Today I cut a video for a conference presentation, that may or may not make the cut. However I was happy with my 5 minute monologue. A single take I might add! Edited it all up threw up some overlays and viola.
Its about AR, where that fits with virtual worlds and 3d printers. Obvious really.
See what you think.
metaverse
No not Snowcrash, Modern Warfare 2 updates
The last few hours have been about the release of an update to one of the most popular online games of recent years. Modern Warfare 2. The update, or “stimulus package” as it is entitled is a new collection of maps to engage in multiplayer matches online. The pressure that Xbox Live was put under and the Modern Warfare system, must have been very intense as the game is still highly played and clearly most people were geared up to download it and to spend 1200 Microsoft points on Xbox Live (though that seems a little steep for 5 maps).
DLC is an interesting approach to keeping a game alive, the game becomes a framework or container for us to be sold new virtual goods. People often assume virtual goods are t-shirts and posters but this is highly engaging virtual content.
What is also interesting is that the levels will feel different each game. This is because of the unknown factor of other people and of variations to the games, team deathmatch, capture the flag etc that give a different dynamic every time.
What we end up with is an event in virtual space, with some other people joining in and a degree of structure to the event. It may be twitch reaction shooting and situational awareness but it is an important interaction to help inform the non game virtual worlds.
One of the levels features an oddly spooky mannequin factory that in Snowcrash you might consider these are avatars of people with lower end kit and connections to this virtual world.
Actually they are just scenery. Though when you come barrelling into the room tuned to shoot at anything human shaped they are a little disconcerting en masse.
The only way is up – Just Cause 2
Recently I have been exploring the new free-roaming island based game of Just Cause 2 on the 360. I was a fan of the original and anything that features a high degree of independence of action, not just on the rails story appeals to me. There is an interesting dynamic in such games though, that in not following the story all the time it feels as if you may be missing out, not doing as you are told. This may be my legacy of gaming in that much of what we have grown up doing has been to follow a plot. It is akin to listening to the radio rather than picking your own playlist on an MP3 player. The latter is rewarding but the former is much easier and my just lead you to some new piece of music you had not considered.
I have to say that Just Cause 2 has an immense map. You have 400 square miles of map to explore. Very importantly though that is not all, there is very much a use of height in this game. Buildings and mountains can all be traversed, and subsequently jumped off again with some fantastic base jumping elements. In addition you can take to the skies in helicopters, jets and commercial airliners too. Even without the use of the upcoming 3d it manages to generate a fantastic feeling of vertigo.
Another feature of a sandbox environment is the ability to deal with things in inventive ways. Your character features a grappling hook that does the basics such as hanging out of a helicopter even higher in the air.
However it also is able to be used as a tool by attaching both ends of it to things and using physics.
A prime example was when my car ended up on its side propped against a tree, yes I was driving up a mountain in a “I wonder if this will work moment”. It was an obvious thing to do to grapple the car, attach the other end to a very large rock and see what happened. It righted the car. It then made me feel I had been clever and inventive dealing with a situation of my own creation.
There are somewhat dubious references to the imagery of the gulf war in that the islands dictator has large statues dotted around the island. Part of your destructive game play means you can attach the grapple to the statue and then to a vehicle and attempt to pull down the statue.
Sandbox games are the closest to what we see in virtual worlds in crossover terms. Just Cause 2 is a single player game, in part because the destruction you create is really personalising your island. However the balance between “give me something to do” and “I am just going to find something to do” may be something the VW providers and content creators need to consider in helping people find a narrative, either social or business related.
Getting organized at a legal level.
On Friday I was lucky enough to be asked to join a panel at a Governance in Virtual Worlds event in SL. It was hosted for Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law Arizona State University by the guys at World2Worlds
We were there to discuss “are the trappings of place-based governance the best model for virtual worlds? Given a choice, do people prefer corporate-style management to political government? What are the opportunities and perils of each model? Are hybrid forms evolving in virtual practice?”
It is always interesting to be a panelist or presenter at hosted events like this, as just as in a physical venue it is no always apparent the amount of organisation and attention to detail the goes into getting everyone where they need to be.
Kim/Rissa and John at World2Worlds (and the rest of the team) were busy all the time during the event.
From the initial elements of having a reception for panelists and attendees complete with catering
to the more technical challenge of the panelists being in a specific Skype chat as well as in SL in voice to help bridge and mitigate any voice issues and broadcast what we had to say to the web. The initial gathering for this was akin to a green room at a physical event where we chatted and got organised before taking to the stage.
I am often struck with how people can assume that online means easy and no effort, when in fact the effort required is the same from the organizers. Getting the agenda sorted out, dealing with people turning up, advertizing the event (based on a track record of doing good events), getting the great audience that we had to come along all take time and persistent effort.
World2Worlds always do a fantastic job and so a huge thankyou to them from me.
More Interesting Ps3 Home content
I ended up back in PS3 Home again this weekend, mainly to take my predator AV for a walk again. There were some significant updates. Most notable was the XMB style navigation replacing the graph paper and tiles map that we had before. It is certainly quicker, though had a hint of Fisher Price about it.
GAME stores in the UK had a brand new space, primarily about banner adds and game trailers, though they had a hop across some buttons mini game that is really hard to complete, but if you do you get a spacesuit AV to show off.
In general its a moonbase
I had a great encouter with a fellow Yautja. Of course with these custom AV’s there is very little personalisation. However we stood and kind of gestured and bowed and saluted followed by some take turns break dancing. A funny moment.
More important than the game space though were some purchasable more dynamic “apartments”. The basic lost apartment or treehouse are ok but you cant do much with them, the odd bit of furniture, and as far as I know in Europe we are not trusted to share our own photos and videos in our rooms. Which makes them…. well… pointless and boring.
The first one I tried was a nightclub, a large space called musicality.
This space has a stage with 4 sets of instruments on it for you and friends to mix sequences and loops.
I quite like these sort of multitrack music sequencers so having a multiplayer version is great. I have not spotted how to buy the extra sample packs but the space does include a t-shirt shop. Some interesting integration.
The next space that turned up is a London Pub. Which does what it says on the virtual tin. Its a bar, seats, fire dart board and toilet. Some nice animations out through the window with some london red buses zooming past. The darts games and wall mounted tv for high scores and friends scores is a great touch.
It also featured a built-in web browser at the till behind the bar and you can ring the bell for time.
It was of course interesting and amusing to find myself doing this in a virtual world.
Maybe there is an interesting future emerging for Home now, though they should hurry up I think.
One final great change is that the standard movie theatres in the main square now are real spaces. Previously you entered and a flat screen showing some seats just blocked the view of streaming video. It was very poor. Now it is a space, with seats and you can sit with people, i.e. a shared experience at last!
Heavy Rain – Heavy Narrative
I hope this is spoiler free in talking about Heavy Rain.
In all the DotGovLabs games workshops we have had discussion around narrative and how a game experience needs that in some form. Heavy Rain has come up a lot in that as a prime example of both story and character engagement. We also have often ended up talking about fun. Often in the fun discussion zany, wacky, quirky, frivolous are the natural partners to that. However we have also all been discussion challenge, and how solving something hard, achieving a complex task is rewarding and fun, but in a different way.
I had read a lot about Heavy rain, seen the pictures and heard others say how unusual it felt to engage with. Last night in a 4 hour stint I could not put Heavy Rain down, and there is a lot more to come story wise it would seem.
It certainly pushes some emotional buttons for me as a parent and has an air of intrigue about it that is not quite a horror film style fear but its suitably slow pace give you a lot of time to think and reflect of whats going on.
The acting in this form both the technology of the facial expressions to the brilliant voice talents blended with a varied set of camera angles and film style techniques have certainly moved this sort of story telling forward. It has clearly learned and extended its predecessor Fahrenheit, but cranks up the emotions even more.
The game mechanic is very simple, and is a serious of twin stick gestures at vary speeds or slightly more complex quicktime “Simon Says”. When something more action packed than walking around investigating happens you are bounced from you reflective and pondering mood into an almost panic. Its all adrenalin, but seems to be a different flavour flowing.
The plot has a central character and I felt I was in his shoes, though it was not too big a leap to segue into the other characters just as in a back story in a film. Feeling sorry for the character and wanting to help yet wondering if he is the one that needs help is key to this story.
At points when you think things are just settling down a curve ball is thrown and one of the most unpleasant levels I have played was what seemed to be a hallucination of all the crowds in a train station as static dummies, paused in time, slightly greyed out. You have to walk through them and as you touch them they crumple to the floor. It actually reminded me of the Modern Warfare 2 infamous airport scene, there innocent civilians are cut down by the team you have to work with and you can do little about it, its a shock, but more of a single moment out of context with the rest of MW2. Here in Heavy Rain, there is nothing you can do about the people either, you know its a dream, the panic of the slow chase you are in and watching people drop like flies will stick with me for while. It’s very spooky.
I am really looking forward to getting through this story now, likewise seeing how the apparent choices make a difference in the long run, at the moment if its making a difference its very subtle.
One last think, I love the FBI agents desktop AR. Roll on when we have that for real, great virtual world crossover.
***Update After several solid late night sessions I finished Heavy Rain last night. It certainly picked up the pace and told an intriguing story. There were moments I gasped and felt a variety of emotions form revulsion to relief and an undercurrent of sadness. Spending that much time with so few characters makes this feel like a TV mini series rather than a film. I usually wander from most games before finishing them as over the years the endings have let me down and I have felt it better to leave the thing hanging in the air as a great memory. This one though…. absolutely needs to be finished. What a great piece of entertainment. Thankyou Quantic Dream
Design outside the box – gaming instrumentation
This is a fantastic video talk from Jesse Schell on the future of points, achievements and emergent game play. What happens when designers get hold of the merge of real and gaming life. I like this a lot as it fits very well with the sorts of things I am doing with a project at the moment.
Restaurants Vs Home Cooking, Distributed Vs Local
I have been wrangling with explaining how a business or idea can be spread across user generated content platforms with as much impact as attempting to create a platform of your own.
The social and technology landscape that surrounds us right now has fundamentally shifted opportunities for people to get things done. If you want to do something there probably is a place, space, server or service where you can experiment with your idea without the need to invest huge sums of money and hours of effort in getting the entire full featured gizmo up and running.
Businesses that suggest they are going to inject themselves into the places where people already are, in particular in online activities are often viewed as a little odd. It is part of the reason people get confused by virtual worlds like Second Life. There is the business of Linden Lab in creating the tools, running the servers etc. However there is also the creativity of the residents and users of the places in that world. Those people are able to experiment with ideas of how to interact in a virtual environment without having to build an entire one. Likewise people who want to experiment with how to build one and run one can now also do that due to the open source Opensim.
That is not to say there are not huge rewards for those platforms and middleware providers that make it easy for everyone to do the thing that they want, but presence in another place makes a great deal of sense. If your core business is story telling why should you need to bother about how a light shading technique is coded in a 3d engine.
I think we have always had this concept, but for some reason its got lost in attempting to compartmentalise business ideas. If you are a RL shopkeeper you do not tend to build the shop and the street it is in.
The exciting thing is that both concepts can co-exist. Just as restaurants and people cooking at home are really the same thing, but just there for different levels and quality of experience.
So thinking about explaining a truly web distributed experience over user generated content platforms on the web is more like considering cookbooks and utensils for the home market, spread in lots of different places, used in lots of different ways as opposed to the very focused, very local experience of a restaurant.
PS3 Home – Just got better
I have often been a bit annoyed by PS3 home that I did not feel comfortable with my avatar. I had a few custom clothes that were fun, but the lack of green hair just grated.
Now though with the release of the game AvP (which I have on my Xbox) some limited edition content has been made available.
There is a predator helmet and body suit (cost about £2.00)
So I bought it last night and whilst I cannot overlay my jacket as in Second Life it did feel just right. Odd as that may seem.
It made posing and dancing even funnier than it has been before
It also leads to the clash of content that worries many people about interoperability
I am also sure this is not seen in too many Audi showrooms
The models and movement and lighting are all very high grade as you would expect. Though I think it still shows the fantastic skill of Sythia Veil who created my predator AV in Second Life over 4 years ago with just the tools in SL !
Which I might add if I had not had so much time and emotion invested in that look I would not have paid to have that in PS3 Home and then written this post singing it praises. Note, there is a lot to be said for user created content and fan art!
Exploring the galaxy
I just tried to put google sky on a media surface on the inside surface of a sphere in #slviewer2
It sort of works. Of course if you do put a web surface on the inside of a sphere and want to drive it you have to be able to click on it 🙂 I think there is some scope for some interesting holodeck effects and animations though using web content.
I was experimenting with some spherical photos out on the web, as we really have a qtvr viewer like viewer thats much easier to control for people