The Development of Tactics and Strategies in a Mobile Game

In Picking Pockets on the Lawn: The Development of Tactics and Strategies in a Mobile Game, Louise Barkhuus, Matthew Chalmers, Paul Tennent, Malcolm Hall, Market Bell, Scott Sherwood, and Barry Brown present Treasure, an outdoor mobile multiplayer game inspired by Weiser’s notion of seams, gaps and breaks in different media. A seam is a break, gap or “loss in translation” in a number of tools or media, designed for use together as a uniformly and unproblematically experienced whole. Well, constant network connectivity is often assumed, but it is yet not always the case when mobile systems really are mobile. In urban areas it is likely that there are variations, gaps and overlaps in networks’ coverage.

The study and design of games has added diversity to many areas of ubicomp research. Games are not only worthy of academic attention in themselves, they introduce challenges in terms of designing enjoyable (the technical novelty can wear off very quickly) experience. The authors aimed for the game to be engaging in order to better understand the relationship between game play and the system’s design. The research question would be:

Understand how people use and react to a design which makes an element of ubicomp infrastructure an explicit part of an interaction design.

The trial participants seemed to achieve what Salen and Zimmermann call “meaningful play” through their experience in that, through multiple plays, the relationships between actions and outcomes were both discernible and integrated into the larger context of the game. For example, because of the lags in GPS, the movement of a player’s icon on the PDA was often delayed by several seconds – resulting in problems picking up coins. Most of the players learning this over the course of their games. Moreover, because some players realized the inconsistency of what was on their screen was not the same as what appeared on the other’s screens, they played more boldly, raising their shields and attempting to steal.

During the iterative development of Treasure designs often changed in response to ongoing findings, which were generally reflections from observational studies of system use.

Technically they used UDP instead of TCP for the messaging subsystem because the play often takes place on the edge of the network (weakly connected). The server “heartbeats” the game state, broadcasting all game state information (scores, positions, etc) every second across the network. The messaging system was found to be robust, but it would not scale well to high numbers of clients creating large volumes of state information and net traffic.

In the discussion section, the authors mention that their reinforced opinion that user trials of such games, and of ubicomp systems more generally, should involve repeated use and/or use over a long time than a single, short session. A recording and replaying system (lke replayer and CatchBob!’s replay tool) are of a big aid in developing tactics and strategies for future play, but may also be an important means for players to show each other how they played in the past. EA’s game Burnout rely on playbacks.

Weiser’s narrow design focus only concentrated on transparent use. It is at odds with the findings of user studies of how people develop their use of ubicomp systems through experience of both transparent and analytic use. Transparent and analytic activity use are mutually interdependent with the former unaviodably influenced by analytic activity such as handling “breakdown”, working on or adapting it. learning about it, teaching others how to use it, considering how to act so that it works better, and considering how to present oneself to others through it.

Design that makes the system so starkly open to analysis by users may seem contradictory to the design goal of “invisibillity” or “transparency” usually associated with ubicomp, but people use past, present and potential activity involving the system in developing their understanding of it.

Reference I should get my eyes on:
Chalmers, M. A Historical View of Context. J. CSCW vol 13 (2004) 223-247
Salen, K, Zimmerman, E. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, MIT Press (2004)

Microsoft Live Local

Micorosft Virtual Earth has now become Live Local. They added a “Locate Me” feature to display current location of the user by by using Wi-Fi technology. Very similar to James Howard’s Google Maps WiFi Locator and my MapMe. Microsoft uses their own Location Finder program that has to be installed. Location Finder is probably related to Microsoft’s efforts to locate APs. If you do not install Location Finder, or if your computer does not support Wi-Fi, Windows Live Local can attempt to find your location by using the IP address of your computer. Apparently Microsoft

In their privacy policy they mention that “Microsoft may use the information collected to provide you with more effective customer service, to improve Location Finder and any related Microsoft products or services”. They show a clear lack of sensitivity towards privacy issues. Location-based applications should be designed to present location coordinates privately to a user, without querying, or notifying the network.

Moreover, Mike Liebold proves in the Place Lab mailing list that “Clearly Microsoft’s IP location database includes spooky datamined information about users’ actual location that is not normally available by querying the publically accessible databases.”

Situation Awareness

Inf@Vis! has an article on Situation Awareness by Juan C. Dürsteler a fellow researcher at the Technology Department at UPF.

Situation awareness is what’s needed in many environments in order to operate safely avoiding the appearance of critical situations. When they appear it’s still more important to know instantly the relevant information regarding the crisis.

Situation awareness can be very relevant to ubiquitous environment and showing the causes of uncertainty only when necessary instead of clogging the user’s cognitive system.

Juan talks about a recent Air Transat flight during which the plane flamed out both jets due to a complete loss of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilots were unable to correctly identify the loss of fuel that happened in one of the turbines. They thought for a long time the oil temperature readings and remaining fuel were wrong due to the unusual situation and the causes that led to it.

This is a clear example of the importance of situation awareness. The information systems in the plane were accurately reporting the situation but with huge amount of detailed information. This goes against Ben Schneiderman’s mantra: “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand”.

Multifunction displays considerably reduce the cognitive overload and enable the user to see on the screens the most relevant set of information for the flight while the rest of it stays in the background, except when an alarm occurs. This way the pilots provide themselves with a situation awareness that instead of clogging their cognitive system, frees it from the overload other systems impose.

Wireless Connectivity in Mass Transit System

While reading Underground, but not unconnected — BART offers wireless service to riders I found funny that the reasons to get wireless connectivity in transit systems are:

• (My food) phone in a pizza order on their way home.
• (My safety)What if there was a disaster? It’s a safety issue
• (My work) “I wish it could work everywhere I go,” he said. “Even underwater, swimming. “

Cons are:

• (Social) No more ‘I’m sorry, I can’t talk, I’m on BART,’ ‘
• (Social) Worry about loudmouthed louts shouting into their cell phones to be heard over the train noise.

Or the future of wireless in mass transit systems is this?:

“I’d like to see cellular availability every place,” she said. “Would I use it? I don’t think I’ve used my cell phone on BART ever.”

Somehow it is like the beach in the Bay Area… it is nice that it is there, but you rarely enjoy it.

Augmented Maps

Augmented maps, which add digital graphical information and user interface components to printed maps.

Localisation and Interaction for Augmented Maps by Gerhard Reitmayr, Ethan Eade and Tom Drummond explains an experiment based on augmented maps. In the simulation areas of flooding are superimposed onto a map of Cambridge along with live images captured by a camera in the city’s centre. An operator can see the image and assess the local situation immediately. An emergency unit represented as a helicopter is visible on the map as well. Now, the researchers want to move out from their labs and build a deployable and mobile system.

A short video showing localisation of maps and the use of the different tools.

Understanding Spatial Abilities

I developed mobile applications that use maps to render positioning information. However map literacy isn’t necessarily a given. Reading them might ask an effort and can even be misleading. I had players reporting me that they got lost on the map with their position while being familiar with the physical environment.

Why Some Students Have Trouble with Maps and Spatial Representations is a tutorial for college-level geoscience instructors that looks at spatial abilities (i.e. the capacity to extrapolate the real world from maps, models and the like).

Via The Map Room

4th Place and Mobile Technologies

Finally a survey that links the 4th place with mobile technologies. It is a clear confirmation of mobile usage in this particular context and maybe a need to define scenarios.

“A significant number of Americans use the computer connection in the bathroom”

Le Continuum Numérique en Suisse

Luc Vodoz, politologue, chercheur à la CEAT (institution intercantonale et interuniversitaire romande rattachée à l’EPFL) à propos du rapport rédigé dans le cadre du Programme national de recherche “Intégration et exclusion”: Ordinateur et précarité au quotidien: les logiques d’intégration provisoire de la formation continue. Voici un entretien sur son analyse des TIC en Suisse. Il mentionne que:

• Parler de fracture est une abus de language pour pouvoir créer des catégories. La situation en Suisse est plus une continuum numérique.
• Il n’y a pas de vrai fracture, mais l’intégration n’est jamais parfaite pour personne, parce que les TIC exigent des capacités d’apprentissage continu. Il y a un large sentiment permanent d’insécurité parce qu’il y a besoin d’efforts d’adaptation permanants.
• Les 3/4 des élèves suisses qui terminent leur scolarité ne vont pas surfer sur le web. Ce qui ne veut pas dire qu’ils n’utilisent pas d’autres technologies numériques (jeux, mobile, IM, …). Mais ils n’utilisent pas ces technologies dans une perpsective plus productive (par exemple pour trouver un travail).
• La plupart du temps, les technologies ne sont pas là pour créer des liens sociaux, mais entretenir des liens sociaux
• Perception réelle de la population sur les TIC est que la société de l’information c’est la télévision, beaucoup d’information, beaucoup de publicité dans mon boîte aux lettres. Tout cela est très loin des discours de la révolution de la société de l’information, que le monde a changé et que tout doit être adapté en conséquences. La population n’a donc pas perception d’un nouveau paradigme du fonctionnement de la société.

Technologies Pervasives et le Désordre

Edito complètement décousu mais très dense et riche de Daniel Kaplan dans Internet Actu. Le titre
Désordinateurs II : “Les mots de la tribu” n’est qu’un avant-goût. Il parle de la fusion du virtuel et du réel, de la nature et de l’artificiel, et que la connexion et l’artificiel deviennent les états par défaut. Les technologies ne sont pas source d’ordre et maîtrise, mais sont des agents du désordre et du bruit (dans le sens surplux d’informations, de données, d’idées, …). Ce vacarme quotidien à pour effet que l’on ne peut pas penser l’avenir avec des grands desseins, des intentions clairement formulées, des stratégies d’empires, et proche de la vitalité du social.

Je garde une phrase proche de mes questions de recherche (perception des environnements omniprésents et gestion de leur complixité au niveau de l’utilisateur).

Nous devons apprendre à observer les technologies “pervasives (omniprésentes) et invasives d’aujourd’hui sous cet angle, celui du désordre plutôt que de l’ordre, du désir plutôt que de l’efficacité, du quotidien plutôt que du grand dessein.

Mobile Technologies are Shields That Protect us From the World

In current issue of Vodafone’s receiver Erik Holmquist (the leader of the Future Applications Lab at the Viktoria Institute in Göteborg) describes his lab’s researches in mobile media and ubiquitous displays. Erik’s interests match mine: HCI, InfoViz and Ubicomp. Nothing really new under the sun in his presentation of their work on mobile collaborative games context photography. I in fact really like his mention against the current frenzy to create interaction from scratch:

“Often, we use mobile technology to create a shield that protects us from the world.”

Mobile technologies offer bridges and shields… and all our efforts tend to multiple the bridges and destroy the shields. Of course bridges are more romantic than walls… but is it really what we want?