The Undiscovered Country

Life is hard. So the human race invented escapism. Thus, the game. A construct which combines the best of many mediums. And video games in particular provide us with all sorts of goodness. We can immerse ourselves, 2 senses deep. Decades have gone into the how of this interactivity. It's nine-trillion colors of shiny and sounds so pretty. If you believe the people who told us we'd have rocket belts and flying cars, the ultimate interface will be brain-to-machine - hands off, senses plugged in. They're wrong. And I'm still waiting for my rocket-belt.

And so I present the secret ingredient that seems to elude video game developers. It's not controllers or inputs or joysticks or gloves or guitars. It's not force feedback, vibration, or sensorama.

It's Stuff.

Stuff -- things you hold in your hands and feel and interact with for their own sake. Stuff is important in every kind of gaming other than video games. People care how their golf clubs feel, whether it makes them better golfers or not. Pool players adorn their cue-sticks. Board gamers will wax poetic about the "bits" in their favorite game, and there's a whole subculture of folks who collect Chess sets and Go boards just because they are beautiful things -- every chess board is functionally identical, yet there are thousands of variations. Meatspace game designers really, really get this. Even folks like Hasbro, the most mainstream of mainstream game companies, clearly agonizes about making their games feel good. Go pick up a copy of Heroscape: you can entertain yourself for hours with the pieces without cracking the rule book.

Prove this to yourself. Go grab a deck of cards. Shuffle it. Deal a game of solitaire. Flick a card across the room. It feels good doesn't it? Grab some dice and shake them in your hand. You've been conditioned to associate certain memories, certain activities, with just that feeling of roiling plastic. I keep a big D20 sitting right in front of my computer. When I get writer's block, I just toss it around in my hand. Something about the act of holding that die triggers creative neural pathways in my brain.

When I walk into the bookstore, what book attracts my 6 year old daughter? The one with the frog on a string. Sure, it's a marketing trick, but she still reads the book. In fact, she reads the book with the little frog on a string more than it deserves (it's not that good, the frog doesn't even sing). She does this because she can hold the frog. Even without reading the book, she still enjoys holding the frog. It sparks her imagination. By comparison, if you walked in and saw me fondling my Razer Diamondback mouse or my DualShock, you'd fear for my sanity.

Our little corner of the world seems oblivious. Let me be clear, I'm not talking about cloth maps and gold coins. These Zork-era throwaway chotchkies still abound in the bizarre phenomena of "collectors editions," all the cheap black T-shirts, malfunctioning headsets and printed maps you'll never need. And as cool as the Guitar Hero controllers, light guns, teledildonic remotes and DDR pads are, I'm not talking about building a better joystick.

I'm talking about real interaction between the virtual world and the real world. I'm talking about a true hybrid game. I want a real interaction between Stuff I have in the real world, and what goes on in the virtual world.

I've only played one game recently that even comes close to bridging this gap between a virtual game and a physical game -- Hasbro's Clue DVD. Hasbro took an existing, understood, and beloved board game, and improved on it in a dozen ways that enhance the experience, adding cut scenes, graphics, soundtrack, and new game play elements and bring the level immersion far deeper than a board game ever can. In a word, it's brilliant.

To be fair, our industry has tried. Majestic, a short lived but groundbreaking "Alternative Reality Game," attempted to break the barrier between its world and mine by sending me emails, faxes and phone calls. But in the end, it wasn't actually that good a game, and it was more a gimmick than a real innovation. Perplex City comes close, integrating a collectible card game and an online scoring and clue system to tell a story. But fundamentally it's just solving puzzles (some impossible for mere mortals) and keeping score, and the puzzles are only available if you buy an endless stream of cards.

But even there, why should truly innovative game design be ceded to a card game company and the pathetic interactivity afforded by an industry standard DVD player or a web browser? Why are we relying on the old guard to get hip, when the hip could be leading the charge?

I demand a new game. I know you're smart, you famous-game-designer-people, much smarter than I am. Make me a game where there is something on my desk that is real, tangible, and interesting, and have it really matter in the game. I don't really care what it is: a deck of cards, a novella in which clues can be deciphered in and out of the game world, a small board game with little plastic meeples that I use to solve Myst-like puzzles. Give me a Kit Williams-meets-Perplex City game that requires neither a Ph.D. nor a never ending collectible card game investment. Give me the hybrid.

Dance monkey, Dance!

Comments

Dance? But you can't even see me!

*dancing*

There are those games... found almost entirely in Japan, I think... that combine an arcade/scanner with collectible cards. That's a brilliant idea, really. Plays to two entirely different sections of the geek brain, that does.

Here's hoping it's just the beginning of a trend and we reach some sort of state you describe, rabbit.

EDIT: This article has something of a description of the games, although it's trying to make a point other than "it's neat."

Could be done. Have a load of RL game pieces and doodads (board or whatever), all RFID'd for a cheap mini GPS system in your livingroom (should that be LPS then?).
Have this information relayed to your PC. Now your PC knows where all the pieces are (related to each other anyway)

Now if someone hid one of the pieces around your house, you could play a game of "hotter-colder" with the PC game to find it - maybe getting more information from the PC about your proximity depending on your score on certain mini-games through the PC.

Or something - you get the idea....

I remember all the infocom games my dad would buy that came with alot of nitknacks. It was really cool, and woe if you ever lost one and needed it to solve a puzzle!

This will probably sound idiotic cause I'm not all that technically inclined, but still here goes. Lets say you take those motion sensor suits, and some goggles that could display graphics when they saw someone wearing a suit but still allowed you to see everything else normally. You could could come up with some computerized L.A.R.P hybrid, or virtual versions of lasertag or paintball. You die in game goggles turn off and people see you normally. I think I recall reading about the military working on having soldiers networked via a computerized vest or something.

The Monster Rancher series has an interesting real world/game interaction element. From GameSpot review of Monster Rancher 2:

GameSpot wrote:

You stick any CD into your PlayStation, which reads a segment from the disc and then uses that data to generate your monster - a combination of two basic types. From there, it's your responsibility as a certified monster breeder to train your monster to fight.

Neat gimmick. I'd love to see someone create an action figure that plugged into your USB port and mimicked your characters actions in WoW or verbally gave you status updates. Anyone who wouldn't want a water elemental action figure that blows bubbles and smacktalks in response to in-game events is a bitter shell of a human being.

I vauuugeeely remember that -- basically it used the CD as a random number generator. What I'm talking about goes beyond that, but I'm honestly not sure I articulated it very well...

Were the first games really escapism? Seems more like competition to me.

Dance sheople, Dance!

Get with the times, rabbit

This article reminds me of some early 'computer' or electronic interactive games that came with lots o bits to move around.

One game I had as a child, I think it was called Dark Tower. It had a game board and pieces (knight, dragon, treasure etc) for the player to interact with. An electronic Dark Tower that stood tall in the center of the map. The player would push buttons on the dark tower, which in all its digital and audio glory, would tell how many moves around the map you could make and also I think the fate/next move of your little hero. I wish I still had it, its worth money today.

I also remember an early SSI game, Computer Ambush, a turn based strategy game of a single WWII german camp. On screen was represented in atari 800 ASCII glory, if even that, I think it just gave coordinates/status of your soldiers. The box supplied you with a wax covered coordinate map of the camp and you could plot the moves of your own gi's and the german soldiers on it as you input your moves into the computer. I seem to remember it taking upwards of 20 minutes to calculate a move.

Irongut wrote:

One game I had as a child, I think it was called Dark Tower. It had a game board and pieces (knight, dragon, treasure etc) for the player to interact with. An electronic Dark Tower that stood tall in the center of the map. The player would interact with the dark tower, which in all its digital glory, would tell how many moves around the map you could make and also I think the fate/next move of your little hero.

http://www.hotflashgames.com/darktow...

Damned you straight to hell Quintin!!! You beat me to the post!!! Grrr......

Dark tower rocked. But again, why does this come from board game companies? I mean, I have nothing against board games, I love them to death. But come on, the MONEY's here baby.

Sheople. Heh.

How about an online game where you create a character, and using cards that you buy like a ccg except these cards have computer chips in them. You can play ongoing effects or special abilities using a computerized touch sensitive board. Make every card have positive and negative aspects so you can't just lay any card down it has to work with what you already are using. Plus being able to change any card on the fly would make for a neat ever changing combat. I think it would require an enormous pool of cards ala mtg to keep everyone from using the same stuff over and over.

Irongut wrote:

One game I had as a child, I think it was called Dark Tower. It had a game board and pieces (knight, dragon, treasure etc) for the player to interact with. An electronic Dark Tower that stood tall in the center of the map. The player would push buttons on the dark tower, which in all its digital and audio glory, would tell how many moves around the map you could make and also I think the fate/next move of your little hero. I wish I still had it, its worth money today.

I had this game as a kid as well. I think my parents sold it at a yard sale after I went away to college. And you are right about the money, I hear it can go for upwards of $100 on EBAY........

Brizahd: while an interesting idea (I'd buy it!) I have this horrible aversion to CCGs, not the least of which is that the marketing channel is different and differently funded. I want a mainstream hybrid game I can pick up at Best Buy, even if it's in a big box.

Dance!

Cool idea.

KillerTomato wrote:

Neat gimmick. I'd love to see someone create an action figure that plugged into your USB port and mimicked your characters actions in WoW or verbally gave you status updates. Anyone who wouldn't want a water elemental action figure that blows bubbles and smacktalks in response to in-game events is a bitter shell of a human being. ;)

Awesome idea - maybe the character could have a few dozen different LEDs all over his body which can color his items differently. Even though the items themselves won't match the ones on your in-game character, the overall color scheme and look will.

Of course they'll still have to create a different-equipped character for every class.

In the "everything's been done, better" department, I point you to this article by our own 1Dgaf, who says it better than I did:

Punches, 'Puters and Purpose

That's very kind thing to do, Rabbit. Thanks.

[size=7]The cheque is in the post. I added a bit 'cos it's coming up to Christmas. Awight? Sweet.[/size]

rabbit wrote:

To be fair, our industry has tried. Majestic, a short lived but groundbreaking "Alternative Reality Game," attempted to break the barrier between its world and mine by sending me emails, faxes and phone calls. But in the end, it wasn't actually that good a game, and it was more a gimmick than a real innovation.

You know, this reminded me of the free web-based game that was designed around the Spielberg/Kubrick movie A.I. I don't know that it ever had an official name, though those playing it called themselves Cloudmakers (see http://cloudmakers.org/). It was, I always thought, a brilliantly designed interaction between the web, the phone, and the audience. It did everything Majestic tried to do, but did it far better (there were phone numbers to call, messages received on phone numbers, emails received, web browsers redirected with startling results, etc). Even more, it raised a community around solving a mystery (the puzzles were damn near impossible sometimes without experts in certain fields providing input). I thought one of the coolest things about it was that it was never announced or marketed. It was left entirely for someone to notice a strange entry in the credits of the movie, and built by word of mouth.
And I never actually heard much discussion about it, even among gamers, even though it was about the same time as Majestic.

I agree, not as truly interactive as it seems could be done, but pretty cool for what it was.

Were you a fellow Cloudmaker? memories... The website is still up at www.cloudmakers.org if you want some details.

The funniest thing about the whole mess is that they expected it to take a year for them to get through the first batch of content they threw out there. It took something like eight days. And then the rest of the project was a mad scramble to keep ahead of the distributed parallel processing juggernaut. Final solution was in a little less than three months.

momgamer wrote:

Were you a fellow Cloudmaker?

I came to the table too late. By the time I discovered it, it was 90% solved. Still, I had a great time going through the early parts, and it was still active, allowing me to receive emails and phone messages from the game.

Do you remember how you became aware of the game, MG?

I found out about it in one of the newspaper ads for the movie (I'd already been interested due to being a Kubrick fan). There was something weird in it and I wanted to figure it out. Started googling about the movie and ran into the Marting Swinton Design site. And then down the rabbit hole I went.

I think a computer system needs to be in some object(s) for a true, good hybrid.

Harking back to my playtime as a kid, I'd love to have some goggles and earphones that overlay an image and audio on top of reality and a rod that works as a magic wand, plasma rifle, sword, or rocket launcher depending on how you hold it.

A Hybrid God game would rock, except you'd be more like a Titan or Frost Giant than some intangible being.

A Hybrid Puzzle game would be or is already first. The puzzle is displayed on the device or transmitted to a monitor. The mechanism for manipulating the puzzle is on the device itself.

A Hybrid RTS would be fun but robot fighting competitions are so concerned with safety they don't allow explosives.