Just a brief note: I’ll be cross-posting some posts to Glider Gun, which is a brand-new blog written by the dazzling cast of Future Platforms. The blog launched yesterday. We’re named after a pattern on Conway’s Game of Life: Gosper’s Glider Gun (see a longer explanation here).
Go and check it out and subscribe to the RSS feed!
Last month Aleks Krotoski spoke at dConstruct on Playing the web: how gaming makes the internet (and the world) a better place (listen to the podcast, or see a write up of the talk here).
Two main things I got out of this talk: (1) carrot: good games should reward people for contributing more, with points, levels, collectable items. (2) goals: good games should have an end goal.
Casting my mind back to various games I’ve played, I’ve never been so hooked on a game as Ultima Online. I played this game compulsively for about a year – quitting only when I really needed to focus on schoolwork (and when I finally switched to a Mac).
Rewards and goals are everywhere in Ultima Online. The gameplay is rich on hundreds of different levels: across the macrocosm of the game down to the tiny little details. I loved that spell ingredients, known as ‘reagents’, spawned across the land – which could be picked up and used, or sold. I could also harvest cotton from cotton fields and sell it to tailors in the town. If you’re like me, you’ll find both of these ideas hopelessly novel.
Another thing I liked about the game: killing monsters gives a character an amount of “fame”. And with enough “fame”, you gain a title. This brings a compelling social aspect to the game: you have something to show other players for your participation in the game. Your title also reflects your skill level, ranging from “novice” to “legendary” (they might have introduced more levels since).
Building a character within a system, within a world, is satisfying, compelling, and addictive. A character can take one of hundreds of possibilities. The game is not just about “killing stuff” within a contrived “level”. In addition to being a mage or a warrior, you can make a living as a tailor, a chef, a bard, a thief, and even a beggar. Skill increases as you practise it: so, to build your bard character, you’d need to first raise enough gold to buy an instrument, then walk around playing said instrument.
This does get a little dull. In some professions, raising skill is much too mechanical and technical for sustained interest, so you could macro or automate it to rise. (If you get caught, though, you put your account at risk.) On the whole, I think the game manages this well: although it can get boring, it is more likely that you will invest the time to build your character than it is for you to give up or quit the game.
How does Ultima Online manage this? You can clearly see the structure and process for raising a skill. In other words, you can see the journey ahead, and know what you need to do in order to reach the end. You can see the rewards in the future: e.g., a tailor with 100.00% skill can make better quality leather armour for your mage. An animal tamer with 100.00% skill has a much better chance at successfully taming a dragon. Getting to 100.00% skill is difficult, but fun: the rewards are both in the journey and in the destination.
I think Ultima Online is the perfect game. Sadly, its membership is dwindling: possibly because World of Warcraft is the new MMORPG vogue, and possibly because gamers aren’t known for their lengthy attention spans.
So, some basic principles which are useful to interaction and experience designers, or anyone planning a social website:
Another principle:
From ‘Rules of Play’:
The idea that players subordinate their behaviors to the restrictions of rules in order to experience play – and its pleasures – is a fundamental aspect of games. The restrictions of rules facilitate play, and in doing so, generate pleasure for players.
From L. S. Vyogotsky:
To observe the rules of the play structure promises much greater pleasure from the game than the gratification of an immediate impulse.
Now: how to bring these principles to social websites?
A great post from Khoi Vinh: Wanted: Trashy Design Magazines.
It has always intrigued me that Eye is such a beautiful artefact when graphic design is part of a throw-away culture. Print is chucked away after use: packaging, newspapers, magazines, posters, tickets, coupons. All of these are torn off, chucked away, thrown out, ripped down, used, expired – they’re temporary, usable, and expected to change.
Eye, on the other hand, is a bit like the precious china doll you could never play with as a child.
Not saying this is a terrible thing (far from it: it’s a beacon of excellent design and high-quality printing, and I love it, despite how critical I am of it). However, we need a counter.
Khoi Vinh asks for a design rag. No less substance and quality, but something we can use.
What I’m talking about is a design rag that I can just throw into my bag, roll up, tear pages from, and scribble all over with impunity. It᾿s not that it can’t be masterfully designed; rather what I’m looking for is something that looks good but that was designed to be used.
Perhaps something like Scroll Magazine?
It certainly looks promising. The contributors include Joe Clark, Jeffrey Veen, Indi Young, and Veerle Pieters, and it has the advantage of being cross-platform: print, PDF, and web.
Silly definitions aside, there are some useful specialist skills at postgraduate degree level graphic designers could go on to accrue. I continue to wonder at the usefulness. It’s occasionally thought that designers with academic credentials are ‘cliquey’ and, of course, not necessarily better designers.
A personal note: being the obsessive life-planner I am, an MA is something I’ve been considering for a while, and *might* end up doing at some point in the future. The question is why!
Interaction design
Interaction designers define the behaviour of products, systems, and services that users interact with.
It’s oft-thought that Don Norman wrote the bible of interaction design: The Design of Everyday Things. This book is particularly great because he talks about generally lo-fi things, such as the design of doors and handles, but shows that the same basic principles can be shared with the high-tech world of product design.
I’ve looked at a few MA courses in interaction design out of curiosity. Carnegie Mellon has a very well-known postgrad course. The RCA offers one in the UK (not sure about their website design).
Useful for: anyone making websites, mobile applications, designing software – anything, in fact, involving making something to be used by people.
Information design
Information design is the life-blood of traditional graphic design. How to best organize information? Information design is also a subset of interaction design. At core, it deals with how to arrange information to make it clear and usable.
There’s only one pure “information design” MA I know of, at Reading. There are many “communication design” programmes out there, though.
Useful for: graphic designers working with information. I think this is a true graphic design specialism.
Doing an MA in design pros
Doing an MA in design cons
Is the industry the best place to train? Conversely, is the university or design institution the best place to train?
