Just as a bit of a background on this recipe.  The 7th day of Passover is historically when the Jews crossed the Sea of Reeds (sometimes mistakenly written as the Red Sea).  In Hebrew the Sea of Reeds is “Yam Suf”.   So…loving to play with words as I do, on the 7th day of Passover I make Yam Soup, just so I can have my translingual pun and eat it too.

Passover tends to be when I cook without a cookbook.  Something about a simpler set of ingredients makes it much more doable.  This the recipe from this years yam soup, which this year was not vegetarian:

olive oil
1 onion
2 carrots
2 celery
1 chicken in quarters (or a pack of chicken thighs which is what I used)1 granny smith apple
1 yam
3-4 small zucchini
Water
Salt

Chop up the onion.  Peel and chop the carrots and celery (but keep them separate). With the celery I just peel the outside – it makes it less stringy. Peel, core and chop the apple.  I cut the apple into 6ths and then it is fairly easy to chop the core out, and then I halved each 6th and chopped from that width.

Heat some olive oil in a soup pot and saute the onion until translucent.

Place the chicken on top of the sauteed onions and cover with carrots and celery and apple.

Cover with water and bring to a boil, cover (if it isn’t already) and turn down to a simmer. (Or if it is Yom Tov slide off of the flame so it isn’t too heavy a boil.) Cook for at least an hour.  You want the chicken well cooked but not yet falling off of the bone.

While the chicken cooks peel and chop the yam and zucchini.

When the chicken is done enough pull the chicken out of the soup, remove the bones and most of the skin and shred/chop the chicken.  If you let it cool a bit first you can de-bone and shred with  your (clean) hands, but if you find that too visceral you can also do it with a fork and knife.

Put the chicken back in the pot and add the yam and zucchini.

Cook until the yam is soft.  Add salt to taste.

If you want you can puree the soup a bit and make it a creamy soup.  Otherwise, leave it as is and serve it up.

The festival is in full swing now. Today all day long there were constantly bands, complete with a retinue of Falleras, marching up one street or another and accompanied by the many explosions as everyone old enough to walk is setting off some firecracker or another. I think the guy at the pyrotechnics store was shocked that I wanted only one box of 50 bombetas (picture those snaps you used to be able to get that you could throw at the ground to make go boom…and triple the size).

I just got back from the 1am fireworks. It is the third night of fireworks (and there is one more night to go) but it was the first one I have made it too. The whole city was awake (including babes in strollers.) As I headed out at about 12:15 when I passed the pyrotechnics store it was still open. Surely you didn’t expect individual pyrotechnics to stop during the official fireworks.

As I walked over to the Turia (former river bed, now park, where the fireworks would be held) I had to smile as every restaurant and little corner store was open, not to mention stands set up with an impromptu bar or sausage stands. The churros, buñuelos y chocolate stands were still blazing, but this late at night they just smelled like tired oil, so my usual wish I could partake had fled for the night.

My route took me by the Ofrenda. The Fallas, from what I can tell has always been made of these wooden structures depicting scenes on the edge of what was the social norms. Sort of political protests that have been part of Valencia for centuries. Nonetheless this defiant behavior is tied in closely with the Church. The burning of the statues, the Crema, occurs on S. Joseph day, and as part of the festival a giant wooden frame as the dress of the Virgin (holding the Child) is set up, and people stream in in traditional dress bearing flowers which will be woven into the frame. This is the Ofrenda. The procession today had started at 15:30 (3:30 pm) today and was just finishing up with some anthems as I passed through the square at about 0:30.

As I completed my walk I had to pity anyone who was trying to drive. I crossed two fairly major roads and people just walked through the middle (or danced and lay down depending on what group it was). No the streets weren’t closed, but that didn’t really matter.

The fireworks started on time and were wonderful to see and hear. Alongside the official fireworks there were a few local “booms” as people where I was standing set off their on firecrackers. It wasn’t until the walk home that someone decided decided to set off one of the ground flowers, on the main street, in the middle of a bunch of people. Other than some sprinting away no harm was done, but it did remind one to stay on their toes.

On the way back home some of the restaurants were closing up, but as I made it down my street I could hear parties in the tents of the Casals (the groups that worked to put up their neighborhood/corner Falla (of which there are over 300 in the city)). And as I type this I hear a band marching along down the street from here. Ah the party in the streets is still roaring (and booming) at 2:40 am.

And with that I sign off from Valencia Spain.

N.B. In spite of the GDC in the title this post is mostly about me – so feel free to skip if you were looking for some actual thoughts on GDC.

Day 3 for me was a big switch of gears for me. I only got the tutorials and summits pass, which means it’s the expo halls, and the odd session for the the last 3 days.

I’ll confess that day 3 was what I might call a low value day, mostly because of my attitude. It’s been about 18-20 years since I’ve wandered a conference floor, or gone to some event alone. That alone is a big change – added to that is that this is a new field for me, that I’m still in the learning/dabbling phase. All in all it left me rather off balance. I wandered looking a bit but not even sure how to start a conversation. Finally I found a corner to hang out in and played a little Quell and improved my mood enough to go out and wander a bit more. I did have a few good conversations.

Really part of the objective of this trip (GCD and then Valencia) was/is to shake me up enough to get me out of the rut I was in, even before Shamir’s passing. I suppose part of a shake up a get out process is actually being a bit shaken, so I’ll take day 3 as a good sign and see what day 4 brings.

For day 2 I expected to spend the whole day in the Games for Change Summit.  That was what brought me to the GDC page in the first page and made me think that it was time to go to GDC (at least for part of it.)

However, at the end of yesterday I attended a session in the AI Summit - Turing Tantrums: AI Developers Rant!.  I loved the name, and for some reason I thought it would be interesting.  It turns out it was quite interesting. As I listened to the rants I was stuck by “Hey AI is cool – and I’d like to do this.”

As it turned out I started out the day at the AI Summit attending Beyond Eliza: Constructing Socially Engaging AI.  I have to admit this was influenced by a co-worker who had mentioned that someone from Little Text people, which had been acquired by Linden Lab was speaking and maybe I should catch his talk.  Of course, it also was influence by the title – and the recollection of the “simple guard” that a friend made in SL, that had people standing there and arguing with it for hours (or at least a good half hour.)

As I listened to the talk I was struck by how much what they were doing reminded me of my work with Software Agents for my dissertation.  Of course, now that I think of it more that makes total sense because I was modeling behavior, simulating attacks and responses, which I guess is AI.    The talks themselves were on modeling social interactions – the first two sets of speakers were exploring complex relational (relationship/social) models, and then Stephane Bura looked at scaling and how “smart” interactions can be created in a scalable way.  I thought what he presented was particularly interesting and I will have to follow up with him later.

After lunch I was back in the AI Summit for Less A More I: Using Psychology in Game AI.  This was fascinating pair of talks about how our brains create meaning from what we see or experience and how we can leverage that in games to create the feel of intelligence with very little.

The first part of the talk by Dave Mark looked at visual responses, for an example check out this Heider-Simmel demonstration.  Meaning, intention, story, and possibly gender all are drawn out by the mind when viewing an animation of triangles, lines and a circle.  (This also reminded me of some the lessons from: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art)  How our brains create meaning is pretty fascinating.

The second part was presented by Brian Schwab looked at heuristics and how they influence emotion and behavior. If you have read books on behavior and influencing people, even some of the Heath Brother books (Made to Stick, Switch) you will have read something on the models (even if they were not posed as heuristics in those books.)

As you can see with my side references a lot of what I’ve read in my personal learning seems to be from the same kind of analysis and exploration of behavior of at least part of the field of AI.

The rest of the sessions were in the Games for Change Summit. They were good sessions,  good points on how depth of information can create depth of play – and that fun and informative/teaching can augment each other.  However, if the goal is education or a particular change the place you start the design of the game may be different – for example the content may have to drive the design rather than starting with the core mechanic of the game.

I also learned that I first played Dungeons and Dragons rather close to when they were created, and got to enjoy a bit of “oh I remember that” as Ian Livingston spoke of his history in games.  (I must confess, it was not until well after college that I really learned to learn in depth and pay attention to things like who wrote or created what.)

All in all a great day.  By the end I was feeling my exhaustion from more (and early) travel in the past two weeks than I’ve had in the past two years, so I just headed off to Sabra for some kosher food and headed home…after buying a Ferrari ;), and a box load of books.  The rest of the week will be attending expo and exploring the non-session events.

For the first day I spent most of the time in the IT summit sessions although I did slip in to a few sessions from some other tracks.

This is my first time here, and given my mostly academic experience in the field (aka I’ve read some books and jotted down some ideas but haven’t built a game yet) I tend to think I have an outsider’s or at least a n00b’s perspective on things.

Following the principle of begining at the begining, the introduction speech by Ben Sawyer brough up good points that got me thinking.  I liked how he brought up the pluses and minuses of both gamification and Serious Games.  One of the advantages of gamification is the augmentation of existing services with a small set of changes, but that ultimately it is only a piece of the picture, and not truly gaming (and honestly rather focused on extrinsic motivations.  The lightweight changes and the the “reduced gamey feel is, however, helpful in some environments.  

Serious games, on the other hand provide a more complete expression of gaming. It isn’t just a reward system tacked on afterwards. Serious games developed as games, and essentially are games. While this adds to their effectiveness, this also presents challenges in areas outside of traditional arenas for gaming.  Conservative environments (education, corporations, etc.) often flee In fear if it looks too much like a game.  (Ok, maybe not flee in fear, but at least reject the game.  N.b. I expect this will change over time, but in some places time slogs along a bit slower than others).

So the challenge becomes, how can we bring real features of games into the broader world, without causing the fight or flight reaction in those we are wanting to adopt these tools.  How can we apply these lessons learned?  I could feel the spark of an interesting intersection of ideas which I will have to ponder further when I have a bit more time.  

The talks I attended were great, and it was interesting seeing certain common themes or patterns in the development of the games presented:

Many projects started, or at least were able to get off the ground when the went as simple and as minimal as possible and then iterate up from there. 
Most talks included the point that It is very important to know what you want to achieve,be it knowing the domain of the task, or knowing what changes you ar looking for, or what information you are looking for.
Test and watch how features influence behaviors and see if that is in line with the goals. Sometimes features you think will help either get in the way or have unexpected side effects.
Perhaps most interestingly was seeing the number of projects that involved the reuse of or building on top of other platforms, sometimes in unexpected ways  (Mechanical Turk, google maps, google mail, game mods, etc.)

Beyond the specifics of the talks started pondering pondering if a game is always the answer, and if not how does one determine the balance? There was one talk where someone was talking about how they created a game for an interactive learning center, and the response was so positive that they decided to make all the exhibits a game. This sparked the question – is all game for the best, or are ther skills, or rather the opportunity to develop certain skills that would be lost? Are there different approaches to teaching that might reach some people better than a game? This is hard to judge because being a game is not just one mechanism or one methodology of thinking – so is my question one truly of balance or more a reaction to the cultural influences from the society I live in.

Overall it was a good day of learning, and of ideas that have gotten me thinking.  I’m looking forward to day 2.

Ever since I read Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses when I play a game I tend to look at what pieces are contributing to the experience and how the “Lenses” apply to that game.  Right now my memory of the lenses is a bit rusty, but I started playing a new Facebook game to look at how it works and doesn’t work and thought I’d write my thoughts while they are fresh.

First off, the music has a nice “Fairy tale/adventure/disneyeque” sound to it.  I know that I may tire of it after a while, but right now it is enjoyable. How you design loops so they enhance and don’t get annoying is a really good question.  That said it seems to have more than few segments of the music (perhaps even “movements’) so it isn’t just a short loop.

The graphics are cartoon and on the cute side, but defined enough that you aren’t going “aaaah saccharine”.   The look is consistent, the graphics go together and nothing makes you go “Wait…where did that come from.”

The avatar for the user has a default so the user can get going but has a small but reasonable set of customization options (and probably you can buy more.)  It is nice to be able to pick your character’s look, but at the same time it is good to not have too many options or it gets a bit overwhelming.   (n.b. by default it created a female character for me and I didn’t check if I can change my avatar to a guy (I just changed my hair color from blond.))

The game does a nice job of gradually building the player’s knowledge of how to play.  You start out with some small quests that teach you he basics, and then as  you complete the quests you get new ones that teach you new skills (how to use the market, how to plant, how to move the gloom away.)  The game also provides good feedback as you make progress through the quest – encouraging you on.

The game also introduces new characters as you go and you end up “interacting” with them through quests and the like.  It makes you feel more like there is a “there” there.

This is a Facebook flash game and as such it is “click on things to interact” kind of game.   As far as the type of game, it has a few elements. The first is a “gathering/building” game ala Tiny Towers/Farmville/etc.   It gives you small simple repeatable tasks with clear indicators when you must maintain things, plus the “playing house” aspect that these games have where you can build things and move things around allowing you to entertain your inner organizer/decorator.

Secondly it has a “questing and adventuring” game.  The various NPCs (non player characters) give you quests that you fulfill, but in addition there is an overall story where you are the Lord or Lady of your estate and you are fighting off the gloom and rescuing people. The story quest line (which interplays with the “here’s how you play the game” quests) uses the language of hero quest lines.  You may be the chosen one, but there are challenges to meet and bad guys to fight off, and those who will help you in the journey that you must seek him out in the  to learn from him…but first you must gain the skills for your journey, etc.  (Sorry…Joseph Campbell is on my reading list still so I can’t tell you if this is the classic hero’s journey – but it mirrors many games and movies that I’ve been told reflect it.)

The language as you receive and complete the quests is written in a way to make you feel your “choosiness”, which does give a nice feel good.

In addition to the type of gaming the way they have implement the performing tasks is quite well done.  When you click on something to clear it/harvest it/mine it/feed it/etc. when the actions is completed your rewards joyfully pop out onto the screen and you run your mouse over them to gather up the rewards.  For some reason this has a satisfying feel – like you are really gathering rather than just clicking – and also it allows them to throw out variable rewards.  Yes you get the item you harvested but you might get something else with it.  It makes each click a bit of a “surprise box” which adds to the feeling of adventure.  (Ok, perhaps I find adventure easily but the element of surprise does trigger something in the human pleasure psyche.)

Like most Facebook games it has the standard “invite your friends to be neighbors” and “visit your friends” quasi-social aspect.  Visiting lets you do tasks for your friend and vice versa.  However, when a friend has visited, you see them in your estate (somewhat standard behavior) and you can accept or reject their help (also standard) but then you watch them do the tasks (that they did whenever they stopped by) and you get to gather up the rewards from their tasks, and then you send them off with a gift.  While the end result is pretty much the same as the “Farmville model” since you are watching them do what they did and interacting to gather the rewards it has a very different feel – it’s like you got to see them visit.

As with many games there are resource limitations.  Some tasks take a set amount of time to complete – so you have to wait to do them.  You also have a limited resource of energy that limits how much you can do in any one session – you can wait or buy more energy -  (so the constraint can become coins in this case).   And then there is the space & money resource management as well.  All in all the time  & energy constraints seem the most “need management” so it is a pretty loose boundary but the constraint is there.  Also quests require resources, so you need to manage gathering and producing such resources to complete your tasks at hand.

Lastly they do a very nice job of always giving you something to complete.  When you finish one quest a new one appears.  Right now I have 4 quests (one for each NPC I’ve interacted with), plus animals to feed, periodic bad guys to fight off, and various and sundry tasks that i can chose to do.  It is easy to get into the “just one more task” mode because it just feels so productive – there is no time where you are going “hmm…nothing to do….”  which is good.

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts on Castleville.

Much has happened since I last blogged. I’m still working on getting my inner censor to hush up a bit more. (At which point it goes “Nah…don’t post this”)

Anyway, the other night I had a dream that I woke up from. I was listening to a radio show or some such and the DJ was about to start a series of songs as a tribute to Shamir. I woke up just as the first one started playing. The lyrics began:

Can you be my friend and believe in me.
Can we walk together side by side hand in hand.
Let me be with you until the end
Will you hold me in your heart.

And that’s a bit of song from Sunday morning.

I was cleaning up my disk and found a small .rtf file from March 2009 labeled “Anon”.  In it I found these words:

“We think anonymity exists, but really, except in rare cases, we leave markers to our personality and traits wherever we go.  We can only hide angles not our entire selves.”

Is this true, or can we become invisible in certain places while still speaking our mind.  (And if we are speaking our mind is there a piece of one’s mind that is not a reflection of self?”

It seems so odd posting about Second Life again, even though that is where all of this whole web 2.0 stuff stated for me, but here it is.

The other day I downloaded the latest Beta Viewer for SL which include the initial version of Basic and advanced modes.  There are a lot of things that I like about it, and some definite criticisms, and I thought I’d capture them here rather than in 140 character segments.

First off, and my favorite part of the viewer is they have improved the graphic rendering engine for the Mac significantly.  On my Macbook pro I rez places (and myself) fairly quickly (10-30 seconds in very limited testing – not with lots of people around) AND I can move.  In the same places on the old viewer it would take me a good 5 minutes to rez and walking was a step by step, step every second or two jerky experience.  That alone gives me more options on where i use Second Life.

When I started up the viewer I set it to basic mode just to see what the starting point was.  To start with there are a number of features that I liked:

The click to move is very nice, and is a simple way to move. Also the mouse to pan/turn the avatar was a nice way to look around, although it really is more of a “push against the world to move” action than a camera view.  (In other words, it moves exactly the opposite of mouse view in game like World of Warcraft.)  Alt-zoom is still there.  Also I really like the fact that the viewer 2 tab list HUD is gone, giving back some nice screen real estate and helping with the immersiveness.  Instead there are nice text buttons at the bottom out of the way of the screen.

I like the Gesture button – it makes it easier to “emote”.   The “Destinations” button is my favorite button.  It gives you a range of categories of places to explore and you can head off into the world and ideally find places where people are. The my avatar button has a nice selection of pre-made avatars with skin/costume combos.  It makes it easy for a newcomer to change their look.  I’d love to have my outfits displayed that way and be able to do wardrobe changes that easily with my bought clothing.

The “Howto” button is the last standout feature – it brings up help with a list of “how to do x”.  It is a fairly short list but then what you can do in basic mode is fairly limited, which brings me to my criticisms.

I understand that basic is designed to give a simple interface without too much to get new users started.  They have an excellent start, but there are some key features missing that make advanced a necessity (and the changes between the two very disorienting.)  Before I touch on the concerns with advanced we’ll finish up basic.

First off, although I can wander the world, I can’t return home.  To start with, there is no way to set a home, and then there is no way to ask the viewer to send me home (unless I can get there using the back button in the navigation component at the top.)  Even my web browser has  home button – this should be an easy and an early fix.

Secondly, there is no way to access your inventory.  You can still acquire inventory nicely but there is no way to get to that inventory in basic mode.   This seems like a huge oversight.  I understand that the inventory presentation is messy – and perhaps they didn’t know how to basicize it, but it is something that has be addressed.

As you might guess basic has no build mode.  I’m ambivalent about that.   On one hand it makes the UI very simple.  On the other hand, it means that to get to building they have to intentionally switch the mode of their viewer.  There is no accidentally discovering building.   While I think removing building from the much simplified right mouse click menus is correct, it would be nice if there was a menu option, like under Edit or perhaps it’s own, that would let a person discover building.

So…we’ve explored basic, realize we need to move to advanced to build and get to our inventory…let’s check out the jump our new user will have to go through.

First up, the HUD is back, with the tabs with the indecipherable icons on them.  As a plus it does seem to tuck out the way better than I recall it doing.  However, it could be hugely helped with at least mouseover text.  What are these strange icons and why are they on my screen?

Help is now up in the menus, and takes you to the old style help – no “how to” option here.  I think at least adding the how to help, as limited as it is, to the help menu options would be useful.

Moving along, our new user now tries to click to move to a new location and…that no longer works.  I hope they figured out wasd or arrow keys for movement while they were in basic.  Well, lets look around…wait…mouse turn is gone.  Luckily the “view” button that gives you a HUD that lets you change your view around exists, and if they try the help the directions for alt-zoom aren’t too far down in the help.  However, this change is jarring.   That, and even as an advanced user I’d like have the click to move & mouse turn options back.  They are great for casual looking around. (n.b. mouse turning does have a limitation as there is no way to look up (or to use it while flying) so it could use some revamping – perhaps to have more of a “mouse view” functionality rather than an “avatar turn” functionality.

Having not played with Viewer 2 that much I’m not sure that there is that much different in the Advanced mode from what existed in Viewer 2.  I think the new basic mode is a great start but there are some key missing things I’d like to see added.  Also, since at some point a basic user is likely to go advanced it would be good to have a few of the features of basic mode brought into advanced mode as well.   I look forward to seeing the next iteration of the viewer, which hopefully will advance the state of basic, and bring some new features to advanced.

This post was inspired by a meeting of the meetup group currently known as Serious Second Life. We were discussing what we are working on and what our involvement currently is in Second Life. For many of us we are less involved in Second Life, while still busy in virtual environments or sometimes simply busy with social networking/media sites and tools.

I know I’ve been a rare presence in Second Life. For a while it was the lack of a machine with enough horsepower to do anything in Second Life…you know, like walk. Now that has been resolved but I’m looking for that “project” or reason to reenter the world.

In the mean time I’ve been exploring gaming, game design, and augmented reality. One game that has caught my eye and made me ask some questions is Minecraft. I will say up front that I have only played a small amount of Minecraft, but I have been stunned and amazed by the videos out there of the creations made in that game. It has taken the gaming world by storm, being names game of the year by some. Yet at the same time it is an amazingly simple game. You start out building stuff with cubes, you can eventually program using logic gates, oh and and night the monsters come out so you better get your shelter built.

What I’ve seen of the game makes me say the simplicity brings out the creativity in people. It also makes me ask why is this a wild success yet Second Life is so…niche when the potential for creating is so vast in Second Life. I was looking for more on Minecraft and came across this article on G4TV’s site with this great quote:

“Unlike other world-building games like Second Life, where it’s theoretically possible to build whatever you like, but is, in practice, way more trouble than its worth, Minecraft isn’t hard, per se. Read a few “getting started” tutorials if you’d like, but after that, you’ll find your way without too much trouble. It’s not super time-consuming either. Give Minecraft a couple hours, and you will have an exciting adventure, I promise you. Plus, there’s enough danger inherent in guarding against death that it’s interesting, unlike Second Life.”

That started me thinking and reminded me of some past discussions on why the entrance to Second Life is so hard.

Beyond basic usability questions the real challenge is finding why you are there. Now needing to build so I don’t get eaten by monsters wouldn’t have enticed me to join Second Life. I know I was terrified of “damage turned on” areas in Second Life, even though I knew I would get my avatar back. But one thing that Second Life doesn’t have that real life has is an initial impetus to act.

Even if I picked a random point on the map and drove there in real life, my real life body would require me to seek out food and a place to sleep. I would wander, and likely run into some people and then find out more about a place. Just the nature of life causes that seeking.

Within Second Life, if I’m dropped in my natural curiosity might send me to explore, but for what? There is no defined objective. I don’t have this short list “food, sleep”,  I have an unbounded list “find something cool” which means infinite possibilities, which means infinite choice, which is a close cousin to analysis paralysis, which, with a handy “quit” button, means people exit the world.

While what you can do in Second Life is amazing, the creations are wonderful, the concerts are brilliant, the potential is huge, for the initial starter there is no simple goal to get them started that gives them a place to build from. For those who have stayed in Second Life they’ve come in with a specific purpose, or wandered luckily into a group that gave them a what to do that drew them in. But for those who wander there without such luck or escort it is hard to know where to go and what to do. I would say that this one thing is the largest barrier to coming in to Second Life – without a reason or a focus it is hard to find the why to remain, or to come back.