Session 8: The Future Platforms
5th Global Conference
Friday 12th March – Sunday 14th March 2010
Salzburg, Austria
Machinimation Tools and its Impact on Creativity
Daniel Riha
Cyber Hub Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Machinima as user-created content gained increased attention from videogame developers over the past few years. Many videogames include machinimation modules or some form of support for amateur machinima productions. This paper explores selected tools for machinima authoring in the context of creativity.
Lowood, inspired by Duchamp proposes casting machinima as found technology that identifies user creativity as not focused on invention of new artifacts but “one that traces new player commitments and uses, often by learning how to mash up practices imported from other activities and contexts”. According to Lowood “high performance play” brings the players “to the discovery of new uses of digital technology for learning, as well as cultural production”.
The focus has been set on the Half Life 2 videogame modification Garry’s Mod (2004) and two dedicated machinima production applications: pioneering Moviestorm (2008) and pre-viz machinima-ready Antics3D (2008). GMod represents the ludic machinima, the type of machinima that in the movies features various experiments with game engine physics. Moviestorm and Antics3D bring cinematic machinima type of application that focuses on the development of traditional film storytelling. While the cyber-community of machinima producers around videogames recruits mostly from the active players engaged in historical culture of gameplay and modification of the selected videogame title, the dedicated machinima production platform is often more popular among amateur animation film enthusiasts.
Building on Bardwell’s methodology of semiotic analysis of multimedia authoring platforms and identified principles of digital creativity, this paper will analyze how the features of these machinima platforms influence the creativity and the user community building.
Crossmedia Web Platform of the Future
Fredrik Gundelsweiler
In this publication we present the requirements and design of a novel crossmedia online platform by the example of the course of study called “Multimedia Production” (MMP). We show some of our new ideas on how to design and realize a multimedia online platform of the future for study paths. Therefore we explain some theoretical assumptions and found them on our practical experiences. The design study we produced based on the results of our requirements analysis. We extracted some principles and techniques relevant to online platforms in general. Thereby we present the methods used during the requirements analysis and show how we came to our conclusion by evaluating and interpreting the results. In the outlook we present current trends in the research of human-computer interaction and three design solutions of our crossmedia online platform, each meeting the concerns of a different theory and its assumptions.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Gaming Potential of Augmented Reality
Gaspar Pujol Nicolau
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Augmented reality (AR) consists in a series of interconnected devices capable of adding virtual information over physically existing information already available. It distinguishes from virtual reality because it does not substitute reality but overprints digital data over the real world. Actual applications of AR are multiple, from social networking through info overlaying, to gaming.
Of course, there are several approaches to this relatively new subject. Actual gaming platforms are dealing with AR in several ways, but they all seem to be moving in the same direction. At the same time, with the appearance of more and more powerful mobile telephones such as the iPod, is introducing AR applications and games into our daily lives.
Therefore, in our saturated game industry, augmented reality seems to be one of the more interesting gaming innovations available. As AR capable hardware gets into the market, developers use this technology to experiment in gaming design. At the same time, good gaming ideas seem to mobilize hardware industry into new (and risky) interfacing methods.
We will show and discuss proof of concept demos, hardware, applications, gaming prototypes and actual commercial games based on AR in several platforms. This will let us start to understand which are the true possibilities of AR in gaming terms, and which could be the next step for games with AR. At the same time, we will delve into the possible improvements and future of AR.
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