games


Forza Horizon 2 and Crackdown- E3

Anyone who has been to one of my talks will know I always mention Forza on the Xbox as an example of some interesting ways that games technology is used and can be used to share information. It means I can show some really nice pictures and cover any subject. I am also a big car racing fan. So I was made up when this trailer and the extra information appeared yesterday about Forza Horizon 2.

I also know from experience that it is going to be a brilliant game. Forza 5 is a track based racing game. The original Horizon let you drive around a free roam area, racing and discovering things with the same dynamics and setup at Forza5. Horizon is one of Predlet 1.0’s favourite games too.
It looks as is the Drivatars will be free roaming too, which will be interesting. How that data is collected and the illusion of the real players driving style in such a free environment is quite tricky to pull off.
From the video there is also the statement that you can drive anywhere. In Horizon there were a lot of very strong fences, unlike in Just Cause 2 or Test Drive unlimited where you could drive across any field and over a cliff. So that looks like its been rectified. Free roaming games are the best sort for a gameplay magpie like myself as I dip in and out of various games. The ones that hold my attention let me go off and make my own experiences work. Driving fits that pretty well though as the constant flow and balance of cars are a microcosm of free roaming in their own right.
As part of the E3 bonanza Turn 10 also released the “free” patch to Forza 5 to give us (back) the Nürburgring in its entirety

I dived straight in and did an 8 minute lap in a Ferrari 458 and lo and behold I ended up 41st in the world 🙂

That will not last, but it was a pretty good time. Whilst it is a very unforgiving track it can be learned and the previous Forza on the Xbox 360 had the track. They definitely have upped the detail on it, the video mentions laser scanning the most accurate model yet. No mean feat. It does suggest its a free update, and I applaud them for delivering it, however as there were not very many tracks in Forza 5 compared to Forza 4 the next gen upgrade felt a little short on content. Now releasing the ring at E3 to help promote Horizons 2… well its almost as if it that free content was held back as part of a marketing plan? Of course it was. Still, I am pleased it is here and look forward to September’s release.
Another game I was very very pleased to see was Crackdown making a return. The original game was one of my all time favourites. (back in 2007 I said I thought it might be good 🙂 )
Crackdown 2 was ok but this reboot and the original creator running it will hopefully get back to its roots but jazzed up to current tech.
The trailer is CGI bit anyone who has played Crackdown will get a little tingle in the back of the neck watching this. “We like Dominoes!”

Can that be the same game? Max and sparky

I was looking at the new updates on Xbox One including the wonderful ability to add new hard drives now, increasing the puny 500mb storage. At the same time Microsoft added games for gold, free games to subscribers. One of them was Max and the Curse of the Brotherhood.It was interesting that is is all powered by Unity3d, but that is an aside from this tale.
In the inter a boy wishes his little brother away, a magic portal open up and he is dragged into it. Max didn’t mean it so he dives in after him and ends up in a nice looking platformer where the main tool is a magic marker that lets you create things ate certain points.
I couldn’t get out of my head that the story was very similar and I had an inkling that the name was also very similar from something back in 1997.
Back then I was just joining the slightly rogue organisation called the Interactive Media Centre that was doing some interesting work with early web and at the time interactive CD-ROMs. The sort of fancy stuff that came with magazines before we all had internet access.
The team were busy working on a very early web presence for a washing powder. A game was being built which involved a boy and getting dragged into a parallel universe.
In this case the portal was related to washing. I remember the odd CGI that had been created for the narrative where the boy climbed into the washing machine. We all realised this was not a very sensible thing to be seeing. The render got redone and the story changed a little to involve getting sucked into the pattern of the shirt that was being washed. I am not sure who was doing what where as I was very new to the group. (I even turned up wearing a suit on day one, as we wore in the rest of IBM, that was a mistake of course. Not worn a work suit since 🙂 ). This moment had an impact on me as I realised the bizarre set of things we now were going to have top start worrying about and getting right and checking in this fledgling industry. There was no manual to follow we just had to work it out. So in many ways this was a catalyst for all the things I have been willing to get involved with since. Once you know there will be something weird, you may not know what, but you know you can deal with it you develop a different attitude.
Anyway it turns out this game, which I managed to track down some images of was called “Max and Sparky”. It is pretty amazing that a game from so long ago that aaas just part of a project that the team was working on is documented at all on the web. Now we take it for granted that things will be able to be found and looked up.
machine
So I was play a Max game on the new Xbox One, thinking about an old game with Max and history of the web etc. Just to complete the coincidental combination, the name of the excellent game graphic designer I am working with on this current Unity3d project is …. yes you guessed it.

Watchdogs – Benny Hill and Next Gen hide and seek

Yesterday saw the much delayed release of WatchDogs by Ubisoft. It was originally one of the flagship release games for last November when we had the console refresh of Xbox One and PS4.
Firstly, after a good few initial hours of play and investigation I will say that I do really like it. However, most of what I really like are things from other games in the city sandbox genre. They have built a new version of Grand Theft Auto/Saints Row et al. That is not a bad thing, but it would seem the newer features and ideas are extra icing on the cake. It’s not a bad thing. Genres develop and succeed because we enjoy them. We need the patterns of the familiar with some extra tweaks to keep out interest.
So in Watchdogs you are a vigilante with some tech smarts and some hacker friends. Using your trust smartphone you get to do things to people and the city of Chicago in addition to the usual running, driving, shooting, climbing, exploring and collecting of the other great games this builds upon.
Before I go any further though. What is going on with the price of the game? I pre-ordered the disc on Amazon and it arrived on release day for £42. I had nearly cancelled in favour of getting a digital download. Which on Xbox One means that you don’t need to pop the redundant (once installed) disc in the drive on order to play. I am glad I did not. The digital download, you know the easier to distribute, lower overheads, no additional production costs easy money for the distributor version, was £59.99. Nearly half as much again as the physical version direct from Microsoft. Way to go to encourage the digital age.
Anyway, back to Chicago. I found that being a fan of the free roam game I tend to only do a few of the initial missions before getting into wandering around doing side missions. I may have dived into that a bit early as some things I already had unlocked and did made less sense than if I had discovered them in the plot. That is not a criticism. To get this much free roaming variety and link in a story is very hard. I prefer to discover, and would probably be less happy if everything was locked until I had done the first level tutorial grind.
Some skills in the typical RPG progression were locked until a certain level of mission was achieved, so I think all the pointers were there to get on with the campaign and stop gaffing around 🙂
Like all Ubisoft games there is the almost default unlocking of territory by climbing up something and pressing a button. In Far Cry 3 and Assassins Creed maps are unlocked by finding the a hub and dealing with it. Here it’s a cell phone tower. The climbing tends not to be quite so vertical as Far Cry 3. It is generally a puzzle of lifting platforms, razor wire and camera jumps that is needed.
I say camera jump as this is the main new dynamic to reach places that are hard to get to. Being a hacker, if you can see a device like a camera you an take it over. You then get the camera view of the world, in digital snow covered CCTV. Once you have the camera, it is as good as being there. Which means if you can see another camera you can jump view to that. Each camera can then take you round corners up building and into server rooms for the final puzzle hack of a level without having to traverse the level. It’s a twist on the stealth sneaking and it works really well. There are also nice twists such as guards on patrol wearing cameras that you can dive into, but have to wait until the get to the right place on patrol to do whatever deed it is you need to do.
Police chases are as per Grand Theft Auto. If things are going badly, they scan and then chase you. Running and hiding to avoid them ups the tempo of the sneeking around. This is where hacking the city comes into play. You gain the ability to switch traffic lights as you approach them. Initially this seems odd as in a car chase a red light is hardly off putting. When you do switch though all the cars at the intersection get confused and tend to cause a roadblock collision. It’s a bit like Benny Hill’s role in the original Italian Job as you cause gridlock with the lights. Other things such as lifting bridges and massive pipe explosions under manhole covers also feature. You find that this sort of messing around with the environment at a distance also works in the on foot sections. Blowing a pipe or exploding a bad guys phone as a distraction gives a lot of freedom to finish a mission.
One of the parts I like in these games is jumping in a vehicle and seeing the sights. Sort of a pedestrian thing to do by not being a pedestrian. In this mode you generally get to listen to some tunes. The music so far has been good but it is not the multiple radio radio channel experience of GTA.

So you can just grab a boat and sit in the harbour and admire the sky line.
As usual there are some great weather and time of day effects. You have a hideout (or several if you do the tower climbing unlocking ) where you can go a sleep, replenish and set a time to get up. It has only forced that once by way to letting me know that was an option. Sleeping currently seems underrated 🙂
With this game being all modern day hacker the phone plays a major part. It is the scanner that pops up to tell you things about the people around you, the device that lets you blow things up and take over cameras. It does have a few apps on it too though, of course!
There is a shazam style whats this tune app and some media players for the various things you collect. There are also some games. They are referenced as a sort of digital drug experience to allow them to be a bit trippy. Again very Saints Row and like the drug missions in GTA. As a game device it allows some every weird things to happen. I have played 2 of the 4 so far. One is a 3d bouncy jump game around the city, where the platforms are colourful giant flowers that you rag doll onto and bounce around a track, with lots of psychedelic reference points. The other was a full on action game as a giant spider robot in a small part of the city. It is a destruction derby but with the ability to climb up the side of builds and even walk upside down on the elevated railway track whilst firing a massive chain gun. It is a mini game, but not that mini. I am sure the others games and the extra content on its way will be equally satisfying.
Ah yes the other content. Of course a season pass is on offer. i.e. pay in advance for the updates and unlock some content. It’s something to factor into the price of a game now too. Given digital download is the only way to do this properly, and given the price difference of downloading the full thing digitally, I wonder how much more rinsing can go on of early adopters with apparent disposable income?
The smartphone relationship is not just in the game. There is a companion app, separate from Smartglass. This provides a hacking from the map approach of flying a helicopter around and deploying squad cars. It is like Battlefield commander mode.
Then there is the hide and seek game. Whilst playing your single player game you can be invited or just invaded it would seem by a multiplayer task. I only did a few of these but the ones I did were high end hide and seek. I was given a target, I had to find that target and scan them with my phone. They get made aware of the hack and they then have to try and find you in the area amongst the crowds before a time limit expires and then “deal” with you.
The first few didn’t go to well, as I was spending more time thinking about the game dynamic than playing it. The third time was very tense and exciting. I arrived in a flash sports car but parked properly. This meant I looked like an NPC car. I scanned the other player almost by accident as I parked. I think hit the hide in the car button. Light are off engine off. You can be seen in the car. I then watched, panning the camera around as my foe frantically dashed around the block cross crossing, circling, switching direction trying to find me. There I was sat hunched down in the car. I knew if the car moved it would like like a player, if I got out the same thing. So I sat. I watched the timer go 25%, 50%, 75% and as it does so the area the player has to search decreases. It was at 98% and I was about to drive off when they clocked me. Needless to say the car was not bulletproof. It was a very memorable moment for me. It was very different to hiding as a sniper in an FPS (something I prefer not to do). It felt more like an action thriller as the hero watches as the bad guy gets closer. Of course in this case it was not a happy ending. I should imagine though my opponent felt quite a rush too in dealing with me with so little time on the clock. Its a connection to another human through gameplay. We both know how one another felt, but that was it. An anonymous game of hide and seek 🙂
It generally seems to be these moments that define games for me now. It may be the relationship you form with a games puzzle, trying to solve it, realising how much thought and evil intent to catch you out went into it (like in Limbo the game).
Watchdogs may not be the ultimate next gen game, might have more pixels on a PS4 to and Xbox One, but it has got me thinking about the genre again and about these gaming moments in a metaverse.

An interesting game tech workshop in Wales

Last week I took a day out from some rather intense Unity3d development to head off to North Wales to Bangor. My fellow BCS Animation and Games Dev colleague Dr Robert Gittins invited me to keynote at a New Computer Technologies Wales event on Animation and Games 🙂
It is becoming an annual trip to similar events and it was good to catch up with David Burden of Daden Ltd again as we always both seem to be there.
As I figured that many of the people there were going to be into lots of games tech already I did not do my usual type of presentation, well not all the way through anyway. I decided to help people understand the difference between development in a hosted virtual world like Second Life and developing from scratch with Unity3d. This made sense as we had Unity3d on the agenda and there were also projects from Wales that were SL related so I though it a good overall intro.
I have written about the difference before back here in 2010 but I thought I could add a bit extra in explaining it in person and drawing on the current project(s) without sharing too much of things that are customer confidential.

Why SL development is not Unity3d development from Ian Hughes

I did of course start with a bit about Cool Stuff Collective and how we got Unity3d on kids TV back on the haloween 2010 edition. This was the show that moved us from CITV to ITV prime saturday morning.
I added a big slide of things to consider in development that many non game developers and IT architects will recognise. Game tech development differs in content to a standard application, the infrastructure is very similar. The complication is in the “do something here” boxes of game play and the specifics of real time network interaction between clients. Which is different to many client server type applications (like the web)

After that I flipped back from tech to things like Forza 5 and in game creation of content, Kinect and Choi Kwang Do, Project Spark and of course the Oculus Rift. I was glad I popped that in as it became a theme throughout the pitches and most people mentioned it in some way shape of form 🙂

It was great to see all the other presentations too. They covered a lot of diverse ground.

Panagiotis Ritsos from Bangor University gave some more updates on the challenges of teaching and rehearsing language interpretation in virtual environments with EVIVA/IVY, the Second Life projects and now the investigations into Unity3d.

Llyr ap Cenydd from Bangor University shared his research on procedural animation and definitely won the prize for the best visuals as he showed his original procedural spider and then his amazing Oculus Rift deep sea experience with procedural generated animations of Dolphins.
Just to help in case this seems like gobbledegook. very often animations have been “recorded” either by someone or something being filmed in a special way that takes their movements and makes them available digitally as a whole. Procedural generation uses a sense and respond to the environment and the construction of the thing being animated. Things are not recorded but happen in real time because they have to. An object can be given an push or an impulse to do something, the rest is discovered but he collection of bits that make up the animated object. It is very cool stuff!

Just before the lunch break we had Joe Robins from Unity3d, the community evangelist and long term member of the Unity team show us some of the new things in Unity 5 and have a general chat about Unity. He also did a session later that afternoon as a Q&A session. It was very useful as there is always more to learn or figure out.
We all did a bit of a panel, quite a lot of talk about education of kids in tech and how to just let them get on with it with the teachers, not wait for teachers to have to become experienced programmers.
After lunch it was Pikachu time, or Pecha Kucha whatever it is called 🙂 http://www.pechakucha.org 20 slides each of 20 seconds in a fast fire format. It is really good, covers lots of grounds raises lots of questions.

David Burden of Daden Ltd went first. VR the Second Coming of Virtual Worlds exploring the sudden rise of VR and where it fits in the social adoption and tech adoption curves. A big subject, and of course VR is getting a lot of press as virtual worlds did. It is all the same, but different affordances of how to interact. They co-exist.

Andy Fawkes of Bohemia Interactive talked about the Virtual Battlespace – From Computer Game to Simulation. His company has the Arma engine that was originally used for Operation Flashpoint, and now has a spin of with the cult classic Day Z. He talked about the sort of simulations in the military space that are already heavily used and how that is only going to increase. An interesting question was realised about the impact of increasingly real simulations, his opinion was that no matter what we do currently we all still do know the difference and that the real effects of war are drastically different. The training is about the procedures to get you through that effectively. There has been concern that drone pilots, who are in effect doing real things via a simulation are to detached from the impact they have. Head to the office, fly a drone, go home to dinner. A serious but interesting point.

Gaz Thomas of The Game HomePage than gave a sparky talk on How to entrain 100 million people from your home office. Gaz is a budding new game developer. He has made lots of quick fire games, not trained as a programmer he wanted to do something on the web, set up a website but then started building games as ways to bring people to his site. This led to some very popular games, but he found he was cloned very quickly and now tries to get the mobile and web versions released at the same time. It was very inspirational and great to see such enthusiasm and get up and go.

Ralph Ferneyhough of newly formed Quantum Soup Studios talked about The New AAA of Development – Agile, Artistic, Autonomous. This was a talk about how being small and willing to try newer things is much more possible and needed that the constant churn in the games industry of the sequel to the sequel of the sequel. The sums of money involved and sizes of projects leads to stagnation. It was great to hear from someone who has been in the industry for a while branching out from corporate life. A fellow escapee, though from a different industry vertical.

Chris Payne of Games Dev North Wales gave the final talk on Hollywood vs VR:The Challenge Ahead. Chris works in the games industry and for several years has been a virtual camera expert. If you have tried to make cameras work in games, or played one where it was not quite right you will appreciate this is a very intricate skill. He also makes films and pop videos. It was interesting to hear about the challenges that attempting to do 360 VR films is going to have for what is a framed 2d medium. Chris showed a multi camera picture of a sphere with lenses poking out all around it, rather like the star wars training drone on the Millennium Falcon that Luke tries his light sabre with. This new camera shoots in all directions. Chris explain though that it was not possible to build one that was stereoscopic. The type of parallax and offsets that are needed can only really be done post filming. So a lot has to be done to make this giant 360 thing able to be interacted with in a headset like the rift. However that is just the start of the problems. As he pointed out, the language of cinema, the tricks of the trade just don’t work when you can look anywhere and see anything. Sets can’t have crew behind the camera as there is no behind the camera. Story tellers have to consider if you are in the scene and hence acknowledged or a floating observer, focus pulls to gain attention don’t work. Instead game techniques to attract you to the key story elements are needed. Chris proposed that as rendering gets better it is more likely that the VR movies are going to be all realtime CGI in order to be able to get around the physical problems of filming. It is a fascinating subject!

So it was well worth the 4am start to drive the 600 miles round trip and back by 10pm 🙂

Game mechanics are not …

I often get involved in conversations and projects about how to engage people with technology. This is, of course, often using game technology to connect people, to collect and show information or just to hang out and chat or meet. It covers nearly every project I do. It is as applicable to a TV show like the Cool Stuff Collective as it was to corporate life’s use of virtual worlds. There is always a line of confusion though. It is around what enables the technology and what you actually do with it.

“A pack of cards is not a game”

Building with any technology, whether it is pieces of paper with pictures on or with virtual environments across a network does not mean something is a game yet.
The best reference for all this is of course Raph Koster’s Theory of Game Design which I suggest everyone read 🙂

This book sets out a lot of the principles of what makes something interesting to do, to play. How and when repetition and skill gets trumped by boredom and familiarity.
I don’t want to get embroiled in the discussion of what “Gamification”is (too late) but very often it focuses on producing the equivalent of pack of cards. The mechanics of a potential game. This needs to happen but at it’s heart the question should be what are people going to do with the pack of cards.
Cards are a good example as most people have seen or played cards at some point. They are an easy form of technology to understand. There is a mathematical order to them, there is a visual design component. A real pack of cards also has a tactile element. Yet that pack of cards can be used for thousands of different types of game. It is the game mechanic that defines the game and the cards are just a small (but essential) component in the mix. I am sure many people have sat down with their family on holiday with a pack of cards and said “right what do we play then?”. The cards don’t tell you, they are just a medium in which to operate. So you can’t always expect a freeform environment to get people to play in. Some will of course, some people find enjoyment or mischief in any environment which leads to types of gameplay.
Card games very often feature chance. Luck places a big part however so can skill and experience. If you think of high stakes Poker games millions of pounds/dollars change hands on the turn of a card. However it is the ability to read people, to bluff and double bluff as much as the ability to calculate odds that apply. Yet the same cards can be used to play a simple game of snap. A reaction game, visual matches, fast reactions maybe a little sleight of hand as the cards are turned over.
Cards also have emergent game play. I know as a kid I used cards to layout race tracks for matchbox cars. People attempt balancing games making houses of cards and of course there are magic tricks.
So approaching a game of any sort we need to not just ask how the technology will work but find a few seeds of an idea of who is interacting with what and why. Is there jeopardy? is there luck? is there teamwork? However we should also not restrict ourselves to tightly defining rules. Allowing gameplay to be discovered.
Discovery though only really comes with familiarity or the need to break the rules. So any game needs some rules, some structure and an idea or most people (not all) are going to drop out or be less bothered. Something has to matter. There are lots of triggers to make things matter, but they don’t just happen. Someone has to make something, relate it to something.
Having been a gamer for many years I still find I play games both as a player and as a developer, I also realise I look at them as a game designer too. Why did that make me feel I needed to continues, what was so cool about that.
We all played games as kids, made up games, set rules and parameters, then found ways around them in a spirit of fun. Tapping into that as adults is much harder. People are less willing to think about why. So like many skills we all have it, its a question of unwrapping the gift of play and exploring it 🙂

Is Statue?

I had a all to rare go on Call Of Duty on the Xbox One yesterday. I downloaded the latest map pack and I was intrigued as I ran around an Aztec ruin against bots that I heard one of them shout “enemy over by the statue”. I had not really noticed specific voice prompts of that nature before. However after a bit of exploring, and obviously getting fragged a lot I found the statue and I was pleasantly surprised to see this.

I haven’t explored the other levels too much yet but I am as always intrigued by the level design and the spirit and atmosphere these design elements create.
Checking the other add-ons it I also noticed that COD has gone all Sat-Nav on us. There are additional voice packs for the game commentary and in particular you can have the dulcet tones of Snoop Dog keeping you up to date on the game. (‘big fan am I’ of the Yoda voice on my Iphone TomTom Sat-Nav app).
Whilst on the subject of persona, Kinect Sports Rivals arrived a few weeks ago. It has a number of sports to try some of which differ from the usual motion sports. There is go course tennis and ten pin bowling, but without the controller so no risk of launching one into the TV. There is Jet Bike riding across waves, football(soccer), shooting, and the intriguing rock climbing too. What I found even more interesting was the kinect being used to scan me and make an avatar. Often the web cam style face camera pastes textures on a standard rig. This however creates a cartoon character of you. So clearly there are a set of noses, eyes etc and it picks ones close to the parameters. It starts by scanning your body shape then asks you to get close in to look at your face. I ran this a couple of times as I was intrigued when it asked me to remove my glasses (which I thought was a generic message) but then put glasses on my avatar. When I took the glasses off before I started it did not ask me to remove them and I had a specs free avatar. You can of course customise the avatar once this scan has been done but it seemed to work very well.

As I mentioned its caricature 🙂

BCS Bristol – Guitars and games, changing peoples lives with martial arts

Yesterday I braved the inclement weather and headed of to a room at Bristol university to give one of my talks to BCS Bristol. I had arranged to do this some time ago, probably when we were moving house back in May so I had sent a possible title and was planning to send an abstract. However, I forgot! so the the invite just said “Guitars and games, changing peoples lives with martial arts” with Ian Hughes. I did have my usual bio in there so it was not all bad. Luckily there were lots of interested or intrigued people who came along last night and I had a great time sharing, telling the stories of my tech journey that got me to Choi Kwang Do. Explaining just how cool Rocksmith 2014 is and also showed everyone the Oculus Rift and let those that wanted to have a go. The presentation is of course a mix, match and evolution of many of my previous ones, but here is it, minus the many videos with some links to them instead. It also features links to the local Bristol CKD school as I said I urge everyone to just go and take a look at how friendly and invigorating Choi Kwang Do is.
Thankyou to everyone at BCS Bristol. Thankyou also for the very kind comments and great conversations afterwards. It means a great deal to me that I help people see things in a new light through sharing these personal experiences powered by game technology.

I should add that the 90 miles home was a good straight run in the car, hardly any “weather” to speak of. Quite a relief.

Project Spark – looking good

I signed up for the Microsoft Project Spark beta initially for windows 8.1 but soon cross platform for Xbox 360 and Xbox one. It is a game building tool/environment/experience. It is still of course in its early stages but I was immediately impressed by the build and adventure tutorial.
Being used to environment like Second Life, Minecraft and also programming environments like Unity3d everything is instantly familiar.

Objects are dragged into the environment from a palette. These objects are detailed models not just graphic primitives. People, trees, goblins etc. In that respect it is very similar to Disney Infinity. You are also presented with lots of terrain tools. Sculpting, shaping and painting the environment.
It is clear though that there is much more under the covers. Each object has a “brain” associated with it. This reveals a vast range of interactions and behaviours that can be added to any object. This is done in a very “scratch” or LEGO programming language way. A line consists of a When and a Do programming block. When “wads” Do “move” is the first one it gets you to do. However there are lots of lines that can be added and a huge range of detection, action responses.
Before you know it you are have a single player character, who can run jump and shoot, a mountain range you have created and a bad guy goblin who, when you click test, chases after your.
I set the predlets on it, letting them just follow the tutorial. They have a lot of minecraft building experience and have also programmed a little in scratch. They were both instantly hooked and interested.

Predlet 2.0 left to his own devices just started not quite following the tutorial. It was directing you to create a normal size person, normal size goblin, but a huge mountain and a larger than the default tree. Within seconds he was laughing and playing a little game of escape the giant goblins. He had rescaled the default goblin, cloned it and had giants something around after him. It was an inventive step that is where just letting kids loose on these tools is a joy.

There are some other interesting modes other than pure creation too. You can access a little big planet style carousel of user generated content and play other peoples creations. You can also take those and see how they work and remix them. There is also “crossroads” which is a create your own adventure. Here the environment asks you questions as part of game play. You discover a ? and you pick from a list. Gradually you create a whole mini adventure level but also play as you go along. There will be lots of templates in the future, but for now the one there shows the potential.
it is not all good news though. There is of course a cost to all this freemium game creation. The basic palette of objects and the styles of levels are constantly offering a view of things you don’t own. You are enticed to buy objects or styles etc all the time. Each object can be bought for cash or by earning and grinding game creation time. The balance of this and the potential cost and pester power of needing to have x to play y will be interesting. There is an option to pay an amount (the prices are likely to constantly change) which gives you access to all the content whilst that subscription is valid. There is an implication in some of the video streams by the developers that if you keep using Project Spark you will earn enough in game credit to pay for the next months full time access. So it seems they have the option to appeal to all sorts of people and ways of paying.
Of course we have to generally pay for content, 3d models out in the world are not usually free. Code, animation rigs etc all cost so it is not wrong to be charging for things. It will depend how much we can do with the base kit, what offers arrive, how much time is required to earn credits, whether there is a linkage of family accounts to help kids work together and earn credits etc.
For now, it looks great and offers an very good experience, has some great potential and I can’t wait till I get to see my windows 8.1 creations appearing on my xbox one and vice versa.
Got to go, a giant Goblin has 3d printed itself from predlet 2.0’2 creation and is stomping down the garden

Gameduino 2 vs Raspberry Pi?

Often when I use examples referring to the Arduino micro controller board I am asked about the Raspberry PI. It is often implied that the PI, with much more function, is “better” than the delightful simplicity of the Arduino.
Arduino’s are a programmable switch. They require almost no additional setup. They let people learn to code simple programs that, with the addition of a few wires, turn lights on and off, make sounds etc. It blends the physical and the digital( and is in my TV showreel). In it’s raw form its simplicity is its key.
The Raspberry PI is the other end of the spectrum. It is a full computer. Hence it can do everything Arduino does and lots more, but… it takes a different level of set up.
Typically getting a PI running requires the user to do some basic system administration, getting an operating system (picking one from the many available) and then plugging in keyboards and monitors. When you do though you then have lots of choice of languages to use, development environments etc.
Both are great, and so this is really not a versus platform war.
Recently I received my additional shield for the Arduino. (A shield is an additional bit of hardware providing extra function to the Arduino) This one is called GameDuino2.

Many other shields provide things like network connectivity, more ports etc. This Kickstarter funded shield instead adds a screen to the Arduino. However it is much more than that. The screen is touch sensitive and there is also a tilt sensor. In addition it provides hardware to be able to put interesting visuals on the screen. It extends the Arduino development environment with some more library calls and is specifically designed (as indicated in the name) for building games.
I have looked at the extensive tutorial code. It seems that it is brilliantly straight forward.

GD.get_inputs();

This will simply get the details of any touch interaction on the screen.
Whilst this might be straightforward to do on other devices like iOS, but the lack of expense and the simplicity of the environment to be able to develop or prototype a touch based application is fantastic. All the Xcode, developer registration etc needed to just begin to tinker is obviously off putting for many people.
There is much more though with GameDuino2 things like hardware sprites, audio and other game goodness.
Not only that though, to quote the kickstarter information “Does it work on the Raspberry PI? Yes, it hooks up directly to SPI port on C13 on the Pi. And Raspberry Pi software support is done, so the GD library and samples/demos/games all run fine on the Pi.” So you can combine both worlds.
Right at the moment though one of my Raspberry PI’s is being a dedicated set top box for the TV using the XMBC open source media centre version Openelec something the Arduino certainly can’t do 🙂
Either way go out, get one or both and enjoy coding and sharing.

COPPA seems to be the problem – Some companies are lazy?

It seems that this needs a breakout post as a follow on from trying to allow my 7 year old son Predlet 2.0 to use the online features of FIFA 14. In trying to manage his account(s) and finding I was not able to I ended up on the phone to EA support. After a little while of too and fro with 1st level support I was transferred to an more knowledgable person.
I was told, quite frankly, that because of US federal law and the COPPA(Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) regulations anyone under 13 gets more privacy protection. I was happy with that, it makes sense.
Next it seems that EA/Origin create an account based on the birthdate on Xbox One. Once they know the person is under 13 they create a Minor account. Again, it makes sense.
Next it seems that no-one in EA is able to edit the minor’s account regardless of the parents wishes until they are 13 (yes that is no-one!). The excuse being, US federal law doesn’t let them.
This is of course where it gets a odd, and incorrect.
COPPA appears to place more restrictions on what companies do with under 13’s, triggered at any point by any service anywhere asking or discovering a date of birth. Then making the company duty bound to protect the information further.
For EA this amounts to a total ban on under 13’s on pretty much any online title regardless of PEGI rating or parental wishes. By reading the parental approval I was apparently giving approval to this process not giving approval as a parent to allow access.
I wondered how any service anywhere could be used by kids, and comply with US law. I looked at the Moshi Monsters COPPA statement. That appears that they have put in the work and the words to cover COPPA (link is here)

As part of the registration process, we require demographic information (gender, country of residence and birth date); we encourage you to submit this information so we can provide you a more personalized experience. We limit the information we collect, both actively (i.e., what we ask kids) and passively (what we collect through use of web tracking mechanisms like “cookies”) to that which is necessary for kids to take part in a particular Moshi Monsters game activity.

I was directed to EA’s COPPA statement by the support on the phone.
They have a lot less text.

2. Why do you now need an age gate?
Changes to COPPA now require age verification for some of our games that use information gathered by the app and gameplay of the game. According to COPPA, players of these games now have to be age 13 or older.

3. If I’m under 13 years old, will I still be able to play EA mobile games?
For most games, yes. For games that require it, players will see the age verification check the first time you launch or log into the game on or after June 13, 2013. Once the verification is complete, you’ll be able to enter into your game.

For certain games, players under the age of 13 won’t be able to continue. We’ve worked to ensure this is not the case for as many games as possible. These are new requirements that weren’t in place when we first launched our games, and while we must make every effort to stay in compliance with such important laws, we hate that it comes at the cost of some of our players.

The US government provide a clear description of COPPA though here

As a parent, you have control over the personal information companies collect online from your kids under 13. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act gives you tools to do that. The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule. If a site or service is covered by COPPA, it has to get your consent before collecting personal information from your child and it has to honor your choices about how that information is used.

Nothing in COPPA says that kids can’t be on services. It says that parental permission is needed and security measures need to be in place.

So it is fairly clear that EA have taken the route of just to bothering. Deciding it was too difficult to protect the data. Which of course doesn’t bode well for the rest of us if the data is not secure. They have not provided the parental approval and maintenance tools though even at this basic level. As it stands right now they have an Origin account for predlet 2.0 bound to his Xbox Live account. They have captured his date of birth, yet they do not allow me as a parent to remove that account, or even see if the date of birth is correct?

The online features they use and the data collection they make, the communication options etc are all standard now. I would be more than happy if they use the parental approval system, or they just did not allow an Origin account to be created at all, which is effectively what happens which then cripples the online activity on any EA game on the Xbox One. You cannot logoff from origin, you cannot unbound an Xbox Live ID from EA Origin ID.

Whilst they could not recommend lying about age the implication was that it was better to have another Xbox Live account, with a “different” date of birth and create an EA Origin account with that. That hardly seems to be the right approach to have to lie about age or give access to a full adult account on systems just because EA don’t have the will or the ability to follow the rules?

So parents, if you want your kids to explore and enjoy online gaming activity, with your overwatch then avoid EA Origin games. Showing kids the right way to behave and interact online with one another seems to have to start by setting a bad example and bypassing a system because a large corporate entity can’t find a way to comply sensibly?