As it was an experiment, and especially as it was using Twitter, things didn’t go perfectly. But it was interesting to observe the way the players dealt with the breakdowns (or lack of start up) in gameplay.

Although the smartphone Twitter apps that everyone was using were very advanced and supported what was needed, there was a lot of clicking around to carry out the checking in and target acquisition, they’re not designed for the tweeting and reading required by the game. At the beginning of the game there was a lot of unfacilitated software/knowledge transfer. I personally downloaded and then used a new Twitter app on my iphone, and a couple of other people did the same.

Even though the game story encourages players to split up and be alone the breakdowns caused a lot of clumping and chatting. Players group together to discuss the game itself, analyse the technology and discuss personal strategies for iphone use.

Most of the conversations I was party to were either suggestions about technology based improvements to the game or the design of bespoke apps/software to support it, the problems with Twitter, or the use of the iphone and its Twitter apps. So a big part of the socialisation was really around 3rd party technology use, not about the gameplay itself.

The game set up with Twitter, picture taking, etc took about 40 minutes at the beginning. Many people had returned to base before both the first and second games had been closed, so there was a big discrepancy between ‘play’ time and ‘non-play’ time. Maybe 3 to 1. Lots of people drifting in and out of the nearby pubs to get drinks and drink them in front of the milk bar. There was still a lot of cohesion through the whole 2 hours that I was there. One or two people left, but mostly people stuck around. All participants were prompt, and were there at the 7pm start time. I didn’t see how it ended and how it all broke up.

Although the discussion did drift a bit, most did come back to or were inspired by the technological framework of the game. It would be worth doing a straw poll at the beginning to work out people’s backgrounds. But of the people there nearly all work in technology related jobs, and I think at least half were programmers. So it is natural for the participants to discuss these subjects.

Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

More of less finished my PhD progression report and prepped my talk for this week’s Gesture, Technology and Play symposium. Completing the two of those has made me quite excited, galvanized and enthusiastic about my overall PhD project and academic life.

Was interviewed for Fry’s English Delight. Talked about the future of keyboards in light of touch, gesture, mobility and our changing relationship to serialized text. Should really write up my notes from that.

Went to London and saw this beautiful installation at the Barbican.

Also popped in and saw the wonderfully chaotic Tate 10 year anniversary celebrations.

Start Date: Monday 17th May, 2010 – 09:30
Location: Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol

Bodies, rhythm and digital games.

This talk will cover Henri Lefebrve’s rhythmanalysis technique and discuss how it may be applied to digital, non-digital and pervasive games. As well as his methodology, his work on bodies, gestures, traffic, exchanges and daily rhythms all bring insights to the practice of game playing.

Rhythmanalysis, in its original formulation, can be used to describe the way games fit into society and the larger patterns of how play fits into everyday life. It is also well suited to explore the lower level detail of gameplay itself in a physical and embodied manner. Because of this it gives a tool that can describe gaming from the second to second button-mashing dance of gameplay, though game structures, to play sessions and ultimately how games fit into the wider, cultural and societal cycles of our lives.

Many discussions of gaming describe it as a break in the everyday or an escape into an alternate world of fantasy and the virtual spaces of digital games make this separation appear more stark. However the fundamentally physical, repetitive and rhythmic characteristics of games are intrinsically a reflection of their quotidian nature. Exploring the interactive eurhythmia that games create through the specific linear and cyclic rhythms of gameplay opens up these cybernetic texts to a physical and embodied analysis. It provides a way to understand certain game patterns in ways that narrative and ludological approaches cannot.

The thing that really got me enthusiastic was Cirillo’s contextualizing it through Bergson, Minkowski and Becoming. Call me a philosophy snob, but it just rung more true than all the efficiency chat around GTD.

So far it has done two really important things. Firstly it does keep my mind on the tasks I’ve got, but more importantly, the granular day planning makes me very aware of what I can actually, reasonably, achieve. Which is always a lot less than I think I can do.

For example, right now I’m in the middle of writing my RD1 progression report for my PhD and I’ve been pomodoro-ing it from beginning to end. The draft took about twice as long as I had originally planned, which became quite apparent very early on. So I’ve been able to plan around that. It is obviously having a knock on effect elsewhere, but not to the extent that it is driving me crazy like all the other writing projects I’ve had.

The Pomodoro thing is making me break it down into planned sections, as well as making me take breaks to think about things. It does help me focus, both through the little, crunchy blocks of time and with the enforced breaks. All up it has a lot in common with a micro-Scrum sort of a process.

My biggest concern is that it has a silly name. I now have to say to people that “I’m just off for a couple of Pomodoros.” Maybe if they were Bergsons I would be happier.

The Prezi I built for a lecture on chance and skill in game design.

The other great thing is that they offer a free, educational tier in their pricing model. Though four, purely text based, prezis take up nearly 10% of by 500Mb. So if I start bunging images in (something I want to do) I wont get very far.

The one major thing I came out of it with was realizing that recognizing shapes is not the same as recognizing patterns. Most of the time when someone says they see patterns in data sets and visualizations, they see shapes in the data, not patterns.

Also the HEAT workshops keep progressing. Still looking into behavior change through both mobile devices and serious gaming as part of that.

Lots of presentations at the beginning of the week from the students I’m teaching on Play and Games. They came back with initial concepts for their serious board game designs. Quite a lot of good work, and we were quite impressed with a smattering of proper citations and name checking in the talks. Some nice ideas coming out, though many still have their heads stuck in the Monopoly space.

The previous week I was impressed with the quality of the Play and Games essays, and finally after collating, double marking, remarking and all the other tedious admin stuff that makes up teaching we got them finished and back to the students. It probably isn’t methodologically accurate but we did see a massive increase in the students marks between last year and this year. The average mark last year was 51, and this year’s average is 61. There are probably lots of factors in the mix, but I do think that between Ian and myself we got the students to actually read, dissect and analyse academic articles. As well as getting them to think through constructing an argument, writing coherently and lastly doing proper citations and referencing (big thanks to Ian who I think did most of the work on it). Phew… it paid off.

The choices of essay topic were interesting as well, considering that, apart from one, they are all boys. I gave them a choice of four topics, with some starter texts on each. 23 wrote about girls and gaming, 22 wrote about immersion, 11 on simulation vs narrative and only 2 on definition.

Segueing onto something completely different, On Friday I went to the DCRC’s Pervasive/Invasive seminar/workshop on the ethics of pervasive media. A bunch of interesting talks, much interesting chat, and one big realization for me. That we’re already there in discussion the ethics of these things, pervasive media is not something way off, we are in that posthuman space already. Which marries up with a few other things I’ve been reading and pondering recently by way of Katherine Hayles and Andy Miah. The Future Has Arrived. Though I’m sure Sam will pull me up on my loose attitude towards thinking about this and what we can or cannot do or say about how we create, imagine and relate our present and future.

Although I’ve not started data collection for the project I used the occasion to do a bit of observation and collect some participants for later phone interviews. My initial plan of trying to interview people at the sandpit isn’t going to work. It is just too hectic at the event. So I think I’m going to drop back to fewer face-to-face, and more phone interviews. But the good news I think is the project is starting to take shape.

Also had Tom Burton, Beef’s Technical Director in this week for our industry talk. Again a dismal turn out from the students, but that meant it was more informal and we chatted about Tom’s path from university to running his own business, alongside how to use technology in creative ways.

Otherwise there was much marking going on, I finished my share of the Play and Games essays. Which, I have to say, have largely been better than last years. There is some truly outstanding work, and far fewer that made my eyes spin trying to understand them. I think our rigorous tutorial plan last semester to tie the students down and make them think seems to have paid off.

Good news that I’ve had another paper accepted.

On Wednesday I had Phil Gyford down for a talk to the Web Design students. I bumped into Phil last year and I was surprised to find he was a UWE graduate (through Bower Ashton, in the days before it was UWE and still the West of England College of Art) so I invited him down for a talk.

Also marked/watched the first presentations from the Play and Games students. I’ve set them a design exercise to come up with a “serious board game.” Which has resulted in four games about global warming, two about the recession and two about somalian piracy, plus half a dozen other ideas. The multi-stage, gateway approach seems to be working already, these guys are much more engaged in their coursework than the students over the last couple of years.

At the end of the week I also did a spot of project debriefing and lessons learnt for Ed at the end of his transition network mega project. Though overall the problems were very small and it seems like he’s put together a cracking little co-op of dedicated webinistas.

Analysis Tool or Design Methodology? Is There an Epistemological Basis of Patterns?

The idea of patterns as a means of inquiry seems to be increasing in popularity, in many different ways, across many different disciplines. Partly this has to do with new tools and techniques which allow us to discover, analyse or visualise patterns, and partly from our long history of systems thinking. Though the concept of patterns and pattern recognition are not new and have been strong across the 20th century, from structuralism, through cybernetics and into complex systems theory.

However there is no robust epistemology for justifying what they are, how they are used and in what context they are interpreted. Also there are few comparisons or linkages between different disciplines use of them.

This position paper asks questions about what patterns fundamentally are, whilst also providing a pragmatic epistemological basis for using them founded in the interventionist practice of action research. Problems concerning the abductive reasoning process and apophenic outcomes are also highlighted.

Having thought about it the best crux point to count these weeks from is from the point that I became an, err, ‘academic’, whatever that means. Though it does mean that I’ve been at it for 171 weeks, or just over three years.

On Friday I had a nice chat with Jo Morrison, who is also doing a part time PhD through the DCRC and teaches design at Central St Martins. She’s working on art in public space and drawing on a lot of similar theorists to myself.

One other thing we talked about was an interesting project she set for her design students to explore process. She makes them give themselves five rules that they must stick to. The final product can be anything, but they must strictly follow their rules. This has been keeping me thinking over the last few days about what rules could I put in place to help my process?

Otherwise my week was dominated by finishing my paper exploring the epistemological basis of patterns. Got good feedback on it from the reading group on Thursday, however they did warn me that thinking too much about this would drive me insane and I would end up living out the movie Pi.

Trying to delve into patterns has been interesting and much further reaching than I thought it would be. I think that my central thesis of patterns being an increasingly important way of thinking for the 21st century is generally validated by my research. We’ve gone from the systems theory ideal of trying to model and understand systems to a more instrumental approach to just knowing enough to be able to use systems and effect change. And it is a big subject, as we discussed on Thursday, there is a whole book in this… though a book that would make my brain bleed if I tried to write it.

I wanted to go into a bit of detail about Michel de Certeau as I’ve been thinking through his Practice of Everyday Life quite a bit recently. As it emerged from the seminar, so had quite a few other people.

The short version of my argument is that de Certeau is important for understanding games and game-like activity, through his concepts of strategy and tactics. He says that there is an everyday art to the tactics one employs to negotiate the overarching strategies. If so, then I say there is an aesthetic experience of those practices and that aesthetic experience is related to the experience of game play. Hence many everyday practices seem related to games in the personal aesthetic experience of them, i.e. navigating the city, personal relationships, finding a car park, getting a good cup of coffee on the way to work, etc. At the end I also raise a question about the claims made by many that we are living in a Ludic Age, that there has been a Ludic Turn. There is no real proof that we are, besides manifesto style claims by gamers, game researchers and game designers. But if we are, then I think we ought to be re-interpreting de Certeau, who was writing in an era of resistive thinking, rather than in a possible Ludic era.

Slides here

Jaakko Stenros has another brief review of events over on Pervasive Games.

Graeme Kirkpatrick keynoted and touched on many of the same things I did. Sort of felt like he had stolen my thunder, but I had some good feedback on my talk. He’s also thinking about the aesthetics of games and gameplay and pointing out that the physicality of gaming is not considered seriously enough. I think that my application of the Dionysian principle provides some theoretical background to his discussion.

Slides are on slideshare.