Crafting Interesting Worlds Inspirations from Gaming User Experiences

Crafting New Worlds: Inspirations from Gaming User Experiences Amit Pande Credits: Sameer Bhiwani, Adesh Singh, Deepak Srinivasan, Shami Raj

About me
Intrapreneurial/Entrepreneurial
Enterprise, Mobile, ICT4D, Decision Support
Manager, Designer, Researcher, Engineer
President, UPA Bangalore (http://upabangalore.org)
Supporter/Organizer: Doors of Perception, Dcamps, World Usability Days, other P2P
http://amitpande.com

Is this your image of Gaming? Chicago Tribune: 76% of casual gamers are women…

Two main objectives today
Gaming is a legit, interesting, complex sub-culture – not just teens fragging away to glory
Gaming provides strategic approaches, metaphors, inspirations and tactical notes, interactions, and interfaces
Implications exist for consumer and enterprise software

Basketball players in regular game? Ancient gladiators fighting till death for glory?

Students creating art on stones with paint Wizards creating spells to cast new magic

Old fogies playing poker with money in poker club Generals planning attack against robotic alien army

The Importance of Gaming
Gaming is problem solving
Gaming is socialization
Gaming is experimentation
Gaming is relationship building
Gaming is visceral and emotional
Gaming is mind expanding

Moksha Patamu: Ancient India

Go: Ancient China

Monopoly: 1935

Space Invaders: 1978

LAN parties: 1980+ Above: DreamHack 2007, Germany, 10445 gamers

The UX Impact of Gaming
250+ million gamers online worldwide
$10 billion+ global business
Driver and consumer of innovations
New Business models
New Technologies
New Experience Ecosystems
New interactions and User Interfaces

Gaming and business model innovations
Traditional
Game characters on Ebay (now banned)
Share profits with power user-developers who create mods (Counter Strike)
New
MapleStory by Nexon, South Korea: Nexon prepaid debit card is second largest selling at Target, after iTunes card
WildTangent, Redmond: Sells ads that are displayed on its site and sells players ways to avoid having to look at those ads.

Gaming and technology innovations
Innovations in storage, graphics cards, network access
Reliability and speed
Visual and tactile manipulation via many ‘interfaces’
Industrial design for core/casual gaming
Future: Supercomputer consoles, Virtual Reality headgear, brain interface games

Gaming and experience ecosystems
Ecosystems create stickiness and engagement
Virtual collaboration in sensory immersive environments
Creation of community ecosystem via sites, forums, etc
Community builds itself
Focus on reputations, ranking, rewards points

Gaming and Product User Experience
Freeze frame, forward, or rewind game
Remapping of controls’ preferences
Radial-context menus
Contextual palettes
Defining of hotkeys using drag-and-drop
Scriptable command line interface integrated with Point-Click
Streamlining of repetitive tasks
Approachability and help for newbies
Extensive adaptation to users

4 Interesting Gaming Experiences
Nintendo Wii
World of Warcraft
BrainAge
Spore

Nintendo Wii Experience
World’s best-selling console – 30 million sales till June 2008
Most games complement real life, not escapist
Touchscreen interface – TV channels metaphor
Wii remote is a wireless controller, a handheld pointing device that detects 3D motion (accelerometer/infrared)
Blue Ocean Strategy: "price", "movie playing", "graphics", "physics", "fun", "game library", and "magic wand"
Embodied physical user interaction: Point, Click, Sway, Swing, Swirl – even coined a term, Wiiitis!!
Collaborative by design

World Of Warcraft Experience
Owns 62% of online massively multiplayer online game market – 10 million subscribers
Players use characters to explore locations, defeat creatures and complete quests, gaining experience points.
Experience points help characters gain a level, opening up the option of learning new skills or abilities, exploring new areas and new quests
Customizations of User Interface based on character, game level and experience

BrainAge Experience Nintendo Annual report: Worldwide sales of 13 million copies, Mar 2008

Spore Experience
“ Massively single-player” online game
Real time strategy, simulation game
Control the evolution of a species
Unicellular organism -> Intelligent and social creature -> Interstellar space exploration
Throughout gameplay, the player's perspective and species change dramatically.
18 software editors including Creature, Music, Vehicle editor. Translatable skills. Toy metaphor
User generated content - Sporepedia
YouTube/Flickr character uploader

Spore Experience
18 editor software tools including Music editor. Translatable skills
Creature Creator tool - Create your characters in natural, elegant UI – not a creature modeling tool, but a toy
User generated content - Sporepedia
Characters evolve in game world

CELL CREATURE TRIBE

CIVILIZATION SPACE

Software UX –Some inspirations from Gaming
Consumer software
Enterprise software

Gaming Inspirations for Consumer software
Humanize
Create Playfulness
Use quirky relevant features
Allow users to engage in entertaining passive exploration
Use rich and interactive tools wisely
More iterative and immersive Design Process

Source: Jonathan Harris: We Feel Fine (www.wefeelfine.org)

Gaming Inspirations for Enterprise software
Playfulness should either be helpful or at the very least not get in the way – should be contextual
Use challenges, pleasant feedback (e.g. mission complete!), psychological payoffs (progress indicator showing 2 goals left)
Performance based recognition (level up) for completing difficult tasks, if better than average time on task list

Game Over (for now..)
http://amitpande.com
Plan to write essay with additional examples ( www.braid-game.com , www.puzzlepirates.com )
Presentation hosted at: www.slideshare.net/amitpande

APPENDIX

Design Patterns for Games

Design Patterns - Usability Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1408/designing_usable_and_accessible_.php?print=1

Design Patterns - Accessibility Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1408/designing_usable_and_accessible_.php?print=1

Commentaries on games
Quirky Games: Making Boring Tasks into Great Games
http://hdrlying.com/2007/08/21/quirky-games-making-boring-tasks-into-great-games/
Game Design Is ‘Just’ Specialized Interaction Design
http://leapfrog.nl/blog/archives/2008/01/04/game-design-is-just-specialised-interaction-design/

Game Design References
CHI 2008 Workshop “Evaluating User Experiences in Games”
http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/chi2008uxgames/
Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2322/game_feel_the_secret_ingredient.php
Game Design Fundamentals
http://www.metaplace.com/blog/24.html
Game Design Links
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/links_for_2008_02_09/

Game Design References
Usability & Games – References
http://www.webword.com/2006/02/23/usability-and-games-17-excellent-references/
UI Design for Games
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~soar/Classes/494/talks/User-interfaces.pdf
Do Usability Expert Evaluation and Testing Provide Novel and Useful Data For Game Development?
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2006_february/usability_game_development.html
What We Learned Evaluating the Usability of a Game
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0410-gameevaluation.html
Challenge versus Usability in Games
http://www.ok-cancel.com/archives/article/2004/07/the-fight-of-challenge-vs-usability-in-games.html

Mario motions that cause “feel” Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2322/game_feel_the_secret_ingredient.php?page=4

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Crafting Interesting Worlds Inspirations from Gaming User Experiences

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