Jul

04

Simple, Single-Purpose Elegance

Design Diary / Telling Stories Together

I hate Facebook.

There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.

This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.

Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.

And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.

Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.

Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.

750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.

It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.

But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).

So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.

Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!

The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.

So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?

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May

06

The Internet Already Exists

Telling Stories Together

I’m not a fan of people expecting other people to prime themselves for internet conversations.
Come as you are.

But! If you’re interested in reading some of the things that have inspired my thinking lately and in the past…

Play Passionately: Introduction
“To me, a game is most fun when there’s an element of social risk. When playing passionately there are two layers to that risk. The first is the same as any collaborative creative endeavor: Failure. Simply, the game or some part of the game and the created fiction might suck or be no fun. It might take some practice or critical thought to understand exactly what went wrong and how to avoid disappointment in the future.

The second layer of social risk is, perhaps, a bit more controversial. Plainly, you might get hurt or offended. Playing passionately involves an element of emotional vulnerability, putting a little of yourself out onto the table for others to poke and prod. It’s about finding the uncomfortable spaces inside us and deliberately bringing them out into the light. That kind of honesty brings us closer together through vulnerability, trust and shared pain.” – Jesse Burneko

The College of Mythic Cartography: What Does Fluency Mean?
“Notice the distinction there; in our modern culture we value the amount of facts you carry. In an animist culture we value the amount of questions.

In a modern sense, to “know” something means to have an intellectual understanding of it, though the execution of it may elude you. In an animist sense, to “know” something means you feel comfortable in your skin about it, that you can implement this knowledge easily and gracefully. Essentially, this underscores the difference between learning a language, and gaining fluency in a language.” -Willem Larsen

M: The Way It Is (this post is, in my opinion, absolutely beautiful. I don’t read this blog, though.)
“You are not sharing an experience. You are alone. You are not a fucking “protagonist” awaiting contrivances. You can’t have what you want in character. You can’t have what you want out of character. Nobody says yes. You do not get to roll the fucking dice. It isn’t safe, and when I say that I don’t mean the vapid, pathetic usage of “unsafe” that is in fact very fucking safe. You do not know if you are angry, or if the character is angry.

You don’t get to choose.

That’s when you’ll abandon the geek-guilt and stop trying to ape the idiotic 19th Century, High School English conception of story. That’s when you will embrace the form for what it can do. That’s when you will remember. Not invent. Remember.” -Malcolm Sheppard

Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore: A Small Thing About Suspense (scroll down to find it)
“Suspense doesn’t come from uncertain outcomes. I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we’re on the edge of our seats! What’s up with that?
Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable. What’s up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don’t know what it will cost.” -Vincent Baker

The Centre for Nonviolent Communication: List of Needs (also, the List of Feelings)
[This list] is meant as a starting place to support anyone who wishes to engage in a process of deepening self-discovery and to facilitate greater understanding and connection between people.

Maybe in spots these are disparate. One is a bitter rant where a designer calls out people from a different school of design. One is story theory. One is a philosophy of learning, another a philosophy of shared narrative. The last is a laundry list of legitimate needs (linked to a list of feelings). But, anyways, I wanted to link-drop them all, so as to give avid readers a common ground to build with me upon.

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