News
New York New York! | Simon | Simon Evans | Simon JohnsonWe're putting the finishing touches to Comfort of Strangers before it's outing at Come Out & Play festival in New York in early June. Ok, we're ironing out the bugs that made the game frustrating to play at the Media Sandbox Showcase. There is some urgency here as the game is opening the festival on June 6th.
We are really excited by the opportunity visit Come Out & Play, all made possible by Clare Reddington and the PM Studio, who are covering travel costs and HP Labs who are lending us the ipaqs we need to run the game. We will be blogging here throughout the festival, so check back for news of how Comfort went and the other great games we get to play.
Final Showcase But A New Beginning | Simon | Simon Evans | Simon JohnsonThe Media Sandbox Final Showcase event was a great opportunity for us to trial the game with the numbers of people for which it was intended but the scale threw up some issues. Some of these were pretty straightforward and to do with device management – keeping 40 devices charged, making sure the game mscape didn't crash out waiting for players to begin – others were more interesting.
For the first time we began to glimpse the kind of dynamics thrown up by large game populations and swarm like behaviour. These manifested themselves in periods of highly fluid, fast moving game-play alternating with periods of stasis. Clearly we need to find a design grammar that can accommodate these characteristics. To do this we have to refine the game so that it is stable and engaging enough accommodate the numbers of people needed to create the effects . Sometimes we feel its a bit like observing events at a sub-atomic level, you haveto build a massive apparatus in order to glimpse tiny elusive phenomena.
One aesthetic issue is proving telling. We added music to the beginning to the piece, to create a mood and to give players an indication that the piece is actually running. Feedback from players at the final event was that they wanted the music to continue throughout the piece. As Duncan Speakman pointed out this would work against the whole premise of the work, which is to encourage people to interact. This is a contrast to his work, where he explores the experience of listening to music as one wanders the city, viewing the environment as if you were in a movie. This is the opposite of what we want to achieve. We want people to engage with each other, the technology being the facilitator of this. The music became a seductive insulator of the 'real' world, behind which people felt safe. So we need to work on this area, re-assuring players but also opening them up to interacting with strangers.
Finally, the conclusion of this year's Media Sandbox might be the end of swarmtoolkit, but the research continue with a new company we are forming to exploit commercially swarm game dynamics in education and HR as well as entertainment. We are calling the business……Simon! No website yet, but we have a logo.
We already have a couple of business opportunities, more news on this and what we are aiming to do in our next post.
Happy Packages lives on! | Dan | Thought Pie
It's been hard-core few months, as you might tell from the other blog posts and mediasandbox…a lot of fun, inspiring, challenging, and more than anything this project has opened hundreds of doors for everyone involved. A realisation dawned this week that we really are operating at the forefront of the pervasive media industry…things break, people don't understand, it's new NEW stuff!
Our stand looked beautiful, as did Tom's face beaming out from the 42″ plasma screen. People milled around, took the Happy Packages GPS demo for a test drive, asked us what on earth we were talking about and nodded knowingly when we explained the difficulties working with pervasive convergence in multi-platform content distribution systems.
At around 3 or 4 it was time to deliver the 6 minute presentation and face the judging panel, who were:
Sam Ingleby - Digital Communications Programme Manager, Intellect UK
Dan Sutch – Researcher, Futurelab
Paul Appleby, Series Producer, BBC NHUIt was all over in a matter of seconds (360 I suppose) and as the beads of sweat poured down my face my mouth moved of its own accord, parrying everything the judges could throw out - It's a niche product, a playful campaign machine, a response to the enthusiasm shown by modern consumers to engage with their brands…And as it turned out, the cold hearted commercial hard-sell was what done it for us! After a painful few hours wishing the other Media Sandbox participants the best of luck, the announcement was made.
Happy Packages lives on! After an awkward group hug (and some slick high-fives) up on stage the party was on full swing. It wasn't long until we headed to Start The Bus for more, and while I didn't manage to get the barmaid's number (no appreciation for Pervasive Technology it seems) it was night to remember: Champagne, food, friendly back slaps and promises to take over the world. Watch this space.
Just The Beginning | Tarim | Altern8Exhibiting at a showcase event means don't get to see a lot of what other people are doing. (Could the other teams run the event again so I can wander round, please?) We finally settled on Instant Graffiti as the demonstration of PTTP. Instant Graffiti allows the audience to draw in light, etch-a-sketch style, on a building. Richard (who did a great job producing code at short notice and without complaining that I'd just changed the spec … again) even managed to fit a two point perspective scheme in so the lines of light follow the lines of the building. We couldn't find a small building inside the Watershed to project on - so we had to use a back projection to convey the idea.
The PTTP tribute to Friedrich Hundertwasser. I think the idea fits well with his concept of "window rights" - although he might not have been so keen on all the straight lines.
Although this is the end of the Sandbox project - for PTTP it's just the beginning. The next stage is to look at running some Instant Graffiti Parties to encourage people to play and write some interesting games for it. Keep an eye on the Sandbox lists for dates and on www.mediaplaygrounds.co.uk
Many thanks go to all the Media Sandboxers: Clare, Emma, the panels, the other projects and the many people I've talked to - for seeing the potential in PTTP. Without you, it would still just be an idea knocking around in my head that, although clear to me, seemed too difficult to explain. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement. Publicly controllable fountains, and a whole lot more, are now one step closer
