Spark Minute » Gaming

What you can and can’t do (but soon will do) with augmented reality

David Spark — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:25:46 +0000

Last week I attended a fantastic presentation by Gene Becker (@genebecker) of LightningLaboratories, an augmented reality research and consulting firm. I’ve been fascinated by augmented reality (AR), and after attending Becker’s presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I felt I got the full lowdown of the current state of AR, the challenges, and its hopeful future. Much of this post is a summary of what Becker discussed in his presentation. Here are his slides.

Experience Design for Mobile Augmented Reality

View more presentations from Lightning Laboratories.

What is augmented reality?

As Becker explains, “Augmented reality is the display of computer graphics and media, overlaid and registered on real-world environments, interactively in real time.” That simple explanation requires a lot of wizards behind the curtain. There’s a confluence of multiple technologies and disciplines to make AR appear as a seamless experience. AR is comprised of computer graphics, machine vision, sensing and sensor fusion, geographic information systems, mobile systems, ubiquitous computing, and the web, explained Becker.

While we can realize a certain level of AR today, we’re constantly striving for improvement in these technologies and greater synergy.

History of virtual reality

Becker gave a brief history of augmented reality, covering the work of Steve Mann and his wearable computer in the early 1990s, and the Touring Machine from 1997. Becker claims that modern AR has been around for 15 years. But back then to achieve augmented reality the user had to carry a backpack full of gear. Today, those capabilities that filled a backpack – your orientation, direction, view of the world, and display over the world – can now fit in your iPhone, Android phone, or Symbian device.

Uses for augmented reality

For each of AR’s uses, Becker poses a series of questions that a developer has to contend with when trying to effectively achieve and cope with that level of augmented reality.

Visual search or querying the natural world: You can look at a building and augment it with printed text, or maybe call up a historical photo. Question is how do you go about recognizing things in the world? How do you then translate what you know of the real world and make it interesting?

Augmented Reality ID or Social Augmented Reality – If we can identify people in a room, we can understand more about them and their relations. There’s already an example of this with TAT, a new AR technology that IDs the people in the room through facial recognition. Once you positively identify a person, you can access their social account, see that person’s friends (do you have any in common?) and see personal public information.

Problem is augmented reality touches upon some new social and privacy issues. Becker points out that ARI ID is the collapse of social nuance and the end of personal privacy. Someone can stand in front of you and query your social profile while they’re sitting there. It’s more than just seeing you right here in the moment, but now I have a window into your entire background. Social Augmented Reality redefines what it means to be public.

While having your personal information completely public wherever you go may creep some people out, most are slowly becoming accustomed to this type of recognition. Many embrace it. They’ve chosen to be public online, so it’s only natural that they would want their public information to be portable with them. The question is how will others use that information.

We’ve been creeping to the point of accepting this kind of behavior. Already people are accustomed to having their photo taken from a mobile device, uploaded to Facebook, and then tagged with their name. That’s a manual tagging. Soon it will be done automatically. And once you can make that connection, it opens the path to a plethora of other personal data and connections. Becker argues that we’ll need this technology to be built into glasses before it can be more socially acceptable. 3D movies and TV are trying to move us towards this natural concept. Becker predicts that we’re five to ten years away from Terminator-like vision capability.

What’s available today

Layar – Utilizing your GPS and compass, this system knows where you are and what direction you’re pointing. The majority of iPhone-enabled AR applications work like Layar. For the Layar application they look at the Latitude and longitude coordinates of you and where you’re looking. The dots on houses allow you to call up the address and also the price.

Problem with this application is its use is not realistic. People would use this product for a moment, but not continuously. You can’t expect someone to walk around with their phone out in front of them. Inclusion of this technology in glasses is necessary.

Metaio – This technology lets you see 3D-augmented items on top of physical items. In one example with Lego, you can hold up a box to the camera and it will show you on top, in virtual 3D, what the item inside will look like, once you make it.

Becker stressed that AR is not just a new technology, but rather a new medium of creative expression that expands human experience. It’s a mashup of all sorts of information on top of our physical world: Web, images, sound, movies, games, search engines, databases, advertising, and social media connected to people, places, and things. AR can reveal invisible stories all around us.

What makes a compelling AR experience?

Becker explained that there are three dimensions that create a compelling augmented reality experience. A true AR experience allows for flow across all these issues. Becker talked at great length that success in AR requires complete flow.

When people have a good experience with AR, they talk about these three aspects:

Challenge/Expression – physical/mental challenge, self-expression, and creativity
Drama/Sensation – physical stimulation, mental/emotional stimulation, and imagination
Social – competing with others, bonding, and cooperation

All the tools out now are only good at solving one maybe two of these aspects, said Becker.

The reality of AR experiences today

Here’s Becker’s estimation of what does and doesn’t work with AR today.

What works

Physical engagement
Visually captivating
Emotional “wow” factor
Invisible stories, revealed

What doesn’t

Awkward use models
No flow opportunities – Just point situations. Not continuous.
No social dimension
Point experiences only

Mobile AR issues and limitations

Technical limitations

Sensor accuracy
Indoor positioning
Line of sight
Device constraints – Eats up battery life
Lack of interoperable standards – No cooperation on what is a “point.” It’s a lot more than just latitude and longitude.
Relative positioning – Things that we’ve come to expect from an experience on the screen, don’t necessarily work in AR.
Object recognition and tracking
Graphics issues

Use model issues

Unnatural physical position
Ambiguous social signals – What are you doing that you’re pointing this at me?
Cognitive model – What am I seeing here? How do I interpret this?

Authoring Limitations

Platform specific
Low level tools, complex workflow
Focus on point interactions. No support for stories or interesting interactivity. How do we create a flow?

An example of a compelling AR experience

Becker showed us this concept video from HP that shows how a great AR experience could play itself out.

The video addresses all the issues of what makes a compelling experience.

Challenge/Expression – Running to get to your destination. Finding your way through the city.
Drama/Sensation – There’s a storyline. How should you get there? Will you find the locations in time?
Social – Racing and competing against other people.

Mobile AR experience design practices

Becker summarized what you need to be thinking about when developing an AR experience.

Understand limitations and design around them. You’re looking create flow and physical drama.
- Design for inaccuracies in the system.
- Emphasize audio for immersion, continuity, and story.
- Use “magic lens” position sparingly. Don’t need to be looking through it all the time.
- Fail gracefully and transparently.
Design for challenge, expression, and flow.
- Focus on experience, not technology. Have your experience through the device, not of the device.
- Goals should be challenging.
- Set clear goals, expectations, and rules.
- Encourage focus and concentration. Limit distractions and gratuitous things. Don’t overload the individual with ads.
- Make activities rewarding.
- Provide direct and immediate feedback.
Design for physical sensation and emotional drama.
- Scout the locations, know the environment and context deeply, sights, sounds, smells, textures, weather, rhythms, and moods. It’s like filming on location.
- Design for “magic moments” – mental immersion, physical/virtual coincidence.
- Emphasize sound design for immersion, continuity.
- Develop a cross-media story.
Design for social bonding, sharing, and competition.
- Game mechanics drive competitive engagement – Create multi-player competitions, scoring, and leveling systems
- Social media integration to share broadly/vicariously.
- Tight and loose multi-person activities encourage bonding and shared experience.

Bring an interdisciplinary media production mindset

Take all jobs you might have with film, gaming, and web development, mash them together and you’ll have the team for your AR project. To be successful in AR, you’ll need to reach from multiple creative disciplines.

Photo credit: CC Estaban Trigos

Social Gaming Summit: Is gaming overseas more or less lucrative?

David Spark — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:05:35 +0000

All through the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco, one common theme came up over and over again and that was the increasingly stringent contractual rules developers and publishers had to adhere to, just to exist on platforms such as Facebook and the iTunes store. If you think it stinks here, try making deals in Asia said the members of the “International Perspectives” panel.

Those panelists included:

Bret Terrill (moderator)
Kai Bolik, GameDuell
Patrick Liu, Rekoo
Andy Tian, XPD Media
Arthur Chow, 6waves

Here are some of the issues that came up in the “International Perspectives” discussion:

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in Japan is 50% more than the U.S. But the market is far more mobile centric.
In South Korea the gaming industry has been there for more than 10 years, so the audience is very ready for social gaming.
Facebook was originally weak in international markets that already had small local social networks. But that has changed in the past few months as Facebook has gained significant ground internationally.
Facebook takes a 30 percent cut for purchases of Facebook credits to be used in games. Internationally, mobile platforms take a much larger cut.
You’ll see cultural differences in how people around the world play the same game. For example, in one game called “World War,” the Chinese players just save up the money they make in the game. The Americans keep spending it. The Italians just want to fight.
It’s necessary to offer a wide set of payment systems that are appropriate for different countries. Not everyone is accustomed to paying with a credit card or PayPal. They like using different payment systems.
If you have to build a social game outside of Facebook, pick one where Facebook can’t compete. One distributor suggested Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in South Korea.
Operating on other people’s platforms, like Facebook, is a tenuous occupation and difficult to value.

For more coverage of the Social Gaming Summit, check out:

I’ve never participated in any overseas gaming at all. All I’ve seen is kids playing in an Internet cafe. What have you seen?

Up Against Zynga: Small and medium developers surviving the social gaming landscape

David Spark — Sat, 08 May 2010 23:44:26 +0000

With a handful of powerhouse development companies dominating the gaming space, what room is there for small and medium sized development groups? If Facebook has its way and drops Zynga for refusal of accepting its Facebook credit system, there could be plenty of room. But it probably won’t come to that extreme as Zynga will probably accept 70 percent of a very lucrative pie, Facebook’s audience, versus nothing.

The timing of this news was met by huge applause from the group of small- and medium-sized developers and publishers that attended the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco. One panel discussion focused specifically on the market of small and medium sized developers.

Atul Bagga, ThinkEquity Research (moderator)

(From left to right in photo)

Donna Powell, Meteor Games
James Currier, Wonderhill
Greg Thomson, Tall Tree Games
Joel Auge, HitGrab

All developers on the panel worked for shops with less than 40 people on staff.

Here are some of the issues that came up in the discussion:

Placing games on Facebook allows game developers to attract non gamers and bring them into a gaming space.
HitGrab claims that they have 70-80% retention after day one of acquiring a player versus Zynga who claimed in another session that 30-50% was a good rate of retention for their games.
There are some commonplace engagement tricks like spinning wheels and lotteries. All of those were used heavily with NeoPets.
A dotcom connection (a space outside of Facebook) is one way to engage users outside of a social community.
Build an emotional tie with your product. Movies, TV, and music do that. Game developers need to think of ways to emotionally connect their gamers to the product.
Ease of developing social game companies started about 18 months ago when it became so viable on Facebook. At that time there was such a low cost of customer acquisition and high retention.
The big disruption isn’t Facebook, it’s virtual currencies. Virtual currencies is the business and if you focus on that, then small and medium sized companies can thrive.
HitGrab said that Zynga didn’t want to copy its Mousehunt game because they didn’t want to make the investments that it would require in design, game mechanics, and how deeply HitGrab gets involved with retaining players in its games.
Getting something to go viral is something you have to do every single day. It’s not something that just happens.
Intellectual property moving to virtual spaces and gaming have all failed in Second Life and most of them failed in other locations. A good example is Scrabulous, which did very well on Facebook, and then they got kicked off and the official Scrabble tried to succeed and failed.

For more coverage from the Social Gaming Summit:

Do you think Zynga will completely cower to Facebook’s pressure? Zynga definitely needs Facebook, but do you think Facebook needs Zynga?

This post will be valid for about an hour – Apple, iPods, and The Beatles

David Spark — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:50:18 +0000

It’s only an hour away. The big 9-9-09 Apple announcement. Rumors have been flowing about new iPods, iTablets, Beatles appearances, and Beatles music. I discussed that, and The Beatles: Rock Band with Curtis Sliwa last night on WABC Radio. Listen or download the 12:30 segment.

14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media

David Spark — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:05:15 +0000

This article is part of a road show presentation series I did in Toronto for Intertainment Media, owners of Itibiti Systems.

Social media is far from prescriptive, that’s why I sought out stories of people who succeeded in creating their own industry voice using social media. The result of my research is this article, “14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media” (view on docstoc, download PDF). Check out the summary below, read the article, and/or watch an audio slidecast of the live presentation I did in Toronto. Let me know what you think. Do you have any stories of your own to tell?

Summary

Get inspired to capitalize on social media for your business with these successful tales of building industry voice.

Ride current hot news and cultural memes: Mobile gaming company capitalizes on the Bernie Madoff scandal by launching a “create your own Ponzi scheme” game.
Build your own memes: An unexpected Internet entrepreneur starts a new celebrity tracking trend.
Connect an existing brand or talent to your brand: From complete nobodies to big product brands, more and more companies are using celebrities and entertainment to connect audiences to their brands.
Focus on content, not social media: An unbridled focus on content and not gaming social media technologies is what made Alec Saunders a thought leader in Voice 2.0 communications.
Use your own product to tell your story: Alec Saunders demonstrated Calliflower, his company’s free conference calling application, by hosting a daily roundtable podcast in which anyone could participate.
Manage your industry’s community: An SEO entrepreneur launches his city’s professional networking community. With no revenue model, the connections and recognition have built invaluable goodwill with potential and existing customers.
The community is the best help desk: Intuit is helping customers find answers quickly by building social networking capabilities right into its applications.
Take care of your best resource, super users: Like Tom Sawyer did with painting the white picket fence, Boxee turned the arduous task into manning a booth at CES into something customers competed to do.
Convert potential buyers into a word-of-mouth advertising network: Unknown book author becomes a New York Times best-selling author by podcasting his book for free.
Feed everybody’s needs all along the sales cycle: In order to sell a new product, Microsoft engages with decision makers, and tries not to fall short of satisfying everyone.
Own a word: With laser-like intensity and determination, The RFP Database focuses its energies on owning one word and succeeds.
Customer’s perception of what they get must be greater than what they give: General Mills’ Yoplait Kids asks customers if they’re willing to trade personal information for a coupon.
Own more real estate: NBC extends its reach to every screen, but also uses itiBiti to get prime placement on the user’s desktop.
Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing: If everyone follows the same advice, social media becomes very crowded. Sometimes, as Harry McCracken of Technologizer discovered, it’s best to do the opposite.

What’s wrong with your current solution or why haven’t you chosen one yet: Most companies haven’t made the leap into social media because they’re either still trying to uncover social media’s ROI or they lack the necessary structural change in company communications.

Download PDF

14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media –

Build Your Industry Voice with Social Media

David Spark — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:25:38 +0000

Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media

View more presentations from David Spark.

Above is an edited version of a presentation I led in Toronto as part of a social media road show sponsored by Intertainment Media, owners of Itibiti Systems.

The companion article to this presentation is entitled “14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media” (view on docstoc, download PDF, Summary of article). The article includes many more examples than you’ll see in the presentation (Time: 38:44).

During my research I was inspired to adopt many of the techniques for myself. I hope you find the same is true for you as well. Please watch and let me know what you think. If you have any stories of your own, please let me know as I’ll be writing a lot more about this subject.

My new pilot: Power Tech Builders

David Spark — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:22:37 +0000

Few weeks ago I appeared in a pilot for a new technology show called “Power Tech Builders.” Dubbed as “Not your daddy’s Nova.” The show is on builders who use technology to express creativity in everything from robotics to medical applications. The show is directed, produced, and shot by TJ Walkup. It’s edited by Brent Jones. The field engineer is Seth Worden, and I’m the talent. The first part of this three part program covers RoboGames, which is essentially the Olympics for robots held once a year in San Francisco. I’m really impressed with the work TJ, Brent, and Seth put into this. They truly did a fantastic job. Please take a look at the ten minute pilot. Watch below, or see the larger version here.

Spark Minutes on the air for the week of 3/9/09

David Spark — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:00:12 +0000

For those listeners of the Spark Minute on Green 960 or 910 KNEW in San Francisco, you’ve found the summary of all the follow up information and reports you heard on air for the week of 3/9/09.

The market for used games, online and offline

David Spark — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:12:12 +0000

You remember when your local video store made all of its money off of late fees? And then Netflix and video on demand came around and all that money washed up. It was fun while it lasted, but now that money is gone.

The rise and fall of the video rental store could be a map of success and failure for GameStop’s market for used video games. That’s what the market thinks as the company’s stock tumbled after Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, and Amazon announced they’re all entering the used video game market. Up until now, GameStop more or less cornered this market. Bring your old video games you don’t like playing anymore and we’ll give you a new one or another used one. It was a very lucrative business for GameStop as 44 percent of its gross profits came from the buying and selling of used games.

GameStop isn’t deterred by the announcements by competitors. They’re banking on its relationships with customers and that people want instant gratification. Amazon’s model is to give customers the option to trade in used games for store credit to buy anything. I think Amazon will be hugely successful. Many of us just give our games away to Goodwill or try to sell them at garage sales. And I believe we are willing to wait. I’ve traded in books to a local book store in my area, Green Apple Books, and I’ve got about $40 credit I’ve yet to use.

Yes, in some cases people want instant gratification, but in other cases we can wait. And with the multitude of options of ways we can entertain ourselves, I think most of us are willing to wait for a game as we amuse ourselves with all the other games, movies, and on demand movies we have access to.

Good Morning Silicon Valley has a great write up that I highly recommend.

This news item is for the Spark Minute week of 3/9/09 which can be heard daily on Green 960 and 910 KNEW in San Francisco, CA.

A military camp in China for Internet addicts

David Spark — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:43:47 +0000

Are you on the Web 6 hours a day consecutively for three months? If so, then you fall under the definition of an Internet addict and your parents need to ship you off to military camp. Such is the case in China where Internet addiction has become a real problem and parents who’ve failed at limiting computer time are having to take far more drastic steps like sending their kids to a military camp for Internet detox.

Parents have to go with junior as well as they’re often the problem with the addiction. Patients and parents stay in the camp for three months and undergo non-Internet related activities such as military training, reading, therapy, and sports.

The most common symptoms of Internet addicts is that they get upset very easily and they’re afraid of people. Looks like one solution for both is a lot of “hugging it out” therapy.

Check out Time Magazine’s great story about Internet addiction and props to my friend Patrick Mauro, sports radio host, for bringing this story to my attention.