Next appointment on the list: the not-to-be-missed Cross Media Week, next September in Amsterdam, now at its second edition - calls are open for workshop proposals and events organization, take a look

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media, event

Peeping in the ACE conference venue, I came across Noldus, a complete system to analyze complex interaction - they use the term user-system interaction, interesting alternative to the restrictive HCI and to the overly vague activity monitoring.
It is interesting how many technologies applied usually to single media interaction analysis,
like behavioral observation, video analysis, facial expression reader, for “still” media, and portable cameras to monitor the activity in mobile media, “detecting time relationships between events” and finding “common navigation pathways, task structures, common causes of error, etc”.
I wonder how many other similar softwares are already around - probably the trouble in usability testing is one of the reasons that keep many broadcasters from taking the big leap into crossmedia communication (the fact that BBC has one of the best testing teams in the world is maybe key to the development of BBC interactive and “360° entertainment”).
I also wonder if activity and affective monitoring is enough (it sure is a lot already!) or if narrative involvement, which determines affective reactions and in the end the attachment to the product/story hence the activity, should also be considered. That is, the type or style of the narration and
the relationship with user’s response. I wonder if somebody is already doing this and if anybody knows about it, if you could send me some links.

Technorati Tags: affective research, cross media, usability research

Another main feature of Pergames and ACE conference is what I would like to call “participatory fitness”, that is technology-mediated sociable situations to exercise together.
The recent proliferation of “sociable fitness tools” is perhaps unrelated to the mild success of EyetoyTM: Kinetic, pseudo-game to exercise with your Playstation, and maybe is rather dependent from the latest fashion of motion detection devices.
Anyway, Pergames features a number of “networked exertion games”, like “Breakout for two”, cross between soccer and the computer game “Breakout”. Both players kick a ball against a physical wall, where is projected a lifesize videoconference image enabling the players to interact with each other (why should people play soccer indoors instead of simply meeting outside, I don’t get) - “Airhockey over a distance” repeats the same concept, of two players separated each with an airhockey table, and “PushN’Pull”, in which two remote players are basically pulling the same exercise bar in opposite directions (the two exercise bars remotely communicate data about strength and direction); “Table Tennis for Three” enhances the concept involving remote players, while “Jogging over a distance” offers social joggers a “jogging together experience” although geographically apart, via headphones and devices to track the joggers’ speed. “Fitness Adventure”, from another research group, tries and combine location based games with fitness, enhancing sociability and the opportunity for face to face interaction.

The common tract of this new generation training projects compared to the Playstation is SOCIABILITY; the main goal is to do something (in this case fitness) and do it together.
Some try to connect persons living in different places, as the web does, others try and organize LOCAL GROUPS, in the style of web 2.0, a virtual stratagem to create connections in real life.

As usual, new technologies supply to insufficiencies in (western) society to provide aggregation sites and motives - when will all these “sociable systems” be noticed by State organs, like for instance social security, and be employed for public use?
The social potential of pervasive, locative and mixed reality games is huge, I want to read more from the Convergence Consortium at MIT and see if Jenkins and the group actually talk about a “participatory revolution”, although the word “revolution” is not so hot anymore.

Technorati Tags: conference, location based games, participatory, social interactive television

another great chance to ponder about the interrelation between cross media structure and games, and another call for papers that I am going to miss:

“The Future Play Conference focuses on three main themes. The first theme, future game development, addresses academic research and emerging industry trends in the area of game technology and game design. The second theme, future game impacts and applications, includes academic research and emerging industry trends focused on designing games for learning, for gender, for serious purposes, and to impact society. Finally, the third theme, future game talent, is designed to provide a number of industry and academic perspectives on the knowledge, skills, and attitude it takes to excel in the games industry.

Future Play addresses these issues through exciting and thought-provoking keynotes from leaders in academia and industry, peer-reviewed paper sessions, panel sessions (including academic and industry discussions), workshops (including design, technology, and career workshops), and exhibitions of posters, games, and the latest game technologies and supports from industry-leading vendors. The highlight of the games exhibition is a peer-reviewed competition of games in three categories: Indie Games, Serious Games, and Student Games.

For Future Play 2007, Algoma University College teams up with the Ontario University Institute of Technology to bring you some of the most thought provoking and talented people in the gaming world today.”

Submission deadline: June 30, 2007

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, conference, event, games

We were talking the other day about terminology: the Transmedia and games workshop was as far as I know the first one to employ the term “transmedia” officially in Europe; my impression is that “transmedia” (Henry Jenkins’ s creation) is mostly used in the States, while the term cross media or crossmedia has been gaining recognition in Europe thanks to the work of Monique De Haas in the Netherlands, since the Acten Report in 2004, and Jak Boumans, the other main cross media theorist in the Netherlands. IperG also used the term “crossmedia game” for their pervasive game “Epidemic Menace”.
Christy Dena in Australia, one of the most active cross media “evangelists”, uses the term cross media, transmedia and many others, but in the most communications she sticks to cross media. She also gives a rather comprehensive overview of all the people analyzing cross media in her link bar.
My impression is that transmedia is mostly academic, while cross media comes from the industry, with an aftertaste of “cross-platform”, and some enlightened academics are trying to restore some depth and worth to the term; I wonder which term is going to stick in the future.

Some fun moments during the Pergames conference came with the testing of Shame Station, an interesting student game project.

Shame Station lets you command via joystick another human being via a headset with a commands display inside, transforming the person into an avatar, and making him or her to perform actions we wouldn’t normally do, “shame free”.
The goal of the project was to show how guilt (and conscience of our acts) where in the end related to our own body’s actions, and a joystick would relieve us from guilty feelings as long as the shameful actions where performed by someone else’s body. Interesting enough, the body-avatar was also relieved from all responsibility because of his or her being “remote controlled”

In Salzburg the only shameful action performed unfortunately was the simple spraying of innocent spectators with spring water, see a picture

Anyway the whole experience made me wonder about the utility of commanding an avatar, or being an avatar - in our role-demanding and role-shifting society in how many situations it would be nice to be free from the responsibility of our actions, either performing them directly either leading someone else to do what we don’t want to do personally….

Technorati Tags: affective research, locative games, pervasive games

Here you can find the slides of my humble contribution to the Transmedia and Games workshop, entitled ” Some Ideas for the Evaluation of Cross Media Interaction ” , for a better definition of experience and gameplay. I wish I could give much more time and thought to the topic, because I think it really pivotal in understanding new communication models like cross media, I wish there were more working on it.

Technorati Tags: conference, cross media, personal, workshop

I was expecting this workshop to be more project-oriented or game-oriented, instead to my surprise all the presentations were dealing with highly theoretical issues, like metagame (D. Detsaridis), schemes (G.Hale), experience and gameplay (me), evaluation tools for cross media, starting from Perplex City(J.Bardzell).
Some more practical presentations like the one from Vicky Wu about Trans Medial Access put everything back into context, nevertheless this thirst for definition made me wonder.
This is the first workshop in Europe I believe to use the term “transmedia”, perhaps because all the organizers come from the States…

Technorati Tags: conferences, cross media, personal

Create your own locative game and organize it at the second edition of the “Come out &Play” festival in Amsterdam, within the Cross Media Week (September 21-29)
Games of the previous edition included spy games, sonic pong (! I have to ask how they did that!) make your own picture puzzle and conquer the city making phone calls.
These are great times for creative people…

Technorati Tags: Call for papers, conferences, cross media, locative games

If you want to see the dreams you dreamt as a kid reading science fiction (if you actually did that as a kid) and see the magic wand, the butler house, the intelligent table and much more check out the Amigo-TV project and Philips research center in Eindhoven, Netherlands