I’ll be speaking at a conference this Sunday at the Asia Society here in New York City. It’s part of the Asian American International Film Festival. I’m not an Asian person myself, but I do strive to be more like one.

Here’s the blurb on the panel:

Over the past two decades, video games have occupied an integral share of our visual media vocabulary. From simple moving dots (Pong) to visceral melodrama (Metal Gear Solid series), games are evolving to incorporate highly sophisticated film-like narratives. Films created through game engines and real-time graphics, known as Machinima, have emerged as an inexpensive, readily accessible way to tell stories. Likewise, popular films such as PAN’S LABRYINTH and SPEED RACER use the rapid-fire action and puzzle solving conventions so typical of video games. The panel will explore the intersections of film and video games, popular examples of their convergence, and what it means for the future of both media.

And the link: http://aaiff.org/2008/program/extra-lives-intersections-video-games-and-film

The festival looks really interesting, more info and tickets here:

http://aaiff.org/2008/

A student assignment that resulted in one of my favorite machinimas. I love it for its choice of relevant subject matter, and for its frantic and unpredictable pace. Nice job!

Oh, and it’s less than a minute long! These students have been taught the value of editing. An important lesson for anyone learning cinema through machinima. Bits are cheap, but your viewer’s attention is not. This piece is short and fast, which makes it all the more funny.

Nice job to Kyle Moody and Darren Miller, and to their teacher at the University of Buffalo, the highly talented (and former Electric Sheep) Anton Hand (A.k.a. Xenius Revere in Second Life.)

I went back and did this 30 question test to learn what type of MUD player I am. It’s kinda fun, but also kind of not. Richard Bartle didn’t make that test, so I won’t call it the Bartle Test, but it’s based on his 4-types of player in a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) or as we call them now: MMO (Massive Multiplayer Orgy.)

As was predictable I was very close to even percentages on the 4 types, which leads me to believe (as others before me have concluded) that the test itself may be flawed. Not to suggest that the test-makers themselves are also flawed, although it is within the realm of possibilities. We are all only human.

It is also possible that the concept of the 4 player-types is flawed and no test would work, since we are all many more than 4 types of player. (No offense to Richard Bartle.)

I know of a pseudo-psychological workshop where participants can learn which of the 5 basic types of people they are: Bad, evil, wrong, inadequate, or broken. We seem to love the idea of categorizing human beings into easy to define categories. And to some degree that may be possible. But how desirable is it to generalize about our own humanity? My example of the workshop is obviously exaggerated but my point remains; by limiting our thinking on what it means to be human, we limit what we’re capable of as individuals and as a species. (Other examples of species: Ponies, Cockroaches, Marshmallow Peeps.)

There is much to learn from the 4 player-types and Richard Bartle. (I haven’t met the man myself, but I’m sure if I did, I would be honored if he would kill me and collect my stuff, while exploring my home and then getting to know my girlfriend.) I think the idea of different preferences for types of play among the population of players is key to good world design, and it’s one I address and think about regularly as part of my work here at ESC.

Perhaps I think like a toy-maker more than a world-designer, but I prefer to categorize types of play, and leave the categorizing of people to God.

Last month I enjoyed the honor of being a SCAD speaker.
Sounds scary doesn’t it? SCAD is the disease-like acronym for the Savannah College of Art & Design, host to the Game developers Exchange (GDX.) A pleasantly small gathering of game industry folks who made me feel quite welcome.

The topic this year was independent games, and the speakers list included some luminaries from indie dev, ARG creators, and Machinimists (yours truly.)

I had the distinct honor of geocaching with Elan Lee (of I Love Bees fame.) We both had 3 hours to kill before our flight, so we ate breakfast at the Flying Biscuit, and wandered into a ritzy neighborhood nearby. Somehow the conversation strayed to GPS, and he checked for any nearby caches on his GPS enabled phone. One cache was less than a quarter mile away, so we headed for it. He handed me the phone to get the full tricorder effect of following the arrow.

The first cache we looked for had apparently been bulldozed during renovations of the park, the second was in a corporate district a few blocks away and the only clue was “Have fun storming the castle.” We found an old building with a castle-like stone wall among some skyscrapers. After 20 minutes Elan and I gave up to head for the airport.

It was certainly fun, and most importantly lead us to visit parts of Atlanta we never would have found otherwise, which seems to be the point. This is a perfect example of taking an ordinary environment (in this case a real one) and adding a simple game mechanic (follow the arrow.) Walking around a new city becomes, “Find the Treasure!” And since the real environment of Atlanta is a rich interactive space, simply walking towards a mysterious goal is a rich interactive experience.

By far the most enjoyable part of the experience was sharing it with another person. In this case someone I had only met that weekend.

So what’s a great way to make almost any environment fun to just wander around in?

Add other people.

I recently had the good fortune to take a driving trip through the mountains and coastline of Northern California (known as Alta California prior to the Mexican-American war and subsequent Mexican Cession of 1848 but that’s an entirely different story.)

For the first time, I had the opportunity to use a GPS Navigator. It was a Garmin with a 3D view of the 2D map. I could see the real roads stretching away from me in a virtual environment.

Driving truly became a game, or I should say the car became a toy, since I had no goal other than my final destination which I had input myself. I followed every road that caught my fancy, and I zoomed out on the GPS to see which way I might want to head. If I saw a winding street that looked interesting out the window, I drove on that one for a while. If I noticed an interesting arrangement of roads on the GPS, I went to check those out too. I also asked people which were the most interesting roads for someone with plenty of time.

I wasted a lot of gas.

Next time I’ll have to drive my pedal-powered green friendly earth hybrid efficient openSource proprietary vehicular thingamabobsticle.

Highway 9 from San Francisco (via Santa Clara) to Santa Cruz was incredible. Few other cars on the road, 60 mph through constantly winding angled curves and a view from a mountaintop with few railings. Fun!

I also went to my cousin’s wedding. Congratulations Vin and Loren. It was great to see everyone.

Spent the day with the Sheep at the Virtual Worlds Conference. Had some fun. Nice to be in such an intimate setting with a fledgling industry.

Something tells me that 90% of the people at this conference are working on the next big kid’s world. Some of them come right out and tell you all about it, shake your hand, give you a business card, gaze into your eyes and fart in your bathroom. Others pretend they are just looking, and then fart in your bathroom. But they are all secretly working on their own perfect little kid’s world that will finally get it right this time and be the next big breakout blockbuster hottest intellectual property to take over the real world bigger than wankinz and club baboon and furgy combined. Humanity is an endless stream of little virtual world users being born to populate our wonderful virtual creations.

They are wonderful aren’t they?

Deborah M. Manchester from Zula (the show, not the planet,) said something really interesting today. I asked her about a perception among adults that interactive entertainment is inherently more educational than television. She said, part of that is a parent’s need to justify allowing their child to play games.

Either way, if someone makes a product for a child, I believe they have a necessary obligation to at least be aware of what their product teaches, or at best work towards teaching something valuable. Human beings are learning at all times, but a 7 year old is learning what it means to be human, and what kind of world we live in. Every one of us has memories from those early years that still shape our personality today, whether we realize it or not. Like the time I rode my bicycle off a cliff, I learned that I am made of rubber.

I remember learning a lot from Mister Rogers, and Yoda. I can’t think of anything I learned from the Atari 2600, other than perhaps a few things about game design (which have certainly come in handy for me.)

I think it’s a great question to ask ourselves every now and then…

What am I teaching?

While pretending to be a video game, Rock Band has gone and become a successful virtual goods revenue generator.

Rock Band is possibly the greatest video game ever made, and one of the reasons is because it only gets more fun as you play it. Downloading new songs to play for a couple dollars benefits everyone involved, no one gets hurt, Jack Thompson stays out of it, and we all do our part to postpone the economic end of the world as we know it.

Downloadable Content (DLC) is limited to use within the game or virtual environment, but if that experience is as well designed as Rock Band, then the real-world money is perceived as being spent on real-world entertainment.

Does this make iTunes a virtual goods store?

According to CBS, the Grammys attracted 16.9 million TV viewers–down 15% from the previous year–it also generated 7.9 million online video streams and 4.9 million page views. But the current metrics don’t agregate these stats into one.

This is interesting for a lot of reasons. Metrics obviously matter enough to get tv execs scared. But what’s also obvious is that the metrics don’t measure what’s happening, they measure whatever is agreed to be worth measuring. In a world where the only thing that matters is the length of one’s nose, then I’d be pretty well set. In a world where height matters, I’m not so good.

Ok, so what?

The measurements are attempts to assign a value to a number associated with the way people consume content that is otherwise free. On their own those numbers are worthless, but the measurements give advertisers the comfort and perceived certainty that they are investing their money wisely. Just follow the numbers. Numbers don’t lie do they? You get your ROI from your CPM so get some SEO and your set! Who needs an IRA when we’re headed for an IPO based on all this great stuff we’re giving away for free.

Hopefully soon we’ll see some new metrics that measure something a bit more useful than pageviews. Big media will certainly benefit from measurements that aggregate every instance of a media property and the overall engagement (or time spent) viewing that content. A change from one measure to another can make the graphs that may currently point downward for big media start to point upwards.

(Free stuff photo by h.wren)

This is my first blog post. Oy! Did I miss the party?

I’ve avoided blogging because I normally suck at doing things like updating a page every day or week. But lately I’ve come across links and articles that I wanted to share, so rather than spam friends and co-workers with every link that I come across, I’ll post them here, and if you want to you can follow along.
This blog will be a place where I hope to exit from coherent thinking, for a bit of thought gymnastics. So expect anything, but don’t expect sense or reason.

Here’s something funny and unexpected: I’ve been playing “No More Heroes” for the Wii, which is a pretty sadistic M-rated assassination game that has all sorts of irony-laden jokes. One of which involves the training sessions. Much like other games of its genre, this game includes opportunities to “train” with a master and increase your character’s strength or speed. But unlike most other in-game training, this one actually involves some real training. As in doing squats for 20 reps with the wiimote. Tiring, but funny, and may just be the only exercise I’ve gotten in a while.