GAMBIT

Next steps, and a final report!

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:05:41 -0500

We have released our final report, outlining 6 years of experimentation, innovation, achievement, and original research! We've learned from the experience of running this international collaboration, in how to conduct research, how to bring together students and researchers to create interesting and innovative new games, and how to bring our discoveries to outside groups like industry and government. Please download the GAMBIT Final Report here: http://gambit.mit.edu/finalreport The US instance of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab initiative has also recently announced the creation of the MIT Game Lab, where the staff and researchers will continue doing what they do best: combining cutting edge research with game development and rapid experimentation. More info about this can be found at the MIT News Office here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mit-game-lab-explores-the-potential-of-games-and-play.html While there will no longer be any more news updates to this site, we will be updating our Read Me section with our research as it gets published and our Games and In The Press sections as our games continue to receive recognition. You can follow along with us at our new website or through our Twitter (@MITGameLab) or Facebook.

7 new games to play from our Summer 2012 session!

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:26:07 -0500

The games made during the Summer 2012 session of The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab are now online!

This year, we explored a diverse set of topics, and from that we created 7 games:

Bosnobo: Primate Change -- teach the Bosnobos the skills they need to survive! (an artificial intelligence experiment)
Fugue -- spend a day in the meadows using the Tarot (or your own will) to guide you
The Last Symphony -- explore the life and story of a composer through the objects he left behind (a design challenge to tackle how hidden object games work)
Movers and Shakers -- 2 players are tasked with keeping the world turning (a game with meaningful conflict)
Movmote -- control a moving object by slowing it down and changing its movement paths (it's up to you about how to interpret this - that's what our researchers want to know!)
Phantomation -- save someone from the evil spirits of a haunted house using your phantomation powers (a game where the UI for your powers will be used in an animation tool)
A Slower Speed of Light -- a first person challenge: pick up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments (designed to help the player better understand relativistic effects when approaching the speed of light)

You might be aware that this was the final summer of the collaboration now known as the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. This collaboration between the Media Development Authority and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology started way back in 2006 and has had an excellent run: 55 games, over a hundred research papers, lectures, and other publications. We've hosted dozens of visiting scholars from all over the world.

We're not going away! As of October 1, 2012 the US lab (which maintained this site) will be called the MIT Game Lab -- more information will come up after our program wrap-up Symposium, "Games in Everyday Life" (which by the way, still has spots open! If you're in Boston on September 21st, come on down to see us!

More details about the wrap up of the GAMBIT initiative will come out later in October. Stay tuned at this website, the new MIT Game Lab site, http://gamelab.mit.edu, and on Twitter (@MITGameLab) for more information about our future projects!

Games By The Book: Videogame Adaptations of Literary Works in at the Hayden Library

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:52:28 -0500

The Hayden Library is host to an interactive exhibition from September 7th. Patrons will be able to play a selection of videogames adapting literary works, from Shakespeare to Douglas Adams. The exhibit is an exploration of the range of approaches to adapting novels or plays to a videogame format, from creating worlds based on the works of a single author, to free interpretations of a novel. The result is often whimsical, turning the worlds of these stories into spaces to be explored, often abstracting them into videogame conventions. The games featured in the exhibit invite players to become Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, dodging drunken partygoers in his way to meet Gatsby, explore the world of Shakespeare's plays, carry out an exercise of introspection based on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, or revisit the events of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Our own game, Yet One Word, is also part of the show. The games have been curated by the Clara Fernández-Vara, a member of this lab, and Nick Montfort, Associate Professor at MIT. Preparing the exhibit, both the process of curation and setting up, has been an unusual challenge, given the venue and the nature of the exhibit. Games by the Book will be open to the public until October 8th, and will be located on the second floor of the Hayden Library building. More details can be found in the exhibit's website. The exhibit is sponsored by the De Florez Fund for Humor and the MIT Council of the Arts. The organizers are the MIT Game Lab, the Electronic Literature Organization and Comparative Media Studies.

A Closed World selected for IndieCade!

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:45:00 -0500

In all of the madness at the end of the summer program, the beginning of the new school year, and the relocation of our US lab, we forgot to update the blog with this awesome news: A Closed World has been nominated for the 2012 IndieCade Awards! From Oct 4 to 7, 2012, the IndieCade international festival of independent games will feature our game in multiple locations in downtown Culver City, CA. We're in great company (full list of nominees) and greatly honored for being selected for the festival. G4TV is doing a series of stories on "The Road to IndieCade", and they included A Closed World in the Five Games You Should Have Played By Now article. If you haven't played it by now, well, here's the link!

Last Chance! Come Test Games at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab - Thursday, July 26 at 6:30pm!

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:15:18 -0500

What: Open House Focus Test of games in development at the GAMBIT Game Lab When: Thursday, July 26th 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Where: Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab 5 Cambridge Center, 3rd Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 (Next door to the Kendall Square T stop) The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab has seven games in early development, each one seeking to answer a different research question. We invite everyone - young, old, game playing, game developing, or even never touched a video game before in your life - to play our games and give us the early feedback we need to complete our games by the end of the summer.

What is an "Focus Test"? During the open house, our development teams observe your game playing, answer any questions you may have, and record your comments and opinions about the games you are playing. Our games are in the fifth week of development, with early (unfinished) art and user controls that are still being worked on. By testing now, we get feedback we can use, with time left to use it. This is your big chance to actively influence our games in development! Our doors are open from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. You are welcome to drop in at any time during those hours and play as many (or as few!) of our games as you wish. Each game takes around ten minutes to complete; some are longer than others. We do recommend that if you want to play all the games, you should arrive earlier rather than later! (There will also be light snacks available, to keep your game playing strength up.) While we welcome testers of all ages, our games are not intended for the youngest players. Children under seven may have difficulty playing our games alone, but might enjoy sitting on a parent's lap and watching. We are an active research lab, so any minors (age 17 and under) need to have a parent or guardian fill out a consent form before playing any games. Forms will be available at the lab, or you can contact gambit-qa at mit dot edu and request forms that can be printed and filled out to bring to the test. We are at 5 Cambridge Center, 3rd Floor. Tell the guard at the desk you are here for the GAMBIT Focus Test, then take the elevators up to the 3rd Floor. Turn towards the big glass doors as you exit the elevators, and come on in! To keep up to date with our lab, follow us on Facebook or Twitter!

The Snowfield featured in GDMag!

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:29:23 -0500

Our 2011 game The Snowfield is featured in the current issue of Game Developer Magazine's Game Career Guide. Matthew Weise provides candid insight into his research and the team's unique development process through a thoughtful postmortem. Read what went right, what went wrong, and how sucker punches can serve the greater good!

Come Test Games at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab - Thursday, July 12 at 6:30pm!

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:43:12 -0500

What: Open House Focus Test of games in development at the GAMBIT Game Lab When: Thursday, July 12th 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Where: Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab 5 Cambridge Center, 3rd Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 (Next door to the Kendall Square T stop) The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab has seven games in early development, each one seeking to answer a different research question. We invite everyone - young, old, game playing, game developing, or even never touched a video game before in your life - to play our games and give us the early feedback we need to complete our games by the end of the summer.

What is an "Focus Test"? During the open house, our development teams observe your game playing, answer any questions you may have, and record your comments and opinions about the games you are playing. Our games are in the fifth week of development, with early (unfinished) art and user controls that are still being worked on. By testing now, we get feedback we can use, with time left to use it. This is your big chance to actively influence our games in development! Our doors are open from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. You are welcome to drop in at any time during those hours and play as many (or as few!) of our games as you wish. Each game takes around ten minutes to complete; some are longer than others. We do recommend that if you want to play all the games, you should arrive earlier rather than later! (There will also be light snacks available, to keep your game playing strength up.) While we welcome testers of all ages, our games are not intended for the youngest players. Children under seven may have difficulty playing our games alone, but might enjoy sitting on a parent's lap and watching. We are an active research lab, so any minors (age 17 and under) need to have a parent or guardian fill out a consent form before playing any games. Forms will be available at the lab, or you can contact gambit-qa at mit dot edu and request forms that can be printed and filled out to bring to the test. We are at 5 Cambridge Center, 3rd Floor. Tell the guard at the desk you are here for the GAMBIT Focus Test, then take the elevators up to the 3rd Floor. Turn towards the big glass doors as you exit the elevators, and come on in! And if you can't make this Thursday, we will have another test on Thursday, July 26th, same time, same place! Our next Open House & Test is Thursday, July 26th To keep up to date with our lab, follow us on Facebook or Twitter!

Thoughts on Procedural Content Generation

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:13:51 -0500

This post originally appeared on Clara Fernández-Vara's blog Vagrant Cursor. At the end of May, I gave a presentation on the underlying systems and tools that we used to develop the games Symon and Stranded in Singapore at the Procedural Content Generation workshop during the Foundations of Digital Games Conference. Most of the other presenters were computer scientists, as well as my friends. Thus I had a kind audience for this humanist to present the paper I wrote with Alec Thomson (now available online). Feeling a bit of the outsider in terms of background and methods, I also sensed the cultural differences between their approach and my own. In general, the presentations focused on generating the game (including mine). What I found considerably absent was a discussion of human factors: are these games playable? How does PCG transform how we make games? How does it change how we play them? The workshop obviously had a technical focus, so when it came to talk about evaluating the systems, the discussion focused on how AI solvers / computer players were used to see if the game generated is consistent. Few of the presenters seemed to have used human players (more sophisticated and accessible AIs which you don't have to implement) to evaluate their systems. On the other hand, there were presentations that dealt with the systems exclusively, not really dealing with why this approach was better for games apart from the pre-existing arguments efficiency in creating more content with smaller teams. I guess that the presentations at the PCG workshop were clear examples of the proceduralist stance in game development, since the discussion of players seemed to be out of the question. Many of these presentations are more hypothetical, and implemented as early prototypes, still far from being actual games. I'm not saying that this is bad, we do need this kind of studies and tools. It was also the nature of this seminar, which was grounded on computer science, and the expectation seemed to be focusing on the systems and not players. Throughout the workshop it became evident that we also need the space between procedural generation of content and evaluating that content through playtesting. After two years of working on games using PCG, the conclusion is that, in our case, we can generate procedurally generated narrative puzzles. It's a lot of work, but it's true it's only half of the work. The other half is making them playable and fun. For that, I have less faith on AI and more on actual humans designing and playing. I'm advocating the creation of a research space closer to HCI, where we study how procedural generation actually affects game design and gameplay. There is a need to study how the process helps both designer, the design process and the players. We need to see this in games that can go beyond academic experiments, that are played by people who don't know and probably shouldn't care that these games are part of research. Reaching out beyond the academic sphere is not easy: there's Facade and Prom Night, and my own games Symon and Stranded in Singapore. (If there are more, please let me know in the comments!) We cannot feel snug about creating a system and making a game that our friends will play. If we want to make an impact on game development and design, we must take it a step further, we need to evaluate how games using PCG are played by people who are not those who developed the system. There are already some easy questions that we can start looking into:

If we think of content as something like puzzles, or level design, how do we provide cues for interaction to players? Think of hints to solve a puzzle, or user feedback about where to go. This is a common problem--Gillian Smith had run into these issues as well during the development of Endless Web. We can certainly design a system to provide these cues and feedback, but the best way to do it would be studying how players interact with the game first.
What are the aspects of game development that can use procedural generation best? Design? Art? Code? QA? Writing?
All the designers I can think of working on PCG come from computer science. How can we make procedural content generation accessible to non-programmers, or at least people who don't have a strong background on CS?
What mechanics and fictional worlds fit PCG best? I believe PCG is one approach to game development, but not the only one. After working on Stranded in Singapore, one of the conclusions was that it was really hard to design puzzles to be procedurally generated when they were based on the real world. Dreams, on the other hand, seem to be a good match for PCG, as seen in Symon and Endless Web.

These are the immediate questions that come to mind, based on my experience making games. I have a few preliminary answers for some of these, but we need to expand our thinking on what PCG means with relation to games. The workshop taught me (amongst many other things) that many of the people working on PCG already take playtesting as part of their process. There were also slides that made my blood curdle, which reduced human behaviour to mathematical formulas. One presenter had a formula for "fun" depending on the type of player (who I'm guessing it's also determined with another mathematical formula). Another presenter called the story "filler" in the context of RPGs, which can be just generated to give you a motivation; when I called him out, he admitted that it may not be the best term. The fact that human feelings and behaviour are reduced to numbers, and that narrative is considered filler, may be symptoms of the subconscious disregard certain computer scientists may have for human behaviour. This is one of the dangers of focusing on the procedures so much: look at the screen for too long and one loses sight of play as a human activity, doesn't question how our brains and hearts fill the gaps so that we don't have to really generate all the content, and stops giving enough credit to players. By approaching fun and storytelling as things that are generated mechanically, negating that fun is an awfully vague concept (and non-quantifiable), and that stories are not only about events but about worlds and the people in it, we're heading towards playing with mathematical formulas empty of human meaning. I'm probably preaching to the converted--most of my friends working on PCG will talk about their playtests and what they learned from them. This post is calling out a certain type of discourse which, also necessary, also seems to leave out the humanity of games. Rather than complaining (too much) about it, we should see this as an opportunity to opening up a new area of study. The combined study of procedurally generated content and human-computer interaction is waiting to happen.Who's up for it?

Ten Years of Civ II: Why Procedurality is Insufficient yet Critical

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:45:59 -0500

The Internet (well, the part of it I care about anyway) practically exploded this morning in response to the 10 year Civ II game. If you haven't read that article yet please do so now, as I'm going to assume you are familiar with it for the rest of this post. While I certainly found the story interesting, especially since I've been reading Noah Wardrip-Fruin's excellent book "Expressive Processing," I have been wondering why everyone has found it so compelling. On Twitter Chris Remo called it "breathtaking," and this doesn't seem to be an isolated case of hyperbole. So what is it about this particular game of Civ II? I think that the answer is pretty straightforward, but is interesting in light of a recent game studies debate. It seems pretty apparent that we (myself included) find this instance of Civ II compelling because it resonates with our fears regarding our own future. With Stanford biologists recently claiming that the current state of the world is unsustainable, recent economic pressures, climate change and general environmental destruction, in this game we see our potential future. It looks like a real possibility, and it scares us. This fear is amplified by the fact that it comes from a medium so many of us are so attached to, and furthermore, from a simulation that many people don't realize is as ideologically charged as it is. It's a bit like predicting the Super Bowl with the most recent Madden game. As Ian Bogost might say, people reading this story are working through simulation fever, asking themselves what it might mean that Civ II predicted this (feasible?) outcome for us. What is fascinating to me about the reaction to this game is how it appears in light of recent game studies discourse in the wake of Migel Sicart's fascinating "Against Procedurality." As the argument goes, proceduralists believe that the meaning of a game arises primarily, if not only from, the rules and mechanics driving it. On the proceduralist side, games researcher Mike Treanor has perhaps most openly embraced this viewpoint. The reaction to the 10-year Civ II game shows one of the major shortcomings of the proceduralist stance: the meanings that people make of games depend heavily on the context in which the games are perceived. I highly doubt anybody would care about the Civ II game if it did not seem so real, so possible, and it only seems this way because of the world we live in and how we understand it. If I played a game of Civ II for ten years and it ended in a utopian paradise, would anyone care? I don't wish to throw-out procedurality entirely, though. As is often the case, the truth lies in the middle. This instance of Civ II is important to us because the rules of the simulation enabled it to happen AND because of who we are and our experience of the world. It is the sum of what the game is and how it works AND our own selves that make it meaningful. Subtract either and the meanings that so many are finding it, the meanings that make the story compelling, are gone. Update: From debates on Twitter I've realized this was not as clear as it should have been. I will blame writing quickly, but own it anyway and leave the original unchanged. My goal with this piece was to be a reminder that meaning construction is a collaborative process. Many say that the "proceduralist" is a strawman, and they could be right. But I've met people who believe the game is everything, and I've met people who believe the game is nothing and it's all on the user. I don't think either viewpoint is correct, and that most people don't hold such extreme views, but even at the extremes both are valuable. And I forgot to add in the original that Mike does great work, and I highly recommend it.

Friday Games @ GAMBIT - Starcraft 2

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:34:38 -0500

This week Starcraft 2 players in the US are battling for fame and cash in two major tournaments, Major League Gaming: Anaheim and the US Nationals of the Starcraft 2 World Championship Series. Since its release in 2010 Starcraft 2 has been at the forefront of the rapidly growing eSports industry. Players at the highest levels of competition are now traveling internationally to compete in tournaments and are able to support themselves financially solely from tournament winnings, streaming revenue, and sponsorship deals. eSports as a whole is expanding, with tournaments attracting upwards of a quarter of a million concurrent viewers via online video streaming services and attracting large mainstream sponsors, eager to promote their brands to the new market of eSports fans. Come join us at 4pm in the lounge where we will be giving a primer on pro-gaming and Starcraft 2, then settling in to watch some epic matches.

Friday Games @ GAMBIT - Artemis

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:37:42 -0500

Set phasers for fun! This week at Friday Games we will be exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no GAMBITeer has gone before! In honor of the new milestone set in commercial space flight by the Dragon spacecraft this week, we will be having some space adventures of our own. Join us at 4:30pm where we will be playing Artemis, the Spaceship Bridge Simulator. We are seeking able-bodied men, women, androids, and post-humans to help crew our ship!

Dark Dot at IndieCade showcase at E3

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:00:00 -0500

We got word that our game, Dark Dot, has been selected for the curated IndieCade showcase at this year's E3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center! Congratulations to the Dark Dot team at our Singapore-based lab! Dark Dot is a shoot-em-up for the iPad where you draw shapes to move your shooters into formation. You can scale your formation on-the-fly to concentrate or spread your firing patterns, or rotate them to avoid enemies and obstacles. Or just draw a new shape to deal with new challenges! If you've got an iPad and haven't tried Dark Dot, it's free for download, so what are you waiting for?

Board Game Criticism Done Right

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:53:10 -0500

Anybody who has spent a reasonable amount of time in the video game world will likely, at some point, have realized our serious lack of thoughtful and intelligent video game criticism. Or if not that, then at least countless people pointing out that lack and arguing about it. Approximately a year ago designer Dan Cook created a bit of an Internet firestorm with his "A Blunt Critique of Game Criticism." I personally do not agree with everything Cook said (especially the need for criticism to be useful to designers), but I mention it to highlight the fact that this is a continual topic. This is not to say that nobody is trying, of course, and collections such as The Well Played journal have been wonderfully helpful in advancing the practice. As much as the video gaming world lacks solid criticism, however, the board game world does doubly so. However, one of my favorite thinkers and writers on BoardGameGeek, who goes by "Nate Straight," has recently posted an article entitled "What is / are Roads & Boats?--An attempt at ludomorphology.". This piece is a fascinating look at one of my all-time favorite board games, Roads & Boats, an enormous, impossible game of logistics, route building and resource management. I am amazed it exists at all, the high prices it fetches on the aftermarket are a testament to how small the market is for such a game (and hence how small the print runs have been). But to return to Straight's piece, it has what I believe to be the three components essential to solid games criticism. 1. A thorough description of the game. Straight does not just describe how it works, but why it works, and the consequences thereof. This naturally leads to a discussion of strategy, which reveals a deep understanding of the game. I am quite familiar with Roads & Boats, but Straight's article lead me to rethink what I thought I understood about it. 2. Context. Straight also puts on his media archaeology hat and argues for a lineage from which R&B was derived. He smartly avoids the intentionalist fallacy by showing where the game fell historically, while implying inspiration by highlighting similar mechanics. As such the article traces a history of route building and resource management mechanics in modern European board games. This is a method I am quite fond of (links to a .pdf), and one that I feel game studies could benefit greatly from. 3. Outside knowledge and information. Straight's piece is not just an analysis based on a deep understanding of play, but by bringing topology into the discussion he helps the reader understand where he is coming from and how he understands the game, while also giving them a new tool for understanding other games. My one critique stems from the glossing-over of the wall mechanic, which is the major way players can negatively affect each other. Straight does mention it, however this particular mechanic can create situations where the game spirals downward from planning and management to spitefulness and bickering. When this happens everybody's score suffers, but the potential for it to happen (and I have seen it happen) is a defining attribute of the game. In other words, players have the ability to affect a near-collapse of the system by making resources inaccessible and in doing so severely limiting their own progress. That the game enables this sort of petty, very human behavior, but does not at all require it, is in itself fascinating. Your civilization can collapse because of your own greed or spitefulness, and I find that very compelling. However, overall I find Straight's article to be a deeply intelligent and well thought-out look at a landmark game, and a solid example of effective board game criticism. I do not doubt I will be showing it to my students in the coming years.

Friday GAMES at GAMBIT 5/18: The Diablo Franchise

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:22:12 -0500

This week saw the release of the long-awaited Diablo III, the latest in the landmark action-RPG franchise. Join us on Friday afternoon at 4:30pm as we take a look at the series' 18 year history, including Torchlight. We will also discuss and debate some of the interesting and controversial changes made from Diablo II to Diablo III, especially those relating to character development and customization. The discussion will be broadcast over our live stream.

Friday Games at GAMBIT 5/11: Step up to the Gayme Bar

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:35:03 -0500

Friday Games is going to get a little meta -- and a little fabulous -- this week as we prepare for Saturday's Gayme Jam. Normally, we talk about games, but this week, we're going to talk about people who talk about games. This totally recursive edition of Friday Games features two special guests: Jason Toups and Jeremiah Bratton, hosts of the wonderful podcast Gayme Bar, your "weekly dose of gay gaming geekiness." These two Southern belles grace the world every week with their insightful, snarky, and fabulously funny critiques of games, the game industry, and game culture (amongst many other things) and now they'll be here at GAMBIT to talk about their podcast, games, and anything else that comes to mind. Drop by GAMBIT at 4pm this Friday to join in the fun, ask questions, and probably get made fun of (but in a loving way!)... and if you can't join us in person, you can always catch the festivities on our livestream!