By Evan Ackerman

For the last several years, GDC has hosted the Game Design Challenge, where three talented game designers create games based on some sort of weird concept. This year, the challenge was to create a concept for a game playable by humans and at least one other species. The competitors included Brenda Brathwaite (the Wizardry series), Steve Meretzky (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Zoo Tycoon), and returning champion and the most famous puzzle game designer you may never have heard of, Alexey Pajitnov (inventor of Tetris). Read about the concepts, including paintball dolphins and killer mutant bacteria, and learn who won, after the jump.

Alexey Pajitnov: Dolphin Ride

Dolphin Ride is an interspecies game that takes place in open water. The playing field is a cube of ocean 300 meters on a side, filled with virtual targets. Each team consists of one dolphin and two humans, a navigator and a shooter, and there are 3 – 8 teams playing against each other. The humans “ride” the dolphin in virtual reality, through cameras mounted on the dolphin’s back, and a server projects the virtual targets into the camera views based on the position and orientation of the dolphin. The navigator looks forward, and controls the dolphin through “heels” which emit “very low voltage” electric shocks (!), or through voice command (the dolphin gets a headset, too). The shooter looks backward, and has control over a paintball gun. As the dolphin swims through the real ocean, the humans will see virtual targets consisting of colored spheres 1m in diameter worth varying amounts of points. When the shooter fires at a target, the server computes whether or not a hit was made, and if the hit was valid, fires a paintball. This is mainly for the benefit of the dolphins, since paintballs can’t travel very far underwater. Targets can also be activated by the dolphins themselves, and the shooter is allowed to shoot at the opposing dolphin (!!) with the paintball gun (”killing” the other dolphin is worth lots of points). The winner is the first to 500 points.

Steve Meretzky: Bac Attack

Steve started by looking for a big demographic, and he found it in bacteria, of which there are about five billion quadrillion. How do you make a game with bacteria? Bac Attack is a realtime classic strategy game of attack and defense. A petri dish is placed above a TrayStation game system, which incorporates a powerful digital microscope as well as a projector. Terrain is projected onto the petri dish, and the bacteria react to the different projected colors of light in different ways, either enhancing or retarding their growth rates. The human player uses the terrain to gather resources and build defenses, which consist of focused beams of microwave radiation. The bacteria will continue to evolve due to natural selection, automatically “leveling” themselves, forcing the human player to improve their defenses. Eventually, the bacterial will overwhelm the human player, at which time the human can sell the mutant bacteria to the biotech industry or the military.

Brenda Brathwaite: OneHundredDogs

We’ve played games with dogs for, um, most of human history, so why not transition that into our digital, socially networked world? OneHundredDogs is an interspecies challenge involving 50 real dogs and their owners from every state, as well as 50 virtual dogs on Facebook. Over the course of 4 months there will be challenges in 50 cities for dogs and their owners (i.e. dog-based as well as owner-based challenges), designed to build local social communities of dog lovers. The winner of each local competition becomes the “alpha dog” representative of the city, and those winners become dogs 1 through 50. Those dogs then get a Facebook friend invite from virtual dog 51, and in order to reach dog 52, communities will have to work together within themselves and eventually with other communities to solve challenges, creating a huge real-world social network. Eventually, all kinds of dog and human skills will need to be combined to find the last virtual dogs, and when dog 100 is found, everybody gets a brand new OneHundredDogs.com collar. The real prize, though, is the communities that develop, as well has the fun that both dogs and their owners get to have over the course of solving each challenge. The fun starts on February 29; check it out at OneHundredDogs.com.

The winner? Bac Attack just barely beat out OneHundredDogs, and the grand prize for Steve Meretzky was a pair of Playboy bunny ears.

[ GDC ]

By Evan Ackerman

One of the sessions I went to today at GDC was on experimental gameplay. There were some demos of games where you could clone your character and interact with yourself, start and stop time, play through different realities simultaneously… Basically, it was an excuse for game designers to show off weird concepts which aren’t necessarily suitable for commercial development. I thought one of the weirdest concepts was obfuscation: that is, designing a game where you (the player) have no idea what’s going on. This video shows two games which explore that concept: the first is called Static (screenshot above), and the game consists of a platformer rendered entirely in different types of random black and white static. The second is called Xtor Prime: Retribution In The Invisible Wars: Wrath Of Transparentor: Part II: The Prototype (!), and you play an invisible monster. Like, seriously, 100% invisible. Check out the vid, it’s pretty cool as long as the first game doesn’t give you a seizure:

[ GDC 08 ]

By Evan Ackerman

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor (of such things as the flatbed scanner and optical character recognition) and futurist gave the keynote at GDC on Thursday. Although the title of the talk was entitled The Next 20 Years of Gaming, Kurzweil spent the majority of the keynote explaining how information technology is advancing exponentially at a steady and predictable rate, which allows us to see where our future lies as a species. The idea that was really hammered home to me is that technologies and advances which may sound like science fiction are actually predictable, and thanks to the magic of exponential progression, much closer than we think.

Here’s a little taste of what I mean… Currently, thanks to medical and biotech advances, we are adding approximately 3 months to human life expectancy every year. With the advent of applied information technology (such as the ability to turn genes on and off, something we’ve recently figured out how to do), Kurzweil predicts that that rate is going to increase significantly:

“15 years from now, we’ll be adding more than a year every year, not just to infant life expectancy, but to your remaining life expectancy, so as you go forward a year, your remaining life expectancy will move away from you… The sands of time will be running in, not out.”

Let me restate what he’s saying: if you can make it to 2023, you won’t ever die of old age. This isn’t just speculation: it’s based on a mathematical model which has been, if anything, conservative. I’m sure there’s an asterisk in there somewhere, but even so, there’s no denying that it’s exciting to think about. More stuff like this, after the jump.

Here’s another example… Blood cell sized devices are currently in their first generation, able to cure type-1 diabetes in rats. MIT has developed a nanobot able to scout out cancer cells in the blood, and destroy them. Not too far off are robotic red blood cells called respirocytes, which work just like your normal red blood cells, except they’re a thousand times more capable. “If you replace a portion of your red blood cells with these robotic ones, these respirocytes, you could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or sit at the bottom of your pool for four hours.”

What else is in store? These two slides show some of Kurzweil’s mathematical predictions for 2010 and 2029:

Again, these aren’t just idle predictions, they’re based on trends information technology that have remained essentially stable for decades. Kurzweil actually demoed a few language technology devices, including an optical text reader integrated into a cellphone that instantly translates written text into spoken words (it’s designed for the blind) and a vocal translator, which reproduces what you say in the language of your choice using voice recognition, real-time automatic translation, and an almost but not quite convincingly human speech generator.

All this makes me want to reread Snow Crash. And The Diamond Age. And Foundation, for that matter. You can see more of Kurzweil’s predictions over on Wikipedia, or check out his website here.

[ GDC Keynotes ]

By Evan Ackerman

The Novint Falcon haptic controller has been out for a little while now, and from what I’ve seen, many people have a difficult time telling what it is at all, much less how it works or why on earth you’d want one. I may, in fact, have been one of those people. But slap a pistol grip on the thing and wire it up to a quality first-person shooter, and suddenly it all becomes clear. A haptic controller is a controller that provides some form of force feedback to the user: things like the PlayStation DualShock controllers qualify as haptic… drive over something bumpy, for example, and the controller shakes. It’s neat, but it’s one dimensional, in that all you get is different intensities of the same kind of shaking motion. The Falcon takes that concept and makes it three dimensional, allowing feedback to push or pull the controller in any direction. What does that mean? Recoil, baby. Once you’ve tried the Falcon, pretty much any other FPS controller seems tame by comparison. Hands-on impressions, pics, and a vid, all after the jump.

So, what does the Falcon do for you, as a rabid hardcore gamer? All kinds of exciting and wonderful things! Firstly, the grip itself is about as gun-like as you could possibly ask for, like this mouse but way better. In its current configuration, it has a single stage trigger and three thumb buttons, although more controls (including perhaps a thumb scroll wheel) may be added before release. The grip is attached to the controller through three arms which provide no noticeable resistance in normal use… You use the pistol grip just like a mouse, pointing it in different directions to look around as you navigate with the keyboard. The cool stuff starts happening when you pull the trigger, and the three arms shove the grip backwards, convincingly simulating recoil. Different weapons provide different forms of recoil, so a shotgun feels completely different to fire than a machine gun does. But it gets better. When you get shot in game, the grip will jerk away from the point of impact, giving you tactile information about where the shots are coming from, as opposed to just some flashing red arc of pain which is the best visual cue most games can offer. Here’s a little video… It may not look like the grip is moving much, but it’s totally convincing:

Here’s the nitty gritty: you can move the grip up to 4″ in any direction, the controller can provide up to 2 pounds of force feedback, the spatial resolution is 400 dpi, and the refresh rate is 1000hz. If you move outside of the 4″ limit, the controller will continue panning, so having to recenter the controller doesn’t become an issue. You can switch the pistol grip out for a more traditional ball grip for other applications; the Falcon can simulate texture, weight, shape, movement, etc… So, if something is virtually heavy, the controller will provide resistance, and if something is virtually bumpy, the controller will make tiny little bumping motions as you virtually touch it. Novint has free plugins for a limited assortment of games (including HL2 and Quake 4), and using their software interface, you can adjust the specific feedback parameters for recoil or anything else.

So, it absolutely works, and it’s absolutely awesome, but is it worth the $200ish cost, plus the extra $20 for the pistol grip (available June 15)? It’s one of those things that I can’t recommend you spend a couple hundred bucks on until you’ve tried it, but I do recommend that you go out of your way to get a hands-on demo. You’ll find them at Fry’s and CompUSA. If you’re enough of a fan of FPS games, my guess is you’ll be hooked.

[ Novint Falcon ]

By Evan Ackerman

There were a lot of peripherals kicking around the Game Developer’s Conference expo floor, but most of them, however cool they might be, are just faster or better or fancier reincarnations of existing technology. The biggest wow factor as far as gaming interfaces goes was something I wouldn’t have even considered to be a viable technology, until I tried it out for myself today: brain-controlled gaming.

There were, in fact, two companies that I saw today offering brain interfaces for gaming. Both Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky were showing off wearable brainwave sensors, designed to pick up the faint electrical signals that your neurons emit whenever they’re busy. It’s the exact same thing as an electroencephalograph machine, just simpler and without the conductive goo or the metal pins in your scalp. These interfaces can’t tell exactly what you’re thinking, but they can make educated guesses about the type of thinking you’re doing. I know, it sounds like it could never really be anything more than a gimmick, but the thing is, it totally works, and it’s an entirely new gaming experience. Read more after the jump.

The first company I talked to was Emotiv Systems. Their EPOQ neuroheadset was at GDC last year, but this year, they were showing off an operational, game-integrated system and I got a chance to run through a demo that made me feel like a superhero. The hardware consists of a sort of headband with a bunch of spidery sensors that are placed on your scalp in specific places. Unlike an EEG, there’s no conductive paste necessary, and the sensors are padded. Initial setup for a new user took all of 30 seconds, although much more detailed calibration is possible, and the finer the calibration, the finer the control the headset is capable of.

The demo was pretty straightforward, but highly effective at illustrating the possibilities of the EPOQ technology. Using an XBox 360 controller, I went through a course which taught me to focus my brainwaves to accomplish goals. For example, I could scare off little sprite things by growling at them, as the EPOQ could sense that I was clenching my jaw muscles. It’s not just sensing muscle signaling, though… I was also able to levitate a rock by relaxing my mind, and then doing nothing but focusing on lifting the rock. That’s all. I sat there, looking at the rock on the monitor, and just willed it to lift, and it lifted! I was completely blown away, and me describing it here doesn’t do it justice, it’s something you need to experience firsthand. Yeah, I know that doesn’t help you much, but since it’s an entirely mental exercise, it’s not something that comes across effectively in video or pictures, although I took some video anyway. Keep in mind that this guy isn’t using any physical controls, all he’s doing is thinking about lifting that rock:

The system doesn’t just differentiate between levels of mental activity or relaxation; in another demo, you can control a cube with your thoughts. After calibrating the system, you can will the cube to move around or disappear, among other things. The EPOQ is able to tell when you’re thinking “move” and when you’re thinking “disappear,” and with a bit of practice, you can achieve fairly fine levels of mental control. Now that the hardware and firmware is in place, it’s up to game developers to effectively integrate it into a system. The hardware itself will cost about $300 when it ships in late 2008; you can reserve yours here. [ Emotiv ]

I also stopped in at NeuroSky, who has developed a similar technology, albeit perhaps slightly less complex. Their brainwave sensor focuses mainly on either attention or meditation, which is sort of analogous to how focused you are, or how much you’re concentrating. Their demo let you select from a few different abilities like “lift,” “move,” and “burn.” The effectiveness of the ability depends directly on how strong your mental focus is, much like the EPOQ, and if you’re good, you can lift an X-Wing out of a lake. Here’s a spot about NeuroSky on the Discovery Channel, which does a pretty good job of illustrating what it is and how it works, with a little bit of telekinetic carnage thrown in for good measure:

NeuroSky also suggested that their products could have medical benefits, say for children with ADHD. With the MindSet, they can play games to teach their brains to be calm, and once they have the mental process figured out, hopefully it might carry over into other activities. The most impressive feature of the NeuroSky MindSet, I think, is the price… It’s only about $50 to OEMs. Look for it late this year in some sort of Sega platform, but they couldn’t be any more specific than that. [ NeuroSky ]

[ Game Developer's Conference ]

By Evan Ackerman

I’m not exactly a gaming fanatic, but who cares, I’ll still be at the Game Developer’s Conference here in San Francisco for the next day or so. The keynote this morning was given by John Schappert, the guy at Microsoft who oversees all platform technologies and businesses, including console software, Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows. As you might expect, the meat of the presentation was in the XBox demo vids, so check them out after the jump, including some enhancements to the Unreal Engine, a Ninja Gaiden 2 demo, a Fable 2 demo, and a trailer for Gears of War 2.

Unreal Engine Enhancements:

Ninja Gaiden 2 Demo:

Fable 2 Demo:

Gears of War 2 Trailer:

[ GDC 08 ]