User interfaces for interactive applications basically consist of input from users and feedback from the interface. In order for the user to be able to use – give input to – the interface, the user need to understand what the interface is about. The UI needs to talk to its user in order to work at a truly satisfying level.

The average friendly button needs to be able to say the following to its user:

• Hi, I’m a button and you can click me!
• If you click me this will happen: [action]
• This is my importance compared to my fellow buttons: [importance]
• I’m related to these guys over here
• I’m not related to what’s over there
• You are pointing to me, and I’m ready to receive your click!
• You are clicking me, and I’m ready to carry out my action!
• It’s perfectly fine if you don’t want me to do anything after all
• Look! Now I’m performing my action in all my glory!
• You did great!
• Umm… Sorry, but I’m disabled at this point, and clicking me is of no use

It’s a lot of language when you look at it like this. I’ve found it quite supportive on many occasions to look at user interface design problems in terms of language.

Over the last four or five years I’ve been to several different LEGO office buildings, jam packed with cool NDA-covered work-related stuff. But until yesterday, I had never seen where the actual plastic magic takes places. I have finally had the pleasure of visiting the LEGO factory in Billund.

Fun facts from the tour:

• LEGO in Billund produce 2.400.000 LEGO elements per hour
• Production lines run 24 hours a day, 360 days per year
• Chain elements used for e.g. Bionicle are molded in ONE piece
• It takes one employee to manage around 50 molding machines
• The robots that pick up the filled boxes of LEGO elements are quite patient with visitors
• Said robots wear signs saying “This machine doesn’t have a brain – Use your own!”
• 99% of the plastic that goes into the factory ends up as LEGO
• The remaining 1% is sold to a concrete factory that uses the scrap plastic as furnace fuel
• LEGO is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires (if you look at the # of tires)

The most cool thing about it all though, was the warehouse. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark (the closing scene where the Ark is archived in the gigantic warehouse filled with wooden crates) meets The Matrix – then you have an idea of the proportions of cool that we’re talking. A 100% automated 22 meters high warehouse that was operated by conveyor belts and 22 meter tall robots operating at dizzying speed and precision.

Just imagine sitting in that warehouse with endless LEGO bricks to choose from, and six to ten 22 meter tall robots to help you find what you need…

(No photo opportunities however)

Since I don’t know when the *thing* for especially web design has been glossy plastic rendering and reflections, Apple style. Every new site that launches these days, every old site that gets a 2.0 re-hash seems to be draped with plastigloss.

Why has this thing grown into the only thing? Why insist on this sterile plastic metaphor when there are so many other directions to choose from?

Ok well, that’s all fine. The virtual plastic has grown really tiresome by now imho, so I’ve begun waiting for the countermovement. A design movement to oppose and challenge the come il faut glossy shiny reflection plastic, that we have all grown so used to.

- So what’s the next big thing after plastiglosshinyness à la Apple? Please don’t let it be doodles.

Note, that I’m waiting for this movement to happen – I’m not trying to start or drive anything here.

Reuters runs an article today about MTVN’s plans to invest a large chunk in games:

MTV Networks plans to invest well over $500 million in video games, seeing the red-hot entertainment category as a major pillar of growth in its goal to reach consumers wherever they spend time.

…a major phallic pillar of growth…

“Media companies are crazy trying to bring video-game development in house,” Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said about developing complicated console games. “They act like anyone can do this. The fact is not everyone can.”

… which in turn may become very good news for all us independent game developers.

Full article

Once in a while you need a fresh start in life. In many ways I think I need one now. This is why I have decided to abandon the content that was “lost” in the crash of PeterGrafik.dk and make a new beginning of Kulturprodukt.net.

It seems quite appropriate when I look at other aspects of my life. Jakob is facing a new beginning on his first day of school next Tuesday. We’re about to move into our new apartment and at work we’re busy thinking up and implementing new strategies and goals. So that’s it. Clear slate.

The downside is, that almost all the stuff that I have put online for nearly a decade, is no longer available. Complete and utter linkrot (with a few exceptions). Some of the work was actually pretty okay – some even good, if I’m to judge it. At some point I may decide to bring some of the more durable pieces back online.

But for now I’ll leave this site with a lot of blank pages (?) and just let it slowly evolve into the provider of kulturprodukt that I want it to be.

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.

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…

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.

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 … ?

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.