ds1935’s blog

mike learning to use a footpad to control pinball flippers:

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ds1935/thesis/pinballmike.mov

screen shot of me trying a couple of pinball ‘moves’

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ds1935/thesis/pinballscreen.mov

The code is cludgey and it’s still full of bugs, but it is something to work with. Clicking the mouse makes both flippers move up, but the flippers don’t affect the balls properly.

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ds1935/thesis/simplestpinballphysics/

ETA: For this one, the ‘flipper’ is *much* better, although it is currently one-sided, and i’m avoiding edge problems by making the edge of the flippper be off the screen. For this, hold down a key to make the flipper move up. Clicking in the screen makes the ball move to the mouse.

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ds1935/thesis/flipper/ 

Ideally, the ball should always be above the flipper; nonetheless, there are still times when it ends up getting skipped over and ends up below the flipper. I don’t know why, and the code is full of too many bits and bobs right now. This one also shows the flaws of the bumpers, but it should be easy to fix them now. Next step: clean up, make things work together.

In “On Children’s Games and Gaming,” Linda Hughes documented how a group of girls developed a set of variations and exceptions to the rules of foursquare, to make the game playable in their social context. When I was a child, my mother’s house rules for Scrabble were that “IQ” counted as a word and that we could preemptively look up specific words in the dictionary (but not browse for ideas)—both rules were intended to make the game more playable for children. My partner and I play backgammon with two house rules: a single point may hold no more than five checkers, and when a player rolls a 2 and a 1, if they can make both those moves, then they can also move the ‘doubles’ of their choice. We think that these rules make the game more interesting.

There are many reasons for introducing rule variations into a game: to make the game easier, harder, or more varied; to grease social interactions; to make the game more intuitive; because the rules were initially misunderstood; etc.

There’s an academic argument to be had around whether rule variations change a game into a whole other game—after all, part of the point of playing a game is to give oneself over to the rules of play, not to ignore or alter them to fit our whims. At worst, such alteration is cheating, and at best it’s playing a different game. In practice, though, the argument is indeed academic. Most of us most of the time have a gut feel for the limits of a game, and we can negotiate within those limits to meet various players’ needs.

With video games it’s different. I tried to convince Final Fantasy VII to give me a break on the chocobo breeding, but it wouldn’t listen to me. My Playstation and I do not have any house rules.

My initial thought is that video games are intrinsically unable to accommodate house rules. This is, of course, because video games are code rather than people. A Playstation disc won’t change details of its programming because one of the players is much younger than the rest of the players, or because this stretch of the game is unbalanced but would be much better if you just tweaked it… right… here.

Video games do contain mechanisms to accommodate some of the problems that house rules address. Difficulty levels allow for different skill levels; save points allow for do-overs; customization of avatars and equipment allow players to tweak character abilities and play styles to suit their own preferences. However, these are intrinsicially part of the game as a system in ways that house rules are not. While they allow for increased flexibility in play, they do not allow for unpredictable and creative solutions to unpredicted dilemmas.

After feeling certain of these limitations of video games, I introduced yet another friend to Warioware: Smooth Moves, and in the middle of giving instructions I realized that I was explaining my Wii’s house rules:
*For The Elephant, don’t hold the controller at your nose; hold it at your chin. The sensors will pick it up much better at that height.
*For The Discard, hold the controller very still in your off hand, and when you want to pick it up, toss it up into your dominant hand.

In some ways, these are very literal house (or apartment) rules. Given the way the Wii’s sensors work, my furniture, the location of my television, and the size of my room, there are locations where the Wii’s position can be reliably tracked and locations that are dead zones. Being in the right area makes the game playable.

The rules of Warioware, however, lead to an interesting negotiation between the physical constraints of the system, the explicit instructions of the game, and my desire to play this game and not another game.

In Warioware, the player is moved through a series of microgames—scenarios lasting approximately 5 seconds in which the player is supposed to hold the Wii controller in a specified position and perform an indicated gesture.

For example, I may be instructed to hold the controller in the Elephant position—hold the controller pointing out from my nose—point the controller to the top of the screen to pick up an apple, and then point to the bottom of the screen to deposit the apple in a bucket.

The fun and the fiction of this game is that there is absolutely no encoded reason why I should hold the controller at my nose. As far as the game can detect, I can just as easily hold the controller in my hand and tilt it up and then down. In fact, given the physical constraints of my apartment, I am more likely to be successful at that maneuver, because I can more easily keep the controller away from dead zones in that position.

In fact, I could win this game without doing any of the contortions indicated by the game instructions.

My gut, however, informs me that such an approach would not in fact lead to my winning this game, but rather some other game—or that I would be cheating.

Hence the house rules. Without having to engage with any alterations in code, I negotiate my position in space and figure out how to modify the suggested positions so that I can maintain reliable controller input while playing the game as faithfully as possible.

This is possible in part because the game asks the player to do things that cannot be detected by the video game system. Rather than engaging with inflexible code—which will tell me whether I am right or wrong!—I am engaging with my own expectations of what I think the game is. And since much of what I think the game is is not detectable by the system, the system cannot tell me whether I am playing properly or not. I’m on the honor system, and I have to trust my gut.

****
There’s also something about the fact that Wii games are party games. Wii sports does the same thing. When these games are played as party games, then there is the human element to monitor the negotiation. The huge gaping holes in the system are filled in by people watching and negotiating with each other.

I am pleased with the basic movement mechanics–although i seem to be trending toward (tragically) digital reponses (just yes or no if a person’s body is in the right place), i think the simple act of placing them far away from each other and having 3 of the 4 involve no contact will make it feel expressive enough (must get working! must test!)

The ‘obstacle course’ fiction still leaves me cold, and in looking back at my notes and in reading chris bateman’s blog entries on patterns of play, I am reminded that I was interested in exploring both simulation and vertigo in the context of a 1-2-player gesture-based video game. I think I will be able to create a more interesting and exploratory (but still simple!) fiction based on the same basic game mechanics. Something perhaps more combinatorial. I don’t want a goal-less game, but it wouldn’t hurt to give the player some options between goals, or some sort of experience of having to figure out what the goal is.

right, then the player will have these questions:

• what actions are available to me?
• what are the borders of my game? where does the magic circle extend to?
• what are the effects of my actions?
  • both in my own game
  • and outside of my own game/in an expanded magic circle
• what is/are the goal(s) of my play?
  • what are the possible goals?
  • what goal do i want?
  • how is the accomplishment of my goals affected by external factors?

The first thing that comes to mind is an abstract color and sound thing–not that exciting to me.

It could be a weird puzzle-piece collection game, where you have a choice between pieces from two sets of puzzles, and if you ‘die’ then a piece of the puzzle gets tossed back onto the road… Not very simulation-y, but less competitive, and might be more fun in a 1-player context. Huh. I kind of like this idea. Might try it and see how it looks.

Here are two versions of the same game, using two different types of movement:

 Jumping

Dodging 

me: in an alternate reality game, one of the hopes is a pleasurable feeling of vertigo in which the player almost feels that in another world this game could almost be reality
this is often writ on a large canvas–moving through a city

Ezekiel: yep

me: in a gesture-based video game, one of the hopes is a pleasurable feeling of vertigo in which the player almost feels that in another world this game could almost be reality
this is writ on the body as the canvas

Ezekiel: hmm, interesting conjunction

me: in an ARG, there is often a dynamic exchange between players and designers
and players actually tend to influence the development, outcome, and goals of the game
even if they don’t know it
a video game, however, is a piece of code, and does not offer the same amount of flexible response to the player

Ezekiel: are you going to propose a 3rd possibility?

me: not sure!
i mean, right now what i’m thinking of is a game that foregrounds questions of agency

Ezekiel: cool

me: by requiring players to step away from their avatar and outside the game in order to understand the game
and learn the game’s goals

Ezekiel: vv cool

me: but i think there’s a fundamentally broken aspect where you just can’t change the goals of a piece of code…
you can subvert them or refuse to engage with them, or you can turn the game off
but you can’t convince the code that the objectives and the win state are different from what the code thinks they are

Ezekiel: hehe
unless you get into fuzzy systems and AI

me: right
sort of
they’re still not as flexible as people
there are also sandbox games where the goal is unclear
like the sims, or GTA

Ezekiel: uh huh

me: but ‘no clear goal’ is not the same as ‘dynamically responsive goal’