Ever since I read Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses when I play a game I tend to look at what pieces are contributing to the experience and how the “Lenses” apply to that game.  Right now my memory of the lenses is a bit rusty, but I started playing a new Facebook game to look at how it works and doesn’t work and thought I’d write my thoughts while they are fresh.

First off, the music has a nice “Fairy tale/adventure/disneyeque” sound to it.  I know that I may tire of it after a while, but right now it is enjoyable. How you design loops so they enhance and don’t get annoying is a really good question.  That said it seems to have more than few segments of the music (perhaps even “movements’) so it isn’t just a short loop.

The graphics are cartoon and on the cute side, but defined enough that you aren’t going “aaaah saccharine”.   The look is consistent, the graphics go together and nothing makes you go “Wait…where did that come from.”

The avatar for the user has a default so the user can get going but has a small but reasonable set of customization options (and probably you can buy more.)  It is nice to be able to pick your character’s look, but at the same time it is good to not have too many options or it gets a bit overwhelming.   (n.b. by default it created a female character for me and I didn’t check if I can change my avatar to a guy (I just changed my hair color from blond.))

The game does a nice job of gradually building the player’s knowledge of how to play.  You start out with some small quests that teach you he basics, and then as  you complete the quests you get new ones that teach you new skills (how to use the market, how to plant, how to move the gloom away.)  The game also provides good feedback as you make progress through the quest – encouraging you on.

The game also introduces new characters as you go and you end up “interacting” with them through quests and the like.  It makes you feel more like there is a “there” there.

This is a Facebook flash game and as such it is “click on things to interact” kind of game.   As far as the type of game, it has a few elements. The first is a “gathering/building” game ala Tiny Towers/Farmville/etc.   It gives you small simple repeatable tasks with clear indicators when you must maintain things, plus the “playing house” aspect that these games have where you can build things and move things around allowing you to entertain your inner organizer/decorator.

Secondly it has a “questing and adventuring” game.  The various NPCs (non player characters) give you quests that you fulfill, but in addition there is an overall story where you are the Lord or Lady of your estate and you are fighting off the gloom and rescuing people. The story quest line (which interplays with the “here’s how you play the game” quests) uses the language of hero quest lines.  You may be the chosen one, but there are challenges to meet and bad guys to fight off, and those who will help you in the journey that you must seek him out in the  to learn from him…but first you must gain the skills for your journey, etc.  (Sorry…Joseph Campbell is on my reading list still so I can’t tell you if this is the classic hero’s journey – but it mirrors many games and movies that I’ve been told reflect it.)

The language as you receive and complete the quests is written in a way to make you feel your “choosiness”, which does give a nice feel good.

In addition to the type of gaming the way they have implement the performing tasks is quite well done.  When you click on something to clear it/harvest it/mine it/feed it/etc. when the actions is completed your rewards joyfully pop out onto the screen and you run your mouse over them to gather up the rewards.  For some reason this has a satisfying feel – like you are really gathering rather than just clicking – and also it allows them to throw out variable rewards.  Yes you get the item you harvested but you might get something else with it.  It makes each click a bit of a “surprise box” which adds to the feeling of adventure.  (Ok, perhaps I find adventure easily but the element of surprise does trigger something in the human pleasure psyche.)

Like most Facebook games it has the standard “invite your friends to be neighbors” and “visit your friends” quasi-social aspect.  Visiting lets you do tasks for your friend and vice versa.  However, when a friend has visited, you see them in your estate (somewhat standard behavior) and you can accept or reject their help (also standard) but then you watch them do the tasks (that they did whenever they stopped by) and you get to gather up the rewards from their tasks, and then you send them off with a gift.  While the end result is pretty much the same as the “Farmville model” since you are watching them do what they did and interacting to gather the rewards it has a very different feel – it’s like you got to see them visit.

As with many games there are resource limitations.  Some tasks take a set amount of time to complete – so you have to wait to do them.  You also have a limited resource of energy that limits how much you can do in any one session – you can wait or buy more energy -  (so the constraint can become coins in this case).   And then there is the space & money resource management as well.  All in all the time  & energy constraints seem the most “need management” so it is a pretty loose boundary but the constraint is there.  Also quests require resources, so you need to manage gathering and producing such resources to complete your tasks at hand.

Lastly they do a very nice job of always giving you something to complete.  When you finish one quest a new one appears.  Right now I have 4 quests (one for each NPC I’ve interacted with), plus animals to feed, periodic bad guys to fight off, and various and sundry tasks that i can chose to do.  It is easy to get into the “just one more task” mode because it just feels so productive – there is no time where you are going “hmm…nothing to do….”  which is good.

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts on Castleville.

Much has happened since I last blogged. I’m still working on getting my inner censor to hush up a bit more. (At which point it goes “Nah…don’t post this”)

Anyway, the other night I had a dream that I woke up from. I was listening to a radio show or some such and the DJ was about to start a series of songs as a tribute to Shamir. I woke up just as the first one started playing. The lyrics began:

Can you be my friend and believe in me.
Can we walk together side by side hand in hand.
Let me be with you until the end
Will you hold me in your heart.

And that’s a bit of song from Sunday morning.

I was cleaning up my disk and found a small .rtf file from March 2009 labeled “Anon”.  In it I found these words:

“We think anonymity exists, but really, except in rare cases, we leave markers to our personality and traits wherever we go.  We can only hide angles not our entire selves.”

Is this true, or can we become invisible in certain places while still speaking our mind.  (And if we are speaking our mind is there a piece of one’s mind that is not a reflection of self?”

It seems so odd posting about Second Life again, even though that is where all of this whole web 2.0 stuff stated for me, but here it is.

The other day I downloaded the latest Beta Viewer for SL which include the initial version of Basic and advanced modes.  There are a lot of things that I like about it, and some definite criticisms, and I thought I’d capture them here rather than in 140 character segments.

First off, and my favorite part of the viewer is they have improved the graphic rendering engine for the Mac significantly.  On my Macbook pro I rez places (and myself) fairly quickly (10-30 seconds in very limited testing – not with lots of people around) AND I can move.  In the same places on the old viewer it would take me a good 5 minutes to rez and walking was a step by step, step every second or two jerky experience.  That alone gives me more options on where i use Second Life.

When I started up the viewer I set it to basic mode just to see what the starting point was.  To start with there are a number of features that I liked:

The click to move is very nice, and is a simple way to move. Also the mouse to pan/turn the avatar was a nice way to look around, although it really is more of a “push against the world to move” action than a camera view.  (In other words, it moves exactly the opposite of mouse view in game like World of Warcraft.)  Alt-zoom is still there.  Also I really like the fact that the viewer 2 tab list HUD is gone, giving back some nice screen real estate and helping with the immersiveness.  Instead there are nice text buttons at the bottom out of the way of the screen.

I like the Gesture button – it makes it easier to “emote”.   The “Destinations” button is my favorite button.  It gives you a range of categories of places to explore and you can head off into the world and ideally find places where people are. The my avatar button has a nice selection of pre-made avatars with skin/costume combos.  It makes it easy for a newcomer to change their look.  I’d love to have my outfits displayed that way and be able to do wardrobe changes that easily with my bought clothing.

The “Howto” button is the last standout feature – it brings up help with a list of “how to do x”.  It is a fairly short list but then what you can do in basic mode is fairly limited, which brings me to my criticisms.

I understand that basic is designed to give a simple interface without too much to get new users started.  They have an excellent start, but there are some key features missing that make advanced a necessity (and the changes between the two very disorienting.)  Before I touch on the concerns with advanced we’ll finish up basic.

First off, although I can wander the world, I can’t return home.  To start with, there is no way to set a home, and then there is no way to ask the viewer to send me home (unless I can get there using the back button in the navigation component at the top.)  Even my web browser has  home button – this should be an easy and an early fix.

Secondly, there is no way to access your inventory.  You can still acquire inventory nicely but there is no way to get to that inventory in basic mode.   This seems like a huge oversight.  I understand that the inventory presentation is messy – and perhaps they didn’t know how to basicize it, but it is something that has be addressed.

As you might guess basic has no build mode.  I’m ambivalent about that.   On one hand it makes the UI very simple.  On the other hand, it means that to get to building they have to intentionally switch the mode of their viewer.  There is no accidentally discovering building.   While I think removing building from the much simplified right mouse click menus is correct, it would be nice if there was a menu option, like under Edit or perhaps it’s own, that would let a person discover building.

So…we’ve explored basic, realize we need to move to advanced to build and get to our inventory…let’s check out the jump our new user will have to go through.

First up, the HUD is back, with the tabs with the indecipherable icons on them.  As a plus it does seem to tuck out the way better than I recall it doing.  However, it could be hugely helped with at least mouseover text.  What are these strange icons and why are they on my screen?

Help is now up in the menus, and takes you to the old style help – no “how to” option here.  I think at least adding the how to help, as limited as it is, to the help menu options would be useful.

Moving along, our new user now tries to click to move to a new location and…that no longer works.  I hope they figured out wasd or arrow keys for movement while they were in basic.  Well, lets look around…wait…mouse turn is gone.  Luckily the “view” button that gives you a HUD that lets you change your view around exists, and if they try the help the directions for alt-zoom aren’t too far down in the help.  However, this change is jarring.   That, and even as an advanced user I’d like have the click to move & mouse turn options back.  They are great for casual looking around. (n.b. mouse turning does have a limitation as there is no way to look up (or to use it while flying) so it could use some revamping – perhaps to have more of a “mouse view” functionality rather than an “avatar turn” functionality.

Having not played with Viewer 2 that much I’m not sure that there is that much different in the Advanced mode from what existed in Viewer 2.  I think the new basic mode is a great start but there are some key missing things I’d like to see added.  Also, since at some point a basic user is likely to go advanced it would be good to have a few of the features of basic mode brought into advanced mode as well.   I look forward to seeing the next iteration of the viewer, which hopefully will advance the state of basic, and bring some new features to advanced.

This post was inspired by a meeting of the meetup group currently known as Serious Second Life. We were discussing what we are working on and what our involvement currently is in Second Life. For many of us we are less involved in Second Life, while still busy in virtual environments or sometimes simply busy with social networking/media sites and tools.

I know I’ve been a rare presence in Second Life. For a while it was the lack of a machine with enough horsepower to do anything in Second Life…you know, like walk. Now that has been resolved but I’m looking for that “project” or reason to reenter the world.

In the mean time I’ve been exploring gaming, game design, and augmented reality. One game that has caught my eye and made me ask some questions is Minecraft. I will say up front that I have only played a small amount of Minecraft, but I have been stunned and amazed by the videos out there of the creations made in that game. It has taken the gaming world by storm, being names game of the year by some. Yet at the same time it is an amazingly simple game. You start out building stuff with cubes, you can eventually program using logic gates, oh and and night the monsters come out so you better get your shelter built.

What I’ve seen of the game makes me say the simplicity brings out the creativity in people. It also makes me ask why is this a wild success yet Second Life is so…niche when the potential for creating is so vast in Second Life. I was looking for more on Minecraft and came across this article on G4TV’s site with this great quote:

“Unlike other world-building games like Second Life, where it’s theoretically possible to build whatever you like, but is, in practice, way more trouble than its worth, Minecraft isn’t hard, per se. Read a few “getting started” tutorials if you’d like, but after that, you’ll find your way without too much trouble. It’s not super time-consuming either. Give Minecraft a couple hours, and you will have an exciting adventure, I promise you. Plus, there’s enough danger inherent in guarding against death that it’s interesting, unlike Second Life.”

That started me thinking and reminded me of some past discussions on why the entrance to Second Life is so hard.

Beyond basic usability questions the real challenge is finding why you are there. Now needing to build so I don’t get eaten by monsters wouldn’t have enticed me to join Second Life. I know I was terrified of “damage turned on” areas in Second Life, even though I knew I would get my avatar back. But one thing that Second Life doesn’t have that real life has is an initial impetus to act.

Even if I picked a random point on the map and drove there in real life, my real life body would require me to seek out food and a place to sleep. I would wander, and likely run into some people and then find out more about a place. Just the nature of life causes that seeking.

Within Second Life, if I’m dropped in my natural curiosity might send me to explore, but for what? There is no defined objective. I don’t have this short list “food, sleep”,  I have an unbounded list “find something cool” which means infinite possibilities, which means infinite choice, which is a close cousin to analysis paralysis, which, with a handy “quit” button, means people exit the world.

While what you can do in Second Life is amazing, the creations are wonderful, the concerts are brilliant, the potential is huge, for the initial starter there is no simple goal to get them started that gives them a place to build from. For those who have stayed in Second Life they’ve come in with a specific purpose, or wandered luckily into a group that gave them a what to do that drew them in. But for those who wander there without such luck or escort it is hard to know where to go and what to do. I would say that this one thing is the largest barrier to coming in to Second Life – without a reason or a focus it is hard to find the why to remain, or to come back.

A few weeks ago my digital watch went kaput.  It’s a waterproof watch because I put my hands in water on a regular basis, and replacing the battery on those is a pain, because it usually breaks the waterproofness, and most places won’t replace it for you….because they can’t get the seal right either.

At that point I decided I would try again to switch to the more au currant style of just using one of my digital devices to tell me the time. I have an iPod and a Droid on me at most times, so I’m not actually far from a time device very often.  However, all of these do not have the immediacy of tilting my wrist to see the time.

For the first few days I found myself looking and fumbling, feeling almost a panic, as remembered I needed to find a device and turn it on to see the time.  On Shabbat I actually had to go to where a clock was to see it, since I can’t fiddle with my electronic devices to turn them on to show the time.  It was all a bit disorienting.  But now, a couple weeks in, I’ll think I wonder what time it is, turn on a device, and idlely bring up some application without looking at the time.  The “need to know the time” was more of a habit than a real need.  Knowing the time regularly never made me more on time for scheduled events – that seems to be governed by some other factor.  I either have ontimeness or not.

Today, when I once again wondered what time it was, and then found myself playing pocket frogs instead of seeing the time I thought that I should really make a Now watch, and I was reminded  of a story my uncle told me.

So what’s a now watch.  Back in the 70′s my uncle in SF used to make Now watches.  He’d flatten a bottle cap, attach it to a woven wrist band, decorate a round sticker with pen decorated NOW, and stick it on the bottle cap.  He’d give these out to friends.  His now watch however was made from an old wrist watch that had died, so it looked like a real watch but if you looked at the “dial” you’d see it was a sticker with NOW in fabulous colors.

Anyway, one day he was wandering out and about, perhaps near the financial district, and this older man in a suit, looking very professional and serious came up to him and said “Young man, what time is it.”  He did what he always did when someone asked, and looked at his watch and answered “now”.  The man nodded his head curtly and said “I thought it was.”  and continued on his way.

After the patch that brought the Shattering dropped, I hopped onto my new mage to check out the world (and maybe level a bit.)  I logged into Orgrimmar and was immediately lost.  I had no idea where I was.  I stumbled around the city trying to figure out where everything had moved, and eventually found my way to the flightmaster.  I had heard (from trade chat no less) that you could see a great view of the changes to the Barrens by flying to Thunderbluff.  I had wanted to see Thunderbluff anyway so I hopped a wyrven to see.   Off I flew over the new Orgrimmar, over the South Fury river and into the Barrens.  The point nearest to the river didn’t seem so changed, but I watched as the plains swept by.  In the distance I noticed some smoke rising and wondered what I would see ahead.

We flew up over a few trees and as the view cleared…*blink* there was Deathwing, Aspect of Death, breathing fire and…well…death on the plains below.  I watched and looked at the destruction, and then passed over the chasm of the divide.   We kept flying and the wyrvern flew over the hill into the valley of Mulgore safely away from Deathwing.

I think by this point the idea of “social networking” and “games” being two separate worlds has melted away with the popularity of casual games on Facebook.  Very few people who use social networking sites have not heard of Farmville or Zynga, even if they don’t play the games themselves.  We also have been seeing the gamification of sites (adding game elements to a site) – with social tie in, often with facebook tie in,  to try and increase engagement in sites that might otherwise get only brief visits.

However, the other side of gamification is the socialization (or is socialification?) of games.  This is where games start using social network tools sites to help promote themselves.  Like gamification socialification can be done well or poorly.  I do remember taking a test to see which faction I would be in some game that looked very cool – but at the moment I can’t remember what the game was called (or find it in my Facebook apps – I just looked) even though my thought was “Wow I’d like to check this game out.”  That said – having the social network site tie in can help promote a game.  Blizzard has World of Warcraft feeds that you can set up on Facebook (and that is nicely tuneable so it doesn’t spam your feed) so anyone who friends me will get occasional updates about what I’m doing in World of Warcraft, which if they don’t already play, may get them interested.

Today I came across a new Blizzard site, designed to promote the upcoming expansion pack – Cataclysm.  It is called Darkmoon Faire.  Unlike the achievement feed I think this has more potential to draw new players in. The fact that I got “1 Light in the Darkness” is just some random fact for most. However “fortunes’ and “factions” and hints of some of the elements of what makes World of Warcraft interesting might draw in new players who might just think of the game as just being “beating up on monsters”.   I haven’t had a chance to do much on the site yet, but just reading through the FAQ and glancing at the page it definitely shows an evolution of Blizzard’s socialification activities.

The interesting thing about the socialification of a game like World of Warcraft is that as an MMO it already has a social component.  We have guilds, groups, group activities, interaction with other players who are near you, etc.  However, the social aspect within the game is in its own realm (literally).  Guilds may create websites that people can socialize and discuss things outside of the game, and many do.  However, there is the game (or virtual world) social network and then there is the “real world” social network.  With the integration into sites such as Facebook (and Twitter) the divide between “virtual world” and real world becomes increasingly permeable.  Some will chose not to participate (as with RealID) or they may chose a mixed participation.  They may let friends know their interest in WoW through something like the Darkmoon Faire site, but yet not share their particular identities within the world.  However, as socialification of games continues keeping that division becomes more of conscious choice rather than just the natural state of things.

My friend @alizasherman tweeted:

Do you use an iPhone/iPod/iPad? Do you let your kid (under 10) use it? Tell me what you have/what they use & how old!

And I was struck by how “current age” this question is. iPads/iPods and other touch devices are still relatively new. Do you give kids a chance to play with fancy electronics or geeky luxury devices?
However, if you think about how these touch devices are being used, I think we will see these devices quickly becoming “just what people have.”

I’m sure back when the printing press just started & when paper & ink was expensive and more challenging to get someone might have asked the same thing. At what age did you let your kid handle books? At what age did you let them use a quill?

Now we give children special books that are safe for the crib, and paper and crayons are handed out as soon as the dexterity to use them is there. “At what age did you let them” for paper and books would seem almost odd. How long before touch devices reach the same state?

The one place where there is a significant difference between books and touch devices is in the staticness of the data. If you handed your child “The Giving Tree” you can be pretty sure that it will have the story “The Giving Tree” in it and later…it still will have that story and not much else (other than perhaps some crayon marks.) With your Kindle or iPad the data is not that static. It may have “The Giving Tree” on it, but it could just as easily have any random thing on it. Does the dynamic nature restrict its easy givability? Or will we simply have unnetworked (or restricted network) touch devices for babies and small children and progress from there.

Yesterday I found out that seesmic.tv is going offline. To be honest I haven’t been stopping by there, and the .tv part of seemsic is mostly a vestige of how the company originally started, so its closing makes sense. Nonetheless I find myself greatly saddened (at 2am after my dog woke me up) and so I post. For me seesmic.tv was a big turning point for me. This whole blog was started mostly as an experiment with embedding plugins in this new “Web 2.0″ thingie. I was tweeting some and joining chats in the live broadcasts on places like blog.tv and ustream.tv. With seesmic.tv something else was started. I was part of their early beta users. We were all experimenting with this new thing and in these video experiments we developed some very real friendships. I remember conversations on politics where we found we could have different views and still discuss. We had late night silly discussions about who knows what, and early morning greetings over coffee. We had conversations with the famous that Loic brought through, such as Deepak Chopra and others. We played word games and charades. We helped friends teach their children about the world by sharing videos about where we lived.

In all this video at all hours of the night I gained confidence and voice. My friends inspired me and rather than a shy hidden person I started to think of myself as outspoken and someone with something to share. In the end seesmic.tv played its part in my life, and it left me changed and now it goes on into memory. It is sad that we won’t have any more #oldseesmicers reunions on seesmic, but perhaps it will encourage me reaching out in other ways.

When I tried to go back to sleep as the memories of seesmic.tv washed over me I was reminded of the image of a sand mandala. So many intricate patterns, precisely placed colors of sand. And then – with the sweep of the broom the beauty is scattered to be nothing more than a memory. But…the changes wrought through the work of placing the sand – those last – the impact was made. It isn’t in having the pattern before you that makes the difference but having had that beauty exist.