Canabalt = flow in raw form

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by on December 22, 2009

In Canabalt, your pixelated running man runs for his life through a dystopian world reminiscent of the Matrix, jumping from rooftop to collapsing rooftop and getting steadily faster until he either plummets into the ground, runs into the debris that’s been left lying around or is bombed into a fine mist from the sky. It’s all controlled with one button: all you have to do is jump at the right time to keep accelerating. Best of all, the game was developed in only five days.

Play it as a flash game or on the iPhone. (via Offworld)

The game nails the sense of speed and control, making it a perfect example of flow. How?

Sense of control
The one button controls make it easy to feel in control, but only because they enable you to successfuly tackle every challenge thrown at you (within the limits of your skill, that is). It seems that one of the basic principles of flow in games is that it is enhanced when controls become more sensitive, i.e. as you have to do less to meet the challenges thrown at you. Think of the kung fu master blocking punches and kicks with one arm with a look of thinly disguised boredom on his face. As a bonus, the simplicity of the execution means there are no extraneous elements to pull you out of flow

Sense of speed

There is a limit to the brain’s reaction speed, but you can increase the perceived speed of the character through a few tricks, improving the sense of flow because you make the player feel that they’re going even more awesomely fast. Canabalt uses a bunch of tricks:

  • Four layers of parallax with giant shadowy machines stomping around the background create an epic scale
  • The occasional jet flying in the opposite direction adds an extra layer in front
  • The repetition of the windows/bricks in the buildings adds extra speed
  • The character animation is spot on

Sense of impact
This is related to the sense of control. Here, the buildings that collapse as you jump on them and the physics of the broken glass bouncing around you and birds taking off as you run through their midst amplify your involvement in the action. The more of an impact your actions have on the world, the greater the resulting sense of flow when you successfuly keep things moving at the edge of your ability.

Synaesthesia
The music is a perfect complement to the action. It could do even more: synchronizing the visuals and the sound effects (as Audiosurf does), would increase the sense of involvement even further.

Overall, Canabalt is a pretty brilliant case study in how to generate flow.

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Erbert and Gerbert’s Candle Cannon

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by on December 2, 2009

This a really wonderful promotion by Colle+McVoy for Erbert and Gerbert, a sandwich chain: the CandleCannon!

Erbert & Gerbert’s has been making Subs Worth Discovering for 20 years. To help them celebrate, we decided to have more than just a party. So we built the world’s largest and most powerful air vortex cannon and had ourselves a Blowout.

It’s a great ad, but that’s not what I wanted to point out. Just look how delighted and excited the people in the video are! Although the video is planned, the reactions are genuine.

The CandleCannon is probably in large part a reflection of the ad agency’s culture, and I don’t know if Erbert and Gerbert is the kind of place where that would happen naturally. Nevertheless, companies should aspire to be places where employees can do things like the CandleCannon, and where there is enough soul and humour to create reactions like overjoyed jumping and hugging once in a while.

The corporate culture that can create a better world feels like this video. Wouldn’t you want to be somewhere with that kind of spirit?


(via The Uniblog)

And making of here:

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Put innovation in the hands of the people

Thumbnail image for Put innovation in the hands of the people November 3, 2009

An recent article from the Economist made me think about how companies could learn from the distributed innovation of open source to find the great ideas within. The article is about InnoCentive, which helps connect problems with solutions:
[Innocentive] is based on a simple idea: if a firm cannot solve a problem on its own, why [...]

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Communication 101 – put it in your audience’s words

Thumbnail image for Communication 101 – put it in your audience’s words October 18, 2009

October’s DISCOVER magazine has a nice article about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the colossal particle accelerator which amongst many other things may reveal the Higgs Boson and the secret of gravity. The LHC is 27km long and requires a frankly ridiculous amount of power to fulfill its single goal of making particles crash at [...]

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Miraikan – technology, emotions and people

Thumbnail image for Miraikan – technology, emotions and people October 3, 2009

Last week’s post about the Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) showed just one of the many cool exhibits they had running this summer. Here’s a few more.
Paro, the Therapeutic Robot
First up, a robot created entirely to create an emotional bond with its owner. Paro the robotic seal has been around since [...]

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The five rivers of innovation

Thumbnail image for The five rivers of innovation September 28, 2009

Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) doesn’t pull its punches. While many museums seek to entertain, this one hits you with beautifully presented information that rewards your attention with real teaching.
The first exhibit I’ll mention is particularly relevant for readers of this blog. It’s dedicated to five types of innovation:

Alternative: “New ideas [...]

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Treating the symptom, not the cause

Thumbnail image for Treating the symptom, not the cause September 9, 2009

I saw this today in Walgreens’ pharmacy section – a magnifying lens to help customers read text on drug packaging. It was right by products aimed at elderly people, so fading eyesight would definitely be an issue.
Helpful, right? Yes and no.
On one hand, this tool magnifies the problem of designs which squash instructions together in [...]

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The buffalo design ethic

Thumbnail image for The buffalo design ethic August 27, 2009

In their heyday, the existence of Native American Indians revolved around the buffalo. They used every part:
“The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, holy. [...]

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Welcome to the new site!

Thumbnail image for Welcome to the new site! June 24, 2009

After this June hiatus, welcome to the new site!
As always, this blog is for people who believe that you can design a better world. Stay posted, as I will be reporting back from China and Japan over the next six weeks before joining Chicago’s IIT Institute of Design in August.
Please check that you are still [...]

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You are what you do

Thumbnail image for You are what you do May 12, 2009

No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think

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