crouton days

This post by fellow westsider, video game person and facial hair activist, Dave Taylor reminded me that I’ve been living a human life in a automobiles world and I should share.

A year and a month ago I started riding my bike from our apartment in Culver City to work @ Pandemic in Westwood (about 5-6mi each way). I started riding for a number of reasons; my fiance was tired of sharing a car, I needed the exercise, it’s less expensive but mainly because I hated driving on the westside. Every Los Angelian knows that driving on the westside is akin to bathing in that negative-emotion-jizz from Ghostbusters 2. Driving on the westside was sapping my love for driving automobiles and that’s coming from someone who has owned 8 cars and raced/drifted for many years.

So since Pandemic’s closure, I’ve tried to discipline myself to walk whenever possible and it’s helping me be healthier, wealthier and greener. Things I frequently walk to: two supermarkets, dentist office, farmers market, movie theatre, bank, post office, art shows and over a dozen restaurants. Of course, when you live in a city as brilliantly designed as Culver, it’s easy to live locally. I still drive to certain parts of the city for the time being, but as we get more creative, driving becomes less important. Eventually, I can see giving it up all together- except at the racetrack.

I just finished reading Ikujiro Nonaka’s article entitled ’The Knowledge-Creating Company’ which was published in 1991 in the Harvard Business Review. There is a lot to unpack from such a short article and this write-up will be my reference for what I learned and allow me to theorize how his work might apply to the games biz.

‘Tacit’ Knowledge
“We can know more than we can tell” –Michael Polanyi

Nonaka’s article introduces the concept of ‘Tacit’ knowledge. Tacit knowledge is commonly described as know-how, but goes beyond technical proficiency and skill. Tacit knowledge includes the mental-models, beliefs or perspectives that we often taken for granted. Tacit knowledge is different from traditional explicit (or objective) knowledge, which is easy to formalize and transfer. Tacit knowledge is like brilliance in that it can be difficult to quantify but is very valuable. Who creates tacit knowledge?

People. Humans. We all create tacit knowledge, even unconsciously. Which is why we must emphasize the importance of Human Resource. Human Resource is not what fills a staffing plan; it is what drives creativity and innovation and where knowledge is created. “New knowledge always begins with the individual.”

I think it’s important to remember that knowledge is not always created in the office. Valuable insights or ideas might come from a hobby, a personal project or a long shower. It’s why modern companies like Google pay their employees to explore and digest. Time to think and digest is absent at most companies and needs to be improved.

The Knowledge-Creating Company
A Knowledge-Creating Company is a positive feedback loop of knowledge exchange that resembles a spiral. Knowledge goes through four transitions before repeating itself:

1. Tacit to tacit. An individual acquires know-how or a new perspective through socialization.
2. Tacit to explicit. An individual converts this know-how into information and shares it with their team.
3. Explicit to explicit. The team makes this information standard.
4. Explicit to tacit.  The team has internalized this information and takes it for granted. An individual uses this information to reframe their thinking and thusly creates new tacit knowledge.

Central to Nonaka’s article is the concept of knowledge changing phases. Tacit knowledge becomes practical, easily communicated explicit knowledge and vice versa. As a company, this is how we can stay competitive because we constantly threatened by new technology and competitors. If our company is constantly innovating (parallels Lean’s constant improvement) we cans stay ahead and if we correctly manage the serendipitous nature of innovation, everyone benefits.

Managing the Knowledge-Creating Company
It’s important to note that a Knowledge-Creating Company requires both autonomy and personal commitment from its employees. In return, managers provide a flexible environment that is conducive to innovation. Leading through mandate or strict directives might limit their employees’ creativity or damage their commitment. Instead it is management’s job to inspire the company, not control it.

Redundancy is another non-intuitive principle of the Knowledge-Creating Company. Redundancy is usually regarded as waste, but redundancy can help can help the creation and spread of knowledge. Nonaka provides these examples:

1. Redundancy via Internal Competition. By having several teams work towards the same goal, they can effectively evaluate each other and agree on the best approach.
2. Redundancy via Strategic Rotation. By carefully moving individuals from one discipline to work with a team of another discipline, both the individual and his new team gain a better understanding of how the company operates. The game biz counterpart to this is probably the strike team or embedment. My career might also be an example of strategic rotation.
3. Redundancy via Access to Information: Free access to information allows individuals to interact and communicate on equal terms. This way, no individual or group has the sole responsibility for creating new knowledge and knowledge has value regardless of where in the hierarchy it was created. Example.

Managing Knowledge Creation
Knowledge creation is a product of the interaction between three roles: frontline employees, senior management and teams overseen by middle management.

Who are we talking about when it comes to games? From a macro perspective, you might think of a whole studio as frontline employees, a publisher as senior management and the studio leaders as middle management. Or you could just look at a studio, with most of the developers being considered frontline employees, the producer or studio management as senior management and discipline leads as middle management.

Frontline employees are absolute experts at what they do and the day-to-day realities of the business. However, they are usually confined to very specific information sets, thus limiting them from seeing the broader picture. When frontline employees exchange knowledge with other roles, there is a chance that the context for their knowledge will be lost. According to Nonaka, that ambiguity or mistranslation of knowledge between roles is actually a good thing. It creates an opportunity for different roles to look at the information in a new light and question the status quo. Knowledge is born in chaos and it managements role to steer that chaos towards serendipity.

Senior management is on the quest for the ideal. They create a ‘conceptual umbrella’ that helps frame the expertise of the employees. They ask big questions like: what are we trying to learn? Where are we going? Who are we? What do we need to know? Senior management imbues the employees with a sense of direction by “setting the standards for justifying the value of knowledge”. It is their job to choose which efforts to support and explore. In the Knowledge-Creating company, this is not just ROI. Bioware may not be a profitable studio, but EA supports them because quality is where EA wants to be. Metrics for deciding the value of knowledge may include: does it fit within the company’s vision? Does it express the goals and strategies of senior management? Can it help build the knowledge network? The company’s vision should not be so clear as to be seen as an order. This could effect the commitment of employees who should be self-motivated in their work. This is an area where management can use metaphor and symbolism.

Teams are central in a Knowledge-Creating Company because they give individuals a shared context for interaction and engagement.  Teams create new perspectives, pool and examine their information and eventually form a collective perspective. Conflict is good within teams because it can lead them to question the status quo and new perspectives. As team leaders, middle managers apply the vision of senior management to the chaos of the day to day.  They are the junctions between the perpendicular flows of knowledge. They combine the tacit knowledge of both executives and frontline employees, make it explicit and apply it to products or technologies. As Nonaka writes these are the “knowledge engineers” within a knowledge-creating company.

Thoughts
Video Games are illusions that require complex tricks to execute properly. So, I think game development is a natural fit for Knowledge-Creation. In the bigger picture, I think the industry is missing many opportunities by leaving such a big knowledge gap between publishers and developers. It’s more important than ever for developers to be communicating with publishers and marketers about business and consumers. Of course a few companies are getting it right (like Valve, Naughty Dog, PopCap, surely others) and have enjoyed consistent, long-term success as a result of open knowledge environments.

Watched a few DICE talks thanks to G4’s(?) coverage. I had no idea they were covering non-commercial industry events, maybe they’ll cover GDC for me since I can’t really afford to go. Anyway, here are some thoughts.

#OnLive
If I were a big publisher I would start figuring out how to make my products thrive in this ecosystem. Once games are on an even playing field, many of the advantages that big publishers had (distribution, marketing, etc) go out the window. And if quality is king, then publicly traded publishers will need to adapt. Also, while the value of OnLive to core gamers is obvious, Nintendo still rules the family + living room experience. So unless someone other than Nintendo can make Nintendo software, I don’t see OnLive being the single source of TV gaming.

#JesseSchell
Jesse Schell’s captivating presentation on ‘human game design’ got my wheels turning. The casual/social revolution is pretty clearly a business winner. I could imagine those products becoming the backbone of large publishers. Their developers may need to worry about the laws governing some of their revenue and/or Facebook driving up their marketing costs, but I’m sure they’ll do just fine. What I find more interesting about this genre is how these games work and what can be learned from them. As Schell points out, these games are deeply rooted in psychology/social psychology and we are just starting to see what that type of game can do.

The possibilities are endless: games to make everyday tasks more interesting, games for your health or the environment, games that can take advantage of people and finally, amazing new ‘core’ game experiences that can give us something deep. Sure I want a BioWare WiiFit/RPG as much as the next guy, but that last group of game is the one I’m excited for. And we’re already seeing it to some extent; look at the social connectivity in Demon’s Souls or how Microsoft makes Halo addictive or what Bioshock was trying for with ‘would you kindly’. I can’t wait to see if designers can use psychology to design games that can impact us more than other mediums. Can they teach us about our own nature or help us gain new perspectives? At the very least, Jesse Schell earned himself a book purchase.

Saw some twitter buzz today (by @jwhdavison via @shawnelliott) about the importance of spoilers in game reviews as the games start to get more complex narratives and deeper themes. I attempted to comment on the gamepro post but couldn’t be bothered to register (why>no>facebook>connect). So here it is:

My 83 year old grandmother loves film and has a system for getting what she needs out of reviews; she starts by building up trust with the critics she agrees with, then she skims their reviews for general impressions good/bad and after she watches a film and has formed her own opinion, she goes back to the review for more insight or a different perspective. Sure there’s a risk, she may need to ditch her geriatric companions to escape a bad film occasionally. Gamers don’t have less to risk when since we can choose between renting, buying used or borrowing within days of a games release.

Spoil what needs spoiling and let the reader be responsible for filtration.

What began as boredom finally gained some momentum once I made it to ‘dystopian disneyland’ or ‘the animatronic guide to rapture’. Still, it’s difficult to justify two years for a sequel of the same length, using the same tech, maybe even some of the same assets? Apparently that’s the difference between the tin man and a well oiled machine. With Left 4 Dead 2 and GTA Vice city, Valve and Rockstar kept their teams on and were able to pull off 9 month dev cycles while improving quality.

Despite the relative lack of improvement over the first game, I am loving the strategic feel of setting traps which I don’t remember having nearly as much fun with in the first game. I get a Rube Goldberg-ian sense of satisfaction watching all of my little traps purring in unison, it’s like The Incredible Machine with ragdolls. Sigh. I also played the other game on my Bioshock disc- it’s called multiplayer and it ain’t pretty. Besides being buggy enough to make Mercs 2 look good, the team responsible for it fell into the same damn trap as the Uncharted 2 guys. Like Uncharted, it had the potential to give us a new and interesting multiplayer experience, instead they shipped with a poor imitation of Call of Duty.

One more thing that is bugging me about Bioshock 2 and Borderlands- stop making me look down- it’s ugly, disorienting and it hurts my neck. Either require me to look at the ground less or put less crap on the ground or how about some ground tits? You know, a little physical simulation on them and we’re good. Look, if you want me to stare at the shitty parts of your game I’m going to need more incentive.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication? What would Leonardo think about his famous quote and the implications it has for game design? The more I play, the more I find this sophistication worth playing and the usual complexity not. This summer has been a great argument for the return to the simple with Trials HD, Shatter, Fat Princess and the wonderful one button Splosion Man. Even Battlefield 1943, with its somewhat taxing controls, makes good with its simple control point gameplay. These games are keeping my PS3 and 360 busy and provide a clue about the common thread that connects these games- neither console has a disc inside.

To be continued..

omg games

scribblenauts – I have no idea what this game is about but it has adorable, black holes and internet memes.

batman arkham – quality

dirt 2 – felt a little floaty and looked a little bloomy but sounded great and might be great fun

split/second aka michael bay’s mario kart – beautiful, exciting and so much fucking fun

trials HD – draws up excite bike but entirely physics based. the devs were super cool and I had a blast with the organic feel of the game.

forza 3 – feels and looks good. talked to their executive producer about adding some more smoke to the drifting.

brutal legend – didn’t seem very polished but it was hilarious so I decided to wait for its release.

need for speed shift – a lot of people complained about the excess blur when you crash or bump but I’m happy with the departure from rice culture to race culture.

gran turismo psp – clever girl, occluding 20% of the screen with UI. GT felt and looked great, I can’t wait to play it on my regular old psp-2000.

psp go – ellipses

god of war – hey, its god of war. looking good on a technical level but the art direction is not on par with the previous games.

uncharted 2 – instead of really refining the good stuff in drakes, they added multiplayer. which a) sucks b) it’s not something I want in this type of game.  c) should have been replaced with episodic content

fat princess – adorable and could be addictive, with the controls had a better sense of weight

pixel junk shooter – squinty hd graphics are getting a little tired but the game is beautiful and fun.

left 4 dead 2 – looks weird during the day, didn’t get to try the chainsaw

dark void – forgot to play this, must’ve looked too similar to lost planet

endless ocean 2 – endless, yo

new super mario bros wii – a blast to run over your friends in co-op and finish first. I can see how cooperative co-op could be fun on much harder levels

dead space extraction – looks excellent but might not be running at full 480p?

blur – this game is suckass

mini ninjas – its adorable art reminds me of lost winds

tmnt turtles in time – ubisoft was bogarding this game and instead focusing on their shitty smash bros clone of the same make

I’ve become accustomed to being skeptical of ‘hardcore’ Wii titles and doubly so of anything published by THQ and exponentially so of risky seeming IP. How about a game where you play as a tarantula and a scorpion while you unearth a story narrated by Billy Bob Thorton, Dennis Hopper and clever set pieces? Yes, this is a real game that has actually arrived in my mailbox and it’s not half bad.

Kratos vs Hades in God of War 3 for the Wii Mini Lego Edition

Deadly creatures reminds me a lot of God of War; the cinematic presentation, lots of boss fights, the combat system, set pieces, the encounter/battle system. But it’s the cool, testosteroneLITE infused facade that makes this game appealing. The animations are both anthropomorphic and fun and the art direction is strong. Even the marketing is fun. It really makes you wonder what would be possible if publishers spent 25 million on a Wii title instead of 5.

What’s the story on this photoshoppery? Dead Rising 2 is being developed by a Canadian studio and being published by Capcom. Why is this disappointing? The Canadian interpretation of America versus the Japanese one. Sure, Canada has their stereotypes of the US, but can they pull off the social commentary? I’m obviously going to get the game but part of what made Dead Rising so great was the subtle stuff and arguably even the B treatment. The new House of the Dead game got it right.

I just started riding my bike a lot with the goal of making that my main transportation to and from work. From Culver City to Westwood is roughly 10 miles, uphill on the way to work and downhill back. Last Saturday I accidentally rode about 16-18 miles and found myself at the Marina. The next day I wasn’t feeling lazy and went for another, much more brisk, 8 miles.

 

rode to marina del rey

So, starting tomorrow I’ll be carrying my own ass to work and got some new equips (helmet and lights) to help get me there safely. I still need to do some mods to the bike; the front wheel doesn’t seem to be true and the handle bars are a little wide. Once I’ve got that basic stuff out of the way I need to change the gearing a bit and start looking for areas where I can lighten her up.

pretty fly for a ... bicycle

In Wii Music you can control tempo, tone, arrangement, dynamics and even composition itself. Sounds advanced, but this isn’t some bastard child of reason, pro tools and a Wiimote. No, the interaction is very simplistic and that turns out to be a good thing. That’s because Wii Music encourages variety, experimentation and incredibly, improvisation. Improvisation, in my view, is at the heart of creating many important and expressive types of music like jazz, rock and turntablism. Improvisation is the foundation of many deep, complex and sophisticated forms of music and it’s also the foundation of Wii Music.

rock the bells

It’s not surprising that Wii Music has been overlooked since gamers usually dismiss toys that masquerade as video games. And I’ll gladly concede that Wii Music may not be a good video game, but when I compare Wii Music to Rock Band I can’t help but see Rock Band for what it is; not a music game. That’s because nothing the player does is musical. No, Rock Band is a rock star game and I think most of us can agree that being a musician is not a requirement for rock stardom. If you think about it, even the drums and singing are just fancy controllers for matching colored bars. Wii Music encourages musical creativity where Rock Band does not. If you or your kids want to ‘play musician’ instead of ‘playing rock star’, try Wii Music.

Let me put it this another way. Everyone has music that they enjoy for simple entertainment value, personally that explains my collection of 80’s pop. Many people can also appreciate the musical contributions of specific group(s) or genre(s) on a much deeper level, that’s my Miles, Hendrix, Kid Koala, etc.. Music is not just about fun and entertainment and neither is Wii Music. Rock Band is all about fun, entertainment and maybe even ‘music exploration’ as Harmonix’ founder suggest. Harmonix’ founder also calls Haromonix a music company and Rock Band a music game. But how can Rock Band be about musical if we can program a robot to do it better than a human?

Last thing, I know some will say that Rock Band can teach you to play the drums. I agree and think it’s a great tool for learning some basic coordination. But learning to play the Rock Band drums (or the recorder) does not make you a musician even if it might start you in that direction.

by C.B.Leslie

Our first three dates were sublime and we clicked. Your controls were great, your pacing was wonderful and I always knew what you were thinking. The pressure of the chase was so intense it sent my heart rate up. Then, out of no where, you put on the red light. You went from gazelle on the run to a helpless salmon swimming upstream and everything fell apart. You forced me into combat with every encounter and you gave me no room to gain that wonderful momentum. What happened? I am reading into the fact that your low budget cutscenes got progressively worse with each outing? I bet it was your parents. I thought they were cool with you prototyping your first few dates. Did they force an alpha date on you that just wouldn’t work? God that makes me so angry. Well, I’ts too late for the blame game, Mirror’s Edge, you broke my heart.

When Apple announced plans to release an SDK for the iPhone platform I knew they had a secret plot. The iPhone itself is a great device, seemingly ubiquitous here in Los Angeles, but it’s still the younger sibling of the much, much, more popular iPod. The iPod has had an exciting 9 months with the launch of the SDK and App Store, the swarm of games available for it and the shift from the best iPod yet to the ‘funnest’. Since then, many have called it a DS killer and I conceded, it had the potential, the specs and the image. But where are all the games? Right now the App Store has plethora of games but, none of them truly exploit the hardware, none of them have the polish or feel of a retail product. The iPod is a success but it’s not a gaming machine. What a difference 9 months can make.

Yesterday I downloaded a game called Rolando. Rolando is brilliant in its simplicity; get your circles to the exit. But this isn’t match three simplicity, this has the essence of a triple-A title. It has excellent art and music (provided by Mr Scruff), it has achievements, its credits are a level, it quicksaves your game as soon as you exit. That may sound like a boring list of features but it’s actually the details that make an already fun game an A+ production. Understanding those types of details is a prerequisite to making good games. Yet It has the fit and finish of a $30 DS game and this breed of game could turn Apple into a bona fide gaming outfit.

that's how we roll in rolando

Rolando is tailored to the player; on an iPod, gamers might play for as little as 60 seconds so Rolando is instantly rewarding. Few iPod owners are gamers so Rolando’s developers gradually introduce mechanics while they avoid neutering a gamers enjoyment. It’s the kind of understanding of the user that smacks of Nintendo, and who else should Apple want to target? Nintendo has already fired back at the iPhone by creating the DSi; a DS with a memory card, camera, ‘online market’ and media playback capabilities.

Prices on iPod touches will drop and the DSi will never compete with the iPod as a multi-purpose device. But Nintendo is untouchable when it comes to software. Even something as intuitive and platform specific as Rolando might easily get lost in the herd of shovelware that lives on the App Store plain. What Apple needs is a way to brand their hardware with their software and the solution is to become a first party developer/publisher. 

Apple’s latest MacBooks, which are also Apple’s most popular laptops, now include a low-end gaming GPU and I bet Valve knows how many Macs are playing TF2. Apple has slowly and now more vocally been positioning their hardware as a vehicle for games and the time is right. They just need to capitalize on Steve Jobs’ exit and their billions in liquidity. Come on guys, just grab your balls and create the next Mario.