FDG Mid-Conference Report!

Howdy from Monterey! Specifically Asilomar. I am in a giant barn surrounded by tired by talkative game design people. This is my second time at the Foundations of Digital Gaming and so far it has been a blast; I’m really glad I was able to come back this year. Yesterday I attended the Intelligent Narrative Technologies Workshop, a fascinating look on story telling technology which pretty much broke my brain by the end of the day. My pen is almost dry from taking notes.

Reasons why the last two days have been pretty awesome:

• We are right next to the ocean. Like, the sound of waves is everywhere. It’s so ‘wild’ we found a dead seal and watched a deer take a pee.
• We went to the Monterey Aquarium to take in how they incorporate technology in their animal exhibits. Blown away! Lots of cool education games working side-by-side with the animal environments! Video coming.
• Great people are pretty much everywhere. I need a mixed reality address book HMD to keep track of everyone, my brain is tired.
• Catered food and wine: YES! It certainly dissolved our reluctance to talk to strangers.
• Adding to my reading list as I try to keep track of all the cool things people are involved with…
• As usual at conferences, I get a lot of brainstorming done during the downtimes. First draft of proposed dissertation work is looming over my head, after all!

Reasons why the last two days could have been better:

• Being from Florida, I expected it to be windy buy mild weather. Now I’m very cold.
• It could have been two days on a boat to the Bahamas, like last year. But I’m sure I’m not the only one sad about that.
• There’s so much going that it’s been difficult to maintain my P90X workout schedule. No, I’m not joking.

If you happen to be at the convention, come see my colleague, Juliet Norton, speak on her paper “Exploring Strategies and Guidelines for Developing Full Body Video Game Interfaces” at 7:30 pm on Sunday.

SIGGRAPH 2010 approaches

You can see I’m finally on the Game Papers schedule in the Advanced Program. Looking forward to my presentation!

Biometrics and Physical Controllers

Wednesday, 28 July, 9-10:30 AM

Vibraudio Pose: An Investigation of Non-Visual Feedback Roles for Body-Controlled Video Games

This paper describes a user study of the optimum use of vibration and audio

feedback in video games where players use their entire bodies as input devices.

Emiko Charbonneau, Charles E. Hughes, Joseph J. Laviola, Jr.

This Nerdy Girl’s 8 Must Have Gadgets

Here’s a more laidback post. I looked around my room and realized that I have quite a lot of gadgets sitting next to my bed. So here’s my personal list of electronics that I own and love!

Lenovo Thinkpad

Not much to say about this, its my main machine and its proven to be rugged and reliable. I chose a Thinkpad because of the killer battery life reviews, the keyboard, and the easy customization provided by the website when ordering. I’ve dropped it several times, to my utter horror, but I’ve never experienced any hardware issues from these falls.

Wacom Cintiq
Being a user interface person, I have been using tablet pcs for at least five years, but in 2008 I decided to go with a Cintiq instead. It was a HUGE difference! The reason is the multiple monitor support and context buttons. I had trouble working in photoshop because there are so many shortcuts needed to perform certain functions when I used the tablet pc, but the new custom buttons on the Cintiq do everything you need easily. My photo editing work is so much faster now, I couldn’t possibly be more impressed with this!

Nintendo DS
I think the DS may be my favorite console. I was organizing my bookshelves and I realized I have well over 30 or 40 DS games. And it was a struggle to figure out the top ten to keep on the lower shelf (Hmm, another blog post maybe?) It has such great battery life and so many really unique games, often with clever stylus based gameplay. And some which just take great advantage of the two screens.

Wiimote and Nunchuk
This one is pretty standard. I know the Wii gets a lot of hate and honestly there hasn’t been a lot of killer software in the last year or so. I do like to play Rune Factory when I’m falling asleep, and I’m excited about the new Silent Hill. Oh, and the underappreciated We Cheer 2. (This is not a joke!)

Zune HD
I needed a new mp3 player and the ZuneHD answered all my prayers and more. Okay that’s a little bit exaggerated, but it sure is nice to have something in your pocket that stores a ton of music and I’m really liking it for the software, the pretty screen, and the usability.

Playstation 2
Is this the oldest surviving console? I just can’t seem to upgrade from it, since so many of my favorite games are still on the system and I’ve got no great need to graduate from DVDs yet. Any time I need to throw on an old Dance Dance Revolution for a bit or remember why I like strategy RPGs so much, it is waiting for me like an old friend. There are still some games of note coming out for it!

Flip Mino
My interest in capturing memories on film led me to look for an extremely portable, rugged device that’s easy to use. The Flip is not the best HD camcorder of its size, but the easy software, the slick case and the size were deciding factors for me. Turns out the hardware isn’t quite as rugged as I hoped but its still pretty swell and doing its job nicely. I carry it in my purse in case something funny happens, which usually involves dogs or cats.

AT&T Tilt
I love my phone so much that I replaced the screen rather than get a new one. I even bought a new battery for it. What I like about it most is having the physical keyboard and all the windows mobile freeware I’ve been enjoying (but software should be its own post!) However, I have to admit that I’ve been having issues with the text messages disappearing randomly and the video driver has a weird issue that I’ve had to work around. The hardware is the main point of its inclusion here, however, and I haven’t had any issues with that.

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