Video (and other) Games
PSPredecessors is a series of snapshots of portable video games.
I’ve been trying for a week or so to figure out what flickr is. I mean I know it’s a photo sharing site, but what makes it so damn interesting? Then, last night, I finally figured it out: flickr is a MMORPG.
Really, it should have been obvious, since the site is literally a MMORPG (it’s built on the old Game Neverending code, which is why you’ll see files ending in .gne on flickr). And Ludicorp says as much on their homepage (“Groupware for Play. We’re building a better platform for real time interaction online.”), but for some reason I was tricked into thinking it was more like iPhoto crossed with Friendster than Ultima Online.
Why does this make flickr successful where Friendster, Orkut, et al fall flat? I believe it’s because flickr’s designers are among the first (I can’t think of others but they surely exist) who have grokked video game design and (more to the point) figured out how to translate it to the web. What does this mean? It means that, unlike say Zoto, which is just a tool for storing and sharing photos, flickr is inherently, down-to-its-bones about play. If you look at a list of the elements of a successful game, they are all present in flickr: a sense of space to explore, a range of challenges, a range of abilities which can succeed, the need for preparation and skill, a variable feedback system.*
The most intersting part to me (as an interface designer) is how this plays out in the UI. Flickr is an example of what I think of as “vertebrate” or “narrative” or “trunk-and-branch” UI. In contrast to most web sites and apps which simply present a list of options (usually in a brutally straightforward way), flickr’s UI has a backbone. It presents a primary “plot” (upload photos and look at other people’s photos). This backbone gives users an immediate sense of the “story” of the site. But this central narrative exists in a space which allows for relatively freeform interaction, and the UI also helps nudge users off the main path with teasers like “Do you have a Cameraphone? Learn how to send photos to Flickr.” Like a video game, there’s a sense of progressive disclosure.
The downside of this style of interface is that some features are hidden. I used to reload my flickr home page until the “Do you have a blog?” teaser showed up; that was the only way I knew how to get to that feature. And flickr addresses this by including a mini-sitemap at the bottom of the screen. But the advantage is that the site feels less like an application and more like a Dungeon Master. (A role made explicit on the flickr blog for those who want a little extra hand-holding as they explore the gamespace.)
There’s lots more food for UI-design thought here, but this post is too wordy as it is. Let me just say kudos to the Ludicorp team for what they’ve built and good luck dealing with the player killers.
* List taken from A Theory of Fun for Game Design
Raph (Ultima Onine) Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design is well worth checking out if you have an interest in the how and why of game design. It’s billed as Understanding Comics for video games, though I don’t think it quite lives up to that (the brilliance of Understanding Comics is in large part that it’s a demonstration; you’d have to make a game about video games to match it). Still, Raph is very smart and knows video game design. You can also check out an early comic form of the book (4.7Mb pdf).
Dude, I know Kung-fu: an Israeli company “has created a video-game-like tool, based on training techniques used by the Israeli Air Force, that helps players learn when to shoot or pass the ball and how to work with teammates.” (via)
Mechanical Pong is a lovely bit of absurdist blurring of the virtual and the real. (via)
OK, this is silly, but I thought this game was soooo cool back in ‘85 or whenever: Atari Adventure in Flash
Gamespot review of new Real life MMORPG. Looks pretty sweet.
In the Beginning Was the Word looks at the role of words in media, with an eye to video game design. (Gamasutra login required)
In another of those studies that confirm common sense, researchers find that Video-Game Killing Builds Visual Skills. Specifically, FPSs seem to improve general visual skills (such as “the ability to say, instantly, how many objects were flashed on a screen”), and the differences are pretty dramatic.
An interview with Will Wright: Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata, God and Go. (via xblog)
A couple fairly straightforward interface-design lessons from video games: Everything I need to know about usability, I learned at the arcade
A Case For Game Design Patterns (requires free registration). I think the idea is great, but who has the time? It’s not enough just to say that “game developers [or interface designers] have to make a sustained, conscious effort to define and describe the recurring elements of their daily work.” Why do they have to? If patterns are such a valuable tool, why don’t we use them (formally, I mean)? I’d love to see someone tackle that in a convincing way.
Two interesting-looking articles on Gamasutra by John Hopson: Behavioral Game Design The Psychology of Choice
Gamasutra: History of Videogames (via xplane)
Five Steps to Adding Physics-Based Realism to Your Games. Not just for video games, though, right Josh?
Rhizome.org: Interview with Jodi.. I like it when artists are able to talk about what they’re doing. And I hadn’t yet seen their spooky iconic no-texture version of Wolfenstein. (via currentform)
Some interesting tidbits in Gamasutra’s Game Audio Resource Guide including this cool little article on Adaptive Music.
Raph Koster’s talk on Online World Design Patterns. Raph is the DW Griffith (or whatever) of MMORPGs (you know, online persistent worlds). (via captaincursor)
If you’re into this sorta stuff, you probably also want to check out the nascent MERA, The Mediated Environment Research Association.
A couple bits about the relationship between video games and application interface design:
Feed mag on Oni
What can games teach us about HCI on Kuro5hin.
Wow.. I had no idea epinions is an RPG. (link via robotwisdom)
Every so often I go on an old videogames kick and sites like The Oldskool PC make me really happy (plus the design reminds me of jeff-in-a-box). Ahh.. jumpman.
The Appeal and Usability of Games Interfaces. Yeah, but…
I’m generally sympathetic to the idea that game interfaces are interesting for application designers, but people have been saying this for years and years and I have yet to see anything tangible come out of it. (via noisebetween)
Raph Koster was the lead designer of Ultima Online and is now working on an online Star Wars game. In case I haven’t linked to it before, his personal site has a wealth of information about designing Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs (aka Persistant Worlds aka blah blah blah). Check out the Gaming section to begin with. The guy has a lot to say.
And he’s speaking at this interesting-looking conference: Entertainment in the Interactive Age along with (among others) Will Wright, of SIMs fame and other gaming bigshots.
Cool.. gameai.com, “dedicated to the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games.” Steven Woodcock, who runs the site, also wrote up this Game AI article on Gamasutra.
ps—This reminded me of this book, where machine intelligences are sufficiently advanced that they chuckle over the naivete of the term “Artificial” Intelligence.
Also from xblog, The Art and Science of Level Design. It’ll be interesting to see how all these sorts of “commandments” of game design types of documents change to deal with Massively Multiplayer RPGs, where many of the rules, goals, challenges are different.
And then, right below that entry is a link to the hilarious “Everything I needed to know I learned from FPS” (and part 2):
Keep all your best stuff on ridiculously high pedestals.
Safes are overrated – the best home security is in really high pedestals, stacks of crates, and cubby holes in the wall. I’ve got all the valuables in my house in high places that require a rocket-grenade jump to get to. I’d like to see an intruder handle that.
Game Development Search Engine. Yahoo! for game development.. LOTS of good links.
Really about emotional response in video games… Let’s Put the Magic Back in Magic:
We’re talking about a magic staff of lightning here, not a can of pepper spray. The appropriate emotional response to finding one is not “oh, good, this could be useful…. Our magic-believing characters should respond about the same way that we would if we were handed an armed atomic bomb: “Holy $#&%!! I just picked up a stick full of lightning! God, I hope it doesn’t blow my head off.”
A taxonomy of the four types of players of multiplayer online RPGs.
Gamasutra has an article up on the difference between casual and core gamers. I found the article only ok, but I think it’s a worthwhile topic with relevance to web (or any software) design. I think it’s probably closely related to the old ease vs. efficiency idea problem in interface design. And it all comes back to asking who’s gonna use your site (or software or game) and how they’re gonna use it.
I haven’t read this, but I like the idea of studying The In-game Economics of Ultima Online. I’ve always wanted to play Ultima as a hermit as a sort of absurd dadaist exercise. (via robot wisdom)
Gamasutra article on models of technological progress in God games.
There’s a general feeling in the air that application UI-designers have a lot to learn from video game design. But for some reason it seems very hard to apply game-design theory to apps, except in a tentative or completely generic sort of way. Is this because, as Jef Raskin puts it, people who are trying to get their work done generally don’t want to be playing games? Or is it just for lack of experimentation? Or…?
Though specialized, Gamasutra—The Art & Science of Making Games has several articles that are generally applicable to interface work and lots more that are just plain interesting. (via Robot Wisdom)