Anyway, I’m just really glad to see this day come.  I don’t take personal credit for Epic Mickey, it was everyone from those first interns to the entire Disney Family (which I still consider myself a part of, though I’m still waiting for that free pass to Disneyland! *nudge nudge, wink wink*)  However, I really want to congratulate everyone that was involved, especially Warren Spector- this is his game.  I doubt he’ll ever see this blog post, but all the kudos goes to him for getting this done.  Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my amazing boss from back then, Chris Takami, who created the Think Tank and brought us all together, and who really deserves a ton of credit for making Epic Mickey possible.  I hardly see his name mentioned, but if it wasn’t for him, Epic Mickey would not have happened, and Disney truly owes Chris a major congratulations and a big fat “thank you”.  You rule, Chris!

Well, here’s to everyone again, to my fellow interns, and to Chris, Graham, and Warren Spector.  Now, would any of you believe that I haven’t even played the game yet?  I’m kind of busy getting married next week. Holy cow! What an awesome time.

Some backstory in case none of this post makes any sense.

When Graham Hopper and the boys at Disney introduce the Wii-exclusive platformer “Epic Mickey” at E3 (I think today?), I doubt they’ll mention that, to paraphrase the late Walt Disney, “It all started with a mouse bunch of college interns.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s Warren Spector‘s and Junction Point Studios‘ baby, they made it happen, but I hope that it doesn’t get lost in the hype that Epic Mickey started with game designer and animator Chris Takami and the 8 college interns he brought in from places like USC, CalArts, and the University of San Diego.  Takami initiated the BVG Think Tank at what was then Buena Vista Games (now Disney Interactive Studios) in 2004, and then tossed to us (yes, I was one of the 8 original interns) the challenge of making Mickey Mouse cool again.  We conceived the game, including the story behind the cartoon Wasteland, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (this was before Disney negotiated the rights to Oswald in exchange for Al Michaels – now you know *why* Disney went after Walt’s first cartoon character when Monday Night Football jumped to ESPN) as well as the paint-centric gameplay design and mechanics (and that was pre-Nintendo Wii!).  We were the ones to pitch the concept to Disney VPs, to help show the powers that be that Mickey Mouse could stop being merely a washed-up corporate icon and could get back to his mischievous roots, that Mickey could become a character again, and one that players and fans could actually relate to.  All great stories are about empowerment, about connecting to audiences, and I think that’s what made this one click with Disney execs, well aware of how tired an institution Mickey had become.

Anyway, we did all that.  How’s that for a bunch of interns?

Now, I’m not trying to toot my own vuvuzela (ok, yes I am – because this is awesome), but I think it’s important that Chris Takami get some real credit for this, as well as us interns.  There’s been only a passing mention of the interns that worked on the game, and as best as I can tell, zero mention of Takami.  Of course, I think this is to drive attention to the fact that Warren Spector was brought in to make this game his story, his game, and rightfully so, and he is really the one to thank for it.  So don’t get me wrong; Spector deserves all the love for Epic Mickey.  But, let’s tip our Mouse-eared souvenir hats to Takami and all of the interns that made this possible.  We weren’t just a bunch of sex-crazed kids (as Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor put it – and she has yet to respond to me on that), but we were genuinely applying the creative skills we’d been learning and the talents we’d been developing at our respective learning institutions (so kudos to USC, CalArts, etc, too).  For instance, the concept art that interns like Erin Reynolds and Vincent Perea was generating was jaw-droppingly awesome (I wish their early work had been posted on-line when this story first leaked last summer).  The story logic and gameplay concepts came of hours of dedicated research on our parts.  Anyway, it’s truly fascinating to see the metamorphosis of a great idea from those early sketches and story concepts to what I am sure will be a truly epic game come this winter.

But let’s not forget that it started with bunch of college interns.

Considering the profound global success of James Cameron’s Avatar, as well as the hype surrounding practical 3-D television at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the growing frenzy surrounding the current 3-D craze has got me thinking about the future of cinema and immersive entertainment yet again. Now, we’re no where near seeing holographic, pliant, lifelike simulations like the one illustrated in the clip above – in fact, in our lifetimes we’re more likely to see something like a real starship Enterprise constructed before we ever see its famous Holodeck – but, for all the commotion surrounding 3D, well, it has got me looking at some new entertainment ventures that are edging us closer to true, fully immersive digital entertainment.

Whether or not you enjoyed the narrative or metaphor behind Avatar, the consensus is growing that James Cameron has rocketed forward motion picture design and execution for years to come.  Through his use of groundbreaking visual effects and new motion capture techniques, Cameron has raised the bar for what CGI in film can achieve.  By employing RealD‘s 3D cinema technology, the immersive, photo-realistic, and highly captivating world of Pandora has kept audiences glued to their seats and coming back for repeat viewings at their local cinemaplex.  Hollywood studios have already been planning that their future projects will employ similar special effects and 3D tech.  Plus, as this year’s CES has shown, the popularity of 3D at the cinema will fuel the adoption of 3D at home in the living room.

And it’s telling that Avatar, which centers around a soldier’s experience plugging in to and controlling an alien body, would be so successful in today’s media landscape.  The multi-billion dollar video game industry and the Web (including MMORPGs like World of Warcraft) have each served to propel the notion of what it means to possess and control a virtual character, becoming immersed as an actor or player in a new narratological space.  The sense of empowerment and satisfaction that comes from worthwhile passive entertainment is certainly only heightened for the fully engaged user of interactive entertainment.  What was once only the fodder of William Gibson-style science fiction is slowly becoming science fact.  So, while we are certainly a far ways off from the Holodeck or the Matrix at this point, science seems destined to continue to take us that direction.

Haptic (meaning, tactile feedback) gaming technologies are also furthering the popularity of the immersive entertainment field.  Already, motion-sensing input devices like the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote have helped make that gaming console one of the most popular in the world today – haptic controllers are not far behind.  Sony and Microsoft are already introducing motion-detecting devices and technologies for their PlayStation3 and XBOX 360 consoles.  Controls and input devices that require more than tapping away with thumbs and index fingers are another way interactive agents can become immersed in the play worlds games serve to create.

But, full immersion in all things science-fiction-y or videogames might not be a complete turn-on for all audiences, especially demographics accustomed to old media entertainment.  The success of Avatar and the Wii will help, but accessibility is paramount.  This is where the simple technology of Yoostar comes in.  Yoostar uses simple green-screen technology like that employed by weather forecasters on the nightly news to insert users in to famous scenes from popular Hollywood movies, right in the comfort of their living room.  Yoostar users can mimic their favorite performers or create their own dialogue.  So, while this may appear pedestrian as compared to haptic technology or James Cameron’s 3D, it’s only a matter of time before someone pioneers a device that combines such immersive 3D technology with the simplicity of a Yoostar home entertainment game.

One of the biggest industries, for better or for worse, in helping to fuel the widespread diffusion and adoption of new home entertainment technologies is the Adult entertainment industry.  Porn company Pink Visual (NSFW!) recently introduced a Web camera system that employs similar chroma key technology to that seen in Yoostar to insert adult performers right in to the backgrounds of users’s Web camera captures, effectively placing users inside their porn.  This form of augmented reality, while lascivious in nature, may eventually see itself utilized in other forms of home entertainment, as well as video conferencing and other technologies.  Leave it up to the porn industry to further advances in augmented reality technology.

I look forward to seeing where haptics, augmented reality, 3D, and other forms of cyber-immersion take us in the near future.  Whether it’s as big as the next Avatar or as simple and fun as the Yoostar, it will be exciting to see if we ever do get to finally perform Hamlet on the holodeck.  Janet Murray would be proud!

Anderson’s “Free” starts out by giving us a quick economics briefing, using that as backdrop to defend the notion of ‘free’.  He explains that, for instance, traditional, or old media has used a third-party advertising model to earn revenue while still providing a “free” product.  I may not pay for 30 Rock, but when I buy products advertised during commercial breaks on TV or in interstitials on Hulu, I am still giving my money to NBC.  It’s pretty basic and has worked for Google, a benevolent empire that has largely amassed their wealth through selling advertising and diversifying revenue streams.  Of course, the model isn’t absolutely identical – the web magnifies things by presenting opportunities to apply wisdom gleaned from specific metrics and target users with relevant advertising, as well as ways of satisfying niches with long tail services – but the principle is the same: subsidize one product (free content) with money made from another (paid ad space).  Multiply and diversify.

With the notion of one product funding the other in mind, I further illustrate the point by explaining how I helped inadvertently save ABC, Monday Night Football, and the Disney company in 2004.  Maybe.  Or not.  But keep reading!  I think you’ll enjoy the reasoning anyways!

The popularity of Monday Night Football, or MNF, a free over-the-air product until 2006, has apparently soured since moving from ABC to cable’s ESPN in 2006.  In fact, this year MNF has seen a decline in viewers week over week.  Meanwhile, competitor NBC’s Sunday Night Football, or SNF, has quickly become the NFL’s showcase; during that same transition period in ’06 SNF bested the last year of ABC’s MNF by comparison.  In general, it would appear that on average more fans are watching SNF than MNF (and SNF is on the rise – although, it should be noted that MNF has set cable viewing records, though still not as high as when it was over-the-air).  MNF just isn’t the same juggernaut it used to be, and that’s also in part because, for the viewer, cable TV generally comes at some price as compared to free over-the-air broadcasting).  Truthfully, ESPN doesn’t reach as many households as ABC did or NBC currently does, but, in using a cross-subsidies model – some Andersonian and basic economic thinking – I have found an interesting way of explaining how Disney, who owns ABC and ESPN, is going to come out winner.  In this situation, ABC will be our free product and the eventual beneficiary of the move.

In 2006, when MNF jumped from ABC to ESPN, NBC saw an opportunity to shift NFL eyeballs from Monday to Sunday.  On the other hand, Disney was looking at the move as an opportunity to bolster its ESPN brand as well as develop their free product – ABC’s Monday night – with other shows targeting other demographics.  However, this internal counter-programming was still probably not going to make up for all the prestige Disney would be losing in bumping MNF to a cable network.  Nevertheless, as their plans to switch MNF’s channel were taking shape, Disney still had Al Michaels in it’s deck, the lead play-by-play announcer and respected voice of MNF telecasts up to that point.  Certainly ESPN’s iteration of MNF would benefit from having Michaels, but Michaels would wind up with NBC’s SNF during the transition instead.  But this was no accident or failure on Disney’s part, for, ever the synergists, they must have spotted a different way to cross-subsidize and recoup expected losses with Michaels not around for ESPN MNF.  Michaels became expendable.  Let’s quickly investigate why.

First, back up to fall 2004, when ABC saw MNF get its lowest rating for a game ever.  Yes, their free ad-supported product was losing money.  Big deal?  Well, back up a few more months.  During the summer of 2004, Disney’s video game unit, Buena Vista Games, started a Think Tank of college interns to devise concepts for new video games.  I was one of those interns, a senior at USC.  One of the concepts we pitched, Epic Mickey, a recently announced game by Warren Spector and Junction Point that’s expected to reinvigorate the character Mickey Mouse and hopefully make him relevant to a whole new generation, was just coming together under the direction of game developer Chris Takami and others.  During our think-tanking we came across the character of Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit as we were looking for potential supporting characters to fit the story we concocted for the game. When we brought our ideas for Oswald to Chris Takami, he had some folks do some research and discover that Disney no longer held the rights to the character.  Oswald was Walt Disney’s first cartoon creation, but due to a financial dispute he wound up out of Disney’s hands and  in to the hands of Universal Pictures.  Of course, eventually Walt would craft Mickey Mouse and the rest is history, but this story doesn’t stop there.

Snap back to 2006, and The Walt Disney Company wants Oswald back from Universal in order to make Epic Mickey.  Why?  Disney CEO Bob Iger, perhaps betting that Epic Mickey will reap bounteous profits and reinvigorate a media franchise, subsequently subsidizing any long-term losses ABC and Disney might experience from MNF’s switch to ESPN, decides to trade Al Michaels to NBC Universal for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.  Oswald was back home, and with the trade Disney has kickstarted a potentially lucrative video game venture, a mega franchise in the making (could there eventually be movies, books, and more based on Epic Mickey and Oswald? – as a progeny of George Lucas I sugggested as much for Epic Mickey when we pitched it, and Warren Spector has the same vision).  So, Disney cross-subsidizes ABC and synergistically creates new revenue with this trade, and in so doing they establish three revenue streams (new and free ABC Monday night primetime offerings, the Epic Mickey franchise, and the new ESPN MNF) where there was once only one, (free ABC MNF).  And it all starts with a bunch of interns, of which I was one.

If you think about it, as Anderson points out in ‘Free’, this is what Google does so well – they give away one free product (search) and sell another product (AdWords) to subsidize the free one while still earning a profit from other revenue streams, too (such as the freemium-based Google Apps).  ABC is free, but Disney collects revenue and then some to keep it going from other streams (selling on-air commercial time, selling games like Epic Mickey, charging cable systems to carry ESPN, and so forth).  Sure, it’s not the same as offering many high-quality free products at the same time the way Google does with free Gmail, free Google Search, and free Google Maps, all robust standalone products, but it does prove that if you diversify you can offer several very popular products for free or nearly free and still recoup and profit through other means.  Don’t believe me?  Just wait and watch how much attention they pour into promoting Epic Mickey, a game that will make oodles a pop (at whatever the typical Wii game going price will be when it’s released next year).  So, there you have it: Disney, like Google, diversifying and synergizing through new models.  You should do the same, because you must realize, as my friend Brook Elllingwood put it, that all companies are now media companies.  Step in to the 21st century and play by the same rules as the Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters of the world.

As an epilogue, I don’t actually know what went on in the room when Iger traded for Oswald (as a long-gone former intern by that point), and I’m sure there are eight gazillion other ways Disney prepared to handle the MNF move and ABC Monday losses – plus I’m not dense enough to not recognize that Disney makes plenty of money in other ways (theme parks, toys, etc).  But, they could have just bought Oswald back or found some other way of acquiring him.  Why Al Michaels?  Because Epic Mickey is going to be huge and fund rest of Disney’s free products, as well as help keep MNF on cable TV.

I interned with the first iteration of the BVG Think Tank in the summer of 2004, a video game concept development group comprised of paid undergraduate associates at The Walt Disney Company’s Buena Vista Games shingle (now called Disney Interactive Studios).  Working here as a writer alongside a team of seven other interns, the Think Tank helped develop proposals to guide key decision makers and help Disney extend their reach with gamer culture. “Epic Mickey“, one of those proposals and an idea that we in the first Think Tank originally developed and pitched to Disney executives under the direction of BVG in-house developer and Think Tank creator Chris Takami, is currently being produced by Disney Interactive’s Junction Point Studios by award-winning game designer Warren Spector.

There you have it.  I’m not going to say anything more about it because I’ve never been sued and I’d like to keep it that way. UPDATE: After some careful analysis of Game Informer’s interview with Warren Spector, there really isn’t much I could divulge – what we came up with is still basically intact.  Chalk it up to paranoia.  Now, the “how’s” and “why’s” would be a different story, I guess.  Or not.  Whatever.

Sigh.  Now maybe some of my close friends will understand my obsession with the word ‘epic’.  Incidentally, I latched on to the idea of what constitutes ‘epic’ by watching epic manuevers on YTMND.com.  Can’t wait to play the game next year and hopefully perform some epic manuevers with Mickey on the Wii.  Ahhhh, yeah.

Follow Up

Here’s a bit from Warren Spector’s Game Informer interview where he mentions how the game came about in 2004:

And so at that point they called in Luigi Priore, who was running the think tank at Disney, which I guess a bunch of interns would come in and work up concepts and everything. And he gave me a pitch on a Mickey project that they had been working on, and I sat there and I watched this Powerpoint presentation that he did – and it’s like, “Holy cow, that is the heart of an amazing game.”

So, yeah, I was one of those interns.  The eight of us came up with the original idea and first pitch for Epic Mickey.  What I think is great about this story is that TWDC, Takami, Priore, and Graham Hopper (GM of BVG at the time) – and I’m sure countless other individuals in Disney’s rank and file – were so incredibly wise to run a Think Tank of college kids to begin with.  Take a bunch of college kids, who are also people from the core demographic for the types of games BVG wanted to really get in to, and then just let us loose to create and develop, trusting that we knew what we wanted to see in a game.  It would be so much fun for me, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed, to discuss exactly how we came up with the concept, the reasonings and logic involved. I mean, this wasn’t simply about making a Mickey Mouse game, but about how to make Mickey Mouse culturally relevant again.  I say this because what I think is the very best thing about the way this Mickey game idea was realized, and how the Think Tank operated in general, was what each of us brought, in my opinion, what really special abilities each of my fellow interns brought to the table from an educational standpoint.  I think this is a testament to the educations we were receiving from our respective colleges at the time we were in the Think Tank, be it USC (where I was finishing up, and I can tell you exactly how things I was learning from the Interactive Media Program and film school factor in to Epic Mickey), CalArts, the University of San Diego, and so forth.  THAT’S what I think is most awesome about this, and why I’m making such a big deal out of connecting myself and the Think Tank to the project.  I think some serious credit should be given to our educational experiences in addition to any personal, artistic, gaming, and cultural interests, in terms of how Epic Mickey came to be.  I don’t know, and wouldn’t begin to imagine, that all of our ideas will be reflected in the final product, but I can see, and according to Spector’s interview this is true, that the heart of what we came up with is intact.  That, to me, is really, really, really cool.

Taken as a whole, I feel like Epic Mickey is the product of a bunch of different generations listening to one another and saying, hey, I get it!  That’s the most satisfying thing about this – I feel like someone finally listened to me.  That’s epic in my book.

Picture from Wikimedia

I have completed a simple case study on the Nintendo Wii Remote, answering, in essence, the question: does the Wiimote succeed as a viable interactive device for immersing one’s self in narrative?  Where does the Wiimote stand as an advanced interactive gaming input device?

The case study is available here as a PDF:

http://nerdacumen.com/Case_Study_on_the_Nintendo_Wii_Remote_by_Matthew_Stringer.pdf

This case study is a term paper, and the third and final element of my overall term project for COM 579: Theories and Practices of Interactivity, taught by Carolina Mello-E-Souza at the University of Washington, Fall 2008.  The first portion of my term project was a proposal issued October 23rd (which was revised in November) and a presentation given November 13th in class.  The final paper has diverged slightly from the proposal; there is no mention of the Holodeck, and haptics is not a portion of the primary discussion – but the overall question about the Wiimote that was propositioned remains.

As for the class presentation mentioned… I might make those slides available in the future.  I am happy to note that I gave the presentation using an actual Nintendo Wii as the presentation platform, instead of a conventional PC running a Powerpoint Slideshow.  I converted my slides to jpg’s then transferred them to an SD disc.  I then loaded that SD disc into the convenient slot on the Wii and, using the Wiimote and the Wii’s picture viewing program, issued my slideshow in kind.  I do not know if I am the first person to ever do this, but I would like to find out.

In some ways this is because the technology or know-how didn’t exist yet.  Now we can have simple, good-looking, practical designs with more powerful technology and the forward thinking of personalities like Donald Norman or John Maeda.  Intellects such as these and others have helped me to see why I love bad design, and why that needs to change.  No longer can I marry my mind to the so-called “amatuer aesthetic” or “underground web culture”.  In one class we discussed the design of craigslist.  Despite its archaic design, craigslist remains hugely successful.  Granted, most of that success has to do with what the service provides, but while others push forward with buzzwords like “web 2.0″ people still come to craigslist.  I think a part of that has to do with familiarity – just as I got used to bad design, repeat users accept the design of craigslist because it’s “what they know”.  Just as Donald Norman essentially points out, we so blithely accept bad design that we fail to see how much better things could be.  This class has helped me to see how much better the things I design in my professional life could be.

Whether I was being asked to consider the concept of intuition in the interaction design of something like IDEO’s Project Inkwell, or examine the lazy design considerations of Seattle’s new parking meters, or think about the impact branding has on products and how web memes are a form of branding, all of these things have pushed me to consider simplicity.  The more concise a message, the more efficacious.  The more intuitive the delivery of that message, the more approachable it becomes.  People have short attention spans – can the design of your game console or lolcat or website capture that attention quickly?  These are just some of the things I previously never considered.  But, what I didn’t realize is that the principles of good design were intuitive and instinctual, and I “knew” them without knowing them.  So, in a way, I want back all that long-attention span time wasted from my early days coming in to interactive technologies.  It’s regrettable the amount of effort we put in to certain tasks that could be accomplished so much more swiftly and simply.  As I move forward in producing New Media, I will take in to account the principles of simple, good design I’ve learned from this class.

For example, right now I can apply the principle of being concise.  In the past, my entries for this class have been overly wordy, clocking in sometimes at 1300 or more words when all that was asked for was 500.  Well, that’s over with!  How about 647? Ta-da!

References

Maeda, J. (2006). The laws of simplicity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Retrieved from WorldCat

Norman, D. A. (1998). The design of everyday things. London: MIT. Retrieved from WorldCat

]]> http://nerdacumen.com/things-ive-learned-from-my-interaction-design-class/2008/12/04/feed/ 0 http://nerdacumen.com/the-xbox-360-and-playstation-3-how-design-makes-them-successful-or-not-as-brands/2008/10/23/ http://nerdacumen.com/the-xbox-360-and-playstation-3-how-design-makes-them-successful-or-not-as-brands/2008/10/23/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:55:02 +0000 Matthew Stringer http://nerdacumen.com/?p=93 Shelley Armstrong, Interaction Design Manager at the Microsoft Design Center, spoke to my fellow students and I last week in our interaction design class.  She talked about the process of designing the look, the packaging and the “overall cohesive aesthetic” of the Xbox 360 (see Microsoft design center – our people for more).  She detailed the process of defining your problem (such as, make everything relative to Xbox’s design completely cohesive) and then the cyclical process of designing, prototyping, and evaluating a product until you can finalize it.  It was interesting to hear her story of taking on huge tasks from humble beginnings, where she began designing the dash for Xbox by herself to eventually growing and leading a major team through two console launches.

Armstrong worked on guiding the Xbox brand’s design through the entire production process to maintain uniformity.  Some of the insights that were shared by Armstrong with the class about her approach to even the most finite details of the Xbox packaging, even, are applicable to John Maeda’s ten laws of simplicity.  (If you’re not familiar with Maeda’s work out of MIT, please visit the Laws of Simplicity website.)  Armstrong, for example, spoke about dealing with the preponderance of warning text that would be found on plastic wrapping inside packaging, which results from having to duplicate choke hazard messages in multiple languages.  This was the initial result of choosing a certain type of font, in fact, which actually increased the amount of material that would have to be printed.  Here, in her attempt to follow law 2, or organize (in this case, keeping everything together with a common typography), she learned from law 9 it seems, failure – some things can never be made simple (or, to stretch, let’s say simpler here, in that it would be simpler to keep everything uniform to one type of font, in an ideal world).

Armstrong also spoke about how designing for one space is not the same as designing for another.  Here I will talk about how the brand design presents itself in two areas to illustrate this point.  Although both the Xbox website, available in web browsers of course, and the Xbox Live experience only available on the Xbox console are both navigable, thus lending themselves to what I thought would be similar designs, it turns out that the needs and uses of both spaces were different, and the design is not that similar.  Web users are looking for certain information, whereas the console has a contained environment that allows the user a different navigation experience to access the content they are looking for.  Nonetheless, the design aesthetic remains constant.  The brand is king as will be shown below.

For further illustration, just compare the Xbox Live website to the Xbox Live console experience:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live … hit that link for the first look, then take a look at this screenshot of the console:

While both look very different, both have a uniform aesthetic in colors, typography, and iconography.  They exhibit a cohesive look in keeping with the Xbox brand.

Enter Playstation 3.  The PS3 is another robust brand that offers a console network experience and a web presence basically the same way Xbox does.  However, PS3 isn’t maintaining its aesthetic between their web presence and what is known as the Playstation Network on their console (specifically some of its components, not all, so in this case, the Playstation Store is referred to, comparable to Xbox Live’s Marketplace in many ways).  This represents a significant divergence from Xbox’s brand model which remains cohesive from screen to screen.  See below:

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3 …for the web presence, which is very black in tone, and the…

… Playstation Store, which diverges from the color schematic.

I think what has made both the Xbox and the Playstation 3 successful in terms of branding in each camp, at least in general (according to my personal observations) in their television and other marketing, both brands, is that they both keep the brands’ colors and other aesthetic elements generally uniform between different spaces in which the brands each separatly exist.  However, one can see that there is apparently more of a need on Sony’s part to keep the Playstation web presence separate in look and feel from the console-based Playstation Network, which takes a stylistic turn when you get to the store, for instance.  This would lead one to lean in favor of the Xbox 360 as a more successfully designed brand than the Playstation 3 moniker.

References:

Microsoft design center – our people. Retrieved 10/23/2008, 2008, from http://www.microsoft.com/design/People/Detail.aspx?key=shelley

So, let’s look at ten electronic games, many from a really fun evening in my Interaction Class last week at UW, and the ways these games empower players and make the experiences either exciting or dull. Player behaviors provide for this empowerment, so what are some of the unique behaviors of these games?

1. Lambda Moo – A MOO, or MUD with Object Orientation (hey, slow down buddy, what’s a MUD? – that’s a Multiuser Dungeon – wait, what’s that? – a text based game played over telnet! yikes, ancient tech!)  Lambda MOO, as a text and chat based experience, requires players to visualize their environment, and is therefore capable of really encouraging a players imagination.  However, in this space where the game becomes a joint narrative in typefont, a writing experience, the writer-player becomes limited by the commands the game provides for.  It seems counter-intuitive that I can’t type in something wild and imaginative like “eat my foot” – the game will just tell me it does not understand.  So, unless someone is strongly married to the rules, the game quickly becomes dull.
2. GWAP.com – GWAP is a service of sorts from Carnegie Mellon, a website that presents a plethora of casual object/relationship style games that help improve search engine AI.  For example, a song is played in one game, and each player needs to decide what genre it fits in.  Its fun for awhile, where one is able to show-off one’s knowledge, but being paired anonymously with another player who might not care as much about being right can detract from the challenge.
3. Pac-Man – Everyone loves Pac-Man!  Here’s an experience where you navigate and collect, while evading enemies that want to collect you rather than your treasure.  It’s an empowering analogy for life: we’re out working hard to make a dime, searching high and low through the maze of life, while bad guys are trying to prevent us from ever so doing.  There is nothing dull about the Pac-Man experience.
4. Scrabble On-Line – Apart from shutting down Scrabulous on Facebook, Scrabble in electronic form continues to be a satisfying experience.  A lot like GWAP in terms of showing off one’s knowledge, this time vocabulary, you can actually determine WHO you get to play with.  It goes to show the important social element of games and the relationships that can be cultivated and developed both in competition and cooperation.
5. Tower Defense – A popular flash game, like so many that appear to spring virally from the intarwebs, is an intensely strategic game.  You have to place weaponry and other defenses you have little to no control over throughout a grid.  Then, those items can be moved around while you try to protect your fortress.  A simple interface and fast gameplay make this experience appealing to RTS (real-time strategy) addicts who might not have time for a full-blown RTS experience.
6. Wii Sports – The Wii is immensely popular for its implementation of haptics (sensory input/feedback) technology.  See the tennis ball coming at your character, swing the Wii controller just like you were holding that tennis racket and voila!  It’s horribly intuitive.  And I mean horribly for an old school gamer like me, who is so used to hand-eye coordination controller joystick-n-button inputs for games that I wish I could hold the Wii controller still and use the directional pad and buttons the old fashioned way.  Nonetheless, these haptics through the Wii is opening up gaming to demographics traditionally uninterested in gaming, which is great for the industry and will no doubt further innovation in sensory input and feedback.
7. Rock Band on the XBOX – Furthering the theme of haptics, music and fantasy collide with intuitive gameplay to create a home gameplay experience that was reserved for installations, themeparks, karoake bars, and arcades in the past.  You have specialized input devices, such as a microphone, drum pads, and faux quitars to simulate a rock band experience.  Licensing tons of popular tunes from the real world really helps, too.  Players are empowered by being provided a chance to simulate an experience, this time, being skilled musicians, without having to know how to play real instruments.  One imagines that games like this, games on the Wii, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and so forth, will continue to be developed.  Games are no longer a sedentary experience alone.  This might do wonders to combat childhood obesity.  But, moreover, it trains, educates, and helps people replicate experiences that they wouldn’t normally have.  And the voice recognition software in Rock Band is something to see.  As you sing, you have to match pitches and lengths of notes!
8. Nintendo DS Games AND iPod Touch/iPhone Games – Ok, this isn’t so much a game, but for this eighth entry here I will cover some portability gaming experiences.  The DS is novel in that it has a traditional screen and buttons, but also a touch screen for use with a stylus.  Opening up multiple ways of defining player input gives the device longevity and provides for potentially very new and interesting games to be developed.  But, the iPod and iPhone take that one step further, generally ditching buttons in favor or motion sensory inside the device.  The way the device is held can control game mechanics, for example, or move a character.  Essentially, it introduces haptics to portable games – the iPod touch is basically the portable version of the Wii.  Sorry, Nintendo, but Apple beat you at your own game here.
9. PSP – Cheating again here and not specifying a particular game… but what I do want to mention is the flexibility of PSP hardware for playing ROMs of older “abandonware” console games.  Through widely available hacks that basically turn your PSP in to a PC in your hands, you can then install a ROM emulator on your PSP to get playing older titles from discontinued consoles, many of which are not yet available anew from on-line console interfaces like XBOX Live and the Wii.  Why Sony won’t just make a Windows-based PSP is beyond me.  You already have provided the user with buttons and controls that can be used for old-school game experiences.  A device powerful enough to play them, and a device that could be used to play NEW games made by Joe Average with Open Source software right at home would be ideal.  It should be an open experience a la Linux, but any hacking of the PSP respresents a violation of the terms of use.  I’m not condoning pirating older titles, but I am advocating open devices with powerful processors.
10. Tetris – I love Tetris.  I feel that Tetris is the ultimate single-player gaming experience for the organizationally challenged.  Why?  Because it forces you under time constraints to learn to organize objects according to shape.  I feel this is a very empowering experience for the organizationally challenge in real life.  It’s counter-artistic, but it’s fun.

There is so much more to be said about game design, but what is overall empowering for society is the way innovations in game mechanics and interactive narrative building has already changed so many other businesses, learning institutions, and even traditional manufacturing. Not every game is appealing to every person, but the right game mechanisms, seen in different ways, can be reproduced to solve complex problems in other areas of science, technology, and society.