take?

My favorite part of this talk was its focus on common sense. Clinton encouraged attendees to find what fits their team’s needs and use the proper tools instead of following labels. Scrum is not the goal (magical remedy), it is a tool: focus on the principles of empiricism, emergence, time boxing, prioritization and self organization. Use this tool to iterate on your process. You need to provide leadership and guidance for Scrum to be effective, and plan continually to attack uncertainties.

What I want next from Clinton Keith is a session of case studies!

Game Writer's Roundtable

Moderator: Richard Dansky

Richard Dansky is also the guy collecting submissions for the GDC Austin game narrative review competition. I attended the talk just to see what it’d be like, I guess. I felt that the most vocal participants were the most opinionated (no surprise, but caused content to feel unbalanced) and learned that just about everybody in the room felt that writing is the most slighted occupation in the games industry.

Everything was pretty straightforward, from methods of filling in backstory to the player’s role in creating story. The opinions that spoke the most to me were ones focusing on writers recognizing themselves as part of a development team. One guy asked all the writers if their stories energized their teams, causing them all to play a role in realizing it (sharing the vision). Another said that his first job was to listen and see what he could draw out of the existing design. Resonant comment: writers give gameplay an emotional wrapper.

Wake Up! Your Team is on Fire! Why Your Real Problems are Cultural and how to Change Them

Speaker/s: Michael Saladino

Saladino was my manager at Pandemic when I interned there as a producer last summer.

His talk promoted the identification of (or reduction of problems into) feedback loops and how to understand them to reduce delays in a system. Feedback loops can be positive (encouragement to grow), negative (stasis), and exist in your team: examine loops on the team through the lens of delays. He espoused the values of having a shared vision and promoting team interconnectedness through transparency, visual workspaces, allowing hard questions in public, and avoiding “closed doors,” and more, which all fit nicely into his recommendation of Scrum and Agile practices (monthly retrospectives providing actionable feedback, team self-organization). He examined the concept of crunch as a feedback loop, encouraging us to address the core issue in order to effect 2^nd level change and stop the damaging cycle.

Related to, but partly outside of the systems talk, he encouraged some guidance/leadership principles as well. The first was leveraging the size of your company to find who you want to talk to when you’ve noticed their work (and they’ll love talking about their work), as well as forming monthly discussion calls with like-minded individuals across the company. He encouraged attendees to be teachers: present new ideas, create workshops to bring knowledge into your team, challenge people for growth via 1:1’s, and acknowledge that the best teachers are also students themselves. Lastly he talked about the importance of building a culture that fosters these things:

1. First, lead yourself. Act on your ideas/promises.

2. Second, lead your supervisors.

3. Third, lead your peers – by working together, we win.

By living this, you earn soft authority, and the culture begins to perpetuate. To effect change, run experiments, find the right approach. Evolution gives people time to convert information into knowledge into understanding and ultimately into wisdom.

He ended his talk by giving us homework: Think of your worst issues that always seem to be around year after year. These are likely systemic! Identify the driver and effect change.

Concrete Practices to Be a Better Leader

Speaker/s: Brian Sharp

I really enjoyed this talk because I felt a lot of other talks were very technical, or talk about game development in terms of different systems. Brian Sharp talked about human beings and it dovetailed nicely into Saladino’s discussion about culture. Sharp started by saying that leadership is neither science or craft, it is a practice. Practice: Training is the opposite of hoping; intellectual comprehension is not enough for mastery. Leadership itself is synthesizing a vision with the team and guiding them to it.

1. Empathy.

a. Remember you are dealing with a shell, and there’s a human underneath.

b. Listening and understanding earns trust and respect.

c. “This person is just like me; they want to be happy.”

d. “This person is just like me; they do not want to suffer.”

2. Humility.

a. A lot of people prefer to be right rather than compassionate.

b. Arrogance impedes us and our work.

c. Need for validation/affirmation is an impediment.

d. Humility will make you happier and allow you to learn.

e. “May I be of service?”

f. Everyone is my teacher.

3. Heartfelt Communication.

a. Communicating with the head consists of facts, logic, and checklists.

b. Communicating with the heart includes feeling and emotion, recognizing that words affect people, and noticing how others feel about what you’re saying and responding to that.

c. Create the terms and conditions that will allow your team to succeed.

d. Focus on the basics (references “Difficult Conversations” by Douglas Stone)

4. Confidence.

a. Training is the opposite of hoping.

b. Face insecurity and work with it.

c. Training instead of hoping (or longing, idealizing, wishing).

d. Confidence is a gift to those around you.

e. Confidence is not about me, it is about those around me and it is my responsibility.

f. Self examination: Why do I feel anxious or uncomfortable about something?

Agile: No Silver Bullet

Speaker/s: Chris Oltyan, Rich Vogel, Clinton Keith, Michael Capps

I was pretty underwhelmed with this session, it felt a bit scattered due to its question/answer panel style. There was some good re-iteration of solid practices though:

1. Beauty of wall scrums is that everyone can manipulate it; electronic scrums are in the hands of one guy at the keyboard, which means the meeting ends up losing energy. Tools can still help a lot, one team uses wall stuff for the stand-ups and software for the actual pushing and tracking of tasks.

2. Scrum is meant to be changed.

3. Plan for time-consuming polish and iteration; get into the habit of locking down.

Game Design Challenge: Real-World Permadeath

Speaker/s: Eric Zimmerman, Heather Kelley, Erin Robinson, Jenova Chen, Kim Swift

I’ve heard several friends say they probably will never go to another challenge session because they don’t learn anything from it these days. I’m not so jaded, I thought there was a lot to learn not necessarily from the content but from the questions raised thereof. This year’s challenge was based on the idea that someone in the game must die or be dead in the real world.

1. Last Game and Testament, Heather Kelly & Erin Robinson

The premise is that you use the software to create a scavenger-hunt style game based on your will. The game includes stories and videos about your stuff and you get points for guessing who certain items would go to. Objects that have meaning to everyone are bonus items given to those who know you best (i.e., have the top scores).

I liked it because (to use their words) it tells the stories that live in objects, which are otherwise unceremoniously meted out to family members – that is, your stuff is just stuff that somebody “deserves.” I liked the idea of having fun creating this for your family instead of writing a will, and the idea that your family might even have fun playing. This is in line with my personal philosophies that funerals are supposed to be celebrations of life and the fulfillment of a natural cycle – it can be sad, but it shouldn’t be negative.

2. HeavenVille, Jenova Chen

I’m guessing once he hit on this idea, the comic potential was too much for him to resist. Lots of people laughed at the apparent trivialization of death as people are converted into stocks in HeavenVille after dying and the stocks go up and down based on how well known they are or how well you promote your dead friends. Jenova hoped to present death as a positive; a confrontation and understanding of death that makes you appreciate human life. In this respect I think HeavenVille only partially works; the confrontation is there, but the appreciation felt kind of meaningless and silly. However it raised great questions about how our digital culture will absorb death into our daily lives.

3. Karma, Kim Swift

Kim’s idea was basically a grief counseling game, which you are prescribed after you find out you’re going to die. You gain karma by helping other based on in-game suggestions. I liked the general concept, but I don’t think I see how the game might be fun for the person who is dying, though I can see how it might help you cope with the news. I didn’t see why you’d play this game through to the end, and it wasn’t clear what you do in the game when you aren’t helping other people. I could see a lot of patients feeling patronized by being prescribed the game, as well.

Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2

Speaker/s: Christina Norman

Christina Norman gave a great talk about what drove design changes in Mass Effect 2. She went over a lot of details, so I’ll try to extract the headlines. The team were motivated to make changes through the fact that they didn’t get to do everything, and through fan and review feedback. Interestingly, they conducted a quantitative analysis of reviews (almost like the Tomatometer you would see on rottentomatoes.com) in an Excel sheet to provide a perspective on Mass Effect 1.

She identified the main design theme of ME2 as creating a feeling of intensity. They designated a design team for gameplay changes and rallied the team around this theme, which was a touchpoint for all the systems they went on to change (inventory, combat, and other systems that were already changing due to performance upgrades). One of the interesting things they did, was that in order to focus on shooter combat, they turned off all RPG systems, allowing them to evaluate and iterate the shooting game by itself (of course, RPG stuff was developed in parallel, separately).

Other things changed in the name of intensity: it’s okay to pause combat as an option, but not a mandate (in ME1 you’d pause to select powers, in ME2 they are much more accessible); Class designs each have features that make them distinct; global cooldown on powers and inclusion of ammo clips forced combat resource management.

The Making of "Titan:" A Retrospective

2010-03-22T22:19:00.015-04:00

I've always had an interest in 3D modeling, teaching myself how to use 3D Studio Max and pursuing it as a hobby. Wanting to bolster my portfolio and show a wider artistic range, I decided to take on a project that would have multiple learning stages (so, not only would I be doing something that added value to my portfolio, I would be doing something that also added value to my skillset - what I describe as an ideal project). Some major things I wanted to touch on were high-resolution textures and model unwrapping, as well as poly-modeling on a lower budget, and post-production techniques. I'm sharing my experience because I thought it might be interesting for those who don't really have insight into what it takes behind the scenes.

As a sci-fi nerd, I often have some epic vision or concept knocking around in my head, snapshots of amazing vistas or interesting vehicles that never get much farther than a cursory sketch. However, I think just doing that sketch represents the desire to act on an idea, even if it takes you a while to understand how you're going to realize the vision. My notebook pages are generally filled with stuff like this:

Okay, so I'm no virtuoso - but then, most people aren't. It's important to understand that your sketch is just that - a guideline that may or may not resemble the final product. However, I did find that on this project, sketching removed a lot of the question marks. My sketch answered the following questions:

1) What's the orientation of the scene?
2) What's the general placement of objects?
3) What's the mood or atmosphere?

And by answering these questions, the sketch provided a very useful design tool: Constraints! Whenever I found myself straying off the path, letting my mind wander, I was able to look at the sketch as a challenge - the challenge of sticking to a vision. Obviously, sometimes your initial concept NEEDS to change in order to produce the best work; and sometimes you need your mind to wander to discover why it needs to change. In this regard, the sketch just functions as a touchstone so you don't lose your way too much especially since it answers some basic questions about the concept in general.

The sketch represents what I saw in my mind: a jovian-like planet with impressive, sweeping rings and satellites visited by a tiny spacecraft. With the scene hammered out, the spacecraft itself had to be next since it would be the focus of my low-poly modeling and unwrapping efforts:

Okay, nothing too crazy - I definitely favored the "Cargo Transport" idea from the beginning, and this design looks like you could put a big cargo container in between those big struts. I also like the bristling antennae on the top and bottom. This design looks kinda neat from the front, but I didn't have a clear idea of how it would look from behind, and my original sketch has the ship moving away from the viewer - something I wanted to preserve since I wanted to experiment with engine glow. After some messing around, I ended up with this shape (note the helpful star that denotes a design I liked):

Kinda blocky, and with a retro shape, inspired by older sci-fi and the newer movie "Moon" as well. You can see I got lazy with the sketching because all I've got is this sideview, but since the shape was so simple I knew it would be easy to experiment with its flat surfaces. Also, since I knew the ship would appear pretty small in the final composition, I felt it better to go with the simpler look.

Okay, first things first: with the sketching out of the way, I wanted to get a sense of scale and perspective in the environment before building the ship. Having never built a scene in space, I found Hoevelkamp's tutorials (the first 5 featured on that page) to be super extremely helpful. They were very clear and allowed for a lot of experimentation. After the initial setup, I spent several hours just tweaking things and experimenting, which got me to this point:

Good enough for government work, but obviously in need of some more experimentation. What this does, though, is give shape to the sketch and achieve the true perspective of the scene that I couldn't capture with my simple, quick drawing. I decided to put together the spacecraft to get a sense of how it would fit into this scene.

Okay, cool. Seeing this gave me some confidence in the design of the ship, so I could press forward on that easily. The scene itself has some problems: weird colors, fuzzy-looking rings, and the planet doesn't look gaseous enough. Since my focus at this point was on the ship, I just made a list of the things I'd want to mess with. Once I was able to finish the modeling of the ship, the next step was unwrapping, which was pretty new to me (though I knew the basics).

On the left is the unwrapped model, the middle is the diffuse map and on the right you see the self-illumination map which tells the program what parts of the ship you want to light up. The ship also has a specular and bump map, but since it's so small the detail really got lost. This was by far the most complete and concerted effort I've ever made to paint a model with this level of detail, and I'm really happy with the results. This all went pretty smoothly and I was able to finish the maps in about 6 hours total. 3D Studio Max automatically updates the textures when they're re-saved, so it was a simple matter to just render things out continually to see if it was meeting my satisfaction.

Lookin' good, now to bring everything together...

You can see some experimentation with the rings and the colors here, and a lot of black space. At this point, I knew I wanted to put in a nebula and starfield, to increase the sense of awe and make the ship really look small and insignificant, almost stunned by this stellar vista. I decided the best way to do this was to do it in post-production, and not having a lot of experience there, I asked a friend of mine for input. His feedback was invaluable:

1) Try to unify the color scheme (most space scenes concentrate on two colors)
2) Make the ship more dynamic and the composition more balanced by re-positioning the ship off center and changing its orientation
3) For the nebula/starfield, you can start by looking for images of clouds or nebula online and then modifying them for blending with your composition
4) Consider using actual 3D models of asteroids to give the rings a more realistic appearance

As you can see, his input really made the difference for this image. I also managed to tweak the textures on the planets just enough to achieve what I really wanted (a more gaseous planet with rocky moons). For the rings, I wasn't getting very good results with actual asteroids; instead, I adjusted the granularity of the map and then tweaked its opacity map so that the rings would appear solid and smooth farther away from the camera, but more translucent and filled with particles closer to the viewer. I felt this was a good compromise. If you scroll back up to the top, you can see how the original concept translated pretty effectively into the final product, which I credit largely due to the constraints I introduced early on.

So, there you have it!

021

2010-03-22T20:48:00.003-04:00

Mass Effect Design Themes: Critical Comparison

2010-03-18T00:42:00.005-04:00

Introduction
IMPORTANT: This essay does contain spoilers and assumes you know something about the Mass Effect games. Frankly, there’s not a lot to say about Mass Effect 2 that hasn’t already been said elsewhere. After playing the game, though, I had to go back and play Mass Effect 1 again. Comparing the games as I played resulted in a great exercise - analyzing each in the context of the other regardless of who has already written what. By doing so – and by discussing the game with others – I managed to identify the drivers that make each game so good at their own specific things (I often say they are both excellent games that do different things excellently).

I found it helpful to think of each Mass Effect game carrying its own theme or central concept. In Christina Norman’s talk at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, “intensity” or “a feeling of intensity” was the core theme that drove many of the design changes directly affecting the player experience. It was definitely interesting to hear how the selection of a theme unified the vision and ultimately the design decisions for Mass Effect 2, but in a way this made it seem as if the first game had been more aimless. While that surely wasn’t the intention, it inspired me to find and understand the design theme in Mass Effect 1, which I consider to be “exploration and awe” – that epic sci-fi cinematic experience that makes space feel exciting and limitless – and understand its role in some of the designs of that game.

General Game Progression
In terms of how a player progresses through the game, these themes are clearly laid out. For example, while both games are described as action RPGs, Mass Effect 2 drove for the feeling of intensity by not only streamlining combat but also creating the feeling that you may have to fight at any time. In comparison, Mass Effect 1 emphasized exploration, discovery, and cultural politics – a very classic Star Trek approach - achieving its space opera vastness by allowing you to actually land on planets and explore (more on this later), as well as by providing XP for virtually everything you could do, which helped to make your time investment in thoroughly exploring the game pay off in little incremental chunks. The sequel let this sense of exploration and progress fade a bit in favor of its theme, by waiting until the end of a mission to mete out XP and containing the exploration of planets into side-stories.

Mass Effect 1 even encouraged players to explore their own inventory, upgrades, and attributes, but if you weren’t diligent about maintaining these things, the options could definitely feel overwhelming. There was also the fact that just by playing through the game you’d pick up so much equipment and so many upgrades, of increasingly better quality, that you may actually end up never using a store in Mass Effect 1. What the system does provide is a feeling of satisfaction attached to its management: it’s nice to feel like you are personally providing the best in equipment to each individual squad member. Mass Effect 2 streamlined the whole experience, allowing players to understand upgrades and attributes on a more at-a-glance basis; but this has the opposite effect of not feeling very hard-won. That is to say, you come across general upgrades - like shotgun damage, for example, that performs an upgrade for all the shotguns (all of which can be used by any member of the squad) – by buying them or by coming across them in missions. To me, this made it feel like my Mass Effect 2 squad mates were made specialists only by their special abilities (i.e., overload or throw or whatever), but never in their weapons usage – and that’s exactly the basis upon which I would select them for my away party. Not having to worry much about upgrades or outfitting individual squad members (especially with the increase in number of squad members in Mass Effect 2), and the ease of purchasing stuff, definitely helped to make this part of the experience feel fast-paced and intense.

Even loading areas seem to fall into each theme. Both games have loading screens, but Mass Effect 2 used them to actively engage you during the inevitable loading periods. Not only were they really well done and pretty to look at, but they often related to what you were doing: visiting Omega, using a rapid transit car on the Citadel, or even taking the elevator on the Normandy revealed a cool cut-away view. This highlights the more passive experience in Mass Effect 1 featuring notoriously long elevator rides that were used to get to different areas. However, while I can definitely see this interrupting the flow of gameplay, it really complemented the idea of this vast universe occurring around you when news reports of your exploits would come through the speakers or your squad mates would have a discussion with eachother that revealed insights about their personalities. Mass Effect 2 converts all of these things into an optional part of the experience that you have to stop and activate by pressing a button – allowing the player to fly past it if they aren’t interested, maintaining that idea of continuous intense play. While I think this causes the sequel’s experience to lose a little bit of the soul of the universe, Mass Effect 2 really balanced this in its own way linked to keeping the player feeling the intensity of the experience.

Role of Characters in the Themes
Another area that helped me identify the theme of sci-fi epic-ness in Mass Effect 1 was in the characters of each game. In Mass Effect 2, you are basically given a list of the team mates you are supposed to pick up – you literally are checking off the boxes as you go. While this provides a much more direct experience, especially for players who may not be accustomed to exploring much in a game that leans towards being a shooter, I have a greater appreciation for how you meet your team in the first game. The experience of coming across them is less varied, but much more organic and natural – you bump into them more or less because they happen to be in an area you’re passing through anyways (i.e., you meet Wrex because he’s being all surly down in C-Sec, and Garrus in the Citadel as you walk in on him arguing with Executor Palin). Tali is simply someone who has information you need, but she ends up being much more valuable than that. Finding your team mates in Mass Effect 1 is much more exploratory and as a result, interwoven into the story and world – these are characters that existed before you ever showed up, doing their own thing. Mass Effect 2 loses that organic feeling but opens up a potentially unbroken story experience by giving you a list of people and their locations.

That list of characters in Mass Effect 2 featured squad “specialists,” but without spending much time understanding their attributes and unique abilities, their powers begin to feel more interchangeable, especially with a high number of team mates that often share certain abilities. In the first game, if you were a soldier, you could count on really needing a tech and a biotic to balance things out – but of course, there was a need for this, like bypassing a locked crate or accessing a downed probe. In reducing its ideas of exploration, the sequel featured that sort of activity a lot less. While my perception of interchangeability of characters in the sequel may at first glance seem negative, it also has a positive side – you are encouraged to try out different squad members on a consistent basis just to see how they perform and because there really is nothing keeping you from doing so. Mass Effect 1, on the other hand, actually encouraged the player to stick with single characters by awarding achievements for doing so (i.e., completed the majority of the game with the Krogan). As a result I felt that the squad you choose in Mass Effect 1 doesn’t change as much, acting more as your tight team of traditional action heroes; whereas Mass Effect 2 keeps things a bit more fresh and interesting, especially if you pick a character who isn’t really ideal for a particular mission – leading to more likeable characters overall.

In Mass Effect 1, characters would suggest themselves or other characters for certain missions based purely on the narrative; some characters got mad when you didn’t bring them along on a mission that involved them, again making the universe seem quite large, as if these characters had lives and personalities outside of the Illusive Man’s dossiers. It’s certainly worth pointing out, though, that Mass Effect 2 doesn’t ignore the fact that the characters and your actions were interwoven with the narrative – this is done by relying on a lot of information from the first game. Hundreds of plot hooks link to your actions in the first game, and coming across characters from that experience brings on feelings of nostalgia and novelty, because they remember your adventures together. The level of detail in this regard promotes the continual play experience central to Mass Effect 2 and validates your actions in Mass Effect 1.

Narrative through the Lens of Theme
The tone found in each respective story, however, is different. In keeping with the traditional vast sci-fi epic, Mass Effect 1 had a relatively simple storyline – a slow burn, building up to the big final confrontation, with one or two really exciting main story occurrences (i.e., having to sacrifice a crewmate). If intensity is the theme for Mass Effect 2, they did a great job delivering it in the narrative: they shock you immediately by killing you in the beginning of the game; abduct your entire crew against your will; and make you think really hard about how your decisions might eventually end up killing your crewmates instead of putting you on the spot. It’s ominous where Mass Effect 1 had more of a hopeful “Gee whiz, it’s the future!” approach. The addition of quicktime Paragon/Renegade interruption actions in Mass Effect 2 really ratchet up the intensity by giving the player immediate power to change the course of dialog and narrative.

In the same way, Mass Effect 2 took away some of the player’s power over the story by removing the spirit of exploration in favor of intensity. While a large part of the Mass Effect community disliked the tank-like Mako missions featured in the first game, at least they allowed you to go to some distant sector and land on a planet where nobody had set foot before, delivering on one of the big premises of epic sci-fi. This was an opportunity to see a variety of exotic worlds that were often beautifully presented, a chance to be a deep space explorer. The game seems to specialize in big, open spaces – the Citadel feels like the huge space station it’s described to be, and contains characters that you can help if you take a moment to talk to them. Unfortunately, a lot of the gameplay taking place outside of the main storyline consisted of tediously driving the Mako around unforgiving landscapes just to loot a crashed spacecraft or prospect some minerals – the payoff for exploration simply wasn’t high enough, even though it fit in nicely with the theme of the game. Mass Effect 2, though feeling a bit more compartmentalized and objective-focused, does a great job of creating a story out of each side mission; they each have a narrative and a uniqueness, which is a big improvement, especially with a heavy re-use of assets in side missions in Mass Effect 1 - although it comes at the cost of feeling less like an explorer and more like a galactic sheriff.

The removal of the Mako also resulted in the galactic map needing to shoulder the sense of exploration single-handedly, so in Mass Effect 2 scanning planets is a much more involved process. This is very surprising, as it is notably the only thing that seems to interrupt the intensity of the experience. The planet scanning game is further limited by the need to buy fuel and probes – fuel to manually drive a tiny Normandy to different planets and probes with which to scan them. The whole system is not a very good replacement, because it actually made exploration of the universe more tedious than the Mako did. It’s like, when you’re caught in traffic, and you take another route even if it’s longer because hey, at least now you’re moving, and making that progress feels good. In Mass Effect 2, you can’t move, you’re just stuck in traffic, scanning planet after planet with the only payoff being the fact that you’re getting minerals for upgrades and that you uncover the occasional side mission (no XP). Perhaps my biggest problem with this is that it doesn’t help tell the story of the game. I couldn’t tell you that any one planet stood out from another for me (regardless of the excellent written descriptions of each) – the player can’t really generate their own stories to attach to them unless they uncover a side mission via scanning. Even the descriptions fall short at times – one planet says you can see words inscribed in it from space (via the actions of an angry pirate), but you can’t; another says it’s an arid world with no oceans but the texture looks like the opposite. It just doesn’t feel very reliable as a form of exploration or intensity, and because of this, doesn’t seem to fit in either game because it falls out of each design theme.

Conclusions
Of course, there are things both games simply nailed, and these are core values of the overall Mass Effect experience: a complex, emotionally engaging Hero’s Journey; a complete, consistent, deeply imagined universe; fantastic cinematic narrative design; and great sound design. The one thing that both games seem to deal with poorly is that if you want to “walk the line” – that is, act on both your Paragon and Renegade desires – there is no benefit in doing so as your abilities to be persuasive in conversation and win the loyalty of your squad mates are diminished.

After comparing the games and thinking about my findings, it’s easier to understand the Mass Effect experience in not just two parts, but three (even not knowing anything about Mass Effect 3): The first game introduces you to this vast, awe-inspiring world that begs to be explored; the second game focuses more on the difficulty of surviving and winning trust in this world; and my opinion is that the third game is going to deal with life, death, and how you choose to leave the world you came into two games ago – what is the mark you decided to leave? Overall, each game will do different things really well based on these concepts, producing unique experiences in each.

Balli Plastici featured in Art in America

2010-02-18T23:18:00.004-05:00

The student project on which I was animator and co-producer was featured in the February 10 edition of Art in America!

Top Albums of 2009

2009-12-25T12:09:00.008-05:00

Here are my favorite albums from the past year:

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

Few albums end up being as cohesive as Grizzly Bear's second outing. After watching this video continuously for a month, I was worried that I would be disappointed by an album that wasn't just "Two Weeks" on an endless loop, but the songs on Veckatimest are dreamy and full of texture. That also sets the album apart from its excellent predecessor, which lacks a little bit of the oomph on Veckatimest defined by their abilty to maintain their curtain-of-layers sound while embracing addictive melodies ("While You Wait For The Others," anyone?).

Matt & Kim – Grand

2009 was the year that the mainstream noticed Matt & Kim, much to our chagrin here in Pittsburgh, as we now worry they won't repeat their 2008 visit here at the University of Pittsburgh - easily one of the best concerts I've attended (why is Pittsburgh like some kind of space warp that sends awesome bands directly away from it?). They played an amazing, enthusiastic, high-energy show for somewhere between 50 and 70 people; and they seem to play this way whether they are at some college or on MTV's Woodie awards.

Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms

Feels like the '80s, but as remembered through a lo-fi dream machine that records fuzzy musical memories. The wistful pulse and Blade Runner background synth of "6669 (I Don't Know If You Know)" is what clinched it for me.

Gil Mantera’s Party Dream – Dreamscape

Dreamscape represents a push away from their more rock-influenced Bloodsongs, into the more new-wave electronic feel frequented by bands these days. While that could have made Dreamscape sound dangerously uninspired, it shows its power in songs like "Get Sirius" and "Ballerina," my personal winter jams. These new songs fit their euro-trash inspired striptease live show a little better, as well. Plus, we could all learn a few things from Gil's dance moves right??

Telefon Tel Aviv – Immolate Yourself

Released just before the untimely death of band member Charles Cooper, Immolate Yourself is also a departure for Telefon Tel Aviv into new-wave land, but with their trademark stutters and blips it becomes something else entirely: impactful, atmospheric, dream-dance numbers.

Honorable Mention:

Passion Pit – Manners

It's a great album, I just think it's missing the rougher edge and dancefloor feel found on the Chunk of Change EP, or that it got lost in the high production polish of Manners.

Milestones

2009-12-16T17:13:00.003-05:00

It's nearly the year 2010, which means there are a lot of decade retrospective lists popping up - best albums, best movies, and more.

This phenomenon isn't limited to the decade marker - every year there are similar lists - but the ten year milestone carries with it a sort of significance. It represents the passage of time and the changes during that period, and it's a good signal for everyone to take a breather and look at the state of things, for several reasons.

Think about it: as human beings, we can hope for 10 (dare I hope for 11?) cycles of 10 years in the whole of our lives. That makes the 10-year mark inevitably linked to our own life milestones. It's a nice, even number too: if you were born in 1973, certainly '83, '93 and '03 were all significant for you - decades of your life, your teens turning into your twenties turning into your thirties. Then there's the extra significance of the decades themselves turning over: 1990 to 2000 to 2010, easy units that describe our cultural experiences in fashion, music, family, and careers.

It's easy to dismiss these lists, though, just because there's so many of them, and so little consensus. Certainly everyone has some opinion on a plethora of things, which can make for both fun or boring reading. However, this doesn't make lists less important to us. According to Umberto Eco, an author and intellectual curating an exhibition called "The Infinity of Lists" in the Louvre, we make lists to help us understand and scope the concept of infinity (check out the article, it's extremely interesting).

In fact, this is an ideal time to record your breadth of experience, things you know, and things you love. Imagine that every 10 years you composed a list of the top hobbies you picked up, or the top tweets you wrote. Even better, the top craziest dreams you had, or the top plane rides - anything!

You only get 10 (11?) chances to generate these interesting cross-sections of your life. What insight can you gain from younger versions of yourself, each of which were so enthusiastic about things you have now passed by? What will you find that can inform your designs for the future?

As Umberto Eco says in the article linked above: "If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot." A bit harsh maybe, but good food for thought.

Abstraction

2009-12-14T19:03:00.007-05:00

I’ve noticed that as time passes and I grow older each year, I’m drawn more and more to games of some abstract nature. It could be a smartly-executed minimalist art style or a deceptively simple game mechanic; regardless, the abstract as an experience pulls my attention fully away from other games.

My fascination seems to have a starting point in 2006, when I played a game called flOw created by a couple of University of Southern California students. The concept was so simple – eat, or be eaten – and the visuals so smooth and fresh. It made no attempt to actually look like some primordial pool in which these creatures would evolve; it took the idea of the pool and gave it a distinctive visual style communicating something about the world you were meant to navigate.

It was easy for me to consider myself to be the abstract creature on the screen. As Scott McCloud has pointed out to great effect, the more abstract a drawn face, the more people it could be said to describe. The idea is that you can project yourself and your emotions much more easily on an abstract character than one that is sharply defined. More recently, I bought Lilt Line for my iPod Touch, and found it just as easy to think of myself at the head of the white line racing through a graduated, multi-colored track. The ability to make someone believe that ‘that thing’ is the same thing as ‘me’ is a powerful game design tool, and it’s part of what makes these games attractive to me: I appreciate the simplicity and the fact there is nothing in the way of projecting myself.

Additionally, if ‘that thing’ is ‘me,’ I have a much easier time connecting to a space or character emotionally. I often get much stronger emotional reactions to simple, abstract environments and the way they are presented than I do with games that go to great lengths to appear real. This, in turn, allows me to project my own stories onto abstract spaces and characters. Rez HD is a great example: the framework of a story is there, supported by stunning visuals and great ramped-up moments, and the rest is up to you. The concept of this character breaking further into an abstract virtual system, with an avatar changing as it goes, has a lot to do with the Hero’s Journey, a good formula by which to examine many adventure stories.

Interestingly, I usually lose the details of a complex story until reminded (that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great story, just that it was difficult to retain in its entirety; Mass Effect is one of my favorite games, but I certainly don’t remember all the details). Shorter play experiences, or vignettes, seem to stick with me a little better – I can remember, in a very visual and auditory way, how I managed to ‘be the biggest’ in Osmos. Its simple, gradually-introduced mechanics and polished feedback to player actions (and, in this case, reactions), allow me to generate a narrative and embraces the idea of “less is more.”

Realism, on the other hand, can be exhausting. My brain knows that what it’s seeing is still not real life, and so it constantly compares the details of the two on a subconscious level (though often on a conscious level as well). However, as Carl Sagan once said, “The brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world.” Because this comes naturally to humans, it’s easy for us to make it a process that runs in the background of the mind; but this also means the process is using mental resources. Perhaps that’s one reason why I find realistic games to be a little less stimulating; but overall as I get older my idea of an entertaining escape is changing.

That’s partly because abstract games can introduce us to a world unlike that of which we see every day. This enables us to use our imaginations, gives us a framework for doing so, for creating characters and narratives on interesting not-quite-blank slates. We often lament the loss of extraordinary childhood imaginations as we grow older. We were capable of creating fantastic imaginary worlds as kids with ease. Abstract games provide the means to let our mature, practical, reasonable minds play, too.

I believe that as humans we all carry some kind of synesthesia on a basic, instinctual level. A co-worker introduced the following idea to a room of game designers a few months ago:

Imagine you have two shapes:

One is named “booboo” and the other is named “kiki.”

Which one do you think is “booboo” and which do you think is “kiki?”

The people in the room overwhelmingly chose “kiki,” which has the harsh “k” noise, to describe the pointy shape, and “booboo” with its soft sounds, to describe the cloudy shape.

Abstraction taps into this basic association between senses (in this case, between sound and vision). Lilt Line and Rez are great examples of games that aren’t necessarily synesthesia simulators, but capitalize on a solid association between senses. This is helped by the fact that we are fascinated by the phenomenon of synesthesia, if only because it seems so foreign to us. Still, while it may feel foreign, it’s more familiar than we think – I frequently assign colors to sounds and words even though I do not see those colors visually when I hear or read them. In a way, these associations can help us organize our perception of a world, making it a really effective lens for game design.

Certainly, the things I’ve talked about are not limited only to abstract games. Many games benefit from minimalism and abstraction in lots of respects; and definitely some games that try to be realistic can also be abstract. In the same vein, abstraction doesn’t just suddenly become more interesting once you’re older – anyone can like it. Rather, the idea is that abstract games are an effective vehicle for us to use our imaginations and get excited about a virtual space as we age.

Balli Plastici featured as Best of Performa 09

2009-11-24T15:08:00.002-05:00

As part of my current project, Depero Futuristi, we went to New York City to present our re-imagining of Fortunato Depero's Futurist marionette ballet, Balli Plastici. We did this for the Performa 09 festival at the Museum of Arts and Design. The show just got featured as one of the best performances of the festival by New York Magzine's Vulture. In addition to the show, we did a live demonstration of the software we developed in order to create the video performance. About a hundred people show up and seemed very interested in our work, asking a lot of great questions.

More information about the project can be found here and here

November 13, 2009: MeFeedia
November 11, 2009: Parsons Illustration Department Blog
November 11, 2009: Entertainment Technology Center Global News
November 6, 2009: TimeOut New York
October 1, 2009: Performa Arts Blog

021

2009-10-19T12:03:00.007-04:00

I'm writing today to celebrate a birthday. Well, it's a belated birthday, but since it's also the birthday of a dog, I'm guessing the dog won't mind. A few days ago, it was Chloe's birthday. She spent her day doing what you see her doing above.

Much like humans, who often spend their birthdays going to work or doing what they normally do every day, she spent her birthday doing pretty much what she normally does every day. This is Chloe's "normal." Notice that she gets to sleep on a giant pillow, on a giant sofa.

Chloe is the object of my family's affections. Her roles in our family are to look cute, and to do adorable things. She's spoiled rotten, to the core; she knows nothing of pain or unhappiness...

Yet, she is our most valuable family member.

She curls up with you when you are feeling sad or sick.
She lies under the dinner table while the family eats.
She 'protects' us by barking wildly at squirrels and mailmen.
She greets us by offering a toy or stuffed animal, every time.
She became the center of a family grieving the loss of their last dog; and of a family that was parting ways with kids going to college. She is our common touchstone, a dependable focus, greeting us as always when we finally come home.

Chloe is 4 years old. Happy birthday, Chloe!

019 and 020

2009-09-26T14:18:00.005-04:00

More 3-panel comics! These were drawn on napkins. The final line ("haha, woo!") was inspired by Ryan North at Dinosaur Comics.

017 and 018

2009-04-03T00:11:00.004-04:00

The panels are drawn first, and then the script.

The first comic was drawn by me, and the second by Katelyn.
The scripts were written by both of us.

015 and 016

2009-04-03T00:07:00.003-04:00

The panels are drawn first, and then the script.

The first comic was drawn by me, and the second by Katelyn.
The scripts were written by both of us.

014

2009-03-01T23:12:00.002-05:00

A Very Christmas Dino Comics script that I wrote on Christmas Day.

013

2009-03-01T23:09:00.001-05:00

Self-Portrait

012

2009-03-01T23:07:00.001-05:00

A robot I made for a friend in Photoshop...

010 and 011

2008-11-21T01:11:00.003-05:00

Double update! Two pieces of art that I did for my last virtual world project at Carnegie Mellon. The world introduces an audience to Gus, the sad sack cloud whose father was eaten by a lion and whose girlfriend Caroline broke up with him on his birthday. As part of the experience, the audience has to sing to Gus to cheer him up.

009

2008-11-09T21:48:00.002-05:00

Long time, no draw...

008

2008-09-01T20:47:00.003-04:00

I saw this image in my mind while listening to Fujiya & Miyagi's "Reeboks in Heaven."

007

2008-09-01T20:06:00.001-04:00

006

2008-07-14T21:20:00.005-04:00

005

2008-07-12T00:19:00.002-04:00

It's my birthday today! 45 years from now when we have all-purpose ServiceBots, this is what I'll be saying to mine.

004

2008-07-10T11:56:00.001-04:00

This guy just sort of popped up and I liked him.

003

2008-07-06T19:14:00.000-04:00

Maybe there is an upside to spinning uncontrollably through space on a broken tether?

002

2008-07-04T00:23:00.001-04:00

You may be wondering, man, just what the hell is going on here? Well, this how I doodle on paper that has margins. You'd be surprised at just how much satisfaction I actually get out of doing this.

001

2008-07-04T00:11:00.001-04:00

I can think of nothing better to do with this stuff than post it to the internet for everybody to see. Here's how it will work. I post a tiny image of the actual image, and you click on it to see the full size one. If you feel the desire to tell me what you think about it, or you just want to let me know what you had for lunch, you are free to comment!