Even if I still have to pay for the ticket, if there is no deal or discount attached, if all it is is a letter with the announcement that the park is now open - I would still get the chills. Because a lot of us once upon a time wondered what it would be like to get a letter like that - what it would be like to set foot in the Hogwarts castle.

Universal - get on it!

A letter from Hogwarts

Bow in hand, my super hot archer-chick was standing there, looking at her adventuring party. A mix of races, classes and personalities. These weren’t just any characters, these were the dudes and girls that had stood by her as she kicked butts across all corners of a an entire continent. Her friends, her allies. And I could not care less about most of them.

The game in question is Dragon Age: Origins, which is one of those games that really make a point of the player exploring dialogue options and getting to know their party. And I did! I crafted pretty close relationships with the two party members that I liked the most. They told me their deepest secrets, I completed their special side quests and my character even forged a strong sentimental relationship with both of them: one romantic, one friendly. But me? I just did not care.

And as I finished the game and turned it off, I wondered why it was so easy for me to eject the disc, why these ultra-developed characters couldn’t do for me what the 2D sprites of Chrono Trigger’s characters could. When I killed Morrigan’s mom, who turns into a freaking dragon, I was excited during the battle (it was a pretty difficult battle) and little more. But when I traveled to the past in Chrono Trigger to save Lucca’s mom, by heart was beating so fast that I almost got the code to stop the killer machine wrong.

My impression is that it has to do with over-developing a character. In Chrono Trigger, party members speak just enough for the player to get a good idea of their personality. All of them are honest, and none of them is pretentious in their development. They don’t have incredible, epic backstories. In Dragon Age, however, I could barely stand Alistair’s humor an hour after I met him, so I stopped talking to him. Which made him become even more obnoxious. And as far as backstories go, one is the bastard child of the king, another is the daughter of the most epic witch to have ever existed, the other used to be a bard, then became a missionary, now wants to be a bard again… heck, I would have added the dog to the party if I didn’t find the idea of my dog fighting at my side so ridiculous.

The risk with developing such rich characters is that all of them, because they are meant for the epicness of being part of your parties, will have strong personalities, intricate backstories and specific points of view. So, out of a room of 7 strong personalities, could you genuinely like 3 of them enough to hang out with them for 50 consecutive hours? Probably not. Yet you must if you want to play most hardcore RPGs.

This has led me to be increasingly displeased with the members of my parties in the RPGs I play (which, admittedly, aren’t that many). I can perfectly imagine the whiteboards in the design rooms, the spreadsheets filled with all of the character’s names and their views on different topics of the game. Maybe there’s even an email thread “What do you guys think Morrigan would think about the hero supporting this decision?“. And at the end, they come up with these very rich characters that at the same time feel hollow. A bunch of pixels and decision trees crammed into a virtual body. A party that falls into the uncanny valley.

These parties are so real, so planned, that they become unlikable. So yeah, Morrigan, I understand that you don’t agree with my wasting resources to save this dude so what’s that account to? A -2 to your “like me” meter? Sure. Sheesh, just give me Magus so he can be all quiet and smooth with his cape. Now that’s a dude I’d like to have in my party.

A place where a lot of these cultural differences become evident are theme parks. I knew from a visit to Disneyland Paris some years back that European theme parks were not the same as American ones - and I commented that to my friends on our way to Port Aventura, which is about an hour drive from Barcelona.

Some of the things that stand out the most. You’re not supposed to smoke in most of the park’s spaces, though everyone still does and nobody cares. They sell beer to guests and don’t ask for ID if you look like you’re old enough. Staff is extremely relaxed and not too concerned with everyone staying properly in line or standing exactly where they should.

Oh, and the Cookie Monster does not hesitate to pose with a beer glass.

Cookie Monster shares a drink with my friends.

]]> http://www.franciscosouki.com/designblog/2010/05/only-in-europe-theme-park-cast/feed/ http://www.franciscosouki.com/designblog/2010/02/balli-plastici-presenting-feb-26th-italian-cultural-institute-in-washington-dc/ http://www.franciscosouki.com/designblog/2010/02/balli-plastici-presenting-feb-26th-italian-cultural-institute-in-washington-dc/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:48:04 +0000 fsouki http://www.franciscosouki.com/designblog/?p=129 Balli Plastici will be presented in Washington DC at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura this coming Friday, February 26th, as part of the Fortunato Depero 50 exhibit.

The project was originally presented at the Museum of Art and Design in New York as part of the Performa 09 festival and has since obtained positive reviews from New York Magazine and the Art in America magazine.

You can learn more about the software we created and used to craft the performance here. You can learn more about the semester-long project here.

Be sure to check it out if you’re in the DC area!

Besides from a very informative fly-through of the whole process of getting an app into the App Store - starting with “you need a Mac” and going all the way to “you can choose from different pricing tiers” - the representative presented us with some data from different case studies taken directly from the apps they have developed and put up for sale or download.

iPhone development is not precisely my thing, so even though I have a pretty good notion of the iPhone development process I had never gone out of my way to gather this kind of data. The gold rush of iPhone development is well past us and so companies (and particulars) are now exploring all possible avenues in order to call attention to their apps and to keep the downloads per day vs. time graph from going down too quickly.

“We estimate that there are around 500,000 iPhones in Spain”, he said, and if we add to that the fact that Spanish people are used to downloading their media the conclusion is that there is not much money to be had in the Spanish app market. Two of those downloads per day vs. time graphs sum it up pretty nicely: the first one shows how virtually no paid downloads of an app intended for Spanish customers are made per day; when the app is offered for free for a week, the downloads soar beyond the realm of the graph but, sure enough, when the offer is over the downloads go back to nil. The second graph shows the case of a similar app which, again, has been getting close to no downloads; the company solution is to release a Lite version which prompts for upgrades: the Lite version soars in downloads but the paid version is not affected in the least bit.

The Lite strategy is something that the company is very used to doing and has learned to leverage in the right way, says the representative. He showed how the strategy has yielded more positive results in other European countries like France and went over some strategies the company is pursuing in order to market their paid apps as enhancements to their Lite counterparts.

Getting featured by the App store, he says, is about the best thing that can happen to you. He pulled another of his nifty graphs to show the effect that getting featured had had on one of their first apps - one that made use of GPS to track public bike rental locations back when using GPS was not the norm for apps. As expected, the downloads are affected significantly by being featured, but what’s more interesting is that as soon as the product is not featured anymore the downloads drop just as abruptly to precisely the same level of downloads per day it had before getting featured.

After going through several examples of actual responses they have gotten from Apple when they review the apps for the store (including an actual “we are sorry but there were issues with your app. Please send it again”), he closed the talk by talking to us about one of their most successful apps, called Push the Button. This app was conceived as a sort of proof-of-concept app for the company members to get acquainted with the iPhone development process and consisted of a game/activity which counted how many times the user could push a button in 30 seconds. It was offered for free and downloaded over 600,000 times. When they tried their luck at charging one dollar for it, the downloads stopped. When they made it free again they went back up to the same level.

All in all, a very enlightening talk by Mobivery. It’s always delightful to hear people share their success and failure stories, especially when it comes to both a popular platform like the iPhone and a secretive company like Apple.

The Disney Legends

The IAAPA Attractions Expo held many surprises for me, but none as gratifying and mind-bogglingly amazing as a panel session very aptly titled “Disney Legends: working with Walt”.

The Disney Legends themselves were Marty Sklar (story man), Blaine Gibson (artist), Bob Gurr (mechanical wizard), Richard Sherman (composer) and Harrison “Buzz” Price (numbers man), all sitting side by side and brilliantly moderated by Bob Rogers.

The whole point of the session was for them to share their stories about working with Walt Disney (as in the man, not the company), though of course we were all hoping for them to deviate a little bit into sideplots in order to get the best stories that these men could tell. All of them having helped build what Disney is today, it wasn’t surprising to find them all to be brilliant storytellers and effortless entertainers.

The panel kicked off with small introductions and, barely ten minutes in, every single soul in the audience knew they were in for an incredible ride when Buzz uttered the words “I remember the last thing Walt ever said to me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and said: take care of my school” (referring to CalArts). The audience breathed deep and respectfully clapped. This sort of thing only happens once in a lifetime.

Walt Disney was, it turns out, pretty darn amazing. At least according to these guys who (did I forget to mention?) helped define what we know today as the themed entertainment industry. Buzz, for example, was the one guy to single out Orlando as the destination for Disney World when most of Walt’s other advisers were pushing for different locations, some even way up north. I have transcribed below some of the stories told by these five amazing individuals in the hope that some of them might inspire you as they have no doubt inspired me. Apologies to them for paraphrasing most of these.

Marty Sklar

Marty shared with us a story about Pirates of the Caribbean that says a lot about how Walt used to communicate. As he recalls, when Walt developed the script for the ride, all it said about the animatronics was that they would “sing and do things“. This is how you knew something great was cooking inside his head, says Marty, because he would use the word things to refer to something that simply could not be described.

The five of them would pretty much agree in that you could not say “no” to Walt. Not for fear of his reaction, but because he knew that you were capable of doing what he asked of you. If you didn’t say “yes”, says Marty, Walt would certainly find someone else that was willing to take the chance.

Blaine Gibson

Blaine proclaimed himself the oldest guy on the table and effectively dissipated Buzz’s doubts about the matter. One of Walt’s greatest assets, he said, was his enthusiasm. You could not be negative about the project around Walt.

Blaine also told us about the experience of modeling the Lincoln animatronic and about a time when Walt, during a TV interview, brought him on air to talk about the animatronic.

Bob Gurr

Originally an Industrial Designer, Bob eventually became a master of all things mechanic thanks to Walt’s assumption that if he could draw a car then he could design the insides as well. After designing the vehicles for Autopia (both inside and out) only two of them out of forty survived the initial week. Walt approached him and asked how the ride was doing, to which Bob replied that they could use a couple mechanics to help fix the cars. Shortly afterward Bob was surprised at the ride by a truck dragging a white house - Where do you want your damn garage? asked the driver.

About this, Bob commented that Walt did not care about your experience or certifications: he cared about what he believed you were actually capable of doing. Bob went from not knowing the insides of a car to designing the Disney Monorail. His thoughts on that: God, I’m not certified to do any of this!

Richard Sherman

The most charismatic of the bunch, Richard worked closely with Walt on composing songs for the rides back then.  Along the same lines as what all his fellow legends had to say, Richard told us that Walt had a great intuition about what each person was capable of achieving. He would ask you to do something, says Richard, and the right answer was always “yes! I can do that!”.

Richard also pointed out that Walt had a very strong presence during meetings and that he cared a lot about positive feedback. If someone concentrated on the negative aspects of a project, he would reply “I don’t care if you don’t like it! What can we do to make it better?”.

One of the best stories of the panel came from Richard’s experience of composing the theme song for the It’s a Small World ride. The ride, designed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, originally featured all of the dolls concurrently signing their national anthems. When Richard hopped on the boat with Walt to ride it for the first time, Walt asked to stop the music because of the ensuing cacophony. Then he turned to Richard, saying “you’re going to write me a song that’s going to explain all this, right?”. Richard remembers that after writing It’s a Small World (After All) he proposed to Walt during a car ride that they donate the song to UNICEF. Walt, pulling the car over, told Richard “are you crazy? That song’s going to put your kids through college!”.

Buzz Price

Besides being “the man that chose Orlando”, Buzz had a very particular relationship with Walt, mainly because he was never officially a Disney employee, which meant that he could perform studies for Disney without needing to go through all the hoops of the company’s bureaucracy.

Buzz warmed all our hearts when he shared with us the moment when Walt asked him to take care of CalArts. He also reinforced the general opinion that Walt was a great intuitor, referring to his great intuitions about people. He said that when Walt asked you to do something, you always had to “give him a ‘yes, if’; never a ‘no, because’” - even if initially you sensed that the job was out of your expertise.

It was an amazing session, and it really had the air of a once in a lifetime experience. In my awe, though, I completely missed the piano that was sitting in a corner of the room and so was totally shocked when Richard Sherman told us he would end the panel by playing us some songs.

He played The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room, There’s a great, big beautiful tomorrow, Imagination, Magic Journeys and It’s a Small World (After All) in a slower tempo version which he told us he adopted after performing the song on 9/11. After the recital, however, he was asked by his fellow legends to perform Walt’s favorite song, Feed the birds. And so he did.

It was an emotional journey and I suspect it wasn’t so just for the audience. It’s thank to these men, along with many others, that the entertainment industry is what it is today. And I am very grateful to them for choosing to share their experiences with us in the hopes that we take the industry a step further towards the goal of helping everyone’s dreams come true.

You may listen to the panel here. And listen to Richard Sherman’s performance here.

Few controllers report zero magnitude at their rest position. Each controller reports a different magnitude at rest, and the same controller will report different magnitudes each time it returns to rest. Additionally, different controllers report different maximum magnitudes when pressed fully in a direction, and the same controller will report different maximum magnitudes when pressed in different directions.

He goes on mentioning how you can mitigate this issue by implementing dead zones, but I find it extremely interesting because it’s exactly the sort of problem that we never think about until we encounter it in our designs. Every time we pick up a console controller, we take reliable thumb stick response for granted, but that does not mean that it does not pose a challenge to developers.

Read about the project here and here.

Check out the Performa website.

Some stories are fit for a Haiku and some for an epic novel