Of Geeks, Games, and Girls

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Feb 172010
 

I read this a while back. The essay, which looks at how geek/nerd culture may discourage women from studying computer science troubled me. It troubled me because much of geek/nerd culture is precisely what is produced by engineers that go into game development. So are these researchers telling me that because games are rooted in this particular culture that inevitably it will drive away women? I don’t know if I can really let it go at that.

There seems to be a deeper socio-cultural question that simply isn’t being asked. Why is science fiction “stereotypical” of men? I’m also troubled by the assertion that, “stereotype of computer scientists as nerds who stay up all night coding and have no social life may be driving women away from the field.” I don’t doubt it, but I wonder why we don’t examine the stereotype rather than try to drive off the cultural roots of computing, which does come out of a geek culture. Why can’t we celebrate other kinds of geeks or make geekery socially acceptable for women?

The reason I ask the inverse question is because it is impossible for this to not be the case for many game companies. They work on the very things women would be “put off by.” It almost creates an excuse for why women aren’t there. I simply don’t buy it. Look at the demographics of watchers of certain geek TV shows or book series that derive from or are very much part of geek culture. Did they try an office with Harry Potter posters rather than Star Trek? What about WoW posters or The SIMs.

The trouble is that the findings are based on flawed assumptions about geek/nerd culture that point toward strange conclusions that I suspect only exacerbate the problem. I’ve written before that there is a simultaneous problem dealing with the social construction of femininity in the United States and play spaces particularly coded as male. Perhaps some clues about rethinking femininity outlined in this document is a better place to start.

The Price of “Closed” Hardware

 (dis)continutity  No Responses »
Feb 172010
 

I’ve been screaming about it for a while now, 2007 to be precise. But the proof is in the numbers. More game developers are working on the iPhone and soon the iPad. The DSi’s lack of support for an open SDK is particularly nonsensical, given its reliance on less expensive games for download. But, the same can really be said for any of the new platforms offering digitally downloadable games. These games, to be profitable, must be cheaper to develop than their disk based counterparts. Developers know this and yet manufacturers continue to lock their hardware away, afraid it will go to prom with the bad boy.

Even developers seem to support (and prop-up) the idea that unrestricted this creates a deluge of crap. This does make some sense, but not if you recognize the fact that in the case of Xbox Live Aracade, MS still maintains a great deal of control over what makes it into the official stream. The same could be done for the DSi, PSP and Playstation Network. They still control the means of distribution. They would simply have more people working on games for them. At the same time, the commercial companies also marketing dollars that the amateurs simply don’t. Promote your game on the iTunes App Store. This will inevitably cause it to rise above those other applications.

Closed hardware also prevents the development of open source solutions to common difficulties in the game development process. Again, further reducing the cost of making games for these platforms and increasing the likelihood that developers will embrace them. Especially in the case of the DS, which has a significant engineering learning curve, open source tools would be hugely beneficial to those developers eying the “i” part of the DS.

The Cult(ure) of Secrecy…

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Dec 102009
 

I mentioned it in my dissertation. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Smarter folks than I say it all the time. That great idea you have? Your obsession with secrecy? Yeah… It’s not that cool really. Your idea might become cool. But that will be pretty close to the time you release it. It is going to undergo so many changes and interesting twists and turns as you go about making it that being all Black-Ops about it right now is just annoying. Game developers, and I include myself here (academics are bad about this too, by the way, so my ire is aimed your way too…), we have got to stop being such doofs about this. Seriously. Your XML parser? Not that freaking cool. That super duper new game mechanic? Yeah, jumping was pretty ground breaking too. My dog jumps. Up high. Seriously, like as high as my head. It’s not a secret, but it was pretty awesome when Super Mario Bros. came out. But it wasn’t cool until it played. Jumping isn’t really a secret. Nor is ducking, but it was likely covered under the NDAs surrounding Gears of War. Kudzu isn’t a secret either. I drive by it all the time here in Georgia.

So to prove the point, I had two really cool (I thought) ideas the other night at the local game developer meeting here in Athens. I talked about two game mechanics, one in search of a game, and another in search of some implementation. So here we go. I don’t care if you “steal” them. By the time you finish it, it wouldn’t really be my idea any more would it?

  1. I randomly hear this song the other day. The way the music layers on top of itself is really interesting. It made me want to design a game around the idea that one could add/remove layers of music as you play. My initial idea would be that levels would be designed in such a way that you were forced (to “beat” a level) to build up to the crescendo. I wasn’t sure what the game would look like, but it captured my brain for a good three days. Take that book proposal.
  2. The second idea, linked to this was a game based around fireworks. Spiral fireworks. The idea would be that you are a spark lighting firework pinwheels. As the pinwheel gets going, layers of music are added. Finish when it goes off. Take too long and parts go out.

The moral of the story? Just chatting with that group of developers resulted in at least four other ideas of games that could plug into the overarching concept of layered music. For me to really think that these ideas are so fundamentally ground breaking is kind of egotistical. I’m sure numerous others have thought of them. In some ways its derivative right? Guitar Hero / Rock Band do this to some degree by cutting out tracks when a player goofs up. Sure I’m building on it, but it surely in conversation with those games and ideas. It is even linked to Peter and the Wolf if you think about it. But right now its an idea. By the time I make anything it will be different.

Defy the cult(ure) of secrecy.

On Game Mechanic Patents…

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Dec 102009
 

Anyone familiar with me, or my work, knows that I spend far too much time looking at the patents that come out of videogame companies. Why? Because they’re interesting and they index what these companies really value as innovative. It is also often the only real information available about how their devices function, at least that aren’t covered by non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Since game industry ethnography often involves the researcher (me) being covered by NDA, I am constantly looking for public information that can triangulate and corroborate the observations made in the corporate setting. Thus, patents and SEC filings tend to be critically important resources.

But all of that is really beside the point. I was recently reading an interview between Iwata and Miyamoto where the topic of patenting “jumping” as a game mechanic was raised. I have of course discussed this with my students on numerous occasions, but this offhand comment brought that particular rant back to the foreground in my mind. What if Nintendo had patented jumping? Boxes that contained power-ups? Levels hid within levels (“pipes”)? Side-scrolling gameplay? So, certainly there is “prior art” in many cases here, but would the patent office have been smart enough to notice that? I don’t really want to enter into the software patent debate at the moment, what interests me here are the implications widespread game mechanic patenting could have on the game industry and the indie game development scene in particular.

Imagine a game industry where mechanic patenting was widespread. First person shooters? Third-person perspective exploration? 2D Puzzle? At what point would the pain stop? Certainly it might encourage innovation in game mechanics, but at what point is something so trivial or so fundamental that it is unacceptable for it to be patented? Would the patent office be familiar enough with game development to identify and deny applications for those mechanics?

One idea I’ve been considering is a Public Game Mechanic Patent non-profit organization, with the goal of funding new and innovative game mechanics. This organization could provide grants to developers that submit proposals for investigating new mechanics who then help patent them and assign ownership to the non-profit. This company licenses mechanics to major game studios to provide funds to continue the grant giving process. Perhaps not ideal, but placing the emphasis on enabling developers to protect a collective intellectual space is truly important. How best to do it while encouraging new development? That seems to be the key challenge.

Production Protection to Copy(right) Protection

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Nov 192009
 

I have an essay up over on the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing titled, “Production Protection to Copy(right) Protection: From the 10NES to DVDs” talking about how many copy protection schemes also have roots in controlling the ability create content. Simply put, copy protection retains an inherent interest in also controlling the means of production, which makes it particularly troublesome when you start talking about first amendment rights. Here is the abstract:

Much of what modern digital rights management (DRM) systems attempt to accomplish was actually forcefully implemented on videogame consoles beginning with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and SEGA Genesis system in the early 1980s. Examining the links between modern DRM mechanisms and these early production and copy protection systems can help contextualize the future of media production and access.

Game Studies and Game Development Texts

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Nov 162009
 

I get at least two or three emails a week from folks curious about the texts that I use in classes or what I’m reading at the moment. So the new approach is to place all of those items in that sidebar. There are a bunch in there already, but only 3 at a time display. I’m sure there are a bunch of different texts that I’m not thinking to add at the moment, but I’m at the home office without my library and I’m not prepared to start adding willy nilly from my reference manager.

If I were a little more proactive I’d probably put my $0.02 in on each text, but I’m busy at the moment slogging through pulling all the bits and pieces together on what will hopefully be my own addition to that little sidebar. I’m at about 50% completion on the book at the moment. The other 50% is partially complete as well, but needs a good amount of integration and smoothing into a more cohesive whole, which is what I believe I’ve done with the first half of the text. The other thing I’ve done is really separate out the more historical elements and focus on the ethnographic. That isn’t to say there isn’t a historical bent, particularly in the industry chapters and as I get into development tools, but it is quite different from the dissertation.

(Inadvertantly) Pimping Unity3D at SIEGE

 (dis)continutity  5 Responses »
Oct 062009
 

Well, this weekend was a whirlwind of activity at SIEGE in Atlanta. I ended up speaking at two different panels, one explicitly about Unity 3D and the other, ostensibly, about physics. Though it wasn’t my intention, the Unity 3D Panel ended up being mostly a Unity 3D love-in after Tom Higgins managed to handle the majority of our complaints prior to the actual start of the session. Items such as SVN support and other components supposed to part of Unity 3D 2.6 as well as a future fusion of Unity 3D and Unity 3D iPhone came as music to most of our ears. Even the physics panel had some Unity love. I got to plead with the audience to not write their own physics engines, though I’m sure someone out in the audience will proceed to roll their own just for the fun of it and spend months debugging it when they could have just sat down and started playing with Box 2D or some other physics engine and had much more fun.

Ultimately though, it is the kind of response that Tom gave us, and the user community that makes Unity 3D what it is. There was some interesting discussion if the fact that Unity 3D started out as a Mac project by Mac developers set a kind of initial trajectory for the developers and users that makes it particularly friendly and collaborative, especially compared to other user communities that often times seem less receptive to learning users. Hopefully Unity 3D can maintain that attitude.

Oh. And Ben’s Detonator framework is the bomb. Sorry, bad pun.

Also while at SIEGE I received some excellent feedback on Osy from one of my favorite designers, Ian Schreiber. We also had an excellent extended conversation about teaching game design in the college setting. Something we’ve both found to be an important topic. This of course spilled over to an extent into the education panel round table. But ultimately I was somewhat saddened by the lack of attendance at the experimental game panel, something at GDC that is continually packed and near and dear to seasoned developers hearts. I guess not enough folks have taken lumps yet to really love experimental design…

http://www.siegecon.net/SIEGE2009/

Experimenting with Format and FONM

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Sep 282009
 

I spent the latter part of last week at the “Frontiers of New Media” organized by some great folks at the University of Utah. You can get a sense of the conversation and the different talks over at their website, but I wanted to post here the contents of my talk, which were delivered with my freshly completed presentation system using Löve 2D and the Planet Cute tiles from Dank of Lost Garden. Overall I’ve been pleased with the current setup, which allows me to run around with an Xbox 360 Controller (wired or wireless with the RF adapter) during a talk.

I greatly enjoyed Dr. AnnaLee Saxenian‘s talk examining IT industries from Silicon Valley to China and India, which gave us a great deal to talk about. After listening to her, I’m particularly interested in where the videogame industry diverges from what I would call “the IT industry proper.” There certainly seem to be some interesting parallels, but also distinct differences. That is something that I’ll have to investigate further. There is also something interesting in how many of the game industry “Argonauts” going back to other countries actually have very little experience and instead have done so more due to lack of clear opportunities here in the United States, but significant opportunity to bring skills and expertise home.

Below is a first attempt at how I plan to post these new “presentations” given at conferences. Because they are “played” more than they are “presented,” I’ve had to adjust to some degree.

Frontiers of New Media (FONM) – Casey O’Donnell – 09/19/2009 from Casey O’Donnell on Vimeo.

If you are curious about the “engine” of sorts that I’ve assembled using Löve or any grisly technical details, feel free to ask. Next I hope to attempt using Osy and the Unity 3D engine as a space for constructing my presentations, but more about that shortly.

UGA ICE, ICE, Baby…

 (dis)continutity  1 Response »
Sep 282009
 

No, not that baby. At least not yet. No, this was a very fun talk presented at the University of Georgia‘s Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) “Gaming Seminar” last Tuesday evening. All in all it was an excellent seminar, connecting me with all sorts of interesting new folks at UGA who I’ve not yet really had a chance to meet. This included John Kundert-Gibbs and Brion Kennedy of Bit Brigade. Similar to my talk at the University of Utah, I used my new presentation system to deliver my talk, which you can view below.

Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) Presentation – Casey O’Donnell – 09/22/2009 from Casey O’Donnell on Vimeo.

Magic: the Gathering – Game Designer Training Ground

 (dis)continutity  No Responses »
Jul 202009
 

As if my blog hadn’t managed to establish as a given fact, I’m a nerd. “Geeeeeeeeaaaaeeeek,” is a phrase that describes me and I have no reservations in that. Though I do remain steadfast in my un-dorkiness. But the splitting on hairs aside, I had a revelation while playing Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox Live the other day. Magic: the Gathering (M:tG) (note: distinction is made between the XBLA title and the actual card game) is game designer training ground. Alright, let me rephrase that a bit more carefully. M:tG at its best is game designer training ground. At its worst it is what most online massively multiplayer games are, a race towards the nearest game crushing spoiler deck. However, those skills too are crucial for the game designer to stress and test their own designs. So, even at its worst it is a productive space for aspring game designers.

Shall we step back a few steps? Indeed. Continue reading »

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