Author: Scott

How do you use Sony’s Playstation Portable to play big games? Take advantage of the system’s ability to search for WiFi access points, and make that the basis of a scavenger hunt / puzzle game. At least that’s what Jonas Hielscher did when he created CollecTic, an inventive little title developed as part of Hielscher’s graduation project for the Media Technology masters program at Leiden University. From the man himself:

The objective of the game is to search for different access points, to collect them and to combine them in a puzzle in order to get points. In the game, the player has to move around in her/his local surrounding, using her/his PSP as a sensor device in order to find access points. By doing this, the player is able to discover the hidden infrastructure of wireless network coverage through auditive and visual feedback.

Bonus points go to Hielscher for moving beyond the simple scavenger hunt mechanic, and adding a bit of puzzler to the mix. According to his site, each secured access point is defined by a shape and color, the shape being determined by the manufacturer code of the unique MAC address, and the color determined by the product code of the same. When the player “collects” an access point he/she can then arrange it in a 3×3 square with other access points collected. Matching sets of three (by color, shape, or both), earn the player points.

As if that wasn’t enough, the game allows players to collect unsecured access points as well. Once collected, the unsecured points appear as either black or white stars. If they’re white, they act as “wild cards,” and can be used to complete matching sets. If the point is black, however, it clears the player’s grid, forcing him/her to start over with collecting.

These are small additions, but they can add a great deal to gameplay, as well as make the experience more aesthetically pleasing as a whole (in addition to size, shape and color, each individual access point is defined by unique sound, making for a nearly synaesthetic experience).

Be sure to check out the site, which offers more information on the game’s development, photos, and short videos of the gameplay in action. Although CollecTic is not publicly available yet, Jonas Hielscher promises that it is coming soon, and will be playable on PSP’s up to firmware version 2.0.

»CollecTic via Kotaku.

Appeared originally on Away From Keyboard.

At first I went “huh?” but then I realized it was a match made in heaven.

For those unaware, Will Wright recently announced that Brian Eno — former glam-rocker and father of ambient music — will be creating the soundtrack to Spore. This is, of course, brilliant.

To solidify this relationship in the public eye (and possibly just as an excuse to have a good old chat), EA and Maxis recently held an open seminar in San Francisco, where a theater full of open ears listened to the rantings of two men who in very different fields are doing the exact same thing. Both artists (yes, I’m calling them that) use the idea of cellular automata as a basis for their creations. Cellular automata, I’ve recently learned, refers to a simple initial rule-set that is capable of generating very complex and disparate results. Wright can do a better job of describing this than I can:

“Science is all about compressing reality to minimal rule sets, but generative creation goes the opposite direction. You look for a combination of the fewest rules that can generate a whole complex world which will always surprise you, yet within a framework that stays recognizable…..It’s not engineering and design, so much as it is gardening. You plant seeds.”

Thanks, Will. I dig this concept as a root for game design. The implicit message here is that in generative game design, the designer’s task is not to create a world, but create the tools and rules that allow the player to create through their interaction. The fun and interesting challenge in this is to apply it to games outside of the “sandbox” category. Level design can become inconsequential, for instance, if the player can generate his/her own environments through play.

Tetris is an example of this style of design. The play environment is a direct consequence of the player’s interactions, all built out of the blocks delivered into the player’s control. Although it’s still a great big WIP, I’d like for Sqube to follow a similar design principle.

Let’s talk about the importance of metaphor — and not just in a game, but in its interface as well.

So Sony introduces the PS3 controller, and its gyroscopics, at E3 2006, during their big press conference. To demonstrate the potential of their “new” technology, Warhawk 3 — an action title and flight simulator — is demonstrated. The player up on stage gives the audience a taste of the future by using the entire controller to fly the plane around. Any tilt of the device in his hands yields the same tilt in the aircraft on screen. According to those who saw this first-hand, the control seemed rather tight, and the demonstration was an impressive example of the capabilities of this technology.

So, what’s the problem here?

Video games have struggled with realism for years, not just in the graphics department, but in terms of interface as well. A single controller to play hundreds of different kinds of games makes it difficult to customize the interface — and the direct interaction of the user — with every particular experience. A title like Guitar Hero tackles the issue by introducing a separate controller, specifically tailored to the demands of the software.

With the Wii, meanwhile, Nintendo is attempting to reinvent the wheel entirely by giving the controller less of a presence, and having it retreat into the background as the user’s own motions take precedent. With the Wii, you’ll fish like you expect to fish, swing a bat to swing a bat, and when you want to play tennis, you’ll know how to do that, too.

Our current generation of standard peripherals, however, struggle with intuitive, logical interface. There’s very little the standard Xbox/Gamecube/PS2 controller can do that feels true to its original form. In fact, I can think of only one thing that the analog sticks of our modern devices represent well, and that is flying a plane.

Hell, think about it. Our whole concept of “joystick” descends from the tastelessly nicknamed device pilots use to control the pitch and yaw of their machines. There is no place our everyday videogame controller is more at home than flying an aircraft.

So why did Sony go and muck up the metaphor? Why is it that, of all the possible ways to demo the controller’s “new” features, Sony chose to show the controller doing the one thing that controllers already knew how to do?

The result of this is obvious: every time we watch this dude in action, we can’t help but laugh. The method of control looks incredibly awkward, especially when we can see the dual analog sticks just sitting there on the face of the controller, waiting to be used. It’s like trying to fish by stabbing your rod in the water.

Most importantly, it doesn’t look fun. Because it doesn’t look like you’re playing a game about flying a plane — it looks like you’re playing a game about playing a game about flying a plane. Perhaps contrary to their original intention, Sony has crashed the metaphor, and moved the player one more step away from immersion. At least the graphics are good, right?

From Milan (and via We-Make-Money-Not-Art), comes a bizarre, but arguably worthwhile big game concept: to make the process of play not only enjoyable, but productive as well. Welcome to Dark Treasure (Tesoro Scuro), the gaming adjunct of a slick little Italian pooper-scooping service known as Pooptopia.

Pooptopia relies on a community of users to identify instances of dog poo in the city of Milan. Once identified, Pooptopia sends out an individual on a moped to scoop the “dog litter,” and dispose of it properly. The system is apparently funded by the city itself, meaning the official scooter scoopers are paid for their work, which is comforting to know.

The gaming portion of this is simplistic: A user aligns him/herself with one of three teams. If a user sees dog poo in Milan, they take a picture of it, and send it to the Pooptopia e-mail address, earning points for their team. Bonus points are promised if the user can identify the area in which the poop was seen (which seems like an important detail to me). A prize is offered to the top “poo-hunter” each week, which makes the team mechanic unnecessary, considering the individual is ultimately credited and rewarded, and not the conglomerate.

While earnest in terms of its concept, Dark Treasure fails to seem enjoyable in the overall, in part because the goals of the entire project seem a little jumbled. Consider that the game is being used as an incentive for members of the community to locate and report instances of “doggy doo;” the creators expect players to want to play a game that is fun, and in playing that game, they will indirectly assist the “Pooptopia” system. The play itself, however, is not really expected to be that rewarding, as evidenced by the fact that the official Pooptopia site pronounces the goal of the game to be the sanitization of Milan, rather than simply the pleasure of playing. So, basically, the game is intended to be an incentive to clean up the city, even though cleaning up the city is intended to be the incentive to play the game. (Huh?)

Still, the notion of productivity through gameplay is interesting and always worth pursuing, and Dark Treasure stands as a unique intersection of the “Serious Games” ideology and “Big Games” execution.

Since Apple first introduced the accelerometer in the late Powerbooks (intended as a safety feature), there’s been a persistant question of “how can we play with this?” floating in the heads of Mac fans and those of the techie persuasion.

This example, via Lifehacker, is by far the most obvious: a puzzler much in the same vein as Super Monkey Ball, where tilting the MacBook allows one to navigate the sphere around the maze. At the very least, it’s neat to watch, but from a practical standpoint, I imagine it would get tiresome very quickly (especially with the 17″ MacBook Pro; at 6.8 pounds, it’s an average-weight laptop, but an extremely heavy controller).

Cave Story (if you don’t know what Cave Story is, click that link, download the game, and play it for several hours with the sound on before reading any more of this) is coming to the Sony PlayStation Portable. This is according to Frank, via Polybius, via the publisher’s message board.

If that doesn’t convince you, the publisher – Variant Interactive – has already put up a Cave Story section, complete with box art. Apparently Variant has recently started up as an independent games publisher, and they’re choosing to kick things off with a bang. And by bang, I mean a really, really good game. Seriously. You shouldn’t even be reading this if you haven’t at least started playing it already.

So my first reaction to this news is “Awesome! I love Cave Story! I love it so much!” My second, more rational reaction, however, is “Oh, wait. I don’t own a PSP. Nor do I ever intend to, no matter how cute Loco Roco is. I am sad now.”

I suppose the good news here is that Variant is not averse to porting the game over to the Nintendo DS; they just haven’t had any green light from Nintendo to do so:

You know, I love the DS as much as the next guy… And Cave Story, I think, fits in pretty well with the feel of Nintendo’s general portfolio of titles. But at the end of the day, it’s Nintendo who decides what does and does not go on their systems. Same as Sony and Microsoft dictate what goes on theirs. I’m not much of a fan of online petitions, I don’t think they do much good, but if you’d like to see Cave Story on the DS, Nintendo suggests writing them or posting it up in their forums. If they know you guys want it, and they know that there’s enough of you that want it, something good might happen!

I guess that’s enough to give me hope for now. I don’t think community outreach alone is going to make it happen, though. I think the gaming press needs to start jumping on this, and making a critical argument for the existence of Cave Story on everyone’s favorite dual-screened portable. A solid, well-thought-out feature on 1UP or IGN could be worth just as much in Nintendo’s eyes as a hundred or so e-mails from fans begging “please?”

…But I’ll send off an e-mail or two to Nintendo, just to be sure. That’s how good Cave Story is.

I go home to the States tomorrow (Saturday), so I guess I better get cracking.

Update: Making Progress…

My most recent travels around Ireland happened to last the entirety of this year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo, which meant that instead of camping in front of a computer, constantly reloading Joystiq to see what happened next at Sony’s “big conference,” I was actually doing something. It was quite nice.

E³‘s always a mess of game-related data, which one has to sort through in order to find the important bits. Here’s what I’ve found to be the cream of the crop.

Lumines is making its way to the 360 via Xbox Live Arcade.

Sony’s Playstation 3 is SKU’ing, too (at $499 and $599).

On a similar note, the PS3 controller is an awful lot like the PS2/PS1’s, except with hastily-implemented gyroscopics and no rumble.

Nintendo’s Wii starts out strong, and apparently won’t break the bank, either. (Edit: Okay, it definitely won’t – sweet)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is going to be awesome.

Finally, Greg Costikyan sums up (mostly) everything that’s wrong with E³:

Here’s my E3 fantasy for a Manifesto Games booth: bare concrete floor. Metal folding chairs. Bare tables with computers on them running games. Signs saying things like: “Gameplay Over Glitz” and “Pardon Our Appearance, We Spend Our Money on Games, Not Bullshit” and “No Booth Babes Here, Move Along.”

Bless his grumpy soul.

More travels ahead. Berlin, Dresden, and Prague, before returning to the States. I’m tired.

To begin, never spend a night in an airport in order to avoid taking the expensive bus in the early morning. This is a bad idea.

I haven’t done this “travelogue” thing in a while; been too busy traveling to blog about all the traveling I’ve done.

We went to Amsterdam what feels like months ago, but it’s only really been three weeks or so. We hadn’t originally intended on making the trip (it seemed like the ultimate college-kid thing to do; “dude, have you been to Amsterdam yet?”), but a sincere recommendation from my friend Johnny, and promises of many flowers and canals convinced us to arrange the trip. For the sake of brevity, I will say that Amsterdam was beautiful, and very much unlike any other city we’ve been to so far.

In between our trips “abroad,” Bonnie and I headed west to the coastal city of Doolin, which is in a unique area known as the Burren, and only a ferry ride away from the Aran Islands, popular for their production of wool sweaters. Doolin itself was a very small town (no ATM’s, which turned out to be a bit of a problem), but its size offered an opportunity to take it easy at night, and enjoy the amazing views of the Cliffs of Moher. We traveled to Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands, the next day, and got nice and close to the cliffs on a ferry tour. The morning after, we departed Doolin (with some help from an unnamed Boston-er suffering a hangover) and caught up with a tour bus on the Cliffs of Moher, which then took us through the Burren on our route home.

We did the “overnight in an airport” thing for our flight to France. This might be a good idea if one is 1) on the last leg of their travels, 2) returning home to rest, and 3) equipped with warm clothes and sleeping equipment. It is, however, a terrible idea if you’re like us, and decide to start a week of traveling by staying up all night, unable to sleep on the cold, hard floors of the security entrance. We were displeased. Please don’t ever do like us in this situation.

Beyond the woes of our prolonged stay in Dublin Airport, our time in France was quite amazing, and by far our most successful travel-intense trip so far. Beginning in the south of France with Marseilles (think Mediterranean weather), we traveled north, hitting Avignon (a beautiful walled-in city along the Rhone), Lyon (home to several unearthed Roman Ampitheatres, and an amazing view from our hostel), and Paris (come on, it’s Paris). Highlights of Paris include the Paris Opera House, the Catacombs, our most successful theatre experience yet (two of Moliére’s comedies being performed in the same theatre in which they have been performed for hundreds of years), and Paris itself, particularly at night, when the weather was at its most temperate, and the lights of the buildings rendered everything dazzling.

After Paris, we trained to Tours, where we spent a month last summer in French studies. Being back was a bizarre, but truly great experience. We had dinner with Bonnie’s host-mother from the summer, who also offered us a place to stay for the night.

We didn’t stay overnight in the airport before returning to Dublin, which was for the best considering the Beauvais “Airport” consisted largely of an oversized rental tent (if your daughter’s Bat-Mitzvah was supposed to be outside, and it rains, you order this kind of tent). We were happy to have traveled, but we’re happy to now have a day or so to be home, off our feet and figuring out the logistics for the summer and fall. Tomorrow, we meet up with Stephie, and head south in a rented car. Left side of the road, left side of the road…

The latest issue of the Escapist, which is chock-full of good pieces, features an article by EA’s Rod Humble on the role of rulesets as art, a topic which holds a special place in my heart.

The article begins by talking about Senet, the oldest known board game in existence, dating back to Egyptian times. The cool thing about Senet is that while tomb paintings indicate the number of players, and archaeological digs have uncovered the toolset of board, sticks, and pieces, the rules of Senet were not preserved and remain unknown, rendering the game virtually unplayable.

(I say “virtually,” because there are several historians who have, through their research, devised potential rules for Senet. A version of the game — operating under one of these theorized rulesets — appears online, thanks to the British Museum.)

On the topic of rulesets, I’ve also recently found the blog of Greg Trefry, student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and designer at Gamelab (formerly gameLab). Greg describes himself as a man obsessed with rulesets, which he uses to create a series of Urban Mini Games. These are big games with very minimal toolsets, and simple but specific rules, allowing for spontaneous play in urban environments. My personal favorite is Parasite, a race to a fixed destination made intriguing by several provisos in the rules of movement.

Rod Humble’s Escapist article, the story of Senet, and Greg Trefry’s Urban Mini Games all demonstrate not only the importance of rulesets in game design, but also the crucial role they play in the role of game design as artistic expression. Arguably, the most important facet of interactivity is its constraints. Just as boundaries help define our everyday world, limitations on interaction make one game distinct from another.

Absolute freedom is absolutely boring, and in games we rely on rules, on boundaries, to allow us to discover new ways of interacting. It is through rules — and not through their abolition — that players realize freedoms.

Coming Soon: Queer Interactivity and the Gothic in Video Games, Reinventing the Forum, My (Abridged) Ludography, and An Awesome Mind Puzzle.