Skylanders
Last week I was having a discussion with a fellow student about storage of personal video game data, and we wandered into talking about distributed RFID-based storage system on Skylanders and the crossover between virtual games and real-life toys & games (i.e. collectibles in this case).
A few days later I found myself reading an article on Digital Spy about the development of Skylanders. It really rammed home just how much work had gone into the process. Not a surprise, given the investment required to create the specialist hardware, but the most interesting part was this quote:
"We would design these toys, and one of the ways we knew things were working was - every time we made them, they would vanish," continued [Paul] Reiche. "We would do demos in Santa Monica but we never went home with the toys, because someone would always take them. We said, 'Okay, this is a good sign'."So it was obvious -- even at an early stage -- that these items had a charm. (You can sit there with a focus group all day, but people stealing your stuff is a pretty sure sign that they like it. Either that, or your stuff is way too expensive.)
I remember dismissing the game when I first saw it on a kids' TV show, thinking it was yet another lame peripheral sales gimmick. However, I've now caught up with the rest of the world and realise that this is definitely something I need to look at in more detail...
Wooden Mirror
On a separate note (or at least what I thought was a separate note) I was showing a work colleague some items from the Manchester trip earlier today. I mentioned how my game design antenna was piqued by the intrinsic charm of Bruce Aitken's wooden clocks, which wouldn't be half as endearing if they were made of metal or plastic.
My colleague then introduced me to a piece of art I'd never seen before: Daniel Rozin's Wooden Mirror. This video shows what it's about:
It's a very nice idea: wooden blocks angled by a solenoid to reflect different levels of light to create a grey-level pixel; the pixels can then be driven live from a video camera. Very simple and yet very high-tech at the same time. Best of all, it has the magic charm. By contrast it's not the wood making the charm work, it's the novelty and mechanical quality.
This got me thinking: can this kind of thing work inside a video game? I doubt it. We're used to game worlds realising the fantastic, but we're not used to seeing it in real life. It's the real-life novelty that's a major part of the charm.
Joining the dots with 3D printing
And real-life novelty is why there's such about low-cost 3D printers at the moment.
Joining the dots, how would 3D printing enhance a game like Skylanders? Imagine the ability to print (and customise!) your physical game character. (Obviously, you'd need an Internet-connected central storage system instead of RFID.) That literally adds a whole new dimension to the experience, though, and a lot of excitement.
If you could 3D print a wooden mirror at home, it would probably have just as much charm as the original. (Albeit a wooden mirror made of plastic ... with extra solenoids & control circuitry, which you can't print.) It certainly lifts things beyond the anything-can -happen artificial on-screen world.
I noticed today that Disney were suggesting creating toys which could be printed. This came up in a 3D modelling lesson with my Foundation Degree students today, and we discussed the idea that people would download toys or hoover parts, like they download MP3 or ebooks.
It's a whole new world, and the phenomenal success of Skylanders suggests that video games will inevitably break the real-world barrier.
(Updated 20 Oct 2013 -- added fallback link for embedded video)