What if life was more like a video game..
So after writing about decisions and their consequences in Mass Effect 2, so about games trying to mimic life more and more in some ways, this here is a nice example from the opposite end of the spectrum leading to games and real life merging over time:
What when life turns more into a video game.
In this Dice presentation that is making the rounds right now, Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of entertainment and technology, talks about a likely future vision where rpg- risk, reward and achivment elements from games merge with community features of facebook and the good old real life.
Scary and appealing on different ends, definitely interesting.
Also made me think of area 5´s nice new intro song =) (even though i liked the old one better =( =) )
February 26th, 2010 at 1:21 am
Those who cant do, teach
February 26th, 2010 at 6:42 am
wow, that´s a rough view on teaching =)
Me personally i had both good and bad experiences with teachers in the past, i felt like those were the best ones who knew what they were talking about and passionate about passing on the knowledge.
So people who either were working in the industry before or could have easily gotten a top job in their field in the industry if they wanted to.
Depending on which (type of) school system one attends it probably varies heavily whether that group of passionate ideal teachers is in the majority or minority.
There are meanwhile more and more game design and development related scholarship ways popping up around the world for example, back when i was at school the only such options which were noteworthy at all in Germany were quite expensive private schools which mostly had people from the industry hired as profs for a year or two, for public schools it still was more common to not be able to select any courses freely and many teachers held the same courses with the same papers for twenty years giving the feeling the school was the place they wanted to be in the least.
So yeah, i understand both a positive and a negative vibe when its about such things =)
June 17th, 2010 at 2:37 am
Aint you gonna update this thing anymore?
June 17th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I will, though i was a bit torn apart regarding what to post
Let´s go through some options:
Work and family:
I have a lot going on with family and work these days, but i´m not into posting about family things that often here and regarding things i work on right now its hush hush keep it private until release kinda stuff..
Flash, iPhone, html5, Apple and third party engines:
I thought in between about writing a long in depth article about flash, iPhone, html5, Apple and third party engines etc but hey, the fronts are pretty clear meanwhile and after spending way too much time reading and talking about these things i´m at the state that i think its just best that everyone uses what he thinks is cool and that´s that =)
More on collectibles and achievements in games and real life:
Regarding this blog entry i´ve been thinking about achievements and collectibles and how they affect the ways we play games and when they are good and when bad and what types of achievments and unlockables are nice and fitting and which ones not for quite a while recently.
I feel like some game types are ideal for achievements, unlockables and collectibles, constantly having the next nicer carrot on the stick in front of you to hunt for, but for other game types where other things are more important achievements and basic collectibles for collectibles sake can be somewhat annoying.
A good example case is Alan Wake on the xbox 360 which i played some recently, its a game with great atmo, tarnished some by the side that for the actual gameplay they relied way too much on shooter mechanics for my taste for what that game tries to do.
Well, in that there are two types of collectibles, one is manuscript pages and the other coffee termos cans.
The manuscript pages are one of the best collectible objects of any game, because each tells a bit of the story, so its nice to collect them to get more background info, sometimes even in useful gameplaywise way because what´s told on the page can be a glimpse part of what´s to come in the gameplay soon so one can get prepared or scared in advance.
They also fit well into the game world and game´s storyline because the concept behind the game is that you´re controlling a writer who has written this mystery book manuscript he doesn´t remember writing and now you experience the storyline of that book yourself while trying to solve the mystery around it and the disappearance of your loved one.
The termos cans on the other side are a great example for a total annoying filler type collectible: they have no kind of noticable story or gameplay sense, besides it being totally distracting and negative for the atmo to walk around in the dark woods and then you stumble upon seemingly randomly placed termos cans in the scenery.
Sure i get why they are there, to give yet another reason for exploring the environments and making the gameplay time longer, but man did each of those put me out of the game world and remind me each time: hey, its a game with collectibles, keep on looking for cans..
So yeah, similar things could be said about achievements in many cases, sometimes its fun to unlock em but sometimes it can lead to one totally missing the actual intention in gameplay or storyline thanks to being on the hunt for unlocking an achievement.
It reminds me of some of my worst teachers in my school days. You know, the good ones would motivate one by making the actual content interesting and giving it relevance and reference, some of the bad ones would rather tell one: Hey, if you don´t find it interesting, learn it for the grade at the end of the year. Which, yeah, may work out for some but to me always made the course feel totally senseless and unappealing then.
On the E3 2010 press conferences:
I watched Sony´s, Microsoft´s and Nintendo´s press conferences at E3 this year.
in a nutshell: I think Nintendo clearly had the best performance this year.
After very weak showings in the past few years where they had clearly misinterpreted the E3 as some kind of casual soccer mom convention, this year they had a huge list of things appealing to core gamers. Next up the Nintendo 3DS presented there seems to work really well on the 3D side so that automatically makes it way more appealing than any stereoscopic glasses requiring 3D tech by any of the competitors.
(With the Nintendo 3Ds it gives a 3D depth perception which seemingly works great when looked at the device in certain distance and angle, it goes all wonky when distance or angle is not fine, but yeah, at the right distance and angle it works great)
The two front facing cameras on the device front which can be used to make 3d photos excite me just like being able to watch 3d movies without glasses.
I´m sure such things will be adopted among portable devices rapidly.
And even without the 3D (which they cleverly allow to tone down with a slider) its still a technically impressive device thanks to the great graphics which seem to be on par or above gamecube level, bigger screen and nice analogue stick pad.
Hm, would love to develop something for that
So yeah, there are so many things i could ramble about, its just a matter of deciding what to talk about and finding the time to write it down in halfway interesting form
June 20th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
3d please
June 23rd, 2010 at 7:04 am
well, that was short =)
I´m not sure what you´re asking for, is it you´d like to hear more about stereoscopic or other sorts of depth illusion giving 3d tech for consoles or traditional realtime 3d graphics in general or the 3d stuff i work on?
Btw, my question also shows another problem with this stereoscopic 3d stuff: they should think of a new marketing term for it, since, well, just saying 3d makes different groups think of different things.
Anyway:
I´ll ramble some on depth illusion giving stereoscopic 3d for a start =)
Regarding the depth illusion giving 3d of the Nintendo 3ds and the stereoscopic 3d being hyped at cinemas and for tvs and home consoles now:
Personally i feel like Nintendo has the best solution there right now, the way they do it with the upcoming Nintendo 3ds allows them, thanks to it being only a small screen a single person looks at in short distances and certain angle, to have it work without requiring any kind of 3d glasses to be put on.
Then they also have that 2d-3d slider which allows to tone down the 3d effect to a point where one feels comfortable.
Both these points together make this the best solution right now in my opinion.
The kind of stereoscopic 3d used at cinemas and being hyped for tvs and coming to ps3 etc now requires 3d glasses to be put on, there are a few different implementations for those, sadly the currently most pushed flavor is using shutter glasses.
Have a look here for more info on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_glasses
in short they flicker between dark and showing a picture which, well, gives a flickering effect and makes the image appear darker/ less detailed/ more washed out.
The flickering next to the stereoscopic effect itself also seems to give many a headache after having the glasses on for a while.
I luckily didn´t get a headache or any other heavy issues when trying any of this depth perception giving 3d tech and i found the few times i watched a 3d movie at a cinema quite enjoyable but that also showed me in a few ways why i think this way of doing stereoscopic 3d will in my opinion not become widely popular for tvs or home console usage.
People with glasses have to put a second set of glasses on which can get uncomfortable quickly, people without glasses are usually not used to wearing glasses at all and already don´t find wearing just one set comfortable.
Then there´s the side that the picture one looks at looks quite a bit worse with shutter glasses on thanks to the flickering and darker tone which also makes thing appear less detailed.
The previous last push of the tv manufacturers was HD and selling a lot of people HD TVs worked out greatly because it brought many advantages and few to no noticable disadvantages.
With depth perception giving tvs and console gaming requiring 3d glasses its the opposite right now, there´s only one clear advantage (the illusion of depth) and besides that right now many disadvantages.
I just can´t picture many, in their daily life, when watching tv or playing home console games, putting on 3d glasses all the time to get an illusion of depth in the picture but then also a less detailed, darker and flickering image.
Its early days though regarding this stuff, i´m sure with time they´ll iron out the quirks some more and once it goes to the step where no glasses are required anymore and it comes as standard feature of new tvs things will look a bit different on that end =)
Until then, and as long as it still requires 3d glasses for at home usage, well, i won´t rush out to get a new tv for that, and if my tv breaks and i get a new one that supports it as standard feature, then i´d still only use the shutter glasses solution for fun as gimmick once every few months at best, not daily for sure =)
As someone developing games i usually also always look at new tech from the angle of would i like to use it and develop something with it or for it.
In case of the 3ds it makes me excited, in case of home consoles and tvs where the solutions right now mostly rely on wearing glasses, well, not so much (yet)
I think for games the illusion of depth could actually be really useful, not just for giving a nice flashy effect feel to a picture, but really affecting gameplay, the problem there is that as game developer one couldn´t implement any kind of such functionality with real gameplay impact that totally requires the stereoscopic 3d side of it until the technology has evolved to the point where most gamers can for sure use it without getting eye drain, headaches, dizziness or other issues preventing them from seeing it.