Migrating from Petergrafik.dk
What has been my site since 1998 has been down for almost a month now. In a way it’s ok. That old domain and me have been growing increasingly apart over the last year or so. Now it’s time to move on and make some changes to my “Internet presence”.
I haven’t really decided yet if I should migrate all the content from the old domain, or if I should start of with a clear slate. Anyway, I’ll slowly shape this spot into something that suits, and then decide along the way.
Confessions of a Casual Gamer
Hi, my name is Peter and I’m a casual gamer. When surrounded by gamers all day long given the fact that I work at a company that makes games, I hear a lot of games talk. Especially about games that I haven’t played. More often than not they talk about games that I will probably never play. Even if I had a million years to do so.
The thing is you see; I’m not a “gamer” – The hard core gamers of the studio makes sure to point that out to me from time to time, just to make sure that I wont forget. Sometimes they even threaten to take away my “gamer license”, only to add laughing a few moments later – with perfect comic timing – “Ohh wait! You don’t HAVE a gamer license!” which of course cracks me up every time.
Maybe I should clarify:
When I play a game, I want to have fun from the first moment. I don’t want to read manuals, memorize control schemes or read long storylines to play. I expect to be entertained, and constantly met with a fine-tuned cocktail of challenge and problems followed by the pleasure of overcoming them.
I don’t play games that require me to sit down for several hours, nor do I play games that would require me to have honed my mad skillz since 5th grade in order to keep up, unless I have indeed played them since the 5th grade which I probably haven’t.
I do however play games that I can pick up, play, have fun with and move along. I play action puzzles; Tetris / Arkanoid / Zuma / Lumines Live-style kind of games with really simple controls, close to non-existent learning curve and constant positive audiovisual feedback to get my endorphine flowing. I play anything with a tendency towards a quick easy fix, rather than a long immersive experience.
I’d play Burnout 3 over Half Life 2 any time. In fact I haven’t even played Half Life. Or any other major FPS since the original Doom for that matter (with the exception of a short fling with Unreal).
If someone was to characterize me and my household by the games I’ve played over the last few years, my guess would be, that I would turn out to be a woman aged 40+, possibly single, with a motor headed 12 year old pre-pimpled son.
Not that I’m trying to make a clever point out of all of this – I’m just confessing. Although I do think sometimes, that my tendency towards casual games actually makes me better at my job. Maybe by putting myself in the casual gamer’s place I can challenge some of the ideas that surface in the studio…
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to make a sci-fi themed FPS ad-game to Company X Ltd. who manufactures orthopedic shoes?”
What do I know? I don’t have a gamer license after all…
”Laklave” – The Titoonic Drinking Game
Is democratic multiplayer gameplay with highly dynamic rules, added and removed on the fly, a possibility? Laklave is a highly playable and fun real-life prototype of exactly that – It’s also a fun activity for your next party…
Back in the days – before we all got carried away on the Poker wave – we had a recurring event every time beer was involved Fridays at the Titoonic offices. We called it Laklave, it was our drinking game and it was all good. DO try this at home or in a similar safe environment – It’s fun!
The History of Laklave
The origin of the term Laklave dates way back to the late 90’s in the 3d animation department at A. Film in Copenhagen. The most commonly used penalty when you had made a mistake was called “Penalty Chocolates” – or “Strafchokolade” in Danish. It was very common to start shouting “STRAFCHOKOLADE!” when ever you thought someone qualified for a penalty.
Some day however, Tobias dug a grave for himself and shouted “STRAFLAKLAVE!” instead of -chokolade. It backfired of course and Tobias was immediately awarded the penalty himself. As time passed the term was gradually simplified into the current “Laklave” and the meaning was widened from chocolates to encompass basically any penalty object that you can be awarded or that you give.
Laklave Basics
The game is best played at the point at a party where things are starting to warm up and people are getting slightly silly. You will need the following items to play a successful round of Laklave:
- People
- Drinks
- Dice
- Laklaves (see below)
Laklave is played around a table that accomodates the number of active players. Make sure that you have a decent stockpile of drinks and at least a handful of dice.
Decide who starts the game by drawing lots. The starting player gets to introduce the first rule. From this starting point every player will have to add a new rule when he/she receives the dice. The rules that players introduce can be anything accepted by the majority.
If a rule is deemed stupid, not fun or out of line by the majority of players it is dropped, and the player has to come up with a new one.
When a player fails any rule in the sequence of rules, he/she is awarded a penalty object – a Laklave – and must make a toast and empty his glass. A Laklave can be any object present on the table or in the room where the game takes place.
The players decide in plenum what Laklave a losing player should be awarded. The Laklaves that players are awarded must be present on the table in front of them throughout the rest of the game.
When ever a player has been awarded e.g. five Laklaves he/she is out of the game. The game continues until only one player is left.
Laklave Play-through
A play-through could take place like this:
Thor introduces the first rule “I must roll 12 or more” and rolls the dice. He rolls 14 so he abides the rule he introduced.
The dice are passed on to Britt who repeats Thor’s rule and adds “You must roll the dice with your right hand while holding your left hand on the back!” She rolls 18 with her right hand while holding the left on her back.
Thomas is next in line. He adds a new rule – “You must say: Long live Kylie Minogue! when rolling the dice!” He rolls the dice with his right hand while holding the left on his back while saying “Long live Kylie Minogue!” and states that he must roll 12 or more. He rolls 16 and and passes the dice on to Hans-Henrik who is getting a bit drunk at this point.
Hans-Henrik – who is left-handed – rolls 21 while shouting “Long live Kylie Minogue!” Only he rolled the dice with his left hand and the rest of the table cheers and taunts him. As a penalty he is awarded a pepper grind (a Laklave) and he must make a toast.
The game is reset, and Hans-Henrik gets to start it all over again by making the first rule of the new round.
Cheers!
Drinking games are among the most basic of games as they are played by increasingly drunk people. Yet they can serve as an interesting proving ground for multiplayer gameplay.
In this case we see that something as abstract as democratic on the fly addition and evaluation of rules to a game, can cater great fun for the players – as long as they don’t get too drunk to play.
Democratic Game Design
Playing kids spend a lot of time deciding how they are going to play, instead of … well, playing.
The first thing kids do when they are going to play “house”, “war” or “cops ‘n’ robbers” is to decide the rules of the play universe. Who are playing cops and who are playing robbers? How do you decide if you are hit when somebody shoots? Who is mommy, who is daddy and who are the kids? Where does the family live? Sometimes this process can be equally or more important than the actual play that follows. Most of the time this process has similarities to game design.
Negotiation is an important tool when kids establish game rules
The other day my six-year old son Jakob brought home a new friend, a slightly older girl called Liva. They met in the court yard and had known each other for about ten minutes when they entered Jakob’s room. Their first step was to decide what to play and with what toys. They quickly picked out some of Jakob’s action figurines as their toys of choice. Next the “what are we playing?” game design begins.
“So, this is one of the good guys, and this one is a bad guy”, Jakob said.
“Ok, then all the bad guys stand over here, right?”, Liva replied.
They started grouping and familiarizing the figurines while picking out their own personal favorites and adding special abilities to them. Soon two large groups started forming formations on the floor getting ready for the eternal battle between the good guys and the bad guys.
“This one is both a good guy and a bad guy”, one of them stated boldly.
“But you can push a button on his tummy and then he switches to a good guy again”, the other one added.
“Ok, and then he’s got a sign on his belly that says if he’s good or bad”.
“- But the others can’t see it – Only us”.
Negotiation is an important tool when kids establish game rules. Only rules that both kids agree on are fun. The kids are creating a shared vision of their play universe of choice – shared being the key word. So called bad ideas are filtered out of the game by the micro democracy that – at least these two – kids unknowingly establish to govern their play.
More or less as soon as all the tiny plastic figurines were placed in articulate formations on the floor, the kids lost interest, and moved on to skate scooters and water balloons. I guess they mastered their own game as soon as they had established all the rules they could think of for their imaginary universe. Once the game was mastered, the novelty wore off. All the playing had taken place inside their heads while designing the game. All the energy was spent getting to know each other by creating a shared play vision – establishing a common ground from which new play could grow.
Establishing the rules is a significant and fun part of real-life playing … Sometimes it seems even more fun than playing.
I wonder if this can translate into computer games as well? We know that “a major part of the fun in computer games is figuring out what the rules are” (source). The only thing is, that allthough you may make creative choices, you don’t create anything new, when you are exploring the rules of a game. Even though you may be on a journey through an unknown digital world, you basically just sit there and take what ever the game designer has lined up for you. You submit to the rules of the game instead of creating the rules.
Computer games are like that. And we know they work – But could it be different?
Game designers could maybe make basic worlds with some founding laws of game physics. On top of this they could add a pool of simple rules that the players could apply or remove during gameplay. The rules should be simple enough to combine without conflicting, yet they should have universal impact on the game. The players would not create the rules as such, but they would create the unique combination of rules every time they played the game.
What would happen if casual multiplayer games were micro democracies? What if players had to decide what rules they were playing by on the fly? What would happen when players applied rules in combinations that the game designer never had foreseen? What would happen if players could tag rules they didn’t find funny, and that if majority was won, the rule would be dropped? What would happen if any rule applied to a game would have a point where it expired? What if the overall color-mood of the visuals was decided by what rules was in play? What would happen if … ?
Playing Cards with Liquid Rules
Jakob and me were playing a nice game of cards the other day. It started out as a simple attempt at getting an overview of exactly how many trading cards he owns, and ended up up a fierce battle between good and evil, between darkness and light.
It was a special battle with Pokemons, Duel Masters, Yo-Gi-Ohs and the recently added Narnia cards, all fighting next to each other, against each other, across race, kind and manufacturer. Jakob isn’t old enough to know or understand the *real* rules, and I’m old enough to know that I don’t care about the *real* rules anymore. When playing like this, rules are added, revised, rendered obsolete and overruled on the fly.
If we cared about the actual rules, I think we would run into trouble pretty fast after all. Some of the cards – especially the Yo-Ghi-Oh cards manufactured by Konami – are written in Engrish (Japanese-English) and make no sense what so ever (some of them are hillarious – remind me to find some examples at some point). If the rules did make any sense, it seems that they would turn out to be either too complex or too shallow for it to make any fun at all.
Back in the days I had a brief fling with ‘Magic – The Gathering’ cards, and I actually played the game while learning and obeying the ruleset. It seemed to wear out and get boring pretty fast though, unless you really got into the whole collecting and trading side of things. Which is – obviously – the key feature of the trading card games. Buy more cards buy more cards but more cards. My guess is, that I was getting too depressed and boring at the time to really dig it.
In Jakob’s mind the cards are plain cool. All of them. Just looking at them one by one is great fun. Commenting on every single one of them, while making up cool-sounding names for the ones he doesn’t remember, or asking anyone within hearing range if they would read the card to him. Pick basically any card and it will turn out to be one of the supreme ones, one of his favourites and/or the most powerfull card of them all. All the boys at kindergarten seem to be emerged in the same kind of card frenzy. Each of them having their own additions to the backstories, the myths, the rankings of the cards and their own set of on-the-fly rules.
I remember the thrill he gets from looking at the cards from my self. Not that something quite like it existed when I was his age. But the idea of this ever-expanding world of absolute and supreme coolness, wow and power, that more or less all takes place inside your head is really how most boys play I’d say. It somehow all boils down to “My dad can beat up your dad!” “My monster is stronger than yours!” “My car is faster than yours!” Boys will be boys. Always. “Mine is bigger than yours!”
Anyway, what made me thinking wasn’t really all that usual macho pissing contest stuff that the trading cards are really about, but more the way that the rules in this testosterone universe are bendable, pliable, stackable and – to some extent – breakable. At least when you’re 5 and a half years old and still learning how to become a big boy.
It’s a wonderful flow of creativity, innovation and fun that floods you if you play by the on-the-fly-rules of a 5 year old. Experimenting is allowed at all times. Unless when it’s not. New rules can be added at any time. Except when they can’t. Rules apply as long as they’re fun, relevant or anyone can remember them. Jakob can add new rules. Dad can add new rules, except sometimes when he can’t. This card can beat that card, but not that one, unless I say so.
The end result is, that we play a unique game with a ruleset the size of Amsterdam and we have a great time. We wouldn’t be able to play the same game again, and it wouldn’t matter, because we would make up another one from the same cards.
This way of playing (/learning) is so natural for kids.
This way of playing (/learning) is so rare in computer games for kids. Needless to mention that I think that’s stupid.
Drawing Like a Child – Learning From Kids
I’m one of those unfortunate bastards who gave up drawing, just when I was getting good at it as a pre-pimple teen. This means that I still draw as I did when I was 12 – 14 – like. Which sucks. Bigtime. I’ve had plans about doing something about it for years. And I haven’t. Now Jakob does it seems.
Jakob is in a completly crazed drawing mode these days, weeks – months maybe soon. He’s drawing like mad, all day long. Where running out of paper, and today I even had to tell him to PLEASE not draw on the stereo with that permanent felt tip marker. Every day when I pick him up at kindergarten, there’s a new roster of drawings of the day waiting. The grown-ups (that’s what they’re called in kindergartens), tell me that he’s producing twice – maybe three times – as many drawings as the ones I see. Hard to keep track of.
Monsters, robots and creatures with sophisticated technical limbs, big mouths and sneaky symmetri spurt out of the boy. He just sits there, completely taken by his own creations, and works enthusiastic and concentrated for hours. So far it’s just “characters” he’s doing, which I find very inspiring.
All of the sudden I find myself actually using the nice set of drawing pencils I bought years ago. Jakob and I sitting around the table, equally taken by the magic of the pencil or the permanent marker.
I’ve heard other parents rage about this before. I guess all parents that are remotely interested in drawing, painting or any kind of arty activity, will at some point get to experience the effortless, and in a way reckless, approach of their child. An approach mostly lost by most adults. Kids don’t need all the details to be accurate. They’re not really so tied down by right and wrong, and most importantly, I think, they’re experiencing the world – the magic marker – for the first time.
Enviously I try to copy some of Jakob’s drawings, just to capture some of the “I don’t give a hell – attitude” that he seem to pour into most of them. Sometimes I just use some of his patterns as a starting point. Just to see where they take me. Sometimes I hear myself almost yelling at him, like another 5 year old, because he wants to draw on my drawing as well. I mean, really, it’s hard not to get upset, when the boy all of the sudden approaches the best human face I’ve drawn *ever*, with a black permanent marker, while asking: “Can I colour the head, Dad?”
In the morning where going out to get some more paper. Lots of paper. And pens. We need pens, markers, pencils, maybe even an electric eraser. We cannot afford to run out of supplies. We have a lot of learning to do while the fire burns – both Jakob and not least me.
I Have Partially Switched
I’m currently looking at the world through a new type of window. New to me at least that is… I’m sitting in my small living room that have recently grown considerably larger, due to the fact, that I have pulled a stationary PC out of it. My home is now officially Mac territory.
Lately I have found myself critizising & designing user interfaces and usability design for a living. I have done so for some years now, as a part of my work at Titoonic. With a variety of purposes, missions and target audiences. For games, web sites and advanced software for kids. But allways with the PC as my own working foundation, and as the unconscious meassure of standards, of good and bad, of right and wrong.
Somehow it seems irresponsible of an interaction-, usability-, user experience-, and communications designer not to absorb as many ways of solving the problems of the trade as possible.
The solution is actually quite obvious. I’ve bought a 15′ PowerBook. I’ve scrapped the old noisy wintel-hell and I’m forcing myself onto a path that I forsee becoming a troublesome one; I’m (currently) the only Mac user at work, and the guys are already giving me hell for switching. My brains keyboard shortcut centre is temporarily fucked up. I feel a frightening, yet at the same time somewhat comforting, lack of control. I’m not used to photo library software that wants to take charge of all my files, instead of using the folders I’ve created. I get scared when iTunes move my music around and follows some weird system depending solely on all the music files to have proper ID tags (allthough I recently bought an iPod nano, I’ve allways used WinAmp). And what’s up with Photoshop not having a solid gray background – I mean, I can see my friggin desktop image through it ?!
On the other hand. All that are just indicators of what I’ve been used to so far. Not of good and bad, or right and wrong.
I find myself in a small living room, slimmed down of approx. 20 kilos of ugly, default gray, noisy wintel steel and plastic. Everything just works. I’m not getting any info I don’t need. Not even while booting (”Searching for secondary slave” – well, aren’t we all in a way?). I’m listening to my music streaming from the PowerBook to the stereo (yes, I know I would have been able to do that on the wintel PC as well, but still, the AirPort with AirTunes is Apple, as well as the ease of setting it all up). That’s a promising couple of first experiences.
But, admittedly, all of the above are just lame excuses for my to buy an expensive computer. The actual reason for this purchase when I’m being completely honest to myself is – brace yourselves; I’m petting a slick titanium finish 2,4 kg completely wireless (at least for 4-5 hours more) computer, that looks friggin cool. That’s it. I’ve bought the design.
What’s even worse is, that I have now found myself turning into one of those bloggers that crowd the blogosphere with mile long praises of all their designer hardware. Designed by Apple in California. Made in China (but that’s a different story).
Documenting the Obvious – An Alternative Approach to the Tourist Guide
Tour guides usually describe and document the highlights of a city, country or region. All the sights, and what makes them so special are described. That’s all fine. But how often have I not found myself taking pictures of all the banalities when I walk through a new city equipped with the eyes of the tourist?
I have a theory.
If I was to document all the most common banalities of the Copenhagen cityscape and put it on a web site, it would prove to be new, strange and exotic to many people. If I however documented all the sights of the city, I’d only repeat all the tour books in the world describing Copenhagen. As interesting as that might be, it would not reveal anything new.
So, why not create a collective hub that collect everyday banalities from around the world? A celebration of all the little differences that only the tourist, the stranger and the guest will notice.
Document:
Your way to work
How do you get there? Car? Walk? Bus? Subway? Bicycle?
Your day to day shopping
Where do you buy your groceries? Where do you rent your DVD’s?
The streets
Signs, appartment buildings, cottages and houses of the place you recide
Everyday stuff
All the things not worthy of mentioning and what won’t fit into a regular guidebook
I’m pretty sure that something like this already exists in some shape or form… But I don’t know where.
A Morning Flight with Google Airlines
Google Earth is Jakob’s favorite “game” for the time being. This morning we’ve been to Illinois, Tokyo, The Forbidden City and somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Jakob is the skilled pilot, and I’m sitting right behind him, as his trusty passenger as we soar the Earth.
Over the last decade or so the world has grown remarkebly smaller. With Google Earth (and the other similar apps out there) it has grown even smaller again. Smaller, but most importanly, within your personal control and reach.
“Look Dad, I’m dragging the Earth.”
To Jakob, the concept of cities, countries, continents on a planet in space is still very abstract. He knows that he lives in Vesterbro and Valby (parts of Copenhagen). He’s quite sure that Denmark has something to do with this as well, but what a country is, and that the world is made up of different countries, is beyond him. Yet, this morning, he was the pilot who took his passenger on a spin or two around the globe.
When I was his age I had a globe with a light bulb inside of it and a map of the World on my desk in my room. I was deeply fascinated with it, but the size relations never really soaked in and the level of detail left me in the dark of what the World really looked like.
When the Apollo flights brought home the legendary photos of the Earth-rise over the Moon they made a significant change. At some level I think that the long term effect of apps like Google Earth will change our perception of the planet even more.
Bringing a detailed map of the World to the people is a good thing. I’m not doubting that. However, the impact of this view of the World will go beyond what we find convienient and cool right now. Kids like Jakob will grow up with a different view of our planet.
I’m not really sure of what the new perspective will be, but I think Jakob’s question gives a hint:
“Can we try another planet, Dad?”
“No, it’s the only planet we’ve got.”
As Seen by a 5 Year Old
I remember back in the old days, when I was watching rally on TV. I loved – as I still do – to watch the shots from the on-board cameras where you can see what the driver sees, and what the driver does. It was so cool and I wanted to be the driver so bad.
Later SEGA Rally came out and I played it until my fingers bled, and I thought to myself that it was almost like watching rally on TV.
My son Jakob is a little short of five years old and he likes rally on TV just like his dad did. I haven’t forced him or anything – he’s always been a motorhead.
Only difference is that when Jakob is watching rally, he pretends he is playing a computer game. TV is just like the game – Not the opposite.