Handy Vandal's Almanac

“The whole process becoming like a video game design with everyone together working around one work space for a true collaborative effort.”

This article about Building Information Modeling (BIM) has interesting implications for game design:

For Scott Simpson, FAIA, LEED AP, senior director of architectural firm Kling-Stubbins, BIM is not a way of business; it is the way of business.

[BIM] includes visualization, simulation, coordination of the documents and quantification of what’s inside the building.

With BIM, “we can show the 3-D implications of the design decisions-the colors, the surfaces, the materials, the light … we can simulate how the acoustics will perform … how much things will cost, how they will look, feel behave, etc.,” said Simpson. “This is an incredibly powerful tool for us to make our clients true partners in the design process. I am a big believer that the more brainpower you get involved in the design process the better it’s going to be.”

… Simpson also shared some of what he views as “the brave new world of BIM.” This includes seeing every project [industry wide] being done on BIM; the whole process becoming like a video game design with everyone together working around one work space for a true collaborative effort; all documentation being done in 3-D and 4-D formats; all projects being done in a year or less; a world with no change orders.

- USGlass News Network

See also Building Information Modelling @ Wikipedia

Speaking as a guy who has to deal with change orders (in software development, not building management, but the same complaint applies), I can assure you that “a world with no change orders” sounds good to me.

“The people of Bogota were more concerned about social disapproval than traffic fines, and so mimes [were hired] to playfully reproach drivers that crossed red lights …”

Traffic miming — the use of mimes to help calm and direct big-city traffic — is a kind of game design, and might prove a source of inspiration to game designers:

In 1995, the traffic in Bogota, Colombia, was so chaotic that drivers had long since given up obeying the rules of the road, resulting in a disorderly free-for-all that was a major impediment to the city’s economy. The recently elected mayor of the city, who came to prominence after dropping his trousers to silence a hall of rioting students, decided on a creative solution to this similarly vexing problem: a troop of mimes.

Antanas Mockus realised that the people of Bogota were more concerned about social disapproval than traffic fines, and so hired mimes to playfully reproach drivers that crossed red lights, blocked junctions and ignored pedestrian crossings. One cannot police by mimes alone and in a further measure to address driving behaviour, the mayor’s office brought in flashcards to allow social feedback. Each citizen was given a red card to signal to someone that their driving was poor and a white card to signal that the person who been particularly courteous or considerate.

– Mind Hacks

Via Boing Boing. This dates back to 2004 … I’m digging through old bookmarks, picking out a few favorites.

Caspian Learning is now offering development tools for web-based simulations, including first-person over-the-shoulder view in 3D worlds:

Simulations and serious games created using Caspian’s Thinking Worlds authoring tool may now be accessed online via Shockwave and Java, obviating the need for game-specific browser plugins.

The new functionality is made possible thanks to a recent core Thinking Worlds update integrating Java Applet and Java Webstart development. Java deployment will be available to all Thinking Worlds users in the next version release.

“Java technology is present in almost all of the world’s corporate and military networks,” notes Lee Rushworth, Marketing Executive for Caspian Learning. “Having the ability to rapidly create and publish simulations into these secure networks without the need for additional 3rd party plugins removes another huge barrier to the widespread adoption of simulations for training and performance within these sectors.”

– Danny Cowan @ Serious Games Source

Now there’s an interesting observation: “Java technology is present in almost all of the world’s corporate and military networks.”

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, author of The Predictioneer’s Game, describes his game theory method as “a way of evaluating how people interact when they are trying to advance their own interests.”

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In his new book, The Predictioneer (The Predictioneer’s Game in the US), he describes a computer model based on game theory which he — and others — claim can predict the future with remarkable accuracy.

- Slashdot

Urgent Evoke is “a crash course in saving the world” …

Online game seeks to empower Africa

Game designer Jane McGonigal sees “superheroes” with untapped potential that can be used to fix vexing real-world problems.

McGonigal’s latest online game, called “Urgent Evoke,” launches on Wednesday. With it, she hopes to channel the obsessive focus online games create into something more productive than conquering monsters and earning virtual weapons.

She wants to push people in Africa — a long-troubled continent where people might feel less empowered than elsewhere — to solve problems like environmental degradation, lack of food, water scarcity, poverty and violence.

To do this, the Urgent Evoke game — classified in the emerging “alternate reality” genre — straddles the online and physical worlds. Players, a few hundred of whom are in Africa, earn points and power-ups by completing real-world tasks like volunteering, making business contacts or researching an issue, then submitting evidence of their work online.

At the end of the game, McGonigal expects some players to have business plans about how they will improve the world.

.. A new challenge, such as a famine or water shortage, is presented to players at midnight for 10 weeks. Players earn points by accepting the challenges and then responding with evidence that they’ve used their real-life “superhero” powers to help. A person might, for example, contact a community organization that specializes in environmental issues, or try to provide meals for someone in their neighborhood.

… People spend a collective 3 billion hours per week playing online games today, she said. That number must be 21 billion — seven times the current amount — for our society to realize its innovative and creative potential, she said.

.. In 2007, she created an online game called World Without Oil, which challenged people to re-imagine their lives without their dependence on fossil fuels.

- John D. Sutter @ CNN

See also AvantGame by Jane McGonigal.

Over at Institute for the Future, Mathias Crawford recently published a thoughtful essay on how games persuade us to change our behavior:

Ends vs. Means and Persuasive Games

As (Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse) Schell points out (in a videotaped speech making the rounds this week), persuasive technologies like the Ford Fusion dashboard, are already being designed with game-like feedback in mind. To him these technologies fall short, however, because they are being engineered by people who are not game designers. If game designers would start to design reward systems that aimed to improve behaviors, we’d have feedback mechanisms that are much more enjoyable, and as a corollary that are much more effective.

Though I agree with his conclusion – that there is a clear need for people with game design expertise to design things that can help people improve behaviors – by focusing on creating technologies that aim to achieving measurable ends, Schell misses a much more important use of persuasive technologies: namely, technology that aims to influence means.

- Mathias Crawford @ Institute for the Future

Via Boing Boing.

Ford Fusion dashboard: “Efficiency Leaves — Indicates short term efficiency. The more leaves and vines that are displayed, the more efficiently you’re driving.”

I have a longstanding interest in games with practical real-world applications. For example, this budget balancer game, where you try to put the State of Maryland’s financial house in order:

Travel to different locations on the main map. Each location represents a policy area (like higher education, revenues, or general government) where you can choose different budget options. Click on an option to select it. Click on it again if you change your mind.

… You need to pay attention to this year’s budget balance. Making the “current year balance” a positive number is what you are required to do under the constitution.

… Each choice you make will not only affect the budget totals, it will also affect your popularity with ten different interest groups. If you make too many of these groups too unhappy, it might affect your and your party’s political future badly.

~ Maryland Budget Map Game @ University of Baltimore

Via The Washington Examiner.

I’m reminded of Budget Hero from American Public Radio, where you try to balance the Federal budget.

This looks interesting — !

cMotion: A New Game Design to Teach Emotion Recognition and Programming Logic to Children using Virtual Humans

Publication Type: Journal Article
Year of Publication: 2009

Authors:
Finkelstein, S. L.
A. Nickel
L. Harrison
E. A. Suma
T. Barnes

Journal IEEE Virtual Reality 2009, Proceedings

Abstract:

This paper presents the design of the final stage of a new game currently in development, entitled cMotion, which will use virtual humans to teach emotion recognition and programming concepts to children. Having multiple facets, cMotion is designed to teach the intended users how to recognize facial expressions and manipulate an interactive virtual character using a visual drag-and-drop programming interface. By creating a game which contextualizes emotions, we hope to foster learning of both emotions in a cultural context and computer programming concepts in children. The game will be completed in three stages which will each be tested separately: a playable introduction which focuses on social skills and emotion recognition, an interactive interface which focuses on computer programming, and a full game which combines the first two stages into one activity.

- Digiplay Initiative

How very Phildickian: machines to teach children how to recognize human emotions. Martian Time-Slip comes to mind, with its teaching simulacra based on historical figures, e.g. the Abe Lincoln sim teaches self-reliance and related moral values. See also Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, where androids — living secretly among us — are more human than real humans. And don’t forget: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Then again: We Can Build You. And, inevitably: The Simulacra.

In the gaming field, Valve deserves special recognition for pioneering the memorable virtual humans of Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and subsequent games. From elaborate models and scripted sequences to persuasive non-player AI to facial animation and voice sequencing, Valve has advanced game technology like no other company.

Paul Spinrad has posted some interesting thoughts about game design and real-world applications:

I’m fascinated at how complexity emerges from certain initial conditions, and independent actors competing within those conditions — i.e. from a game’s rules and its players. It’s a magic meta-formula that underlies a zillion things.

Some day we may discover a formal test for playability– whether a setup will go nowhere or explode into interestingness. (Which is probably also a function of mental capacity– a greater intelligence might find chess as boring as we find Tic-Tac-Toe.) If and when these meta-rules are understood, and we can do things like simulate evolution to levels of real-life complexity, it should convince at least a few more evolution deniers. In Darwin’s day, when timekeeping was a leading geek-magnet, theologists described God as the Great Watchmaker. If there is a God, I think “The Great Game Designer” would be more accurate.

I’m mainly talking about paper games here. In the same way that mathematical formulas distill and express universal laws of nature, simple board/card games capture essential social phenomena — this is a major avenue of research in Economics right? Is there a game like “Monopoly” that distills the phenomenon of an investment bubble growing and bursting? Or a game in which competition between players creates an ever-expanding complex that grows to require all available resources, and constantly presses to extract more? If so, the rules of this game should inform legislation that might increase the efficiency of medical insurers, military contractors, and the like (which is what competition is supposed to do, but in these cases, there seems to be a rule or two missing that takes the systems into another direction).

There are many phenomena I would love to see or come up with essentializing games for, and most of them seem to fall under the categories of consensus, hierarchy, group affiliation, and mating. For different aspects of these, I have numerous half-baked notions about what a group of players in a room could do. For example, draw a new Tarot card every round, and then have to agree on a single narrative that includes all of them in order. Or build the most accurate model of what other teams know and don’t know about a selectively concealed array of random numbers, communicating only through severely limited bandwidth.

- Paul Spinrad @ Boing Boing

This might be useful as a game design paradigm:

Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society. The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress — such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation — by creating spores. Alternately the bacteria may ‘choose’ to enter a state called competence where they are able to absorb the nutrients from their newly deceased comrades. ‘Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory. It pays for the individual cell to take the risk and escape into competence only if it notices that the majority of the cells decide to sporulate,’ explained Onuchic. ‘But if this is the case, it should not take this chance because most of the other cells might reach the same conclusion and escape from sporulation.’

- Slashdot

See also:

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Bacteria