What is Steambot Chronicles?

Before reading this article please do me a favor and play this in the background. https://youtu.be/gPIOb2Yp_8A

Steambot Chronicles is a Playstation 2 game developed by studio Irem in 2005 and published in North America by Atlus. Atlus is known today for their Persona series, but their extensive library consists of a laundry list of fun and quirky RPGs.

Before I continue I need to state my love for this game. Out of all the games I’ve played, none have provided the sense of wonder Steambot Chronicles has.

The story revolves around you.

You begin the game with a choice. What is your style? Do you prefer hats, shoes, jackets, or goggles? This choice, although seemingly minuscule at first, sets up the background of your character. You are then dropped into the world and discover you have amnesia. A girl named Connie is worriedly asking if you’re alright, and you’ll have a choice in what to say to her. Depending on your answer the game will keep track of what you say to key characters.

Shortly after this interaction, you find the illustrious Trotmobile. Trotmobiles are highly customizable mechs that citizens use in this universe for everyday tasks from mining and farming. The setting of the story takes in place in an alternate reality in which world war two never occurred, and bipedal machines were the way of the future. From your first Trotmobile you embark on an adventure with Connie and eventually join a band.

What you do in between those points is up to you. The story progresses in a linear manner, but your choices and actions affect the outcome of the main characters and the final ending.

The main idea here is choice. You can build your character however you want him to be, and respond however you’d like. His back-story is chosen entirely by you as well, so the games true role-playing nature shines.

Gameplay

This is an action adventure role playing band rhythm game

Navigating and fighting in Steambot Chronicles make full use of the analog sticks. The Trotmobile’s legs are assigned to each of the analog sticks and pushing both sticks forward moves your Trotmobile. To turn, you push one analog stick either up or down, and the second the analog stick the opposite direction. Controlling your arms is used with the shoulder buttons. L1 and R1 are your respective arms. Although clunky at first, it starts to feel natural as you progress throughout the game and becomes oddly intuitive.

You control a Trotmobile which is fully customizable (name and license plate included). The rotmobile can be fixed with three different sized bodies, small medium or large and a plethora of leg parts ranging from mech legs to tank treads. The variety of arms are no different. The weapon types range from sword and shields to Gatling guns, and even mechanized versions of medieval flails. These components can be switched out in the mechanic shops that are present in each major city.

Steambot Chronicles also has a subtle reputation system. With each passing day, your character becomes more and more famous with each action you perform. From simple titles such as “Gladiator” and “Taxi-Mobile” to “Gigantic Angry Dog.” Small changes affect your reputation, and NPC’s encountered on the street will talk to you and mention your current reputation.

Your reputation also changes the more often you play with your band. You start out with a simple harmonica which you can later choose between the trumpet, saxophone, piano, violin, string bass, accordion, drums, and guitar. Each of these instruments have different control schemes and varying difficulties. If you’re short on cash you can even busk for tips on a busy street corner.

Progression

You start off the game a clean slate and with no skills whatsoever. It will be difficult to commandeer the Trotmobile at first but just as the character improves his skill, the player does. Fighting is hard to get used to, and getting destroyed by better Trotmobile fighters will eventually happen. However, once the player becomes adjusted to the control scheme, taking down S rank gladiators will be no problem. Dodging incoming missiles and thrown rocks will become second nature. As the main character progresses with their fighting, the side characters improve with their musical ability.

The lead singer for example sounds terrible in their first performance. The first song you ever hear from the band leaves more to be desired. As you continue through the game however, your band practices more, and each consecutive performance improves drastically.

What you do in the world of Steambot Chronicles is entirely your choice. Like other JRPGS it has an overarching story to save the world that is streamlined through main quests, but your side activities form the meat of the gameplay.

I implore you, reader, to play it. Unfortunately, studio Irem was gearing up to create Steambot Chronicles 2 for the PS3, but due to the tragic tsunami in 2011, almost all the assets were lost. We may never see a true sequel to this masterpiece of a game, but at least this studio has brought us this.

Get ready for.

Steambot Chronicles!

Steambot Chronicles: A Love Letter was originally published in Gaming Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Power of Choice in a Closed System

This article contains spoilers for The Stanley Parable.

The first time I played it, The Stanley Parable managed to put me through the five stages of grief in eight minutes flat. I was in denial that the game actually ended that way, I got angry at the design, I bargained for a different ending, got depressed from my perceived failure to play it correctly, and finally accepted that this was just not the type of game I was used to playing. I regrouped, and after I spent the next hour investigating every in-game choice available to me, I realized that The Stanley Parable is complex in a way that very few games achieve. On the surface it’s witty, entertaining, and has a wonderful story, but there are sinister, unsettling overtones that hint at a whole new level of meaning underneath the surface, just begging to be explored.

That is, if you don’t play by the rules.

The game opens in a dreary, fluorescent office, with an omniscient narrator guiding the player through a deserted office building. Everything has been recently abandoned, there are no people to be found, and no obvious explanation for the sudden disappearance of every employee in the building. As gamers, we’ve been conditioned to expect the unexpected at every turn — running headlong through blind corners and into dark rooms rarely ends well, and taking the time to explore can often have huge rewards. In The Stanley Parable, the narrator continually tries to rush us along the “correct” path, and if we don’t acquiesce quickly, he injects snarky (and thoroughly amusing) commentary to fill the time.

Hurry along, don’t ask questions, be a good little sheep. Your free will is an inconvenience to the narrator if it does not align with his agenda. If you take your time but follow the narrator’s, well, narrative, the game comes to a short and unsatisfying conclusion, clocking in at just under eight minutes on my playthrough. If, however, you take the road less travelled and blatantly disregard the narrator’s instructions, the game becomes much more interesting.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

“The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost

Aside from the narrator’s increasing frustration, the conflict between your choices and the path you “should” have chosen also begins to destroy the game world itself. This may feel like success, but really, you’re just going down with the ship. You’re being destroyed too, just because you feel helpless and frustrated and it’s the only other option you can see. Is that really any better than being a sheep?

You can make things difficult, but you can never beat the system entirely. You can never actually win.

The Stanley Parable is not alone in exploring this paradox. Sword Art Online, a fantastic manga (and later anime series), tells the story of a group of teenagers who become trapped in a virtual reality MMO. Kirito, the main character, is obsessed with finding his love Asuna, who has been captured by the evil architect of the game. Kirito is relentless in his search, but no matter how powerful he grows or how bravely he fights, he cannot escape the overarching question in everyone’s mind — why even try to fight in a world where the omnipotent god figure hates you? What chance do you possibly have?

The answer, in both scenarios, is because choices have moral weight regardless of the futility of their outcome.

Is it really a choice if all outcomes are predetermined? Yes. The moral weight of a decision does not disappear just because you have a set number of paths to take; there is inherent value in the journey. This is a difficult concept to swallow for an American audience. We are told in innumerable ways since birth that anything is possible if you just try hard enough, and as a result we disdain impotence above nearly all else.

As gamers, we are also conditioned to dislike feeling powerless, which is why The Stanley Parable (and weaponless games like Amnesia) are so fun, frustrating, and thought provoking. The Stanley Parable follows in a long line of recent indie releases with experimental narrative formats — Gone Home, Dear Esther, and The Novelist, just to name a few. One might argue that these are not even “games” in the traditional sense, and that’s an article for another time. The value in these games does not lie in their groundbreaking graphics or legendary weapons, but rather in the minds and lives of their players long after they’ve finished the game. Like the now infamous Milgram Experiment, games like The Stanley Parable question societal norms and make players think twice about the implications of blind obedience to an authoritative voice.

Will you take the road less travelled?

and why I now hate chocolate…

Hey bro, spare some change for a Lollipop Hammer?

We’ve all heard about the addictive digital confection known as Candy Crush Saga (CCS). But there is much more to this game than meets the eye. To set the table for why you should care about the genius psychology behind its massive appeal, a few facts and figures.

CCS:

> Cost — free to download and play.

> Players — 90% age 21+, split approx. 50/50 male/female.

> Thus Far — 150 billion plays in less than a year after its 2012 launch.

> Currently—played by 93 million people, more than 1 billion times/day.

>> Delivering—In-app purchases averaging more than $875,000 per day.

Collectively, this makes CCS one of the top three grossing iOS games of all-time. So they’ve hit on a model that works, to the tune of nearly $1 million/day. Whether it’s sustainable, or if the game’s designer (King) can produce another hit game with similar success, is yet to be seen.

They had an IPO, and the performance was fair to middling. But the psychology behind the game mechanics is what I find particularly intriguing. A combination of factors produces an addictive experience, which I contend deserves the credit for the rapid, widespread, and prolonged success.

Most prevalent is the encouragement, i.e. reward system. Keise Izuma’s 2008 study showed audible reinforcement from a computer (e.g. “Good job!”) lights up the same regions of the brain as would a financial windfall of some kind. This is similar to the findings, enabled by fMRI technology, showing that our minds (and bodies) respond to physically perceived stimuli the same as if we closed our eyes and just envisioned those same stimuli. In other words, if you look at a banana, then close your eyes and imagine/visualize a banana, you’re activating the same regions of your brain. Your mind/body do not know the difference between actual and imagined (or remembered) experience. This is why nightmares make you sweat or cry out, and why PTSD is so insidious — remembered experiences mentally surfaced and processed as though they are happening in real-time.

In the case of CCS, the reward system is pretty simple. With a minor accomplishment (i.e. a well-chosen move), the bass-baritone voice of the game encourages you,

“Sweet!”

A better move gets you a throaty,

“Divine!”

Those verbal kisses for your cognitive reward center, combined with bright musical sound effects result in subtle sensations of success. You learn to love and eagerly chase another dash of audible reassurance from your new Isaac-Hayes soundalike friend. If you’re not paying conscious attention, absorbed in the game, all you know is you want to keep playing to get that feeling again.

But here’s where the real genius surfaces. Beyond the friendly verbal cheerleader, with only two offerings, there are other silent characters that populate your journey.

First, there is the douchey coach with terrible advice. I call it a coach as he/she/it is ostensibly offering you help when you get stuck, here defined as a long pause between moves. Once your pause is longer than average, this unseen helper highlights a particular move on the board with flashing pieces of candy. In the early stages of the game, this coach (helper) does in fact make some good suggestions. Based on those experiences, you build a certain level of trust. You assume that those hints are coming from a helpful resource.

What happens down the line at some point is the hints become tricks or traps. If you take the coach’s suggestion, it creates a chain reaction that either makes the board much more difficult to complete, or even ends your current life completely. This entity that you always assumed was your buddy, is screwing you over. Sometimes the suggestions are good ones, but many times not. This coach is pretty much the worst kind of friend, totally unreliable. Total douche.

Then there is the dickish chocolate. Sharing space on the game board with the hard candy pieces are squares of chocolate. Whereas our coach is revealed to be a flaky douchebag, similarly, otherwise delicious chocolate is personified as a terrible roommate.

First, it needs constant attention. If you don’t immediately attend to the chocolate (by using your moves to break up and remove it) it multiplies, setting you back further from your goal of clearing the board. When it does multiply (each time you don’t pay it attention), it erases the most valuable candies in its vicinity. Just like the classic bad roommate who eats your favorite cookies while you’re at class, the chocolate consumes the best stuff when you’re not looking.

Finally, the musical and messaging components. The third and fourth members of the Addiction Team. We looked at the positive reinforcement with sound effects in certain cases, but the music plays a different role. As you might have noticed, movie soundtracks function like emotional cue cards, subconsciously signaling how you’re meant to feel during any given scene. Similarly, as soon as you reach a failure point (loss of life), the musical sting is a familiar “wah-wah-wahhhh” in descending tones. Remember Debbie Downer? Like that, her bummer theme song. It’s a musical bummer. You feel let down, disappointed, frustrated even.

Now immediately you’re presented with two options: try again, or don’t. But the genius is in the framing and language. Would you prefer to,

“Play On!”

or

“Give Up”

So… are you a dirty low-down quitter, or are you tough enough to continue playing?

“Pay me, or quit,” That’s the mentality of the messaging, and let’s admit it, it’s powerful. Nobody wants to be a quitter, right?

But now it really gets interesting (diabolical?) when you run out of lives. If you decide to “Give Up,” this translates as “try again,” if you have more lives to use. If you don’t, the failure screen doesn’t remind you or mention that. Instead, you’re presented another message screen, with only two options: “Retry” or, well that’s it. The other option is to tap the red ‘X’ close button on the message window, but no indication what that option does.

Well, I want to try again, sure, and click “Retry”. Now I’m confronted by a giant frowning heart, weeping. Oh, man. Visual bummer — Too bad, what you want you can’t have — with a timer showing how long until your next life, 30 minutes and counting, along with two options:

Beg

or

Pay

You can either pay cash money to buy another life, or, you can beg your friends on Facebook. I’m sure you’ve seen them, those semi-pathetic pleas from the game, posted to your friend’s page, on your behalf, with your face and a request to help. This is the addict’s dilemma, right? (We’ve all seen Intervention by now.) To avoid the horror of running out of one’s drug of choice, one must either find/pay money to buy more, or look to others for help.

Hello, my name is Chris, and I’m a Candy Crush addict.

Spare some change for a Lollipop Hammer?

And so I say to you, King Digital Entertainment plc, well-done, sirs (and madams.) Through counterbalanced entities residing in the mechanics of the UI, plenty of subconsciously-active visual and auditory cues, and a drug-dealer’s approach to incentives and monetization, you’ve created one of the most addictive game experiences ever created in the mobile digital space.

Thank you, King, and eff you very much.

Off to buy more color bombs… ☺

Designing UI and UX for Children

Designing interfaces and apps for kids is not just a matter of simplification or making the buttons bigger — it requires us to consider interaction models and user experience from the child’s perspective. Children are curious, inquisitive and love to explore. They will touch and interact with everything on screen, searching to discover content interactions within the interface.

Keeping the Child in Mind: Press versus Tap

I have been observing my kids (and their friends) using tablets and other touch devices. Children interact with content primarily with taps, finger drawing or tracing, drag and swipe. Tap is the most intuitive and natural interaction gesture that children use. Pointing is the one of the first ways in which children communicate with the world around them to show their caregivers what they want. Tap is simply pointing on the UI surface. The child wants something, the child points by tapping the interface.

Designing for children requires the interface to be reactive to their input style.

For interactions consider using onPress events rather than onRelease events. A child’s natural gesture is to tap and hold, rather than tap and release.

Avoid using double tap. Think about the immediacy of the interaction. The use of a double tap (tap-tap) is a learned interaction. A child’s focused interaction is tap (hold, release), tap (hold, release).

If it looks like a button, it had better be a button. Children will expect something to happen with every tap or button press. If nothing happens, children will press harder, or will use other inputs such as toys, to press what they think is a button and possibly crack the screen. A friend of mine told me a story about his daughter using an app that had a piano keyboard as part of the UI. The piano keyboard was part of the decorative design and was non-functional. The little girl stood on the tablet, using her feet and body weight trying to get the piano to play a note.

Childproofing Your Interface: Navigation

One of the major problems for children is not exploration or interaction but ending the engagement with the interface by accidentally removing themselves from the experience. This often happens through accidental navigation or presenting the child with modal (pop-up) windows that takes them away from the current app or site. Whether this is in the form of clickable banner ads, “rate this app” or “do you wish to continue” modal windows. Swipe gestures that move the child to a different section should also be avoided, unless the child is prompted by the application.

Toca Tea Party uses a simple text link to prevent accidental access. Once pressed, the user is presented with a modal window with a set of specific text instructions to continue. For a child, the modal window is a break in the flow, and the large “X”, which is presented as something to press or touch, brings back the child to the main screen.

More Images, Less Text

Design with little readable text. Assume the child cannot read or requires assistance with instructions. The children’s section of the Netflix website is a great example of navigation designed with children in mind and actions that require parental help. In the Just for Kids section, the primary navigation is by means of characters from the various video titles. A child can recognize a favorite cartoon character, tap or press the character and is taken to all the videos from that particular character or program. Another example is the My Little Pony website, where sections are navigated with arrows and character images.

Encourage and Guide

Game style interaction that encourages children to try again will ensure engagement and replay value. Hints to the next steps will keep children focused on task and prevent them from becoming frustrated with a non-responsive interface or lack of progression.

Plan for Repetition

Provide children a simple way of repeating actions. Whether it is being able to press or tap a button over and over again, or replay a video. Repetition adds to the child’s learning experience and exploration. Removing repetition truncates the child’s interactive experience and will ultimately result in a poor user experience and limit the replay value of the app or site.

Replay value is important but so is planning for child tapping a button over and over again. A button that plays a sound may be tapped several times, causing the sound to play over itself. For apps, keep the sound loop short or limit its replay until the original interaction of playing the sound has stopped. The ABC Expedition by Meld Media uses a simple stop/start sound management on tap and encourages repetition by changing the sounds played randomly after a couple of button presses.

Advanced Planning

Say YES to multi-touch and collaborative interaction. Multi-touch creates a more forgiving interface as children may hold the device differently due to the relative size of the device to their hands. Multiple fingers may find their way onto the interface as part of the child’s way finding and exploration. Disney’s Where’s My Water? allows a child to use one finger to mark a starting point and another to draw to an end point. Lack of multi-touch can lead to frustration as the interface becomes non-responsive to inputs. Children seldom interact with an interface alone. Allowing for multi-touch provides an opportunity for collaborative play.

Say NO to accelerometer use as part of the interaction with the UI and app. Tablets can often be heavy for small hands and kids have a tendency to drop things. Requiring the device to be tilted or turned can lead to an unwanted (expensive) accident. Keep interactions limited to gestures. Gestures can translate well from touch devices to the desktop with proper planning and implementation.

Take a Way

Designing and building user interfaces and user experiences is more than just simplifying and making buttons bigger. The way children explore and interact with interfaces requires us to think about the various affordances that are necessary for them to have a positive user experience. Treat press as tap; plan for both (good and not so good) repetition behaviors; and use simple navigation for children and more advanced UI navigation elements as a means of parental control.

Resources:
Sesame’s Best Practices Guide
What Matters Now: Digital Kids.
Building a Rapport with Kids for User Testing
Eight Critical Risks of Ignoring Kids in Your Design Process

Follow me on twitter: @andrewsmyk

Originally published on the Paul Olyslager Blog.

Going down personal-history lane of 3D editing.

It all started with gaming, of course.

In the early 2000's, I involved myself in 3D editing for computer games. Back then, tools and assets were basic and limited. Level designers were required to create and implement custom textures and 3D assets by themselves.

The process was fun and challenging! Though, being a time consuming and lugubrious task to do it alone, communities sprang forward to help each other out. This became a boon to us neophyte editors. Especially when you couldn’t google yourself out of a tricky spot. The best alternative was to go to a forum and put yourself out there.

Over time, libraries of resources were built upon by mappers and modders. As a team, we learned, created, shared and improved together.

And then I found my place as a level designer when I became engaged with the Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast community.

Being a moderator on LucasForums, I had the additional the responsibility of overseeing the editing forums. I also made friends there.

I think that was what kept it all alive. Doing cool stuff together.

My sole, singular journey went along like this: I began to play games with a keen interest in level design and lighting. Effectively enriching the player’s gameplay experience. I sometimes made my own textures and often wrote shader scripts to create depth through lighting, animation, layers and transparency effects. But that wasn’t all, there were other aspects to tackle.

Adding objects that moved and shifted on their own, like floating blocks or stairs, provided movement and a sense of life to my maps.

Lots of questions had to be answered before diving in. Starting each map from scratch presented a new set of challenges every time.

I often drew rough sketches and 2D layouts. Also preparing in advance with a concept helped. What would the map look like? What is the theme? Then one has to consider player movement, flow and experience. Where does most of the action take place? Do the hallways that lead to open rooms with armour and ammo logically connect to other rooms? Grating structures hold the player suspended above lava pits. But is there sound? Do you hear the melting surface below you? What about the fire crackling from the torches above you? The list grew quickly. It was fun but I could not imagine pursuing this completely alone.

After a while, I started our own offshoot group of level designers to create a map pack for Jedi Outcast. The aim of our pack was to give the player settings for lightsaber duels that existed outside of the Star Wars universe.

We worked closely together with competitive and casual players from test to finish. The maps varied in style, from a medieval arena to a base on an exploding planet. As project lead, I made sure we were on target with our release date and did my best to spread the news. Our persistence paid off. After producing a teaser and a couple trailers we picked up momentum and public interest along the way.

Thankfully lots of people came to help and we succeeded!

Dozens of levels — each crafted by highly-skilled individuals — shone brightly in their uniqueness.

We released our Duel Map Pack in 2003. It was an acclaimed release among community members and played on many public servers.

One of my maps (Terminal Velocity) was later used in a Jedi Outcast competition.

My first Quake 3 map (Blood, Sweat, and Frags) received a positive review from LvL online, highlighting the scripting involved for its ‘brilliant bot play.’

If you still play the game, might I suggest taking the map for a spin and throwing down a few rounds of frags and fun?

I guess it began and ended with fun. Looking for greater kicks and a deeper connection to the games around me pushed me into the realm of editing. Without a community to grow into the impetus would have become nulled and voided. The more involved I became, the richer was my satisfaction.

How the Facebook/Oculus deal saved VR

Earlier this week, Facebook bought Oculus VR for $2 billion. It sent shockwaves throughout the tech community, and raised the ire of many gamers. Many felt that Oculus VR represented The Future(TM) of gaming, and that this deal killed that future.

I’d like to argue the counterpoint, if you’ll indulge me. The Future(TM) that Oculus represents to many could not, and would not have happened without this deal.

Look first at the history of VR. We have something around twenty years of attempts at making VR, and every single one of them has failed. We can talk about how the graphics weren't ready, or the development support wasn't there, or the cost was exuberant, or what have you, but the truth is that the Oculus would most likely have died a slow, painful death due in large part to the fact that anytime anyone has tried to make VR before (Oculus included), they've been building solely for a video gaming market. And that is a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot, because at that point you’re pretty much just making a gaming peripheral.

And that’s what the Oculus was, up until three days ago. A gaming peripheral. Gaming peripherals have a very long and colored history (hello, N64 Rumble Pack) that have done wonders for the landfill industry (rest in peace, Power Glove). Gaming peripherals have a near 99% failure rate at gaining any sort of lasting market impact. They appear, some people look and notice, and maybe it sticks around for a year before it crashes and burns.

The game industry is insular. It is vapid, fleeting, distracted oh-so-often by the shiniest piece of sparkle, and collapses under the weight of it’s own spackled aspirations. The Oculus Rift, for all it’s rave reviews and promises of The Future(TM), is a device constructed out of scrap and unwanted cellphone bits. It is, quite literally, garbage.

The Rift, as it was three days ago, would have been a really cool product that I would have bought on Day One and played the shit out of. It would have given us a version of The Future(TM) that would have allowed us to say, “hey, this is a step forward. Neat.” And then, as often happens with these things, it would have stalled. Stagnated. Oculus the company would have had no real way to raise the truly MASSIVE amounts of capital needed to make any sort of rapid technological improvements. Stuck in a rut of using garbage bits, the Oculus continues to lag heavily behind current technology. Other innovations are slow, because the company simply cannot afford to swing and miss. Our dream of VR becomes stuck in the mud once again.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The Future(TM) is a very real thing, and it’s much closer to us now than it was three days ago. And it’s all because of Facebook buying this company.

Look, everyone has concerns about Facebook, and I do too. I’m not really a huge fan. So let’s address some of those concerns real quick.

Facebook is massive. They’re a pretty opaque company, and they aren't afraid of throwing punches in getting what they want. We've seen them do battle with The Holy Google, seen them quietly change their privacy policy numerous times, seen them monetize on their user’s personal information. Yes, all of that has happened, and I’m not going to pretend it hasn't. Some have voiced concerns, so let’s address those quickly.

People say they’re worried about Facebook plastering the Oculus with ads. A rather logical fear, given Facebook’s entire profit model is based off of ad revenue. The Oculus is, functionally, a replacement for a monitor or television screen. Monitors don’t have ads, the content inside them does. There will absolutely be ads and product placement within the Oculus. 100% of them will take place within games and programs being displayed there. It will be done by the content programmer’s design, rather than Facebook’s interference. Facebook cannot force ads to be beamed into the Oculus any more than Samsung can force ads onto your Galaxy S4.

People say they’re worried Facebook will step in and start micromanaging Oculus, or tell them what they can or can’t work on. This fear flies completely in the face of Facebook’s two largest purchases in the past, Instagram and WhatsApp. When FB bought those companies, they took an extremely hands-off approach to the situation. “Hey, here’s some capital for you to use. Do you want our help recruiting new talent? Our recruiters will now scout possible new employees for you guys as well. Good luck!” And then Facebook let them be.

Instagram was a cool app that has now taken a massive leap forward after FB bought them. WhatsApp is now the second largest social networking app in the world (in fairness to WhatsApp, this was already true before being bought by Facebook). FB has not interfered with those companies in the slightest, and it stands to reason that they’re treating this acquisition the same way, given that they've come out and said “we will be treating Oculus in the same way we treat Instagram and WhatsApp.” Facebook is now a publicly traded company. They cannot lie about these things.

That’s not to say that Facebook buying Oculus will change nothing.

First, the money. Oculus was bought for ~$400M cash, and ~$1.6B in stock. That stock is primarily an incentive: do well, help our stock improve, and you directly reap in the profits for it, just as if you had been independently owned.

Having a larger company behind them to bankroll their endeavors is a huge boon for Oculus, too. With it, Oculus no longer has to build the Rift with garbage pieces. All of a sudden, they have the massive amounts of capital needed to set up direct pipelines for quality parts. They have the capital needed to be able to freely innovate and take bigger risks with future models. They have the capital needed to even ask parts makers to make custom parts exclusively for them.

Facebook has also taken a page out of the Google playbook, and it’s a really great one. The King Of Search has sold all of their hardware pretty much at cost. The Nexus family of tablets, the Google-branded smart phone, Google Glass… they’re all sold at, or close to, cost. Facebook has said that they intend to do the same with the Oculus, which means that the Oculus can have all those nicer, shiner, fancier parts without an increase in price. Three days ago, Oculus Rifts had to be sold for profit. That is no longer the case.

All of this, however, misses the biggest thing. The #1 game changer. The reason that instead of getting The Future Of Gaming(TM), we are now getting The Future(TM).

Facebook bought Oculus.

This is the turning point. Think about it for a second. Facebook is not a gaming company. Their flagship platform does allow for some browser-based gaming, but Facebook is not a gaming company. Facebook is, however, a major power in tech. So major of a power, in fact, that their purchases and plans ripple across the rest of the world.

This purchase hit the gaming web like a tidal wave. It hit the tech web like a rogue wave. But it goes beyond the traditional realms of VR, too. The NYT ran a story about the buyout a day ago. Think about that for a second. A virtual reality headset that’s not even available for consumer purchase yet somehow made it onto the the business section of the most widely read and respected newspaper in the country. TIME ran a piece about it earlier today. The Wall Street Journal has started covering this.

Warren Buffet knows this exists now. The CEOs and Boards of Comcast (owners of NBC), Disney (owners of ABC and ESPN), Newscorp (owners of Fox), and all the others are now aware of the Oculus Rift. Not only that, but they’re suddenly thinking “wait, one of the fastest growing and most powerful companies in the world just spent $2 Billion on this company? And they don’t even have a product yet?!”

This changes everything.

I was excited about The Future Of Gaming(TM). If you had asked me three days ago, I would have told you that the Oculus was an awesome product that I was really interested in, especially since the game designer I respect the most in the world is directly developing for it. I couldn't wait to load up a Jade Empire or Baldur’s Gate or Mass Effect-esque RPG with an Oculus Rift strapped to my head. I've dreamed about that since I was a kid.

But the VR I dreamed about was more than that. The VR I dreamed about could take me anywhere. Three days ago, I knew that the Oculus Rift wasn't going to give me The Future(TM) that I dreamed about as a child, or at least not for quite a while. Digital homes where I could have house parties with all my closest friends, regardless of our location? Front row seats at the 50 yard line of a Mizzou football game? Felix Baumgartner’s crazy Earth-shattering Fall From Heaven, live as it happened? All of that was still a pipe dream.

That was three days ago. Today, that future seems so much more real. Facebook has the muscle, the clout, and the prestige to make it happen. Zuckerberg is a brilliantly insightful person, keenly aware of what you can do with technology, and how the landscape of the industry is shifting.

He’s said as much. In the press release announcing Facebook’s buyout, he talked about using the Oculus Rift to put you at live sporting events. It’s a dream of his just as it’s a dream of mine. From what I understand, Zuckerberg is a pretty big F1 fan. I bet he’s dreaming of the day he gets to sit in the cockpit of Lewis Hamilton’s car as he goes screaming through those corners at Monza.

I share a very similar dream: the day I get to ride along Jorge Lorenzo’s M1 Yamaha as he goes twisting and turning around the holy Cathedral of motorcycle racing, Assen. That dream, to me, is worth the (rather unrealistic) risk of all those fears we expressed earlier.

All the rest of the VR tech will come much sooner now, too. If the Oculus becomes a device people use at home beyond gaming, we’ll start seeing the shift. Television and movies filmed specifically for VR. Haptic feedback suits. Omnidirectional treadmills.

Mark Zuckerberg just did what is probably one of the most important things in the recent history of tech. He made the very idea of Virtual Reality credible and respectable.

Now, all we have to do is wait.

How being a woman in a room full of men killed my love for one of my favorite activities

From a young age, like many people, I’ve been interested in games. My siblings and I would argue over who got to be Mario and who got to be Luigi, whose turn it was to play Yo! Noid (yes, that was a real game), or who got to pick the next title to rent from the video store. When my friend Katie would come to my house for a sleepover, we’d sneak up in the middle of the night and play my brother’s borrowed copy of Strider (which I’m only recently learning is very similar to Metroid). I’d go over to my friend’s house just so we could play Super Mario Bros. on her SNES all day.

Whenever my family went on vacation, I would follow my brother to the arcades so we could play Street Fighter (Guile was my favorite) or Mortal Kombat (I wanted to learn ALL of Sub Zero’s moves). When the Sega Genesis first came out, it was all my sister wanted for Christmas, and we spent the next year playing the crap out of that Lion King game that came with it.

During my childhood, it was never suggested — and I never considered — that playing video games was a boys-only activity.

Flash forward past my middle and high school years (during which I apparently forgot about video games for the most part), to my first year in college. My passion for video games was reignited when my then-boyfriend brought over his PlayStation and we’d play Kessen into the wee hours of the morning. And once I saw his little brother playing Final Fantasy 9? I was completely, unbelievably hooked.

That was also the beginning of my trading card game (TCG) obsession. We played so much Pokemon that I ended up buying whole boxes of cards online. I had binders for every type of Pokemon, complete with color-coded cover pages, organized by rarity and name. I later forsook Pokemon for the Star Wars TCG, and then eventually learned about the satisfying complexities of Magic: The Gathering.

TCGs took a backseat after a while, though, when I began gobbling up every MMORPG I could find. I made an awesome group of friends and we traveled from MMO to MMO together. World of Warcraft, perhaps unsurprisingly, is where the bulk of my online gaming took place. My guild had a significantly large percentage of women — seemingly by chance — and for most of The Burning Crusade, I was escalated to GM. There were a few rather crude guys, but for the most part our guild was a safe and comfortable place for women.

Once again, in my 20s, I wasn’t really exposed the idea that video games weren’t for girls, or that we’re not as good at games (video, TCG, or otherwise) as guys are.

Maybe I got lucky. Maybe it was actually a setback.

One of the things that brought my husband and me together when we first met was playing MtG Online. From there we branched out to visiting a local shop for draft tournaments, and eventually started playing in standard tournaments a few nights a week.

I fell in love with gobblers, burning my opponents’ faces off, and watching the way crazy strategies could play out (or go completely awry). When I would Top 4 and actually win prizes (ooh, treasures!), all the better.

There was nothing quite so satisfying as taking Top 2 with my husband and our matching mono red decks (in fact, he’s still heralded as “the best mono red player in Texas”). At one point, it got so bad (good?) that people stopped coming because they didn’t want to lose to us anymore, so we had to change up our decks. Oopsie!

But the more time I spent playing Magic with the general public, the more I began to understand the discrimination and isolation many women experience in the gaming community.

At first it was fun, being underestimated by my opponent.

People saw me as a new player, so my match wins would often come as a surprise to the other person. I relished being able to outwit my opponents with unexpected deck choices and mind games.

It wasn’t until I started receiving certain commentary, however, that I realized there was more going on. My supposed newbie status wasn’t what was throwing people off; it was the fact that I’m not a guy. People would try to bully/sweet-talk me into letting them win. People would try to convince me to make bad plays, like I was an easy target. People would RAGE when they lost, and I would have to stick up for myself and not back down when I knew I was right or had announced something they “didn’t hear.”

After narrowly losing a mirror match (we were playing Tempered Steel at the time) against a seasoned player, I was told, “You’re one of the better females.”

Perhaps he meant it as a compliment, but it instantly made me uncomfortable. Why wasn’t a “good game” and a handshake good enough? Why mention my gender? (And why not “women” instead of “females”?)

One night I was playing in the final round and my opponent hit me with a double-whammy. In the end, I had to admit to myself that he was better at mind games than I was (and I wasn’t familiar enough with his decklist — also my fault). But the thing that made me want to crush him?

“Whew! I didn’t want to lose to a girl,” he quipped as he packed his deck away.

I’m still annoyed with myself for responding with a soft snicker and embarrassed silence, but at the time, I was kind of shocked numb. I’m a good player and the match win came down to one mistake I made (and will never forget). I was disappointed that I’d lost the match when I was previously undefeated, and had been paired down that round. He wasn’t concerned that he might have lost the match and gotten pushed out of the Top 8. He was worried that he might have lost a match to a girl. Good thing I’m not concerned about losing to guys, or I would hate playing Magic.

Oh wait. That’s actually what started to happen.

After a while, it wasn’t about fun anymore. It was about proving myself as a Magic player. If I lost, it was because I’m a woman (and thus obviously bad at Magic). If I won, it was because they were having bad luck that night.

I wanted to destroy that mindset among the players.

I wanted them to see me as a good player. I wanted them to see me as more than an easy win. I wanted them to see me as an equal, as a peer, and as a challenging opponent. I know that not every Magic player thinks this way (we’ve made a core group of friends who rise above the rest), but the general atmosphere and attitude among players still pushed me to feel this way.

I didn’t just want to be seen as a good player. I wanted to be seen as the best player in the room. No excuses, no doubt.

I played only to win. If I lost, I was frustrated with myself. If I didn’t Top 8, I was embarrassed and would spend the ride home apologizing to my husband for sucking at Magic.

Maybe I sabotaged my own success, though. When people talked about cards, or strategies, or new deck ideas, I wasn’t always able to follow the conversation or chime in (or understand all the jokes). I’ve never been as deep into learning about ALL the cards as my husband and our friends are. [Truth be told, I even became too lazy to build my own decks and just let my husband do that for me (but I would make the final decisions on card choices and sideboard composition; I didn't want to go in blind).]

So I don’t have time to read about Magic all day long. So I don’t have every single card (which set it’s from, and its current trade value) memorized. So you might have to remind me what the mana cost is for Incinerate if I haven’t used it in a while. Does that mean I’m to be dismissed from the community? Does that mean I’m not a “real” player? Does that mean I’m a poseur for wearing my Simic t-shirt every week? (Dear god, does that mean I’m some sort of “fake geek girl”? Hint: No.)

I don’t know how different things would’ve been if I were a guy. I don’t know how different things would’ve been if maybe I was just more studious about Magic (my husband says everyone who likes Magic just naturally reads about it outside of the game — news, spoilers, new card mechanics, etc.; I contend that I can like a game but still not have the time or desire to delve so deeply into it).

In the end, all I know is that my need to prove myself killed my love for the game.

While I’m still a very active gamer, and I still want ALL the trading card games (have you SEEN Vanguard and the Madoka one and The Spoils and…?!), playing a game of Magic always comes with a large helping of self-doubt and trepidation these days. I hope I can shake that eventually.

For now? At least I’ve got Civ5 to keep me company.

Originally posted at rhymes with fairy.

(I can still be an Elspeth fangirl though, right?)

In a Creative Field, It’s Better to Own Your Mistakes than Bury Them 

In 1982, Atari released the Worst. Video game. Ever. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should have been a blockbuster, given the movie’s popularity. The game did sell 1.5 million copies that Christmas — a respectable sum — but then everyone realized: it sucked.

How bad was it? So phone-home-ingly awful that it bankrupted Atari and sent the nascent video game industry into a tailspin deep enough to justify its own Wikipedia page. So awful that Atari bought back millions of unsold cartridges, shipped truckloads into New Mexico under cover of darkness, and buried them — encased, as if radioactive, in concrete — in the desert, near the detonation site of the first atomic bomb.

At least, that’s the legend. Now, filmmakers Jonathan Chinn and Mike Burns are on a mission to dig up the lost cartridges and confirm the myth once and for all. Speaking at this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, they described a story of “corporate hubris,” about “trying to bury your mistakes.” But with a little digging, those mistakes might just reemerge into the public eye.

Of course, thanks to the Internet, stories like this never really go away. Not when message boards can dig up old copies of local newspapers. Not when even The New York Times corroborates the tale. As they talked, I was reminded of a concept discussed earlier in the day, at a panel with Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen: they called it “digital permanence.”

The idea is that information, once published online, never really vanishes. When that drunk Facebook photo from college deep-sixes a new job opportunity, or when sexting costs you public office, that’s digital permanence at work. Cohen even suggested that, because kids’ ability to post damaging information online outpaces their emotional maturity, parents should have “the digital-permanence talk” long before “the birds and the bees.”

Digital permanence also enables whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, who also spoke at the conference. With so much information lying around NSA servers, practically begging to be released, it’s nearly impossible for the NSA to cover its tracks. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” say journalists and legal scholars, and in a digital age, there’s so much more information to shine the light on.

We shouldn’t be surprised: if even “analog permanence” is unrealistic — if we can’t conceal our dirty secrets by sealing them in concrete and dumping them in the desert — how can we expect to police our mistakes online?

The same goes for creative fields like design. There are bound to be a few mistakes along the way, a few misconceived projects that people would rather forget. What firm doesn’t have a few clunkers in its portfolio? But that doesn’t mean we have to bury them. I recently attended an internal awards jury at my firm, which spurred some difficult conversations about the quality of some of our work. But it was a good opportunity to reflect on how we’re doing, how we want to improve and how we might get there.

You could argue those conversations should remain hidden from public view. But architecture is inherently public already. Acknowledging those moments of experimentation, growth and, yes, even failure can humanize a company and make it even more appealing.

Besides, they may not be as shameful as you think; even the E.T. game has its advocates. One can find something of value in almost anything. During his panel, Cohen also suggested that, once the Millennial generation grows up and starts running for office, when everyone has a few embarrassing photos on their Facebook pages, it won’t bother anyone anymore. We’ll understand: no one’s perfect, and that’s okay.

So when Chinn and Burns go into the New Mexico desert, shovels in hand, I hope they find what they’re looking for. I hope they bring the past to light. And I hope it confirms that the only mistake we have to fear is fearing our mistakes.

By Carl Yost, Communications Manager, NBBJ
@CarlYost

See more at meanstheworld.co

To break, or to simulate?

I was really nervous in the first hour of Saints Row IV.

I could already outrun cars, leap over buildings, and punch aliens across several city blocks. Knowing that the whole crux of the game was the addition of Crackdown-style superpowers, I was scared that Saints Row IV had shown its hand too early, and I had already experienced the best it had to offer. Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong.

Since then, I’ve logged over 70 hours in Steelport. Granted, that’s probably due in no small part to a recent project using the game’s engine to create a fake film trailer. But all the same, those have been a thoroughly enjoyable 70 hours.

I gleefully bounded through the virtualized simulation of the open world, vacuuming up shimmering data clusters that opened up more and more outlandish abilities. The skills unlocked in the beginning were only the bare necessities, the baby-steps framework of superhuman powers. The progression was fun, and complimented the hysterical storyline phenomenally well.

Subsequently, though, the effectiveness of any sort of vehicle was quickly eradicated. Steelport’s chop shop, the tongue-in-cheek-titled Rim Jobs, only saw use when I decided to deviate from the main path and customize a few vehicles for the hell of it. I also was that person who would, on more than a few occasions, play Grand Theft Auto working strictly by the rules of reality; driving carefully, walking from location to location, and enjoying the immersive spectacle of Vice City/Los Santos/Liberty City.

Paring down the scale of a game can do wonders for your appreciation, which is one of the reasons why the glorious Dead End Thrills screenshot blog is so effective. There’s something to be said about becoming an actual citizen of a game’s world. Thinking back on my time spent with Sleeping Dogs feels like a warm memory of a vacation in China. Maneuvering down claustrophobic neon Hong-Kong streets on an unfamiliar side of the road while listening to orchestral Asian music led to an astounding sense of place, something that all games strive desperately for.

Unlike Sleeping Dogs’ homage to Hong Kong, Saints Row IV lives entirely in a fictionalized city. (Which, in-game, is even a virtual version of itself, but I digress.) Steelport draws on various elements to create a cohesive, largely believable world with a surprising attention to detail. Sadly, the smaller designs become a blur as your traversal mechanics become more extraordinary.

Because of this, the game called on a different part of my soul, and the game quickly became synonymous with a madcap chaos simulator, a de-stresser I could pop into after work. It’s hard to find anything more therapeutic than the limitless glide off of the tallest skyscraper in downtown, landing with a bang in a crowd and using telekinesis to launch buses at soda-can mascots.

That might be one of the weirdest sentences I’ve ever typed. Videogames!

Last summer, the magnificent recent release of EA/Origin’s Humble Bundle allowed me to finally got my hands on a long-overdue copy of Burnout Paradise. Typically being an RPG and adventure game snob, to indulge in the occasional racing game takes a real leap of faith.

Back in the glory days of the late PlayStation 2 games, I developed a deep relationship with the original Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Before that, my heart belonged to Rockstar’s Midnight Club 2. Both games brought an absolutely excellent amount of fast-paced, frenetic, nitros-induced frenzy of mayhem and fun to the racing experience. I played my share of Gran Turismo 3 and enjoyed the attention to detail, but never really being a gearhead, I felt I was missing out on the real appeal.

Initially, I was overjoyed when Criterion Games announced their attractive-looking Need for Speed: Most Wanted remake. The remake was not a bad game, by any measure. It was tight, visceral, complete, and very effective at translating a sense of dizzyingly high-octane driving. But there was something about it that struck a sour and uncomfortable note with me. Something about the game prevented me from wanting to stick around after the initial release thrill wore off.

Firing up Burnout Paradise, it hit me. Vehicles flipped and spun and twirled like toys. Cars stuck to the road like velcro, and engaging a NOS boost was enough to break the sound barrier. The game was simply fun, and for some reason, that felt missing from Criterion’s take on Most Wanted.

The search for “just plain fun” seems to be the trick, not just mechanically, but thematically. Since Niko Bellic’s soul-searching bowling simulator, Grand Theft Auto has opted for an emotionally heavy cinematic experience, painting the open world in a different light than the pastel-and-blood of something along the lines of Vice City. Saints Row has found its rhythm instead in giant purple dingaling bats. Different strokes, so to speak.

Both games are immensely good entertainment. But there’s a marked difference between the pathos of a GTA: IV and the insane playground of Saints Row. The key word is “playground,” because what are video games, if not a virtual dreamland of possibility?

This begs the question, then if games are more defined as an arcadey realm of digital mayhem and possibility, or simulated realities that emulate life and realism as true to form as possible?

Before we had the drool-worthy visuals of a Crysis, or the meticulously tuned physics of a Forza, games were pixels that would jump when we pressed jump, and turn when we commanded them to turn. The first batches of shooters were almost hilarious in their sense of whiplash-inducing jumping and running. Arcadey games are fast, fun, and allow for a whole world of opportunities that could never be emulated in real life without a massive hospital bill.

That being said, sometimes we really want that true-to-life simulation, the virtual tourism mentioned earlier. Whether we’re travelling to another world, another period of time, or to complete fantasy and sci-fi realms, the more realistic our sword slashing feels against the onslaught of a dragon attack, the neater the illusion. Simulations are being pushed further and further every day with motion controls and the hotly anticipated Oculus Rift.

I love Euro Truck Simulator 2. I’m absolutely enthralled by the experience of traversing the overpasses of Scotland in a massive rig, watching my speed and utilizing turn signals to prevent my truck from making headline news as a five-lane roadblock. That’s awesome. But pop me into a game where all bets are off and it’s a dog-eat-dog race to the finish, and I want to see flames shooting out as I do a 200-mile-per-hour barrel roll over a river and into the finish line.

Weirdly, it almost boils down to the fact that the more realistic a game’s setting and environment is, the more we want to have a chance to break the laws of reality; inversely, the more outlandish and supernatural the world, the closer we want it to feel like we are, in fact, Commander Shepard, and we are in fact saving the galaxy. It’s a fascinating effect.

One last note about Saints Row IV: my friend and I actually developed our own mini-game within it, using cheats to actually remove the superpowers, but imbuing the world with chaotic and violent A.I. We then challenge each other to reach a pre-determined point on the map using nothing but a shotgun, essentially turning the game into Left 4 Dead: Steelport. While Saints Row IV normally plays like a game amped up on cheats, it felt funny to use them to dial back the superpowers and make for a more vulnerable (and enjoyably challenging) player character. It was also strangely entertaining in a way that the vanilla game didn’t quite intend.

What do you think? At the end of the day, are video games more of a wild alternate reality that should let players call all of the shots, or are they a beautiful interactive medium that should be as close to reality as possible, bridging the gap between life and fantasy?

(www.tomjonline.com)

The more I study gamification and serious gaming, the more this notion grabs hold of me: games can teach us how to live. I don’t just mean that they can teach us specific tasks or help us develop certain qualities and characteristics, but also that how we are while we play games, how we think and act, provides a model for how we could best lead our lives. Games can bring out our best qualities. In this article I want to explore the idea that this means that we should live our lives as were it a game.

This idea is not new. Innumerable life coaches, guru’s, therapists, philosophers, writers and artists have said it before me: life is just a game. Life is just a ride. We should be playful. Lighten up. Play by the rules. Know the rules. Etcetera. Now I want to take it a step further to see if what we know about how games work can be transferred to real life.

Two interesting areas come to mind. First the concept of overjustification, about which I’ve written ealier as being the Catch-22 of gamification. I will briefly repeat myself in the next paragraphs. Second I want to discuss Gordon Calleja’s player involvement model, which describes six dimensions of player involvement, to see whether it translates to real life as well.

The overjustification effect is a well-known psychological mechanism which occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform a task. In gamification, this is a real killer, as I explained in an earlier article. Also in many real life situations overjustification presents real problems. In education for example there is a lot of rewarding going on. The whole grading system can be seen (and is often experienced as) a system of doling out rewards (nice ones and lousy ones…).

Take me, for example: I always loved reading and learning languages. I was pretty good at explaining German texts and I got good grades, which boosted my confidence and made me anticipate the next text. I actually looked forward to reading German texts! Another bonus was, that these good grades had to be given to me by my German teacher, with whom I didn’t get along for the five long years. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that she sat at home, grinding her teeth while seeing another example of my fine work.

Now after high school this stopped. No more assignments, no more grades (good or bad), no more dispicable teachers, no more warm and fuzzy feelings surrounding German texts. I hardly ever picked up a German book again. The external rewards had taken the place of my intrinsic motivation to learn, to master a new language. And I think a lot of people can come up whith such examples from their own educational years. Education’s grading systems resemble gaming mechanics like points and levels quite closely.

When I look at how society stimulates, punishes, rewards, persuades, obliges and forbids us… it looks remarkably like a game! A great example and maybe the most fundamental one is money. Money is an external reward. It is supposed to be nothing more than a legal tender of an intrinsicly motivated piece of value, with a practical value of not having to carry around all your cattle while trading. However, our collective attention has in many cases shifted almost entirely to the reward, in stead of the value. It is quite striking to me how well this analogy works. See what people do, to themselves and to others, in order to earn money.

Consider how many people are performing tasks for some external reward that they would not even consider if all that mattered was their intrinsic motivation. Of course, you might argue that the motivation behind them doing the dirty work (so to speak) is the intrinsic drive to survive, to eat, to take care, etcetera. And you would be right. But consider the fact that so many of us in the Western world struggle with meaning in our lives, i.e. with intrinsic value. Grinding away at your job, day in day out, without deriving real pleasure or satisfaction from it, is really hard to endure in the long run even if you get a good paycheck and get to on nice holidays. Don’t take my word for it, look at how many seemingly succesful people are actually depressed and desperate. Millons of us. From this perspective, depression can be seen as the absence of intrinsic motivation and the reason it has declined or disappeared is money: through overjustification the reward has taken the place of the value.

This theory of money eating away at our values, actually sheds new light on the way we have organized society and it might well be that using this game perspective more extensively will give us even more insight into how and why things work as they do in real life. What we would need to look at the world as a game systematically, is a model. Luckily, one such model fits our needs quite well. It is Gordon Calleja’s Player Involvement Model. This model describes six dimensions of player involvement while playng games. He chooses to abandon the widely-used term immersion and uses incorporation as substitute. The reason he gives is firstly that the former term has been used for such a variety of phenomena and in such diverse field, that its meaning is obscured. But the two terms are also quite distinctly different in their implications. Where immersion implies a player who is more or less lost in the designed world of the game, incorporation implies that the game lives inside the player. Both can be true and I do think both happen during gameplay, but to my mind, incorporation seems more desirable and meaningful than immersion.

So Calleja’s Player Involvement Model describes the following six dimensions of involvement:

1. Kinesthetic: deals with control and movement;
2. Spatial: deals with exploration and learning of the (game’s) spatial domain;
3. Shared: deals with collaboration, co-presence and competition with other agents within the spatial domain (other players or game-characters/agents);
4. Narrative: deals with the formation of an ongoing story and/or interaction with the scripted narrative that has been written into the game.
5. Affective: deals with the affect (suspension of disbelief, attachment) generated during play;
6. Ludic: deals with the consciously made choices undertaken while trying to achieve goals, either set by the game or by the player.

When you look at the list and conceptually take it away from gaming and bring it into real life, it becomes immediately apparent that we are dealing with a quite fitting and perhaps powerful model of conducting ones own life. If we are able to deal effectively with the first 5 dimensions in order to achieve the goals set in the 6th dimension, chances are we will lead a pretty succesful life that is very much intrinsicly motivated. Of course, dimension number 5 is a tricky one: how far are you willing to go to see your life as a game? How often will you get caught up in your own story and how capable are you in letting that storyline go if it doesn’t work for you anymore?

Seen like this, gamification might actually be a fun and powerful paradigm for self-help. Who knows, I might just turn into the next Dr. Phil – Bring Your Life To The Win State!

I’d be very happy to hear any thoughts you might have upon reading this. Please share!