We did some research today ‘in the wild’.
Here are our outcomes:
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OCT
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Date:: Tuesday 11 October
Time:: 12.30 – 1.30pm
Place:: Virtual Reality Lab, Bldg. 91, Ground Floor (NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE DUE TO LIVE DEMO)
Peter Wilson and Jonathan Duckworth will talk about their game for rehabilitation:
Re Spiel for Elements System
Patients with brain injury frequently exhibit impaired upper limb function. The Elements virtual reality system addressed this disability by using an intuitive desktop workspace that affords basic gestural control. The system design provides tactility, texture, and audio visual feedback to entice patients to explore their own movement capabilities in a directed and self directed fashion. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated in several studies.
http://www.zedbuffer.com/project%20elements%2001.htm
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OCT
We are having a feedback lunch: a brown bag lunch meeting where we as a group give feedback to each other in the early stage of a research project. Wouter will be hosting the next one (and providing free sandwiches!) on
Monday, 10 Oct 12-1 in the Exertion Games Lab
in order to get feedback from all of you on his current thinking on:
Augmenting bicycle helmets to allow cyclists more ways for self-expression to enhance the cycle experience through play elements (for example, the helmet starts to glow based on heart rate, or the helmet lights up in sync with other cyclists).
He is eager to hear your feedback, so if you can make it that would be great!
We are trying to make it very informal, have lunch at the same time, so hopefully it will be heaps fun!
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OCT
The Exertion Games Lab (exertiongameslab.org) in Melbourne, Australia, is seeking exceptional PhD candidates to research the future of exertion games and play.
The Exertion Games Lab is a new lab that researches the future of gaming in order to understand how to design better interactive experiences, in particular games that require intense physical effort from players. We call it the intersection between gaming and sports. Our research is focused on the merging of play and the active human body, drawing from research streams such as interaction design, human-computer interaction and computer games research.
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OCT
Using the skills developed in a career as a lead designer at games developers such as Krome Studios Australia, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Kuju Games, London, Harry is now working with the Australian Broadcasting Commission helping them reshape the way they communicate with their audiences and defining the role that games play in this vision.
Time: 12.30pm-1.30 Tuesday – 27th September
Place: Building 14, level 11, Room 37
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We are on the Wired website, featuring our very own Eberhard “Uberhard” Graether and his Joggobot first thing!
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/09/exertion-games-lab-where-physical-meets-digital/
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Date:: Tuesday 20 September
Time:: 12.30 – 1.30pm
Place:: Building 14, Level 11, Room 37 (Games Studio)
Title: Developing DroneSwarm Command for the iPad
Conor will discuss the challenges of developing a game on your own
and offer tips and tools for small teams. The presentation will also cover
techniques for promoting your game, working with a publisher (in this case
Chillingo) and testing.
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Date: Tuesday 13 September
Time: 12.30
Place: RMIT, 14.11.37
Simon Joslin from The Voxel Agents explains the lessons they have
learnt about the business of indie games design.
How they funded their set up, the choices they made and the things that
they may have wished to do differently if they knew then what they know
now.
The Voxel Agents are developers of original hand-crafted games for
“on-the-go” fun times. They are an independent team with five
core members and four part-time helpers. They are one of the most
exciting indie teams in Australia, and are situated in the game
development hub of Melbourne. Creators of the smash hit Train Conductor
series, The Voxel Agents are proud producers of addictive game
substances for millions of players worldwide.
http://www.thevoxelagents.com/
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The “official”-looking RMIT Exertion Games Lab site is now live, linking nicely here: http://www.rmit.edu.au/exertiongameslab
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Wouter Walmink will talk about his company Studio Ludens and Eberhard Graether about the Marble Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.
Date: Tuesday 6th September
Time: 12.30
Venue: 14.11.37
Wouter Walmink (walmink.com) just joined the Exertion Games Lab
(exertiongameslab.org) at RMIT, coming from the Netherlands; he has
previously worked at CSIRO in Canberra. He is an award-winning
interaction designer who creates design tools that help you “make
beautiful things”. He helps designers to work together with their users
in creating customized products (without ever meeting in person) and
allowing the general public to experience the joy of creating
firsthand. Wouter’s talk will focus on 2 points:
1. What have I learnt from 5 years of designing for creative
experiences? (examples & findings)
2. How can you make better games / interfaces that use creativity for a
general public? (linking it to the field of gaming)
Eberhard Gräther is student of MultiMediaTechnology at Salzburg
University of Applied Sciences. He is a visiting researcher at RMIT’s Exertion Games Lab.
Eberhard will talk about his study and his projects including Marble
Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.
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Flora Salim from the Spatial Information Architecture Lab at RMIT will talk on Tuesday 30 Aug 2011 at 12.30 in 14.11.37. Talk abstract:
Coding, hacking, and prototyping are fun, as well as playing, interacting, and social gaming! Can we insert the “fun” from gaming experiences into collaborative design projects solving real-world problems? Dr. Flora Salim (http://florasalim.com), a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University, is interested in enabling transdisciplinary design teams to work collaboratively to produce exciting outcomes. With background in Computer Science, she is interested in applying computational approaches, particularly distributed and mobile computing, data analysis, augmented reality, and tangible interactions to architecture and urban design problems. She initiated the development of UbiMash (http://ubimash.com), an open source software platform for designing between physical and digital, enabling data exchange between physical and digital models using game consoles, microelectronics, sensor devices, social networks, and the Web.
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Hugh Davies will be in the lab from Monday onwards working on his PhD on the alternate reality game The Darkest Puzzle. Hugh has produced alternate games for the ABC and has extensive international experience in the games research arena from Europe as well. Welcome Hugh!
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Wouter Walmink is an amazing designer who has done fascinating exertion systems and games in both Australia (CSIRO) and in the Netherlands, where he co-founded Studio Ludens that attracted prestigious clients such as Philips and TUE. He will be joining the Exertion Games Lab on Monday, working on a distributed exertion game for teenagers. Welcome Wouter!
A word from Wouter
Hi there!
I am super-excited to be part of the Exertion Games Lab as of today (29-8-2011). A quick introduction: I’m an interaction designer with a passion for physical interaction. I love empowering people and helping them discover their own talents. In the past 5 years I have been running my own company studio:ludens with Alexander Rulkens, developing online design tools and products in the emerging market of mass-customization. Last year we created an interactive installation called ‘Flosculus’ with Philips and Little Mountain (watch the video).
Among others we developed a pattern-making tool called Repper. An early online version of this tool generated over 100.000 patterns made by people all over the world, browsable at ColourPatterns.com. Have a go at it yourself with the latest version in the online demo.
In the next months my aim is to develop an exertion game that will knock your socks off. I’ll try and merge new interaction styles into exercise gameplay, mingle new themes with old-school fun and make magic happen.
This project is all about making something amazing —> more brains involved = more amazingness. So if you’re in for a brainstorm session, want to share your wisdom with me or join in, contact me at wouter@walmink.com.
See you at the Exertion Games Lab!
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller’s talk at Freeplay 2011 was audio-recorded and is now online at:
http://soundcloud.com/christydena/freeplay2011-floydmueller (including the introduction by Christy Dena).
Christy Dena’s blogpost about the topic is at: http://www.christydena.com/2011/08/avoiding-crap-game-design-panel-audio/
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will speak as part of a panel at Freeplay on “How Every Little Decision Can Bring You Closer To or Further Away from Creating Art” and chair a session on “The big and the small stage” both on 20 Aug 2011.
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller will be talking about Exertion Games and give a demo of Hanging off a Bar on Tuesday, 16 Aug 2011, 12.30-1.30pm in the new Exertion Games Lab at RMIT’s 9.1.27. Everyone welcome.
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Today we showed Hanging off a Bar at RMIT’s Open Day 2011, lots of people learned about game design while exercising with our game! Everyone enjoyed the experience, which was very pleasing!
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Last night we created a new and improved version of “Hanging off a Bar” in a 1-night hackathon. The goal of the game is to “hang on” as long as you can, not letting go and falling into the virtual river below you. There are some rafts coming by from time to time, on which you can jump to rest, but you have to be quick, as they keep moving and you have to jump back up onto the bar. Winner is who can hang on the longest. We will show this game at the Open Day and use it afterwards to explore the relationship between exertion investment and particular game elements.
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Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller from the Exertion Games Lab was invited to jury the Demo Hour in the Interactions magazine for the current issue.
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