Future Cinema

Exercise 2.5: Conflict: Football and Poker

Exercise 2.5: Conflict
Compare and contrast the conflict in football to the conflict in poker. Describe how each game creates conflict for the players.

Having read the very hands on book, Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games I have decided not to write a critical analysis but instead attempt to answer exercise 2.5 that asks one to compare and contrast the conflict designed into poker and football. What follows is a section of that attempt.

Football is a time-based game. It is divided into 4 equal quarters of 15 minutes each. The non-televised version of poker has no definitive ending other than the player running out of resources, i.e. money. Poker games can add and lose players without missing a beat. In both games conflict is maintained through the procedures that reset game play on a predictable basis.

Football is a team oriented, multiplayer game that has at its core a simple goal (to cross a line with a ball) but structures this goal around some of the most complicated rules and as such is probably the most cerebral, strategic, athletic game played today. Football is often likened to chess, which is often compared to war, however, it is far more complicated than chess in that each piece (player) has a job to do that they may or may not succeed at. Every play in football involves at the minimum eleven direct conflicts between players and a maximum level of conflict that is exponential when one begins to ponder the variables involved in decision-making, execution and play calling. Poker is also a complicated game in the way it has developed over time, however, its goal is less singular. This is a game where 2 pair can win just as often as a full house or four of a kind. The real conflict in poker arises from the betting aspect of the game, which is singularly the responsibility of the player. This is where the ‘skill’ of play is to be found.

On a basic level football is a physical game involving physical obstacles and physical boundaries whereas poker sets boundaries that exist primarily as a function of the mind – they are conceptual. Both games use other players as the primary obstacles – impeding success. Both games rely on strategy that is in constant flux, what works today may not work tomorrow, unlike some games where the same strategies have worked for decades. This is a product of game design.

For the head coach and the quarterback, in football, ‘Reading Opponents’ tendencies and intentions is very similar to poker and done well can definitely provide an advantage. To ‘read opponents’ tendencies in poker could be considered the core play aspect of the game for experienced players. To play football successfully frequently relies on the ability of players to both communicate and read opponents intentions in sync with one another. This is an added level of complication that does not exist in poker. Poker does not share this characteristic of football that one might find in bridge for example.

Football rules are often enforced by 3rd party referees. Poker is often policed by the player’s themselves. As such the enforcement of the rules changes slightly from game to game in football, this is likely not the case in poker.

In football there can only be one winner. In poker two or more players could walk away with more money than they started with, in essence producing multiple winners.

Both games can involve mathematics to create advantage. In poker card counting may give a player a heads up. This poker strategy could be paralleled with the use of statistics involving all sorts of football game play variables.

This is an interesting exercise to help understand game play variables in a different way. I would recommend this exercise to anyone developing game play for their AR project. Pick two games you know well and start to break them down.

QUESTIONS

1. What role does player imagination have in designing a game? For example what functions of imagination are needed to play Go Fish vs World of Warcraft. Is there a difference and if so what might it be?
2. Is Will Wrights idea that rules create structure not the other way around always true of game design or is it mostly true of computer game design?
3. Are the successful games that have stood the test of time somehow organic to who we are? If so will any modern games stand this test?

Tags: conflict, football, game design, poker

Google Glasses – a new narrative spectrum

“In its self-contained way, Google Glass joins the 21st-century notion that everyone is a filmmaker with the more conventionally accepted truth that everyone is an audience.”

In that sense I think that Google glass would definitely change ways that docs, news are being made, anything that is audio visual form of communication. It will radically change ways of World’s further both democratization and manipulation. Perhaps it will change the history of a mankind in certain way.
For example, let’s take into a consideration ongoing debate between both World’s leaders, intellectuals and journalists on Kiev uprising. Some say protesters were armed and even had snipers, some say they were peaceful. If lots of people had Google glasses and if we had channels to see what they see there on both sides we would kind of know more precisely what really happened. And we would know better how was it to be in skin of people of both sides. Of course there would always be a space for a manipulation, but that would radically change too. It is to discover how. I mentioned Kiev recent events but I had also personal experience of being manipulated by media in my own country during some events in the nineties. (Just a couple of wars and a revolution.) In that time medias from the West and from my own country reported completely different news from the same places. Just one go pro camera from the spot, linked to a satellite would help people understand what was really going on, perhaps change course of history. Not to mention what a mass usage of Google glasses would be able to bring. So, I believe that Google glasses can change lot more than the cinematography. And at the end they will change the cinematography itself. At least it will change that cinematography which treats realism – the reality itself will be changed.

Who wouldn’t pay 100$ to see the world with eyes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, just one day? Or some other celebrity artist? Who knows, maybe writers discover new spectrum of narrative possibilities of in such live P.O.V. Maybe Google Glasses become new, eight medium? An E-glass artist. People whose POV other people like to watch.

A carrier of the glasses can create and re-create a completely new sense of reality. It can tell new stories, in time in space. Not to mention how it can change approach to documentaries and news. I am prone to believe that with new media such as Google Glasses, the standard formats of news packages and narratives will change. For example, we used to watch narrative structure on film in duration of approximately 90 to 150 minutes. We used to read books of over 200 pages over an approximate span of a couple of days or weeks, depends on a reader… Maybe new lengths will be necessary. Maybe there will be Google Glasses artists? People who will be interesting enough to “distribute” or “share” their own lifes? Maybe it will be interesting to watch how fiction and reality change and interweave in their eyes. A true postmodernism of a narrative.
(Oh, by the way, I wonder if for sake of aesthetics Google contact lenses will be invented.)
It is well known how stand up comedians art is interweaved with reactions of an audience. It will be interesting to see how these two interact. This new medium will definitely change nature of reality shows. See the world with Eyes of George Clooney. There won’t be no shows, there will be something new. (The Sopranos from a POV of each member of a family?) Something kitchy and something that is art, as there always was. Or something more arty – see how Mike Leigh works with his actors. Or how these actors recreate their an innermost world of roles they are playing. See how they play. Play poker with Martin Sheen and his girlfriend. The day of Barak Obama. Maybe the democrats and republicans will split one day over a question – should the people be able to supervise their democratically elected president? To have a control over those who have a control over us. Parliament sessions in many European countries are televised. Then, should the rapists be obliged to wear them and have an opened channel? Maybe there won’t be no jails – maybe the sentences will be to carry them 24hours and have an opened channel in order that everybody could control you. Practically, when you have an access to someone’s POV 24hours per day it is enormous pressure on these people and practically you won’t need to read their thoughts, you see them. Maybe even more clearly than they can see them… Then… Supervise your kids at school…
There are myriads, millions, zillions of questions how such new medium could be used. In that sense I can predict a fundamental change of many formats. These changes will bring the completely new course of the history. As The Internet did, some twenty years ago.

Tags: "google glasses" "wearable technology"

Antibiotics and Existential Technology

In a sense, what is the difference between antibiotics that make you fat and existential wearable technology?

On both a literal and metaphorical level, they are very similar. Both modify the functions of your body by many other organisms through unknown, anonymous masses. Antibiotics modify the bacterias within your body, changing your metabolism and the ways that your body processes food. With Steve Mann’s WearCam, “I was not knowingly taking pictures of anyone and I would need to check with my managers (thousands of other people I did not even kn0w) in order to determine whether or not pictures were remotely acquired” (21). If you replace photos with bacteria, and pictures with fat, then the WearCam serves a similar act that antibiotics do.

Although, unlike antibiotics, he chose to wear the WearCam, when most people are given antibiotics without choice. And, in both cases, just as he claims “out mastery over our own destiny (our freedom) came from our very lack of control over the situation,” antibiotics have been a medical miracle (of sorts) and radically increased life expectancy.

Are Interactive Films Transforming Modern Storytelling? Sundance’s New Frontier Has the Answer

http://www.indiewire.com/article/are-interactive-films-transforming-modern-storytelling-sundances-new-frontier-has-the-answer

Will any of these experiments in #storytelling become the dominant forms of tomorrow? Or are they merely timely novelties whose relevance is tied up with the technologies that enable them?

Interactive Interface

Natalie and I had a great conversation about creating narratives using existing interfaces of devices and taking advantage of the limitations of these technologies to create interactive stories. This reminded me of a short film “Noah” that premiered at TIFF last year. While it is not interactive, it is set exclusively within the protagonist’s view of his OS. Take a look:
Noah

Readings for the next two weeks

Tracy Fullerton

1.  Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition

2.  That Cloud Game: Dreaming (and Doing) Innovative Game Design
Tracy Fullerton, Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago, Erik Nelson, Vincent Diamante, Aaron MeyersUniversity of Southern California, School of Cinema-Television, Interactive Media DivisionGlenn Song, John DeWeeseElectronic Arts

read more about the project here:
http://tracyfullerton.com/projects/cloud.html

Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space

HOW WILL GOOGLE GLASS CHANGE FILMMAKING?

Body Mind Change

When the David Cronenberg exhibit was presented at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, there was a secondary exhibit taking place upstairs. This exhibit, known as Body Mind Change, was an attempt at creating an alternate reality wherein individuals can take part in an experiment in making their lives better through the installment of a pod (essentially a real world “adaptation” of eXistenZ). The exhibit was predictably cheesy, if only due to the overacting that took place at the exhibit. However, the process of “creating” your pod, which took place online away from human hands, followed a more Cronenbergian process, through a mixture of subconscious humanity and machine-like processing. Realizing that the human touch took away from the experience, which would require a two-sided artifice to take place between me and another individual, who would probably feel quite silly themselves, I decided to have my pod mailed to me. It arrived recently. It is a cheap piece of plastic, which arrived in a biohazard bag, but it still retains some interest through its usage of a specialized hashtag, #podlovesme. Rather than having to engage in a shared psychosis with another individual, risking a folie a deux of sorts, each individual can, in a seemingly tongue-in-cheek sort of way, use the advantages of a machine to feed into the psychosis of others in a variety of elaborate ways, whether through very minor tweets about how much pod has improved one’s life (with a tee-hee of sorts) to doctored images of “implanted” pods to perhaps make other viewers wonder if their questions of authenticity are misplaced. As many have learned in the age of the internet, and some here have learned it quite recently, machines can make people believe some quite unlikely things.

Tags: altered reality, authenticity, machines, machines are our enemies, podlovesme

Passion is a better master than discipline.

Like Shahbaz, I can’t help thinking about They Live whenever I read about Google Glass. Steve Mann furthers this point with his idea that clerks and functionaries have the ability to be free but often pretend to be enslaved by their malevolent overlords (a.k.a. managers.) “Questioning and deconstructing the rules becomes a new art form.” And Mann uses his version of Glass, the same way Rowdy Rodey Piper used his glasses  to see through these artificial rules and get to the deeper meaning. Unfortunately, Mann comes across as more of a paranoid weirdo than a John Carpenter anti-hero. He is so caught up with the damage unwearable surveillance technology does to our psyche, ignoring the much greater threat posed by all portable and particularly wearable technology. This article (http://www.technologyreview.com/review/524576/glass-darkly/?utm_campaign=socialsync&utm_medium=social-post&utm_source=twitter) really illuminated some of these points for me (ie: face recognition software, driving with Glass, the general uneasiness created by Glass in a social situation )  and although I’m sure these problems will resolve themselves over time, I wonder how quickly this tech trend will catch on in its early stages. My only real question is relating to the Follow Me series, where a man captures an image of his girlfriend in front of multiple landmarks using Glass. His girlfriend’s face is never shown. With glass, are we going to want to record other people wearing their glass? Will it be like asking people to put away their phones while you’re taking a picture? Or is that an infringement of your rights like Mann would argue, equivalent to asking someone to take off their seeing glasses when you consider how Glass could be helping someone with colourblindness, or another visual disease, see the world in an more standardized way? Will their effect wear off as more and more people get Glass, or will it create interesting new art/design projects featuring a collection of Glass wearers?

Finally, this Toronto gallery project in AR seems interesting:  http://infinitynow.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/creative-augmented-reality-digital-art-from-napoleon-brousseau-toronto/

Readings for this Thursday

Hi everyone. I’ve been thinking about your work and projects and thoughts for this week we’d explore some quick, suggestive pieces by two leading and local contemporary thinkers about AR hardware (google glass etc.), the power of making, and bringing the magic of making and cinema into mobile Ar works. Don’t worry – they aren’t arduous – pieces to think alongside:

Steve Mann EXISTEMOLOGY (EXISTENTIAL EPISTEMOLOGY):
FROM DIY MAKER CULTURE TO BIY (BE-IT-YOURSELF) AND LBB
(LEARN-BY-BEING)
http://wearcam.org/icmc2012/existemology.pdf

Steve Mann Existential Technology: Wearable
Computing Is Not the Real Issue!

Helen Papagiannis, “Google Glass & Augmented Reality Eyewear: “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” Defining a New Era in Visual Culture”

Helen Papagiannis Georges Melies’s Fantastical Legacy in Augmented Reality

And check out:
https://www.spaceglasses.com/