Will consumers play location-based games?

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Another interesting discussion on the IGDA Mobile forum about how engage user paying for location-based games.Some people think it's not good since it's just reshaping existing games in the real world:

Joe schmo does not want to dress up like a fairy and run around his local apt. complex squawking at their cell phone. it just reminds me of kids jumping around and pointing invisible finger guns at each other. plus, it seems like some idiot will be hit by a car or cause an accident by doing this.

Maybe the guy who said this as a strong bias and think mobile game should be just like pc/console games. It would be better to think about how they can design innovative stuff taking advantage of the news technosocial situations created by the use of mobiles devices. Other persons tell this guy that are already strong sucesses liek MogiMogi, Dodgeball or Pacmanhatan.

There is also a liverly debate about location based gaming as defeating the value purpose of mobility:

I completely disagree. Is it the same as me being able to play 5 minutes of Ghost Recon while in line at the store? No, but that is the point. Does this short-area networking entrance (e.g. blue tooth, IR, etc.) meet the needs of ALL gamers? No, again part of the point.

I for one like to play paintball a couple of times a year and laser-tag when in Japan with work. As I live in downtown Chicago, I have to drive at least an hour outside of the city to find suitable facilities/land to play. If people tried playing either paintball or laser-tag in the city parks, the cops would surround the park and things might not be so fun. Enter LBG such as GunSlingers currently available through Sing-tel... Now, people can play virtual paintball wherever they want.

If you combine the idea existing ideas of LBG with short-area networking, additional possibilities arise.

Some concerns expressed by the game designers are also interesting to take into account:

A. Movement is mostly not designed as possibility but as necessity. B. Location Based Games can not simply be consumed. They constantly need the player’s action to entertain. C. Location Based Games often only make fun if there is a critical mass of players. D. A background story is almost nonrepresentational in the real world environment. In best case it fits in small well prepared local areas. So players must be willing to except a high level of abstraction.

Go check this debate ;)

BTW what is a mobile game?

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An relevant discussion on the IGDA mobile forum about how to define a mobile game:

What exactly is a mobile game and why is there confusion? This may seem like a simple question, but there are many different opinions out there.

The schedule and sessions from this past GDC and Mobile GDC imply that mobile games are games to be played cell phones. At least, that was the topic of almost every session on mobile games. Haven?t we had mobile games for years with the Game Boy(s) and similar devices? (...) As we continue to expand into non-console mobile, such as cell phone based gaming, what elements of mobile console carry over to cell phone play, and what does not?

As for me, I think a mobile game takes advantage of mobility (= different context/places/location, integration of movement, different settings with regard to privacy/public display, connectivity/seamlesness...) to create challenging situations.

Psychological elements behind (video) games

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A well-summarized introduction to the psychology of video games in gamasutra:The Psychology Behind Games By Anders Hejdenberg. The author first presents idea like Maslow's pyramid as well as basis concepts emerging from Roger Caillois or Csíkszentmihályi's (pronounce chick sent me high yeeeeee, this is true!). Then he describes the consequences for game designers. Event though it's a brief account, that should be seen as a good introduction for game designers.

I just put here the conclusion which is obviously interesting from a user-centered point of view:

We have to realize that making a great game is not about which features and components to add – it is about what those features and components do for the player. We have to learn not to underestimate how important certain aspects of the design are to the player – for example, difficult controls alone can transform any great game into a meaningless activity. We have to remember that we do not make games for ourselves – we make them for the player.

Sometimes game designers tend to forget this basic rule, they design for an audience not for themselves.

Comparison between augmented and virtual reality

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Tang, A., Biocca, F., and Lim, L. (2004). Comparing Differences in Presence during Social Interaction in Augmented Reality versus Virtual Reality Environments: An Exploratory Study In Proceedings of PRESENCE 2004, 7th Annual International Workshop on Presence, October 13–15, 2004, Valencia, Spain.This paper offers an interesting conclusion with regard to the differences between augmented reality and virtual reality: "the absence of representations of the user’s body in VR environment may lessen sense of spatial presence comparing with AR environment".

I like what this lab does, namely experiments about cognition in AR.

Student needed: diploma or semester project

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For CatchBob! we need interns or students! Here is the project:Development of a mobile game replay tool

The project consists in developing a tool to replay sessions of interactions with a mobile game called CatchBob!. This game is an experimental platform in the form of a collaborative mobile application for running psychological experiments. In our lab, we are indeed interested in studying how people use mobile devices to carry out collaborative activities.

In this context, a replay tool is a piece of software that displays all the actions undertaken by the players. Such a tool is intended to rebuild and enrich our comprehension of how users performed the activity and to elicit their social and spatial behavior. This visual information might be used both by the researchers (to better understand what happen and compute statistics about it) and the players (to offer a visual support in order to explain the researchers what happened).

Example of the replay tool we have so far: path + time are represented + logfile at the bottom.

The project will both address the visualization of interactions as well as the computation of various indexes.

Keywords: teamwork analysis, design of a visual grammar, dynamic image generation, visualization of qualitative Information.

Technologies: Java, XML, SVG

References:

Contact: Please email Nicolas Nova (nicolas(dot)nova@epfl.ch) to set-up an interview. Please include information on the courses you have taken and projects you have done in the past.

Catchbob analysis update

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An update about how I am analyzing the data, from a temporal perspective:- divide each game in 3 parts: 'foraging the campus', 'joining the others', 'forming the triangle'. The end of the first part is when a player warns the other that he found the zone. the end of the second part if when all the players are within a certain area and begin to form the triangle. - for each part, calculate the number of messages (which type), the number of refresh, of disconnections, graphically represent the different category of path taken by the players. Chi-squared this to check the repartition of all those indexes! - for each part, ask the question: at that point is there a control of the environement (does the environment affords a behavior) or of the partners (explicit messages). - how does the leadership evolve during all those parts? (+ the strategy planning phase)

Other things: - calculate the number of pauses (no messages, no movements) - use the number of disconnections: could imply strategy modifications! - how players obeyed to orders!!!!!! - for each part, define the roles (caller, explorer...), look at the backtracking and overlap for each roles.

In the analyis, use: - Sperber and Wilson: participants wrote information they estimated to be relevant for them and their partners. - Kirsh + Kirsh and Maglio (Tetris): low-level information matters

A cell phone stun gun

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Vow! a cell phone stun gun for $79.95 at tbotech:

This Cell Phone Stun Gun incorporates its unique design to give you a tactical advantage. Personal Alarm and 180,000 volt stungun with case. Cellphones are carried by almost everyone these days. No one will think that yours is actually a non lethal self defense weapon. Choose from either navy blue or pearl silver and the cell phone stun gun comes with a free genuine leather carrying case. It also has a safety switch to prevent accidental discharge. Uniquely designed right into a regular cellphone body so there's no question of how it looks. It's authentic! Just don't let anyone make a phone call!

Extreme video gamers: wireless works at 400 feets!

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Wired has a funny piece about extreme video gamers:For instance in the two following picture, the point was to "experiment to see what is possible using the wireless capabilities of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP handheld gaming devices, a team of four sky divers played Super Mario Brothers against each other while jumping over California City, California".

Yet, notwithstanding the risks, the four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour.

Extreme behavior with technology, it's about pushing the limits...

Cool job for Starcraft experts

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This seems to be a great job for Starcraft experts:

Experts of StarCraft: Help Analyze How Players Transfer Knowledge

We are studyiing how people pass their understanding and awareness of complex situations. To test how people 'pass the bubble' we are desiogning an experiment in which experts of StarCraft have to pick up a game that another expert has been playing for 25 mins. We need StarCraft experts who can play the game and analyze the way other experts pass their knowledge

Contact Bryan Clemons@ 858.822.2475

It's actually a research project carried out at University Of California San Diego in this lab.

An history of social bookmarking tools

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A very relevant history of social bookmarking tools in D-Lib by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott.

We are here going to remind you of hyperlinks in all their glory, sell you on the idea of bookmarking hyperlinks, point you at other folks who are doing the same, and tell you why this is a good thing. Just as long as those hyperlinks (or let's call them plain old links) are managed, tagged, commented upon, and published onto the Web, they represent a user's own personal library placed on public record, which – when aggregated with other personal libraries – allows for rich, social networking opportunities. Why spill any ink (digital or not) in rewriting what someone else has already written about instead of just pointing at the original story and adding the merest of titles, descriptions and tags for future reference? More importantly, why not make these personal 'link playlists' available to oneself and to others from whatever browser or computer one happens to be using at the time?

There is also an interesting second part which is a case study of Connotea (reference management service for scientists). Thoses papers have been written by the Nature Publishing Group, the guys behind Connotea.

Location awareness and its social implications in 3rd places

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Jyri Engeström from Aula is going to present relevant stuff at Microsoft Social Computing Symposium:

The Social Implications of Location Awareness in 'Third Places': Learnings from Aula Helsinki

A large part of mobile messaging traffic is about coordinating face-to-face meetings, many of which take place in so-called third places between home and work. A growing number of mobile social softwares (e.g. Imahima, Dodgeball, Plazes, GeoNotes) allow people to define a physical location, announce their presence in that location, and see who else is now checked in, was there earlier, or plans to head there in the future. However, we know relatively little about how these services actually affect the usage patterns of cafés, bars, and other third places. In our research on the use of the Hunaja (Finnish for ‘honey’) system at Aula's social club in Helsinki, we found that new forms of serendipity, self-promotion, stalking and avoidance emerged when club members used their mobile phones to check who was in the Aula space. The focus of the talk will be on an ethnographic case study of these emerging social uses of the Hunaja system. The case will be related to the broader social implications of proximity and location sensors in mobile devices. The central argument is that location-awareness services can turn third places into physical buddy lists where comings and goings become ways to change one's status from 'online' to 'offline.' To the users, such services can function as symbolic instruments for acquiring and maintaining membership in a community and marking territory; practical tools for optimizing paths in the city to initiate and avoid encounters with specific others; and playful objects for expressing humour and triggering creative social mischief. However, they are also a rich source of misunderstandings and afford ways to purposefully stalk and deceive other users.

I would be delighted to read more about it. It's been 2 years I am looking forward to get more information about Hunaja's use!

GhostRadar: a ghostbuster handheld device + collaborative cartography

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Seen in the TIME:

a Japanese gadget company has designed the very thing for you — the world’s first portable ghost radar. The device, which fits neatly into a pocket, promises to alert its owners to the presence of eight different types of spectre, from “lost souls” to “evil spirits”.

Using a variety of carefully calibrated sensors — one of which claims to detect human fear — the machine will then inform users whether the ghost is malevolent or benign.

It's designed by a japanese company called Solid Alliance, this Ghost radar The interface is pretty rough on the website screenshots, here is an example of how the radar displays the haunted areas: There seems to be a collaborative cartography project as well: the website depicts plenty of maps with what I expect to be haunted places. I like the Time's point:

Solid Alliance, the technology company that makes the gadget, has worked closely throughout the design process with GRX, a virtual study group that investigates “paranormal symptoms”. The same group is now collating a giant online database of what the first users of the radar have found.

It's cool to have paranormal users groups to run specific end-user studies!

'The Simpsons' has almost reached its halfway poin

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An important landmark: 'The Simpsons' are not over, they just reached half of their path. A cool paper about it in the NYT

Mr. Groening, in spite of his own hints in previous interviews that the show might be running its course, has found a second wind. "I think the show has almost reached its halfway point, which means another 17 years," he said - and this of a show that is already the longest running now on television.

There also seems to be a movie around:

Mr. Groening, along with Mr. Brooks and several of the show's longtime writers, are all hard at work in an office on the 20th Century Fox lot on the long-rumored Simpsons movie.

\'The Simpsons\' has almost reached its halfway poin

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An important landmark: 'The Simpsons' are not over, they just reached half of their path. A cool paper about it in the NYT

Mr. Groening, in spite of his own hints in previous interviews that the show might be running its course, has found a second wind. "I think the show has almost reached its halfway point, which means another 17 years," he said - and this of a show that is already the longest running now on television.

There also seems to be a movie around:

Mr. Groening, along with Mr. Brooks and several of the show's longtime writers, are all hard at work in an office on the 20th Century Fox lot on the long-rumored Simpsons movie.

IEEE Pervasive Computing Journal of Smart Phone

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The last issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is devoted to smart phones.

The mobile or smart phone is ushering in the real age of ubiquitous computing, and we shouldn’t undervalue its importance. This issue highlights work that presents specific smart phone applications as well as programming infrastructure for further development and studies of emergent uses.

Papers deal with various aspects ranging from social serendipity (the one by Rusell Beale) to the use of camera phones. The interesting point here is that the topic is addressed through various angles (not just the technical point of view). However, it's curious to see that location-based services does not appear that much in this issue. More later, I need to some time to read those papers ;)

Location-based annotations in Geneva

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Shoutspace (one of the research project at our lab) now allows user to put location-based annotations in Geneva with mobile phones! Thanks to fab's hack!Basically, this program enables users to leave messages to other users on the map (our campus in Lausanne + Geneva). The message is then dispayed on the map at a desired location. Multiple threads are displayed graphically with connections among the messages: Now let's spread it and study how people use this application?

Last week trip in Paris summary

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Last week I had the chance to visit few labs in paris, France. I gave few talks presenting CatchBob! and the results we are getting. I received interesting feedbacks from the persons I met both from academics labs and private companies (mostly a telecom company, a video game editor and an electricity company). Thanks all :) My slides are here.

Few random notes: - Saadi: my stuff is about augmenting the representation instead of augmenting the environment. "what is amazing is that the augmentation should help users but it's not the case": NOT EVERY AUGMENTATION IS USEFUL. It would be great to formalize it, great for? - jim hollan: might be interesting to investigate the ambiguity of the positioning (what we thought about having an awareness tool with a lower accuracy) + he advised me to look at what they did about Active Campus. - IPSI: they wondered about the use of very accurate positioning but it turned out that it was tremendously difficult for ALL the users to have the positioning feature working. So users stopped using the tool. That is why they designed something simpler and that take into account the possibility of not having everybody with the location awareness tool.

Swat team plans monkey business

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Via ananova:

An elite American Swat team wants to train a small monkey as the ultimate reconnaissance tool. Wearing a bullet-proof vest, video camera and two-way radio, the capuchin monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it. It would change the way we do business," Said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove.

Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix, Arizona, Swat team, wants to train the monkey for special ops intelligence work. The tiny primate with puzzle-solving skills, could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command, he said.

A grant proposal with the Department of Defence under the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency has been filed. The Swat team is looking for about £60,000 to purchase, train and care for the monkey over a three year period.