Entering an age of playfulness where persistent, pervasive ambient games create moods and modify behaviour

1
Entering an age of playfulness where persistent,
pervasive ambient games create moods and modify
behaviour

• Mark Eyles
• Roger Eglin

Advanced Games Research Group
2

• If the seminal 1976 ambient music album Music for
  Airports became a 21st century ambient role
  playing game, what would it play like?

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Overview

• Computer technology
• Ambient intelligence
• Pervasive games
• Ambient music
• Ambient games
• Ambient Quest
• An age of playfulness

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Growth of computer technology
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Growth of computer technology

• One computer Many users
• Charles Babbage designs a computer 1821
• EDSAC 1 (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic
  Calculator) 1949 the worlds first complete and
  fully operational regular electronic digital
  stored program computer (Jones, 2001)

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Growth of computer technology
Digital Rainbow 100 1982 http//pc-museum.com/offi
cewing.htm

• One computer One user
• 1981 IBM introduced the personal computer

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Growth of computer technology

• Many computers One user
• The current state of play

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Growth of computer technology

• Ambient intelligent environments (the future)

Tom Cruise in Minority Report http//www.visionnet
.be/parahologram.html

• Massively many intelligent computers One user

(Everyone is a user, not just Tom Cruise)
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Ambient intelligence

• There are a number of different technologies that
  are enabling the development of ambient
  intelligence
• Interconnectivity
• Artificial intelligence
• The proliferation of computers
• These technologies support ambient intelligence,
  which has
• Ubiquity
• Transparency
• Intelligence
• (Aarts et al., 2001)

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Ambient intelligence predictions

• By 2010, when Intel expects that every chip it
  produces will have an antenna, there will be
  around 1,000 microprocessors per person
• Harbor Research predicts that by 2010 worldwide
  revenues from network-related devices and
  associated services will be 800bn, around half
  of which will come from valued-added apps and
  services.
• Department for Trade and Industry
  http//www.nextwave.org.uk/docs/markets.htm

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Ambient intelligence

• Ambient intelligence environments offer a
  promising technology for creating pervasive games

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Computer game properties Commitment to play

• Learning curve
• Play time
• Civilization 2 vs. Tetris vs. Hangman

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Computer game properties Location and movement

• Fixed (Console, PC, Set top box)
• Mobile (Mobile phone, Nintendo DS)
• Require movement
• In one location (Football, Eye Toy)
• In many locations (Alternate Reality Game)

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Computer game properties Commitment and movement
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Pervasive games

• Pervasive games are games which extend gaming
  experiences into the real world
• They include locative games in which players move
  into the real world while playing and their
  position and actions in the real world affect,
  and are affected by, events in a virtual world
• (Waern, 2006)

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Pervasive games

• Ambient games are a type of pervasive game
• The pervasive game examples mentioned vary from
  ambient games in
• The intention of the games (ambient games create
  moods, they are not treasure hunts - ARGs)
• The commitment the player makes to the game (they
  do not have to put on back packs of computer
  equipment - AR)
• The level of attention required from the player

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Pervasive and ambient games
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Ambient music

• Ambient music informs ambient games
• Brian Eno coined the term ambient music on his
  1978 album Ambient 1 Music for Airports
• In the sleeve notes of Music for Airports Brian
  Eno gives a definition of ambient music
• Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many
  levels of listening attention without enforcing
  one in particular it must be as ignorable as it
  is interesting (Eno, 1978)

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Ambient music

• I wanted to make a kind of music that would
  actually reduce your focus on this particular
  moment in time that you happened to be in and
  make you settle into time a little bit better.
  (Eno, 2003)
• Think about the ways games might do this while
  accommodating many levels of attention and
  intervention

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Defining ambient games

• Progress Quest - a game that requires minimal
  player intervention

(www.progressquest.com (Fredricksen, 2004))
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Defining ambient games

• Imagine a game similar to Progress Quest in
  which, when the player starts the game, their
  actions in the real world affect progress in the
  game world

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Defining ambient games

• The player chooses the degree to which they wish
  to manage events in the game
• At one extreme the game runs itself, gathering
  data from the players actions in the real world
  and automatically applying this to the game world
• At the other extreme the player can determine how
  the real world data is applied in the game world,
  micromanaging game interactions.

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Defining ambient games

• An ambient game should be as ignorable as it is
  interesting (Eno, 1978)
• Players can dip in and out of the game
• The game is persistent, running in the
  background, creating a mood, while players are
  engaged in other activities
• They may respond to the game by modifying their
  behaviour to affect their game progress

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Defining ambient games

• Ambient games may be controlled by everyday
  actions (i.e. not using a dedicated game input
  device, mouse or keyboard) in everyday, real
  world environments that have gameplay
  consequences in a virtual game world
• These game play environments may be facilitated
  by ambient intelligent technologies that embed
  the game transparently in the environment

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Defining ambient games

• Ambient games allow the player to have
  experiences that range from superficially shallow
  to profoundly deep
• The player is able to choose how they focus their
  attention on the game, and can alter their degree
  of attention at will
• As with Music for Airports an ambient game should
  accommodate many levels of attention, many levels
  of involvement or intervention, creating a mood
  in the environment

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Defining ambient games

• The involvement of the player in the game is not
  determined by the game
• This is not a push technology, but is
  determined by the player who can choose when to
  pull game experiences from the ambient game

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Defining ambient games
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A definition of ambient games

• Ambient games are designed to create a mood in an
  environment through game interactions with
  players whose behaviours, mediated by an ambient
  intelligent environment or similar transparent
  game interface, create changes in a virtual game
  world.
• Ambient games are persistent and are as
  interesting as they are ignorable, facilitating a
  wide variation in player determined levels of
  involvement, from unaware to intensely attentive
  play.

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Ambient Quest single player ambient game
simulation

• Distance walked by players determines progress in
  the virtual game world
• Players may engage more or less with the game by
• Altering, or not altering, distance walked
• Choosing moves for their avatars or letting the
  game move them automatically
• The game is always on

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Virtual world

• The Ambient Quest game world consists of a
  virtual environment containing quests to complete
  (achieved by defeating monsters at various
  locations)

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Ambient Quest single player ambient game
simulation

• Ambient Quest is designed to create a mood in the
  playing environment, overlaying a sense fantasy
  adventure on the real world and giving a hint of
  other hidden worlds

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Future ambient games

• Imagine a job which involves fairly repetitive
  actions which are not in themselves especially
  rewarding.
• Could an ambient game be designed that ran
  alongside this work and brought an element of
  playfulness to the job?

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Future ambient games

• Ambient Shelf Stacking Game
• Imagine an ambient game that drew its data from
  supermarket shelf stacking
• Employees belong to different teams that are
  represented by competing avatars in a virtual
  world

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Future ambient games

• Co-operative gaming
• Ambient Garden Game
• Imagine an ambient game in which players are
  together trying to nurture the plants in a
  virtual garden through their actions in the real
  world
• Interpersonal relationships
• Ambient Relationships Game
• Imagine a Sims like game where the players real
  world actions affect relationships of avatars in
  a Second Life like virtual world

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Final thoughts

• Game players may play even when they are not
  playing!
• Embed mood and behaviour altering game playing in
  the world around us
• Open ended, endless nature of play points towards
  new mechanisms and ways of playing games in an
  emerging age of playfulness

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Final thought
A sense of otherworldliness

• It is another world entirely and is enclosed
  within this one it is in a sense a universal
  retreating mirror image of this one, with a
  peculiar geography composed of a series of
  concentric rings, which as one penetrates deeper
  into the other world, grow larger each
  perimeter of this series of concentricities
  encloses a larger world within
• Little Big by John Crowley
• (Crowley, 1981)

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Entering an age of playfulness where persistent,
pervasive ambient games create moods and modify
behaviour
Questions
www.ambientquest.com
Mark.Eyles_at_port.ac.uk Roger.Eglin_at_port.ac.uk
Advanced Games Research Group