My entry in two parts can be found here and here. Hope you like it.

You can find it here

First, there were the Dutch Game Awards. Three games made @ KMT ranged in four awards; Vogels (Birds), a game that got a ‘special award’. The game helps people recover from brain injury in combination with a dedicated device to retrain motorprogrammes. Paper Cakes, a collaboration with tablet maker Wacom (‘best student game’ and ‘best original game design’), and I must say, a blast to play. And a game made at our faculty some time ago, but fortunately living on as a business is  Mijn Naam is Haas, an educational language game for young kids  (‘best serious game’) originally in collaboration with Radboud University Nijmegen.

First price at bi-annual  Conference on Fun and Games 2010 in Leuven

Students Game Design and Development received first price  in a Game Design Competition for their entry Reflection, a puzzle platform adventure game.

Price winning game Vogels (Birds) was also nominated for a Wozzie Award.

Personally, I felt honoured when the audience at this venue felt my 15 minute talk should come out first, although it was a terrible close call with Bjorn Prins, who’s talk on mindfullness and his charming (Belgian) deep voice brought us in the here and now in the most splendid way.

I always tell people that applying these game principles and design guide lines lead to astonishing behavioral patterns. It is almost as if a hidden big  red button is pushed. This is what happened…

After the ‘unwrap the presents’ ceremony I put the laptop on the table and started the presentation. They watched the first slides (taking the wafer thin storyline for granted!) and matter of factly solved the resistor issue (which I thought would require a lot of extra explaining). Than the had to find the capacitor in the broken equipment. Here my timetable went of the rails: it was too much fun. Even after they had found the capacitor I had intended (and found out it had a polarity), the continued finding and extracting fascinating bits of kit. I decided to stop it once the energy levels lowered and the first kid showed signs it was enough.

The simulation exercises with Spektro were great fun, leading to wonderful patterns of collaborative problem solving. Their ability to ‘debug’ circuits that did not work first time was amazing. On one occasion I had to really help them solve the problem, but then they were building a complex circuit with a LED display in segments which had to flash.

The badge ceremony was well received (although only on screen, more on this later). Than some quick drinks and the secret message to find the car. Excitement rose considerbly, handing out the nerf guns and the walkie talkie made them split roles (recon squad and attack squad, using their game intelligence and experience apparently), deciding on communication codes, and discussing tactics. The notion that some agents were out there to nerf them down in which case they had to report bac to base got some worried faces.

They left the front door backs against the wall, watching the street eagle-eyed. I let them walk for some minutes and than pointed them in a different direction since we had lost too much on the kit bashing. Some fake calls for enemies got them really warmed up and alert. In about 10 minutes we found the car where the two younger sisters welcomed them with darts flying. A short battle and we returned with the kit radio to our house, still on alert “because the hunters are still out there”.

At home, red cheeked and  panting, we started building the kit. But timing was off, we still had to eat, so almost finished we had to put it aside and end the party with the meal. Given the success of the outside hunt and tension I thought we would get away with it. I was wrong. The same evening two boys rang up if we could not finish the radio next day “beacuse of the poor agents” and the fulfillment of their obligation to Jeremy, the lead character. I invited them back for the next morning. They came back and made me smile. They had made badges of Fimo clay for each of the party kids since “they had earned them but did not get them” so they had designed some of their own and my son got one they had made for him. They finished the radio in no time and it worked straight out! I fixed them with a long aerial and they had to ground it on metal (sign post) and of they went.

They spent two hours  outside searching the waves for exotic stations, (and Afghan agents) and were really really excited about … radio! Somehow the magic my father had experienced in the fifties was back in 2010 where radio is so cheap and small it can be build into almost anything.

So apart from the timing issues (which I could have solved skipping one or two of the simulated Spectro assignments btw, couldn’t kill my darling) all went splendid. The boys were ectatic. One of the most fun bits is hearing them report to their parents what they had ‘gone through’, which most parents can by no means relate to sitting in a room on a birthday. Compare it to how kids can tell stories about a game experience, as if they were there themselves doing it.  I will make no claims on validity of learning in this particular case since I did not measure etc. but the amount of focus and concentration on this subject was more than convincing. Any teacher would love that imagery in their classroom, I can assure you. It was fun, exciting, inspiring, engaging, fun to make, fun to do, and a true experience.

In part two we will fill in the blanks in between the start and the finish. The final goal is for the kids to build a working 9V  long wave radio receiver from a kit. In order to do so, they need some basic learning  so they can do it themselves with as  little additional instruction as possible.

On verbs

In order to make the party interesting for them, I follow my own rethoric on the importance of varied activities or ‘verbs’ they should be able to undertake to enjoy the experience. These actions or verbs should be connected to the subject and have some intrinsic relevance. For the ‘capacitator’ assignment I use the classical verbs; read, understand, share knowledge, solve ‘puzzle’. For them this is the let’s-get-it-over with-bit.

The second assignment needed to address the capacitor as an electronic component. Since I wanted them to have a look inside modern equipment as well, I combined these elements into the next assignment. I had gathered some junk pieces of broken electronic equipment ( a broken beamer, a camera, handsfree set that quit working). In almost every piece of modern electronics you can find capacitors. To go beyond the ‘lets-rip-it-apart’  fn that boys of this age like anyway, I instructed them through the presentation to look for one particular item (I had found one in one of the pieces and made an image in the presentation with some text fragments). So the taking apart turned into a treasure hunt for the lost capacitor.

The other components in the radio kit have a unique shape and can not be misplaced to I decided to leave it here re. the components. Onto building circuits.

What I wanted was a simulation with circuit building with the possibility of making easy mistakes. Fortunately, some brilliant ppl created Spektro for that purpose. Low risk experimenting with real components to build working contraptions.

Since the party is always a game of ‘killing time in a fun way” and it was difficult to judge how much time each assignment would take in real life, I took four assignments from the Spektro booklets and presented them as practise tasks to perform to get ready for radio building. They get an image of the circuit and have to build that using clickable components.

This concluded the preparation phase. In order to mark this point I created a “you earned your engineer” badge by means of feedback they had completed the preparation phase.

To avoid a party where they had to sit around the table to much I had decided to have an outdoor component as well. But hey needed a valid reason to go outside. I had parked the car away in the neighbourhood with the radio kit in it. A secret agent transfer of goods. But just walking through the hood looking for our car was a bit too easy. So I decided to spice things up a bit. I told them that some agents were out there on the lookout and would hunt for them carrying Nerf guns. These are toys that shoot harmless foam projectiles. We own some ourselves so they were kitted out with Nerfs to find the car protected. And I handed out a walkie talkie so we could communicate. The game here is suggestion. First of all, there were no hunters outside (apart from his sisters who lay in ambush at the car). Second, I used the walkie tlakie to shoot fake observations and give some hints to manage the time it took to find the car.

In the presentation they got a coded message telling them to look for the car in the neighboorhood and its plate number. And a map demarkating the area.

On return, they brought home the box with the kit. Time to heat the soldering iron and mount the components one by one and fix them in place using iron and solder.

Here ends part II. Will they finish the radio? Was it fun? Did the design work? What went wrong? More in part III.

When asked for examples of the application of the design principles I promote I often mention ‘the birthday parties of my kids’. Known as  weekend research, these couple of hours of childrens fun are a nice lab for small scale experiments. My last endeavour was for my son. He t  turned 11, and invited 5 friends to his party. This is how the design heuristic applies to… the common childrens party.

First, I ask them a theme; what should the party be about? I try to get them beyond the obvious Pokemon if possible for more interesting challenges. My son offered me “electronics”.  My first thought was that I would be fun to make something electronic. The magic of creating electronic devices from mere parts and some solder is a vital experience for an 11 year old boy (and girl). My father made such a device in the fifties and I vividly remember his accounts when he first heard foreign radio while lurking secretly under a blanket late at night with an earpiece in his ear. Could I repeat that feeling of magic and bewilderment in 2010 given the state of technology?

I found a nice object for the party: this radio. So this would be the piece the resistance. But in order for them to make this as a collaborative effort, they had to know some stuff. Resistors have colour codes.  And capacitors have polarity. For them to put the parts on the print in the right order you need to know this stuff. Stuff I did not want to ‘teach’ them in a classical way.

When thinking about the various learning steps I came to this shortlist:

1. Why should we do this?
2. How are resistors colour coded?
3. What is a capacitor and how does it look
4. How does it look inside a modern piece of technology? What is under the hood?
5. How do you build a working circuit? (concept of closed circuit; flow of current: one mistake means “does not work”; high precision job; notion of polarity; diodes blocking current etc)
6. How to put components on a circuit board?
7. How to fix components onto board using solder?
8. How to debug electronics (hopefully not necessary)
9. PLAY! with the final radio

We have a timeframe from 14-19 hours for the party. Two of the boys are ADHD diagnosed or in close quarters of that, a long time in confined space. If not done properly this group of 11 year old boys can become too highly energetic which makes me the policeman of the day! This is something I frantically want to avoid. The day should give me energy, not cost me. Rule #1.

So I want a design where the instructional part is done by ‘something else’. Since this design is a quick and dirty production I decide to use Apple’s Keynote, a powerpoint done better software package. So I am going to run a birthday party using a slideshow presentation? Yes.

(the small movie shows just the first four slides; each for 10 fixed seconds so timing is way off…. be patient while watching)

An important aspect of the esign process is to transfer a large part of my ‘traditional role’ as the puppetmaster to get them into action to the design to free up my own energy and hands. So I created a persona, Jeremy, who adresses them through the presentation. A fictional character that hands out the instruction as games often do. To make this character  bit lifelike I wanted to give him a voice. Not my own. This is called ‘suppression of disbelief’ and suggests to the ‘players’ he could be real. I use a remarkable piece of software called Ghostreader. Here I can type some text and the software turns this into quite remarkable computer voiceover. Small snippets of texts are turned into MP3 files automatically. I drop them on a slide a voila, a deep English voice.

Another design element is the power of suggestion. In many games, limited time to perform a task is a common means to pace up gameplay. So timers often ‘heat up’ gameplay if needed. I made a simple countdown timer in keynote which I could use to pace up or put some assignments under pressure. Here is the funny bit. Once the timer hit zero, I can only restart it. Nothing really happens. But this is not the point. These kids, full of game experience, know from conventions that a timer running on zero means ‘Bad News’ and is something to avoid. One did ask “what happens if it hits zero” which I did not answer to other than giving him a “you know that means bad luck don’t you” look, which sufficed.

So now I have:

1. a format – a manageable technical solution
2. a means to speed up or build up time pressure if needed
3. a final aim: build a real working radio
4. a ‘reason’ to do so, although a thin science fictional aim: more than enough do!
5. intermedeate learning steps
6. a fictional character to put the energy of instruction to the kids
7. a timeline from 14:30 to 18 hours (before that we unwrap presents, after that we have dinner)

It is now time to ‘fill in the blanks’ and create the overall experience within the meta-design that is now ready.

Nice to see their work open to the public now.

http://www.spoorwegmuseum.nl/educatie/fun.html

First of all, the introduction of any new medium (and yes, in this case I treat games as a mass-medium) leads to this kind of discourse. And it has been of all times. Plato and Socrates were concerned. People writing things down would mean the end of civilization as they knew it: the Loss of the Oral Tradition. The introduction of Photography in the 19th century lead to a frantic debate about the death of Painting. And more recently, television (and violent cinema movies) were a threat and inspired kids to do Evil Things.

Researchers have  never been able to conclusively state that television and movies had a causal effect on some deviant behaviours of youngsters. Of course some research outcomes state this, other research state the opposite. The minister handpicked some publications in one camp, overlooking many others. His agenda might be influenced by matters of taste, christian values, but facts and figures are a different realm.

I think ignorance, a lack of knowledge, makes people fearful. The fear of the unknown and a feeling of a lack of control on the matter. I have introduced the notion of game temperature earlier on this blog, where you can rank games on a metaphorical temperature gauge. Why? Because I believe people fail to identify a difference between violence and arrousal.

Revisiting the game model

Our model of games makes a difference between the rule base (the inner design of the game) and the declarative layer by which the game reveals itself to the player. The rule base is the fundament for the game play and contains the vital mechanics that triggers the players behaviour. The declarative layer provides the player with a convincing and authentic setting to provide the proper context for the mechanics to provide a believable game experience.

Mechanics often are archetypical. Shooter games, which are the ‘violent kind’ in the perception of many, are based on a number of archetypical mechanics. Aim, shoot a projectile, hit or miss, find cover, capture a strategic target.

Once you have these mechanics in place, which are the mechanics of ages of child play, like cowboys and indians, or tag games, you look for a context in which these mechanics fit in harmony. This will automatically bring you to contexts like, law inforcement and warfare. But a recent game on iPad and iPhone called Angry Birds, with comical harmless beings, uses some of the same basic mechanics. But nobody will see this as a violent game!

So what you see is not the same as what you play! You play mechanics, you see a declarative layer. Of course, a declarative layer of war triggers negative associations, moral values, matters of taste. But it is a different discussion. Some television programmes trigger similar debates, like Big Brother. But the debates often develop in matters of civilisation, quality levels and taste. Lowest culture debates.

What games do evoke in players, in my opinion, is not violence but various levels of arrousal. “Cold” games in my book are Zen like game experiences, with quiet introspective gameplay. Parents love these games since they see little arrousal in their kids while they play. Its peace and quiet on the couch.

Other games trigger high levels of arrousal. And the funny thing is, the most arrousing games are not the ‘violent’ games. Nintendo, famed for its harmless kids friendly, even family friendly games, are the authors of some of the hottest games on the market. Most notable are multiplayer sessions of Mario Karts and Mario Brothers. These games lead to fiery red cheeks, exclamations  of excitement or anger. The declarative layers of these games are as non violent as Hirsch Ballin could wish. Fictional comical characters, no weapons in sight, no gore, no blood, no ‘violent deaths’… yet players ‘die’ more in these games than they will in a shooter (where staying alive is a core mechanic) and the ability to ‘hurt’ your opponent are exuberant.

In Mario karts for example, a player will run over a marker to obtain some sort of powerup. These come in flavours. If you are running up front, you only get some markers to slow down your fellow players. If you are at the back of the pack, depending on the severity of you laggin behind, you can get a speed boost to get you back ‘in the game’ . This design feature is called ‘rubber banding’, where good and bad players are levelled out in a way to keep the game interesting despite different skill or age levels.

Some of these markers are openly mean and deadly. In MK, a ‘blue helmet’ can be fired on the leading player, making him jump in the air and loosing many seconds ( or a race, quite often). This is a weapon by all definitions, except it looks harmless and non violent. The impact on the other hand, of playing ‘the blue helmet’, is leading to exuberant emotional responses, both triumphant (for the lagging player firing it) to dismay (from the lead player who sees his victory often stolen from him or her). Arrousal. Not violence.

Only if these emotions would lead to a physical violent confrontation between players I would call it a violent game. In that sense Mario Karts should be higher on the risk list than many war or shooter games.

Another aspect of ‘violent games’ has to deal with ethics (running down pedestrians) or taste  (gore, blood, flying limbs). Here there is an interesting parallel between the works of Quinten Tarantino and these kind of games. Both in these films and in many games, violence is taken to such an extreme that it becomes almost a mockery of violence, a comical exaggeration of violence. I vividly remember heated discussions about the eighties hit-series the A-team, which was stuffed with modern fire arms and shootings, but at the same time all bullets missed, nobody got shot, and all villains always managed escape the burning vehicles and massive firefights. In that case, the discussion was about the false portrayal of violence (harmless violence). I believe this is a similar false portrayal, but taken to the other extreme. And players know it is false, because they know from their emerging gaming inteligence it is just a trick, an aspect of the declarative layer. I know of many young players who voluntarily turn off  gore effects because it is not quintessential to the gameplay and lowers their frame rate, which is key to a player for fluid gameplay.

So there we are; end this debate on banning violent games. Start talking about arrousal in games, and taste. I know of several games I find bad taste. I find some of the games we own unsuitable for some moments given the state my own children are in at that moment (too arroused to play an arrousing game). And lets stick to an old adagium, if you don’t like them, don’t buy them, don’t (let them) play them. But certainly do not ban them.

Today, a similar misunderstanding in the dutch media about a collectors game fuelled by a grocery chain. Interesting.

You might want to keep an eye out on this website where we will launch the application,  probably on Monday or slighty later.

Check here later for the final result.

Currently I am working on a project with students for the National Railway Museum. Although it is work in progress I am getting more excited with every day passing. The assignment is to unlock the more hidden gems of  the museum in order to attract new visitors. A difficult assignment, especially since I work with third year students. But they are talented, devoted, and work overtime.

At the moment we are ‘in the crunch’ as we say, closing in on the deadline with lots of work still to be done, but I must say it looks to become thoroughly exciting. I have to wait for the final finish since these kind of complex projects can always hit a bump unexpectedly, but I have great faith in my students.

So, hopefully we get all the features in (and hopefully the client will like it as much) but given my known weakspot for this lovely museum I do hope we can add a little gem to its shine.

I’ll keep you posted, in two weeks time we know where we stand. Here a little artwork teaser from Tomoyo Matsuta, our talented exchange student from Kyushu University (Japan).