The changing way we play

Volume 11 Number 1 January 12 - February 8 2015

INVADER 1000’S Exhibition At La Generale Paris - Urban Street Art. Photo: Stephane Allaman
INVADER 1000’S Exhibition At La Generale Paris - Urban Street Art. Photo: Stephane Allaman

 

The way we play is changing, and gaming technologies – digital and traditional – are developing and intersecting at an incredible pace. Where are these gaming technologies going, and how are they changing our social interactions for the better? Zoe Nikakis talks to two early-career researchers to find out.

Some of us may think video gaming is for teenagers in search of light entertainment, but for the past 20 years, video games have been important drivers of ever more powerful computing technologies, the R&D efforts behind those technologies, and willingness to adopt them. 

Early-Career Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne Marcus Carter is part of a team looking at the ways technology is developing, and the ways in which we will use those technologies in the future. 

“We can look at games as examples of where future technologies can take us,” Mr Carter says. 

“Old computers used a command-line interface, where people would type a command into the computer and press enter to make something happen. 

“Then Xerox invented the graphical user interface we use today, which, coupled with a mouse and a keyboard, allows users to click on things to move them around.

“I’m exploring the next step: what we call ‘natural’ user interfaces, which work without a keyboard or mouse, but rather with a gesture, touch, the voice or eye tracking.”

Mr Carter is a research fellow at Melbourne’s Microsoft Research Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces (Social NUI), and says they’ve invested in this research because they believe, as the inventors of the graphical interface did, that natural user interfaces will give rise to the next generation of computers. 

“We’re interested in how people will use them to create social computing experiences.”

In this context, Mr Carter explains, ‘natural’ means intuitive, also the way in which people’s learned behaviours – such as driving a car – become unconscious.

“When our learned behaviour becomes ‘natural’, we become very, very good at it, like using a keyboard and a mouse,” he says. 

Mr Carter sees incredible potential for natural user interfaces in games.

“If you look at someone who plays a lot of video games, they’re natural at using a controller in that same way as driving a car. 

“They’re natural in that the flow and pleasure of the experience of playing comes from there not being any interruption in the form of the interface. 

“Games are a context where a natural user interface, and a good interface, is really important.” 

Mr Carter says this technology could also dramatically change people’s work and home life in social situations where groups sit around tables.

“The table is where we go for a social interaction at home – the dining table and the coffee table are at the heart of the domestic environment – as are conference tables at work where collaboration happens. 

“The social potential of these interactions is limited because we’re arranged around a laptop screen which deflects attention, or we’re facing a screen on a wall, which interrupts natural social interaction around the table.”

The technology is getting in the way, he says, in much the same way current interfaces can interrupt a gamer’s flow.

“If we can make computers that respond to voice and gesture, that know what we’re doing because they’re tracking our gaze, this will create potential for technology around the table that enhances rather than detracts from the social potential of the experience,” he says.

Mr Carter is examining these ideas by looking at board games, which in the past 10 years have grown and diversified in terms of game development and player numbers.

“People think of it as something niche in decline, but in reality it’s in its renaissance,” he says.

“I strongly believe there is a huge potential for natural user interfaces around the table. We can look at board games, and see how NUIs make it a social experience, with props and dice and cards, and how the rules and the fiction behind the game are relevant, and all create a positive social experience.”

PhD candidate Melissa Rogerson from the Department of Computing and Information Systems is also looking at games to explore complex social interactions. 

She says there’s increasingly overlap in how people are using board games, and digital platforms and games, and is examining, in her PhD, the future of technology and the social interactions they elicit. 

“I’m looking at the experience of play, and how people experience it differently,” she says.

Ms Rogerson brings a wealth of professional and personal experience to her PhD, as a former co-designer of expansions for games, combined with 10 years working in usability and interaction design in computers.

“We know people play board games because they’re social, and overtly social because they’re sitting there, touching things, and being together. We hear anecdotally people are looking to get away from their screens, which is one of the things I’ll investigate. 

“I’ve been looking at how board game players are being affected by digital games – for example, digital games have achievements, and that is now transferring to board games, and how digitising a game can change how it’s played in the real world.”

These games, Ms Rogerson says, are also agents of positive social change, such as has been seen with the popular game Pandemic. This game is based on the premise four diseases have broken out worldwide, each threatening to wipe out a region. Players then work together to cure the diseases before game-losing conditions are reached. Players have been throwing ‘Pandemic Parties’ and using the social interaction and game play to raise money to combat real-world diseases. 

“Broadly speaking, there are two big schools of board game design: the European version, which is about building things, being the first to achieve something, negotiating and trading with people, and the American version, which are usually hostile games, focused on eliminating other players and being the last one left,” she says.

“I like that diversity.”

Ms Rogerson says learning to play cooperative games, working together to solve something, is a really important skill, and is one of particular relevance given the upsurge in the numbers of people playing.

“Sometimes your role might be to help other people do what they do really well. It’s not ‘all about me’ in such games,” she says.

“I cannot get over how much more popular tabletop games have become in the past 10 years, and hope they’re changing the way we socialise for the better.” 

www.socialnui.unimelb.edu.au/

 

www.cis.unimelb.edu.au/