Web demo for DS game

The website of the game The Rub Rabbits, sequel of Project Rub, presents some of its mini-games in flash.

Since there is a version of the Opera Browser coming for Nintendo DS, I hope demos like this one can be accessed through the handheld in the next future. Not to mention (that's what I am really looking forward to) independent games.

(via UK Resistance)

Atomists, part two.

As King Lud IC's Patrick Dugan announced in this website, here is his atomicist take on game design:

"A great metaphore for this is to think of a game as a complex compound, its content a lattice of different molecules comprising the different modes of play. Each molecule is made up of atoms, each atom is an instance of an ontological structure. Ontological numbering, in this analogy, is atomic weight, the factors are the protons and corresponding breaks (nuetrons) that form the meat of a game atom."

Read it all here. And remember, you heard it here first. :)

New book on video game theory criticism

There is a new book on my wish-list: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, by Ian Bogost from Persuasive Games and watercoolergames.org, where he writes: ""Unit Operations" is my shorthand for a general theory of procedurality that includes computational, literary, artistic, filmic, and plastic expression." It sounds like a very promising book.

Having said that, there is so much reading I still have to catch up to...

New addition to the Book list

Patterns in Game Design has been added to the nongames.com list of recommended books.

Making it Big in Japan

If porting a game between different platforms can be hard, porting it between different cultures can be even more complex.

In case you have any interest in how translating a game (in the wider sense of the term) can be a broad process (including the game's language, visuals, controllers, etc.), then read Eric -Jon Waugh's report on Kouichirou Taninami's lecture at GDC: The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan.

Do you speak Portuguese?

If so, you can follow my new blog, in my native tongue, Debate Ludico. I will try to update it weekly with comments on games, interactive entertainment and culture.

Some of the articles might end up translated here, so you might notice a Brazilian accent on future nongames.com posts.

That Cloud Game

Winner of the 2006 IGF Student Showcase, Cloud was made by a group students from the University of Southern California. It's a very original - and brilliantly executed - game where you control clouds, fly through them and use them to make interesting shapes. From the game's website:

"Most video game today is about addiction. But for Cloud, it is designed to be something you can put down and go back to enjoy your life at any time. No failure, no saving. You pick it up and leave it with no second thoughts"

I must say, it is much more complex approach than my own take on cloud manipulation in Insular.

The Virtual Hallucination Machine

Could we see a "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" VR game coming soon?

Capable of emulating the symptoms of mental conditions such as schizophrenia, the Virtual Hallucination Machine, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, will be used for training by the US Police.

The machine was created for mental health professionals, as part of an educational project that would help the public to understand that mental condition.

The Mental Health Association in New York State refers to it as a "symptom simulator", and you can see some pictures of it at the NAMI's (The National Alliance on Mental Illness) website. I am not sure how it works, but it looks like an Augmented Reality device.

This could become a very informative serious (non)game, and I guess there will be some sort of interest from the entertainment industries on the subject. I wonder how long it would take until someone came up with a First-Person "A Beautiful Mind" - even if I am not sure how it could possibly emulate the geniality of John Nash.

The Virtual Hallucination Machine

Could we see a "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" VR game coming soon?

Capable of emulating the symptoms of mental conditions such as schizophrenia, the Virtual Hallucination Machine, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, will be used for training by the US Police.

The machine was created for mental health professionals, as part of an educational project that would help the public to understand that mental condition.

The Mental Health Association in New York State refers to it as a "symptom simulator", and you can see some pictures of it at the NAMI's (The National Alliance on Mental Illness) website. I am not sure how it works, but it looks like an Augmented Reality device.

This could become a very informative serious (non)game, and I guess there will be some sort of interest from the entertainment industries on the subject. I wonder how long it would take until someone came up with a First-Person "A Beautiful Mind" - even if I am not sure how it could possibly emulate the geniality of John Nash.

Mafalda on Game Design and Theory - Part 4

(you might need to access the page to see the comic strip)



- I have to do my homework
- I have to make some deliveries
- I have to watch a TV show

- So, we have just the time to play "nuclear war", right?
- Yes
BOOOM!
- (This modern life requests shorter and shorter games)

From "Toda mafalda", by Quino - All rights reserved

The choice for this comic strip was influenced by this post on Passive Gaming, plus two other articles it points to.

Passive games, played with a few clicks every now and then, ideal for the frantic pace of modern life, could be interesting. In fact, I have previously demonstrated my interest in the subject on the final section of my MA final project's critical appraisal. "The idea of researching a sort of ‘lateral’ gaming – to be played in parallel with non-ludic activities". Passive gaming is the term I was looking for!

non-games at GDC

No, nongames.com is not attending the GDC. The post title refers to Jesper Juul´s talk: 'A New Kind Of Game: Broadening The Idea Of What Games Can Be'. You can read a summary at Gamasutra.com, written by Simon Carless. Simon says:

"One of Jesper's central points was that games don't have to include explicit goals - you can cater to a wider audience by designing open, expressive games. In building games without goals, it was suggested, you can create something relatively new and positive."

Sounds promising. Let´s wait for the article version of the talk, to be posted on Jesper´s website.

No More Toys on Happy Meals - Part II

It's official: no more toys on Happy Meals (in Brazil). The reasons are a little bit different than first announced on a previous post.

The motive would be complaints by parents, who would not want to be forced to buy the happy meal just to get the toy. They will be sold separately from now on.

I have some theories on what could happen next:

a) McDonald's will get back the rights to sell the Happy Meal as it was.
b) Happy Meal's cardboard box will be fantastically improved, with great boardgames to be cut out and assembled by the children
c) Adults who used the Happy Meal as an excuse to buy a toy will protest against the decision
d) Happy Meal will change its name to something else, like Boring Meal
e) McDonald's will start selling toys for $0,29. The toy industry will protest asking for the return of the Happy Meal.

If you are willing to register to a Brazilian online newspaper and train your Portuguese, here is the source for the news.

Gardens, Crayons and Dollhouses

Featured at Gamasutra.com back in 2003, Maxis Designer Chaim Gingold's Master Thesis (and companion 'nongame', Comic Book Dollhouse) is so interesting I thought it would be worth mention it here, three years later.

The thesis is available for download (14 mb .pdf) here (you can also read it online).

Gingold, by the way, is working in Spore right now.

Forget 'Ludology x Narratology', read Cybertext and Half-Real

I got slightly burned for a comment posted on The Ludologist. The subject was The Escapist's article on Ludology and Narratology. In my comment, posted mainly to say how much I liked Half-Real, I criticized an approach to the "Ludology x Narratology" debate which was not employed by the author of the text in question. Although my comment was pointed at a generic position, rather than the text itself, I should have read the whole article before entering the discussion, instead of just commenting the comments.

Having read recently Half-Real by Juul and Cybertext by Aarseth, the episode above helped me see one thing:

Both books are excellent, and very informative. What you might need to do before reading them is forget the whole "Narratology x Ludology" debate - or at least the simplistic view on it. I probably had a prejudiced vision on this debate and where it usually leads to (hence my post), not a very helpful attitude when you're trying to read and understand something else.

The books in question got plenty of reviews around, and they are on my list of recommendations. If you read this website, chances are you've already read them. If not, you should check them out when you have time.

That's it. Let me take a break from the NxL discussion - I don't have much to add to it right now.

No more Toys on Happy Meals?

That could happen - at least in Brazil. The local Association of Toy Manufacturers (Abrinq) wants to sue companies who distribute toys along with food - McDonald's included (Molleindustria, take note).

According to Abrinq's president, that would not be motivated by the fact that some of those toys are manufactured in other countries, but because this kind of gifts would make children associate toys with a half-hour fun period, menacing the industry's image.

It's great to see people taking play seriously, and I wish I knew more details of the case. But I still can't see what's wrong with half-hour fun periods. That is, I believe, the length of the recreational break between classes in most schools.

Maybe they should extend it.

(via Invertia)

FUNctionality

Via Raph Koster's website (which is so frequently updated I can't really catch up to), here is a very good presentation by Amy Jo Kim: Putting the Fun in Functional. This is the kind of vision that fits within the spirit of 'nongames': fun applications and productivity software (a little bit like the game-translation devices I posted about in the past).

Cheap Philosophical Allegories: The Game Design Atomists

As much as I now disagree with some previous comparisons I've made, I can't help seeing parallels between game design theory /studies and other knowledge branches (and I should study both more before making assumptions). Anyway, I came to the conclusion that some Game Design researchers mirror the Pre-Socratic philosophical school known as the Atomists. As the name suggests, they believed, back in 400s B.C., that everything was made of atoms, indivisible units of matter. As Bertrand Russell observed in History of Western Philosophy, “The theory of the atomists, in fact, was more nearly that of modern science than any other theory propounded in antiquity (…) the atomists asked the mechanistic question, and gave a mechanistic answer” .

There are four projects that, I think, more or less qualify for having an “atomist” approach. The most noticeable are Bernd Kreimeier’s The Case For Game Design Patterns and Staffan Bjork and Jussi Holopainen’s Patterns in Game Design. Kreimeier describes patterns as “simply conventions for describing and documenting recurring design decisions within a given context”. Later, he gives us an example:

PAPER-ROCK-SCISSORS

Problem: Avoid a dominant strategy that makes player decisions a trivial choice.

Solution: Introduce nontransitive relationships within a set of alternatives, as in the game of paper-rock-scissors.

Consequence: The player is no longer able to find a single strategy that will be optimal in all situations and under all circumstances. She has to revisit her decisions, and, depending on the constraints imposed by the game, adjust to changing situations, or suffer the consequences of an earlier decision.

Examples: The example given by Andrew Rollings is the set of warrior-barbarian-archer from the Dave and Barry Murray game The Ancient Art of War (Broderbund 1984). He also describes Quake's weapon/monster relations in similar terms: Nailgun beats shambler, shambler beats rocket launcher, rocket launcher beats zombie, zombie beats nailgun [28].

References: Chris Crawford (see "Triangularity" in [15]) provided the first explicit description of the use of nontransitive relationships. Andrew Rollings' discussion of examples uses game theory including detailed payoff, as well as informal fictional designer dialogs.

Bjork and Holopainen’s focus is in “studying computer games in terms of interaction, components and design goals with the intension of creating the basis for a common language for game designers. As the basic building block for this language the project uses the concept of Design Patterns, originally developed by Christopher Alexander et al.”. A similar approach to Kreimeier’s, as it can be seen the example I reproduce here:

PAPER ROCK SCISSORS

Description: This pattern is based on the children's game with the same name. It means that players try to outwit each other by guessing what the other ones will do, and by tricking other players to take a wrong guess on one's own action. The original game is very simple; after a count to three both players make one out of three gestures, depicting rock, paper or scissors. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock. That there is no winning strategy is the essence of the pattern: players have to somehow figure out what choice is the best at each moment. This game pattern is well-known with the game design community (sometimes called “triangularity”, see Crawford) and is a mnemonic name for the logical concept of nontransitivity (basically, even if A beats B and B beats C, A doesn’t beat C).
Examples: Quake (relation between weapons and monsters), Drakborgen, SimWar, protogame to show non-transitivity (Dynamics for Designers, Will Wright, GDC 2003)
Consequences: Paper-Rock-Scissors patterns can either be implemented so it choices have immediate consequences (as in the game that gave the pattern its name) or longterm effects. In both cases it promotes Tension, either until the moment when the choices are revealed or until the success of the chosen strategies is evident. A paper-rock-scissor pattern introduces Randomness unless players can either gain knowledge about the other players current activities or keep record over other players behavior, as otherwise a player has no way of foreseeing what tactics is advantageous. If the game supports knowledge collection, the correct use of the strategies allows for Game Mastery.
Using the Pattern: Games with immediate consequences of choices related to Paper- Rock-Scissor usually have these kinds of choices often in the game to allow people to keep records over other player behavior. Quick Games using the pattern, such as the game which lent its name to the pattern, usually are played repeatedly so some form of Meta Game can be used to allow players to gain knowledge of their opponents’ strategies. A common way to implement the pattern for having long-term effects is through Investments to gain Asymmetrical Abilities, either through Proxies or Character Development. See Dynamics for Designers (Will Wright) for an example based on proxies. For this kind of use of the pattern, players can be given knowledge about other players through Public Information or in the case of games with Fog of War through sending Proxies. Allowing players to keep record over other players’ behavior is trivial if play commences face-toface, otherwise some form of Personalization is required.
Relations: Superior patterns are Player Balance, Tension, Secret Tactics, and Game Mastery. Subpatterns are Trump, Randomness, Asymmetrical Abilities, Public Information, Investments, Proxies, Character Development and Meta Game.
References:
Kreimeier, B. The Case For Game Design Patterns, www.gamasutra.com/features/20020313/kreimeier_01.htm
Wright, W. Dynamics for Designers. Presentation at GDC 2003. http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2003/Wright_Will.ppt
Orthogonal Unit Differentiation, Harvey Smith. Presentation at GDC 2003. http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2003/Smith_Harvey.ppt
Chris Crawford. The Art of Computer Game Design

Another similar project is Doug Church’s Formal Abstract Design Tools. Church proposes that a Design Vocabulary should be created, one that can be used to designate design elements. Here is one example:

PERCEIVABLE CONSEQUENCE: A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.

Finally, there is also Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein’s The 400 Project, which attempts to “ to write up 400 rules of game design that can be used by designers to make better games. Rules are being submitted by designers from all over, but most of the existing rules were written by Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein.” One example is Provide Clear Short Term Goals, and its description goes:

” Always make it clear to the player what their short-term objectives are. This can be done explicitly by telling them directly, or implicitly by leading them towards those goals through environmental cues. This avoids the frustration of uncertainty and gives players confidence that they are making forward progress.”

All those projects attempt to break down game design into, if not indivisible, basic elements, in order to understand how they work within the bigger framework, combined together – in a similar way to the Atomists’. Kept the “modern science” link, they could provide game design equivalents to the Periodical Table.

Particle-based non-game

Here is the link for another (quite nice) web non-game.

ps: I apologize for excessively short notes being posted lately, but I am just too busy at the moment.

New addition to the Book list

Raph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Designed has been added to the list of recommended books.