Metaplace - interaction design for the masses

Everyone´s talking about it (here´s a decent description and information on it), so just let me bullet-point some thoughts on it.

It´s designed by Raph Koster - someone who really knows his stuff.

It´s open-ended and very, very open to user created content (in fact, it works around this very concept, as far as i can see).

It can be approached as a game, but it doesn´t need to.

The idea is absolutely brilliant, and Areae should be proud of actually building it.

It could be the next Myspace, Orkut, etc.

It could do for interaction design the same that HTML did for interface design.

It could do for game designers the same that Youtube did for filmmakers.

It could do for world builders the same that Myspace did for bands... ok, you got the idea.

It sounds amazing. Will it succeed? I could bet it will.

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-if you have no idea what I´m talking about, here´s some info from their website:

What is Metaplace?
Our motto is: build anything, play everything, from anywhere. Until now, virtual worlds have all worked like the closed online services from before the internet took off. They had custom clients talking to custom servers, and users couldn't do much of anything to change their experience. We're out to change all of that.

Metaplace is a next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of giant custom clients and huge downloads, Metaplace lets you play the same game on any platform that reads our open client standard. We supply a suite of tools so you can make worlds, and we host servers for you so that anyone can connect and play. And the client could be anywhere on the Web.

We hope there will be millions of worlds made with Metaplace. It could get hard to find stuff if we're right, so the portal lets you easily search, rate, review, and tag worlds and games of all sorts. You also get a user profile so you can find each other.

Can I make my own world?
That's sort of the whole point. You should be able to stage up a massively multiplayer world with basic chat and a map you can build on in less than five minutes. It's that easy. Inherit a stylesheet -- puzzle game, or shooter, or chat world -- and off you go! Building maps and places is as easy as pasting in links from the Web, and dragging and dropping the pictures into your world.

What's more, you can link your world to someone else's world. Put a doorway in your virtual apartment that leads to Pirate Vs Ninja-land! Stick your world in a widget on your Facebook or MySpace profile. Mail it to a friend and they can log in with one click.

What sorts of worlds can I make?
You can make pretty much any sort of game or world you want. You can decide whether it's massively multiplayer or not (it's MMO out of the box, but you can set it to a lower size if you want). You can decide whether to have physics or not, you can change the keymappings and the interface, the sort of stuff there is in the world, the maps... basically, it's all up to you. Game logic is written in MetaScript, which is based on Lua. So it's easy to make whatever kind of game or world that you want.

Metaplace will support everything from 2d overhead grids through first-person 3d. However, right now we only have clients that do 2d of various sorts, including grid view, 2d isometric, 2.5d heightfields, and so on. We expect to keep working on the 3d client support.

user created content is king

... in Drawn to Life, a game for Nintendo DS that looks interesting to me (in fact, it reminds of me of a more goal-oriented Insular). Here´s a gameplay video:

The Ultimate Gaming Survey

I just took it. Here´s my game profile (can I spread that? if not, just let me know)

The Way You Play:
Your preferred pattern of play is Playful Vertigo (Paidic Ilinx).
Some of the ways you enjoy games include:

Hard Fun: 50%
Easy Fun: 50%
Serious Fun: 87.5%
People Fun: 50%
Happy Fun: 50 %
Achievement Fun: 37.5%
Scary Fun: 50%
Mischievous Fun: 50%

Gaming Skills:
You are an Expert Player

Your strongest Skill Set is Diplomatic

I was too undecided about my Myers-Briggs Typem, so I left that out.

You can take the survey here.

Play The Restaurant Game

It will take you an hour or so, from download to finish a session (which is not much time, anyway), and it will be time well spent.

From their website:

The Restaurant Game is a research project at the MIT Media Lab that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, we will apply machine learning algorithms to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and produce a new single-player game that we will enter into the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game Designer. It's never been easier to earn Game Designer credentials!

(...)

The Restaurant Game takes about 10 minutes to play. It is a two-player game that will automatically find partners for players once you join a server. You are welcome encouraged to play multiple times. In order for this project to be at all successful, we will need to collect a lot of data -- data from over 1,000 10,000 gameplay sessions. Play early, play often, and please spread the word!

This project attempts to address two frustrations I experienced as a professional game developer. 1) Convincing human social behavior is difficult to model with existing hand crafted AI systems. 2) Play testing by people outside of the development team typically comes too late to have a major impact on the final product. This experiment aims to generate AI behaviors that conform to the way players actually choose to interact with other characters and the environment; behaviors that are convincingly human because they capture the nuances of real human behavior and language.

Gameplay video from youtube:


I am too tired to post right now, in detail, how the game goes and what I thought of it. I'll try to do that later. I'll just say that I can assure you it is quite an interesting experience.

(via Play This Thing)

Reading List

While I´m still waiting for my copy of Persuasive Games (Amazon is taking quite a long time to send it), I plan to get into:

- A new online publication entitled Eludamos Journal for Computer Game Culture. (Via Ludogist)

- Raph Koster´s Designing for Everywhere and Nine Mass Market Tips. (Via himself)

- George Backer´s Designing Drama, on Gamasutra.

And also

- Greg Costikyan´s new website, Play this Thing, for daily gaming doses.

Infamous warning haiku for game designers

Stil on that casual x hardcore debate:

Forcing a blend between
mass market and niche
makes "medio-core" games?

Lessons from other media: addressing different levels of literacy

For this round table, I´ll adopt Bateman´s suggested terminology and discuss casual and hardcore in terms of levels of literacy. This terminology, I believe, makes easier to approach videogames as part of a large group of different media - and that´s is pretty much what I´ll try to do here. I´ll not, however, directly compare films to games, music to games, etc. The intention is to discuss how other media manage to please and attract heterogen audiences comprising varied levels of literacy.


I am not suggesting that a designer should necessarily aim at a varied public - there are niche products and genres, and that´s fine. But you will notice that most examples have been quite successfull in both short and long terms. Here they are:

TV: The Simpsons

The longest running animation in history is capable to please children and adults of all age. It is no secret that part of its success is due to its allusions and references to works and characters that should be familiar only to a parcel of the audience. Still, it also has a very strong, straightforward, comic verve, that does not depends on sophisticated levels of literacy and can please anybody.


Literature: George Orwell´s Animal Farm

Again, a very clear piece of work that can be read and enjoyed by children, but that also is very interesting to adults for its political message, which is about Orwell´s strong critical view on the communist regime.
(It seems there´s a film adaptation)


Music: The Beatles

Or even just Sargeant Pepper´s Lonely Hearts Club Band, for that matter. The Beatles successfull fusion between catchy pop tunes, avant-gard art and classical music (this one, thanks a lot in part to producer George Martin) took rock music to a new degree, earning even more respect and credibility for their work. In a single album, sometimes in a single song, they could add elements that would please the ears of people with different musical background and taste.


Web: Google
Its front page is still a single form line with two buttons. However, in the hands of experienced users it can trasform into a all-in-one online center.

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In the end, it seems that it all comes to what the reader/player/listener chooses to pay attention to. It´s about giving not only variety, but depth. Taking care of 'casual' and 'core', to bring back these terms.

Ok, so what games would you say that have this kind of quality? Well, I would start a list with Sensible World of Soccer. Very simple to play (one button!), and several levels of micro-management that could be safely ignored, if so the player wished to. What games would you add to the list?

Flora on FILE 2007

FILE SÃO PAULO 2007

Net-Art, Video-Installations, Interactive Works, Games, Robotic Performances and Beyond. Hypermedia Works, Telematic Actions, Artificial Intelligences, Interactive Cinematics, Expanded Realities, The New Culture Of Interfaces, Tangible Immaterialities.

FILE - Electronic Language International Festival was held at Sesi 10-Paulista's Cultural Space, in São Paulo, Brazil, from August 13th to September 09rd,

For the second consecutive year I´ve got something to show at FILE (Electronic Language International Festival), which is a great pleasure and honor. This year, Flora is being exhibited along with other experimental games. Here´s the list.

Check their website for more details.

Musical / Visualization game for iPod

This is Musika, developed by NanaOn-Sha and created by Masaya Matsuura, the designer who gave us PaRappa the Rapper:



Musika can be either be played or simply watched, so it´s pretty much a non-game too. Its spirit feels a little bit like those Llamasoft synths, although I think this one has more rigid rules and goals. Here they are (EDIT 24/11/2008: from apple's website):

"Your music is your game! 'musika' is a ground-breaking music visualizer game for your iPod that uses the songs on your iPod to create original game play.If you see a character that is in the song title, just hit the Center button!Faster reactions will earn you more points!"

It´s good to see interesting alternative games on the iPod. This could be a very interesting platform for, well, any kind of game really. As long as you can play with one button and a wheel (hey, have they ported Rally X already?).

(via Gamasutra)

The DS has been drinking (not me)

The WiiWii website has a post on alcohol-related non-games being released for Nintendo´s portable console. Apparently, there are at least 3 titles in development:

- Sakeshou DS, which seems to be an encyclopedia on Sake (Japanese spirit made of rice).

- Bartender DS, edutainment about drinks tp be published by EA.

and

- Sommelier DS, its counterpart for wine lovers.

There has been a number of cooking titles released for DS, so this is a logical step. Any guesses on how much it could sell and how it could be received by the press/public opinion?

ps: it´s good to post something after such a long break from here. Due to some news I might slightly change the focus of this website in the near future. stay tuned.