Sony PS3 song

Just a quick post to show this YouTube video about how Sony messed up with the PS3. I of course, have no bias towards any console and did in no way find this amusing:




I came across this on an unofficial Nintendo Wii blog which showcases the unique ability of the Wii Remote to cause bodily harm to its users (and family members) as well as substantial damages to property.
Take a look at: Wii Have a Problem

Dissertation: Meetings with supervisor

This post is to keep a record of the meetings with my dissertation supervisor. The post will be updated after each meeting with a brief summary of the points discussed.

Friday, 23rd November 2007 - 1.5hrs:

We discussed what the exact focus of the research might be given that I had decided that comparing user groups with different abilities & experiences was probably not going to be feasible due to time constraints & availability of hardware. It is hard to put a finger on the exact focus but and that this may not exactly be known until I get some results to analyse.

We also looked at some interfaces on YouTube and discussed the future possibilities of video game interfaces. It will be interesting to see if it is possible to predict the direction that the game industry may take in the future.

Thursday, 20th December 2007 - 1hr:

We discussed the Interim Report and I suggested ideas on the back of the discussion which followed my presentation. The interim report presentation seemed to go well. I'm not at my happiest when presenting work but felt OK this time. I think it is due to the fact that I knew more about the subject (i.e. my situation)than anyone else in the room so I was in charge. The tutors and students present seemed fairly interestd and the 10 minute question time ran into a 20 minute discussion.

My supervisor agrees that the best form of research would be to do an observation but I am worried that I could not do it thoroughly enough given the time and equipment restraints and that this would significantly reduce the value of any data that was gained. We agreed that if I cannot find a suitable framework for evaluating controllers/input devices, without taking into consideration the software itself, then I should concede the point and attempt a small observation session or two. This might prove more valuable if I get a good response to the questionnaire part of the survey.

Dissertation: Calendar, Work Plan & Log

The following calendar shows the intended scheme of work for BSc (Hons) Information Technology Dissertation. This enables progress to be tracked and milestones logged.

It is intended that this post will be continually updated when work is done towards the project so that everything is in one place. Similarly, there will also be further posts, each concerning one aspect of the work, which will also be living documents e.g. bibliography, meetings with supervisor etc.

Log of Work Completed

Sunday, 27th January 2008:

With exams over, made a start on the written work and re-wrote the introduction which is less words and somewhat more impersonal than the interim report version. It is difficult though to entirely detach all personal references given the reason for the choice of subject. I will have to check with Dave that the use of terms such as 'my' is OK. Also, finally managed to get the Google calendar set to 'shared' so that I could embed it in this post!

Monday, 28th January 2008:

Finished the introduction by writing aims, goals and scope of the investigation. I have also added more blog posts to track meetings with my supervisor and a post dedicated to a bibliography.

I've registered with a free online survey hosting company for students called: Thesis Tools which looks promising - if I get the time to use an online survey. This kind of tool would make a web based survey possible and will be seriously considered if I have some guaranteed results from a supervised survey of college students. If successful, it would also have the advantage of reaching a wider demographic and therefore the possibility of receiving a greater value of data.

This gets me pretty much up to date. The introduction should have been finished by 11th January, but with Christmas, assignments due on the 18th January and exams the following week it proved to be too much. The calendar above shows that the literature review was due to start this weekend so I am pretty much on track at this point.

Wednesday, 6th February 2008:

Started making notes on Questionnaires and Survey design from Oppenheim (1992)

Thursday, 7th February 2008:

Continued and finished Oppenheim (1992) notes. Also looked at Colorado State University guidelines on survey research.

Friday, 8th February 2008:

Wrote notes from 'Questionnaire Design' (Hague 1993). This book is considerably more basic than the Oppenheim text but useful nonetheless.

Saturday, 9th February 2008:

Wrote notes from 'Designing Surveys' (Czaja & Blair 1996). This book is much more in depth than Hague's but I found it easier to read than Oppenheim's.

Sunday, 17th February 2008:

I've been researching emerging technologies which could be used in the future of gaming. I'm especially impressed by Excitim's Dream-Technology which allows people with physical disabilities to use remote-control cars and PlayStations. It employs motion detection in a baseball cap (or a wand type device) to interact with a modified PlayStation controller. They also have other devices for controlling PC applications, email and the internet etc. Great stuff.

Monday, 18th February 2008:

This morning was spent researching technologies from the 2008 CES in Las Vegas. Especially fun is the Optimus Maximus Keyboard but I have also looked at OLED displays.

Tuesday, 19th February 2008:

Continued with the emerging technologies review, looking at multi-touch interfaces.

Tuesday, 26th February 2008:

Phew! Busy day. I started out by looking more at multi-touch tecnologies such as Jeff Han's, how the iPod touch/iPhone works (played on an iPod touch on Saturday - must have one), Microsoft's Touchlight and Surfae products and the MERL (Mitsubishi) DiamondTouch. I've watched quite a few product demo videos on YouTube today. Possibly the most relevant is a demo of Mitsubishi's DiamondTouch being used to play Warcraft III. It uses both touch and audio commands - very nice demonstartion of what is possible if the hardware was readily affodable. The video is on another post labelled 'HCI'.

Anyway, this led me to Bill Buxton who pretty much pioneered this sort of technology in the 1980s [ref?]. I started reading about Gesture interfaces and looking at the whole HCI aspect arround that. It is linked to concepts such as chunking - especially when used with speech. This is the direction I now need to get more involved with as I write the literature review. I can then get on to evaluation techniques - hopefully soon.

I also joined a Facebook group called "Why Multi Touch Technology will Change The World". I'm not entirely convinced it will and should remain unbiased but it certainly shows a lot of promise. Anyway, this led me to a lady called Lynn Marentette who publishes several blogs and is interested in "...how technology can support intervention & prevention efforts in health, mental health, and related fields." As I said, phew. So much to be getting on with but I must try and get back to gaming!

Saturday 29th March, 2008:

It's been a month since my last post! This doesn't mean that I haven't done anything although there has been too much time spent on a Corporate Strategy assignment which took much longer than I anticipated. There was also a Project Management presentation to do last week. These are all done now and there are just three things to concentrate on: Dissertation, Evolving Internet Technologies research paper and Project Management Exam. Phew! There is a considerable amount of cross-over with the Evolving Web Tech module and the future technologies for the dissertation so two birds with one stone and all that...

In the past month, i've also done some more research into methodologies for evaluating input devices and it increasingly looks like a lost cause which can really only be done with questionnaires and observations. Talking of which, last weekend (Easter) was spent devising a pilot survey which was then issued to four people for a test run. I chose people of a similar age to those that will be surveyed in the main work. Three are currently final year students (two are also tutors) and one was a fellow student last year. They were chosen because they are all enthusiastic gamers, have different preferences for the type of games that they play and are all in a position to give some constructive feedback with regards to the design of the pilot survey.

This weekend will be spent looking at the results of the pilot survey, creating a 'question by question' analysis of the pilot work and redesigning the questionnaire where necessary. This is because I have arranged to administer the final survey to two groups of students on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. The other problem that I have just realised needs sorting out quickly is how exactly I am going to analyse the data? Excel is obviously the best bet but I've never used it for much more complicated than little graphs and big long lists (flat DB's in another life in a warehouse!). Better get cracking then! This really had to be done before the two week break from college which starts on the 7th April. Although the survey is a couple of weeks behind, at least this will be achieved.

By coincidence, there just happens to be an Xbox 360 tournament running at college on the Tuesday (April Fools Day so yet TBC!!). If so it would be good to go and try to get a few more participants. Even better would be to have an online version of the survey so I could just go and hand out leaflets which link to it - this may not get as many respondents but would take a lot less time (which is better?).

I should have more to write really soon then...

Thursday 3rd April, 2008:

The weekend was spent producing a question by question analysis of the pilot work and devloping the final questionnaire on that analysis. This week I have issued questionnaires around college. There was a charity gaming event taking place so I tried to get some respondents from there but found it difficult to get people's attention for the 10 minutes required.

Thursday 22nd May, 2008:

OK, so there's a bit of a gap, but I've been really busy! The dissertation report went to print & binding with the final title of 'Video Game Interaction: A Survey of User Opinion'. Including appendices it weiged in at around 33,000 words. I had to be quite brutal with the final editing to make the word count but I think that's a good thing as it ensures there is no waffle and every paragrapgh says something.

In the last week I have also had to write a 5,000 word report for the 'Evolving Internet Technologies' module as well as prepare the dissertation presentation - little sleep and much worrying has been achieved, but it's not meant to be easy I suppose! Most of the leg work for the report has been done and there is some crossover with previous studies including the dissertation e.g. Augmented and Virtual Realities and tangible interfaces.

Today saw me present my work and findings to the tutors and some students. I went on a bit as I have so much to say and had to rush through some of the results but this is preferable (for me) to drying up and not having anything to say. As usual I had my comfort blanket in the form of notes but only used them for stats - so that was a plus. The tutors seemed to be reasonably interested and I thought I fielded questions pretty well. Only Andy got me on one question which I had to own up to. I never thought of comparing my results to other surveys which have been carried out although I did look for some to get an idea about format and subject. The problem is that so many survey are performed for commercial purposes and access to them costs money - something which I don't have...poor student, rising fuel, electric, gas and food prices, blah, blah, whinge...

Anyway, that's that and apart from the Project Management exam I'm just awaiting my results although feedback suggests that everything is OK...fingers crossed.

Bumptop - improving the desktop metaphor?

I thought that I'd post this video on [i] Stevieboy. It's been on my website for a while so I'm moving it over to the blog now that it's up and running. I just keep watching the video as it looks so natural to interact with and gets a wonderful reception from the audience. I found this while researching interaction styles for my dissertation and was just so impressed.

The computer desktop as a metaphor has been around for a good few years now and it's something that we all have got used to. This is surely because it works? Or if you watch the video:

"...[the desktop] is the same old crap that we've had for the last 30 years!"

BumpTop is set to change this with a new engaging way to interact with our beloved (loathed?) computers. It also uses pie menus which you can find out more about from Don Hopkins' website. BumpTop also has intuitive physics behind it with larger objects being heavier than smaller ones - seems so obvious now doesn't it?

Anyway, enough of my waffle - just watch BumpTop's creator
Anand Agarawala show you...



If you're having trouble viewing the video, you can also watch it here.

Dissertation: Introduction (part 2)

As promised here is the second part of my Dissertation Introduction. For the story so far please read the previous post, imaginitively titled 'Dissertation Introduction (part 1)' ...

The first part of the research will involve an investigation into the development of interaction devices over the thirty-five year history of the games industry. It is expected that this research will provide a clear insight into how the current generation of console controllers has evolved and help to predict how they might continue to develop in the future.

The research will then proceed to investigate new and emerging technologies in the field of interaction which have the potential to be applied to video game interaction in the future. The joystick has become synonymous with video games but its origins lie in the aircraft industry (Zeller Jr. 2005). At the other end of the scale as far as the home gaming market is concerned, accelerometers (the motion sensing technology behind the Wii Remote and the Sony SIXAXIS controller) have found numerous applications since first being used for collision detection in car airbag systems (Galvin n.d.).

Two areas of interactive technology have been identified at this stage for further investigation. Virtual Reality and Touch Screen technology are considered likely to have an effect on the future of the video gaming industry. In 2005 Sony announced that it had patented a non-invasive, theoretical notion which involves ‘transmitting data directly into the brain’ (Horsnell 2005).

Following this investigation it is the intention to evaluate the primary controllers of the three consoles of the current generation: the Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3. Choosing an appropriate evaluation method will be crucial to the success of this part of the investigation. What may have proven to be the ideal solution, an observation of users performing tasks, has already been rejected in the early feasibility study due to the lack of available time and other related difficulties.

The other issue of concern relates to the nature of the device being evaluated. Specifically, one design is intended to be used in different ways with many contrasting pieces of software. The behaviour of the device changes with the context in which it is being used. This makes it difficult to create a set of tasks for evaluation purposes which are a typical representation of how the device is used. At the current stage of the investigation this is an area for concern and it is hoped that a suitable method can be chosen following further research into the area.

It is anticipated that the main method of data collection and consequent evaluation for this investigation will involve surveying the opinions of people that play video games. The most appropriate method for this data collection appears to be a questionnaire. Questionnaires are cheap to implement on a large scale and can be designed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data (Dix et al. 2004, p.437). There are two considerable drawbacks of this method which are immediately apparent. The first is response rate and the second is time.

Administering the questionnaire to one person at a time could take up vast quantities of research time whereas administering by post and leaving selected participants to answer questions at their leisure could result in an insufficient quantity of respondents. To counter both of these issues it is hoped that access to classes of students can be gained. Using this method should not only allow participants to be supervised (ensuring a response) but also result in the collection of a large quantity of data in a relatively short period of time. The possibility of creating an online questionnaire targeted at games enthusiasts has also been considered.

Using this method would provide a first opportunity to implement this style of research. There is a large amount of literature available which discusses how best to create a questionnaire and perform an analysis of the data collected and this will need to be reviewed and considered before this section of the investigation is undertaken.

Scope of the Investigation

The research will investigate the control devices of home video game consoles. There is an important distinction to be made between game consoles and home computers that play games. It is beyond the scope of this investigation to consider the keyboard and mouse as games controllers because that is not their primary use. There are many examples of home computers that may have been purchased with the sole reason of playing games. For example, Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum, Atari’s ST and Commodore’s VC 20, C64 and Amiga computers all enjoyed commercial success and a large catalogue of games (Forster, 2005).

It is also acknowledged that in some cases peripherals such as keyboards, mice, disk drives and printers were produced as optional extras for machines that were primarily games consoles. Although the investigation will concentrate on the primary controllers of games consoles, i.e. those that were supplied with the original hardware, it is expected that this will not be exclusive and that other input devices will be discussed.

Care will also have to be taken that the control method remains the main focus of the investigation and not the consoles themselves or the game software. The latter is considered to be especially important because the controller is manipulated differently for each game. Although a device such as a universal remote may be used to control a TV, DVD and CD player, the functions are very similar whichever device is being used at the time. For example, pressing ‘PAUSE’ will have the same effect on all three devices. However, pressing the ‘A’ button on a gamepad can have any number of effects within the same game.

So that's the outline of the investigation. I do think it will be difficult to keep the focus of the study on the controller and not the game but it's good to set yourself challenges that you may not be able to overcome - at least not without great difficulty.

There is also a Google Calendar set up to accompany this project which outlines the timescales and milestones of the research.

References

• Dix, A., Finlay, J., Abowd, G. & Beale, R. (2004) Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edn, Pearson Education Ltd, Harlow



• Forster, W. (2005) The Encyclopedia of Games Machines: Consoles, handhelds & home computer 1972-2005, Gameplan, Utting, Germany



• Galvin, G. J. (n.d.) Accelerometer applications converge



• Horsnell, M. (2005) Sony takes 3-D cinema directly to the brain



• Zeller Jr., T. (2005) A Great Idea That’s All in the Wrist

Dissertation: Introduction (part 1)

So, as you might have read, I'm a final year BSc (Hons) student studying IT at Blackpool and The Fylde College. For my dissertation it is required that I keep a log book to track my research progress. This is a document that may be requested by Lancaster University to assist their assesment of my work. This is the introduction then to give a brief overview of what it is that I am studying for this piece of work. It is a very brief summary of the Interim Report which was submitted and presented on December 13, 2007.

In mid 2007 we bought a Nintendo Wii. Although not practiced as often as I might like any more, I have had games consoles as far back as a Binatone “Bat ‘n’ Ball” TV game and an Atari VCS in the late 1970s and early 1980s up until buying an Xbox 360 soon after they launched in 2005. My wife has played a few online flash games but has never taken any interest in the Xbox.
The success and popularity of the Nintendo Wii in our house has amazed me. My wife now plays several games, our friend’s children use it, friend’s parents, who have never played a video game in their lives, have played it - and enjoyed themselves! Most satisfying from my perspective however, is that my sister-in-law who has Down's Syndrome can also play some of the games and it is this that has inspired me to choose this area for my research.

She has developed her skills to a level where she can compete with others at the ten pin bowling and boxing disciplines of the ‘Wii Sports’ game. Unfortunately, she is not able to play the elements of Wii Sports that require fast reaction times such as baseball and tennis. The learning process was surprisingly quick, something which could be attributed to any combination of factors.

There is a clear natural mapping from the movement used in ‘real’ ten pin bowling to that required to play Nintendo’s version, they are extremely similar. The same applies to the boxing discipline. The Wii Remote also provides the user with both audio and haptic feedback. While the audio is not great it is something which is thought useful as the meaning of such feedback has been learnt. She finds this especially helpful because of her poor eyesight.

Another contributing factor is that she is motivated to play, and consequently learn, because she can be competitive and win. It could be argued that there is little fun to be had in continuous defeats, or possibly easy victories, so being competitive is important. Another positive aspect is that some games are quite physical and this helps to provide some exercise which has been disguised as fun. This again relates to her motivation.

Focus of Investigation

The initial aim for this research was to compare personal experience with a study of others with the aim of determining whether Nintendo Wii’s method of control actually does make it possible for users of different abilities and experience levels to compete and enjoy video games where they may not have done previously. After considering this carefully it has been rejected due to the impracticallities of performing large amounts of user testing. This would be extremely timeconsuming and time is very precious at the moment. There is also a problem with accessing the hardware required to perform a thorough comparison between the three current games consoles - the Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3.

Below are listed some observations and opinions which have been formed from the personal experiences described in the first section of this report. It is these which will form the basis for the investigation.

• The complexity of video games console controllers has increased over the thirty-five years that industry has existed and has now reached a peak.


• Nintendo have realised this and in the Wii Remote they have produced a simplistic, intuitive interface which allows for increased user involvement in the game playing experience.


• The Wii Remote allows for an intuitive, natural movement, which is therefore easier to learn and remember. This has attracted a new audience to video games, from people who have previously had little interest to those who have not been able to participate due to physical or cognitive limitations.


• There currently exists a definite split in the directions taken by the three major games console producers. Strategically, Microsoft and Sony, appear to have targeted a more mature audience with their more technically advanced consoles while Nintendo is a more family-friendly and sociable activity.


• Due to the growing complexity of controllers it is likely that the next generation of video games consoles will follow the example set by Nintendo and provide a less complex means of interaction resulting in a more intuitive and natural experience for the user.

It is proposed that by investigating and analysing the historical development of games console control methods and interaction devices, current and emerging technologies, marketing strategies and retail trends alongside the views of the consumers themselves it will be possible to make considered predictions regarding the future direction of the industry.

That's the idea then. There'll be more about this in a post coming soon as I think that's enough for any reader to be going on with for now...