The New Type of Dance?

Even though I’m not at E3, I’ve still been keeping up through Google Reader on the latest and coolest action there. One of the things that has been getting my eyes and ears ready for some epic epicness is the new game coming out for the Connect from Harmonix. It’s called Dance Central, and I’m pretty excited (as you can already tell).

Coming from the perspective of a long-time DDR and ITG player (check out the link to DDRecall at the bottom page if you would like proof), I’m excited for the opportunity to be able to exercise to some good music, but to also get other parts of my body involved in the action. While there’s nothing wrong with playing all of the 10s, 11s, 12s, and 13s in the normal arcade setting, the play does end up getting a little boring by oneself and just playing to test one’s own skills. Being able to incorporate the other limbs (I’ve gotten to play ParaPara Paradise before and really thought that it was cool to get the arms and legs involved!) presents a great opportunity for fun, the chance to incorporate other people into the fun, and also a way for players and families to push themselves for exercise. I think exergaming is a great way to have fun, get into shape, and provide the basis for a healthier life, and I would love to help design these games, as I’ve lost 60 pounds playing DDR and ITG (in the groove if you’re unsure of this acronym). I also hope that there will be awesome DLC to continue keeping the game fresh, along with combining multiple players through XBOX Live (as I wouldn’t mind encouraging any other players out there to exercise!). Even having the ability to record one’s own routine and possibly incorporating homemade music into the mix may also bring about an opportunity to bring people together through dance, gaming, and exercise.

With the advent of another music game, I still have some reservations about how the gameplay will be like. From my experience, “easy” and “medium” are pretty good exercise routines, mapping pretty well to the music, but “hard” and “expert” really challenge the player and put much more moves/steps in the chart than what most people expect/can handle. With this in mind, I hope there is a lot of playtesting to make sure that all of the moves map well to the music and don’t place many arbitrary “things” into the mix just to make things hard. Examples of these are: making notes not match the music (see “Two Weeks”, Drums Expert, Rock Band), making the scroll rate multiples faster/slower than what the actual music is rated (see any of the Maxes, DDR), or assuming that all music placed into the game will be in 4/4 (that’s a common time signature – see any songs by Rush/Soundgarden in Rock Band to see that asymmetric time signatures don’t work so well). These are the biggest aspects of the game that I think pull the player out of the experience of having fun and exercise, forcing the player to concentrate on the game aspect of the game, rather than enjoying the music and becoming a part of the experience for the audience and other performers (granted, for the hardcore, this is what the experience they want, but as someone who can play the tough stuff, it irks me to no end). That’s the type of play I’m hoping for in this game, and you can find me at the end of this year most likely playing it. I look forward to it, and exergaming with you, the reader, if you are up for some epic music and exercise.

I would also love the opportunity to be able to playtest it, but that doesn’t seem to be likely any time in the future. In the meantime, I’ll keep exercising in the gym and in the arcade to keep my weight down and tone my body for the next costumes I am making :D .

Have a great one!

(images from joystiq and destructoid)

A Surprise Party

Last week, our HCI cohort decided to throw a surprise birthday party for one of our professors. We arranged for a surprise dance number, cake, presents, and the fun that would ensue for the night. Here are some pictures to bring this event to life again. Everyone had cake and was merry. Have fun with these pics.

The Redbox Kiosk

When I went home this July, I was fortunate enough to stumble across something I could comment on for design purposes – the Redbox Kiosk. If you haven’t heard of this company, its basic premise is akin to Netflix – you can rent movies from this company for low prices. I won’t give the buisness spiel, but if you are curious, you can go on ahead and check them out at redbox.com.

The kiosk is very simple, and equipped with a touch screen interface for you to find the movies you want to rent. You swipe your credit card, and in a second, the movies you want are immediately given to you from this little slot on the side of the kiosk. Getting movies very quickly from this machine is awesome, and I give the people who designed this part of the interaction a thumbs-up.

Returning movies, on the other hand, I personally had trouble with. There’s a label on the side of the machine that says to return the video, you insert the video in the slot and the machine should take it. So I did that, and the machine wouldn’t do anything. And then I thought – “maybe I need to push it in for it to accept the video” – and then I tried that for a couple of minutes, and it didn’t work. Boy, was I not happy at all with this machine. Turns out, there’s a label on the other side of the machine that tells you to return the video by selecting return on the touch screen. And then I felt extremely embarrassed, as I was in front of a giant grocery store pushing and shoving at this machine, with people staring as I was in epic fail mode.

Hopefully other people don’t have this trouble, but I thought I would let you know of this trouble I had, and that this interaction should be simpler than having to tell the machine to be set into receive mode – I should be able to just return my movie into the slot, just like I have done before when I actually went to a real video store. Those were some good times…

Have fun in the real world!

Pictures from School

Sorry for not writing in a while – in my next post I’ll reveal why I haven’t been writing. But in the mean time, I have finally found a good way to post and share pictures here, so I’ll let you take a look at the past year in HCI at IU, and what it looks like. Have fun looking, and if you like what you see, please feel free to contact me or leave comments.