How can design help us make better decisions?
From the category archives:
It turns out that the way HIV mutates over time can be likened to an email spammer trying to defeat a sophisticated spam filter, in that the virus is always looking for new ways to defeat the human immune system; Microsoft, then, was able to re-purpose techniques and algorithms it has developed over the years for fighting spam to seek out those mutations efficiently and accurately.
The Technium sure got here fast.
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Some cool stumbled upon snippets of Macintosh trivia.
A profile of Susan Kare and her work designing the original Macintosh’s wonderful icons. On the pretzel:
The symbol on every Apple command key to this day — a stylized castle seen from above — was commonly used in Swedish campgrounds to denote an interesting sightseeing destination.
And an interview with Jim Reekes, the man behind its wonderful sounds. Some great insights into the thought that went into it, and a wonderful story about the sound called Sosumi (also on Boing Boing if you don’t want to watch the whole interview).
If you dig that you might also like this series of articles about some sounds we all know very well.
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Really like this take on multiplayer, the time limit and epic challenge can really crystallize a community.
“The idea is to have people partner with each other from all around the world–hundreds of thousands and hopefully millions of gamers–to participate in these massively social challenges. For example, we’ll have a Clash Mob where there’s this huge beast. Let’s say it has 10 million hit points and it’s going to run away in 24 hours. So in 24 hours, you’ll have once chance, one 30-second turn to do as much damage as you can to this one enemy.”
“Let’s say you’re really good and you’re able to do 20,000 points of damage to him before he eats you or stomps on your head,” he added. “That damage is saved persistently to the cloud, and other gamers from around the world get their turn to take a shot at this guy. And if collectively–within 24 hours–everyone from around the world can defeat this guy, everyone will unlock some supercool rare sword, item, or gem.”
Reminds me the bizarre Noby Noby Boy, sequel to Katamari Damacy. The game’s only objective is to stretch your wormlike main character, BOY. On the PS3, that may mean stretching around houses and trees in a abstracted open world, but there’s also the equally bizarre iPhone game where one of the ways to get points is to pin one end of BOY to your current GPS location, and the other end to you. In my case, I got the game just before flying back home to see my family in London, so stretched my BOY about 4,000 miles. Youch.
There’s another character called GIRL, who may or may not be BOY’s true worm-love. Her length is the sum of every player’s progress, and right now she’s reached Saturn, which means players have collectively stretched their BOYs about 1.2 million kilometers.
What I love about this is how an epic goal is created in the middle of a completely abstract sandbox. Seems a good way of bridging short 1-2 minute stints of playtime with a larger mission, making it a very relevant approach for mobile applications and short attention spans.
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Paired Design Meetings
This was really interesting. Every week, the teams have two meetings. One in which to brainstorm, to forget about constraints and think freely. As Lopp put it: to “go crazy”. Then they also hold a production meeting, an entirely separate but equally regular meeting which is the other’s antithesis. Here, the designers and engineers are required to nail everything down, to work out how this crazy idea might actually work. This process and organization continues throughout the development of any app, though of course the balance shifts as the app progresses. But keeping an option for creative thought even at a late stage is really smart.
Missed this one – still enlightening.
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John Polson of Rock Paper Shotgun speaking to the folks from Vlambeer about their experimental, self destructing GlitchHiker.
Well, that was the amazing thing. People were actually empathic towards the game. The moment the first person said, “I’m not playing this, I could kill it!” was the moment we realized we made something unique. There was guilt with those that failed to score the required 100 points to break even the life the game spends when you start a game and a feeling a responsibility in those that succeeded to try and sustain the game system.
Fascinating redefinition of the player’s relationship with the game, and shows how emotions can come not just from events within, but by the structure of the game itself.
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Reported by David Pierce @ The Verge.
Philip Rosedale figured out how to get people to buy and sell goods and services in a virtual marketplace — and now he’s trying his hand at doing the same in the real world. The Second Life founder has launched Coffee & Power, an online marketplace where people can buy or sell small tasks and services, but rather than the inane tasks that you see on a site like Mechanical Turk, it’s designed for people to sell their expertise or hobbies.
Another piece in the puzzle of life’s gamification.
Also – the Verge finally launched. Cool! Go check it out.
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Writes Cassandra Khaw of IndieGames:
They Bleed Pixels is a ‘fast-paced, gothic lo-fi platformer’ with an ingenious approach to checkpoints. Here, the onus is on the player – you’re the one who determines when and where a checkpoint will manifest itself. There is a bar on the top left corner of the screen that fills up whenever you execute a particularly awe-inspiring murder spree or when you retrieve a power-up. Once that bar is filled up, a purple glow will envelop your character. When that happens, you’ll be able to create a checkpoint wherever you want. All that you’ll need to do then is stand in place for a few moments and bam, checkpoint!
But what’s not what makes it so brilliant. The real genius lies in the fact that this approach to check points makes it hard not to eventually blossom into a digital kung fu master. After all, it’s not just a question of points or upgrades anymore. When it’s your insurance against repeating brain-breaking segments of a level that is on the line, button-mashing can appear very unappealing.
Love the flipping of save points from something that happens outside of flow to an integral part of the gameplay, even more so the impact on the player’s motivations.
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Anything to remind us that the road to gamification isn’t always digital.
““Ordnungswissenschaft” is a physical game in which four players are moving stacked boxes according to rigid instructions.”
Ordnungswissenschaft from Marek Plichta on Vimeo.
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Good article (and recap) by Bitmob’s Paul Alexander about the on-going battle over Gamenaut’s cloning of Radical Fishing. (via IndieGames.com)
Radical Fishing was a fun flash game with a visually enhanced iOS sequel (Ridiculous Fishing) in stealth mode when it was beaten to the App Store by another game, Ninja Fishing. The clone was hugely successful (reaching #7) which triggered a firestorm.
Should game mechanics be patented? Should a whole *game* be patentable? Was it wrong for Gamenauts to release their game after learning of the sequel? Should they have been developing this clone/port in the first place? Aren’t we all just indies trying to make a living? And hell: what constitutes a clone?
Ninja Fishing is a fun, attractive game. The problem isn’t that it was a lazy copy – clearly a lot of work went into it – the problem is that it was the wrong kind of work.
I think Greg Wohlwend nails it (he’s Ridiculous Fishing’s artist):
“They didn’t change the theme because they have no idea, really, why the game was successful in the first place. And if they do, they certainly have no clue how to reach it on their own, in earnest. If they change too much about a game they are [ripping off,] it might not have everything in it that made it a success in the first place…this is all about capitalizing on Vlambeer’s creativity and prowess as top-shelf game designers.”
The art of creating a game (or anything, really), is the iteration. The mountain you climb on the way to something good is made up of the carcasses of your own prototypes, experiments and long shots. If you start with the end result already defined, you’re not creating, you’re just implementing.
Radical Fishing is no different; it clearly builds on the mechanics of hundreds of previous games. Avoiding things… Catching things… Shooting things… Defender + Katamari Damacy + Duck Hunt! That clearly fails to properly describe Vlambeer’s game.
The difference is that Vlambeer clearly riffed off those elements and created their own recipe. And just check out the crazy art style they’re playing with for Ridiculous Fishing. It’s clear just how much they’ve iterated away from their first game.
Now compare Radical Fishing to Ninja Fishing. The delta between those two is basically… Fruit Ninja.
I think Vlambeer had an eminently fair solution when they offered to launch simultaneously, and perhaps none of this would have happened if they’d telegraphed their intention to port. You could try argue that a Flash game with no announced iOS port was fair inspiration.
But Gamenauts went ahead and launched their game first. That wasn’t illegal. Maybe it wasn’t even unethical. But it sure was artless.
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Kirk Hamilton for Kotaku:
I mentioned to Levine that it sounds as though the game is using the improv theater technique of “Yes, and,” where one actor’s response to another actor’s improvisation should always be “Yes, and?” in order to support his partner and open the door to new ideas. Levine agreed that the game did that with itself, but that the inclusion of interactivity added a wrinkle to the equation.
“Of course, that’s not taking the player into account,” he said. “The problem is, good improv actors want to help each other. The player doesn’t always want to help the improvisation, so we have to account for them not being the best citizen of the improvisation. That’s the player’s right, and we have to respect that. It would be great if they were like, ‘Yes, I want to make this exactly what Ken Levine intended!’ But that’s not what they’re going to do, that’s not their job. Their job is to have fun.”
Cool. Good framing of the role of AI.
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