(image by tonybarnes)
A little while back I met up with Piers at Spring Lounge for a drink. Among other things, we talked about all the buzz (or maybe hype) surrounding the virtual world Second Life (If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a primer from the Times). A lot of people have been saying that Second Life is currently at the same stage email was ten years ago. Making this comparison to email implies that SL will be as common and mainstream as email is, which I don’t think will happen anytime soon.Why? Because Second Life is too sudden and too drastic of a move into a game-like virtual world. Our main way of interacting with the computer is still with the mouse and keyboard. Typing an email is one thing, but trying to use these devices to navigate and manipulate objects in a 3-d space is a whole other ballgame (let’s put things into perspective).
However, I do think Second Life is important in that it shows us that games can be more than just games. And as we start to take video games more seriously, we’ll begin to see elements of gaming get incorporated into our daily lives. This gaming revolution will be more of an evolution; it won’t happen with a wholly virtual community detached from our real lives. Instead, it’ll happen in steps, and the lines won’t be so clearly drawn. In fact, it’s already happening right under our noses.
Moon Ride
One example I came across recently was the Moon Ride. It’s a project developed by a group of Austrian artists. They rounded up a buncy of cyclists and got them to hook their bikes up to a grid of power generators:
As the sun came down, the cyclists started pedaling. The energy they generated was sent to illuminate a giant balloon released into the night sky. The harder they pedaled, the brighter the faux moon got. Imagine seeing a giant, moving orange moon as you’re walking home!
The difference between this and other pedal-powered electrical projects is that the Moon Ride has both a sense of purpose and (maybe more importantly) a sense of fun baked into it. Pedaling to just generate electricity is boring, but pedaling to generate electricity to light up a magnificent fake moon for tons of other people to see… now that’s a lot more interesting.
Enter Mario & Co.
If you’ve ever played the original Mario Party for Nintendo 64, you might remember a mini-game called ‘Pedal Power’. In it, you’re pedaling to light up the room so that Boo the ghost doesn’t catch you.
The harder you made your character pedal (by twisting the joystick around in little circles), the brighter the bulb would get, until light filled the entire room and scared Boo away (’cause, you know, ghosts tend to stay in the dark).
When you compare this to the Moon Ride, you’ll start seeing the same elements: cause (twisting the joystick/ pedaling the bike), effect (the light gets brighter), and risk (you get blisters on your hand/your feet get tired) vs. reward (Boo doesn’t catch you and you win the game/the faux moon stays lit for all to enjoy).
In A Theory of Fun for Game Design (a book I’d recommend to anyone and everyone), Raph Koster does a nice job of articulating the difference in feeling between a physical challenge by itself and a physical challenge with a higher purpose. He writes,
Physical challenges alone aren’t fun. The feeling of triumph when you break a personal record is. Endurance running can be immensely satisfying but you have not solved a puzzle. It is not the same high as when you win a well-fought game of soccer thanks to your teamwork.
(Due to length, I had to break the entry into two parts. Read part 2!)
