Computer Games
Prof. Walter Kriha,
Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart,
Computer Science and Media
Faculty
November 26, 2009
Agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
On Gaming and Game Development
Games and Art
Games and Virtual Realism
Game Architecture
Games in Science
Games in Media – a fair Trial?
Resources
SECTION 1
On Gaming and Game Development
What Gaming Teaches
1.
Be clever and think around corners
2.
Be quick and careful
3.
Think strategy and use help (e.g. mobmap)
4.
Join a team and take over responsibility
5.
Learn to cheat and how to deal with cheaters
6.
Accept technology and learn it well
7.
Be creative, emotional and enjoy your fantasy
8.
Communicate and share with your friends using all
kinds of media
9.
Have stammina and don‘t give up easily
10. Be enthusiastic about your game but learn to control
your urges
No game does everything and yes, there are stupid games (as there are stupid
movies, TV features, books and magazines…)
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What Game Development Teaches – Dealing with
Complexity
1.
Think content and technology and deal with artists
2.
Understand that playing is fun – don‘t mess it up!
3.
Watch performance constantly – remember: it‘s fun!
4.
Understand how your players think and feel – deeply. (cheating,
skill matching etc.)
5.
Be wary of single and group behavior, strategies
6.
Understand automation and its effect on game play
7.
Fight attacks on hardware and software at all levels
8.
Use advanced security technology and how it works in your
social environment
9.
User content mapping and feature management
10. Expect all kinds of crazy behavior
11. Learn how social games work and what it takes to maintain
groups of players in public
12. Learn to communicate with your players publicly and open
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SECTION 2
Games and Art – Assassin’s Creed
SECTION 3
Games and Virtual Realism – CryEngine3
Uncanny Valley
When will our brain no longer detect something „artificial“ in generated
faces?
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SECTION 4
On Shards, Shattering and Parallel Worlds
The evil wizard Mondain had attempted to gain control over
Sosaria by trapping its essence in a crystal. When the
Stranger at the end of Ultima I defeated Mondain and
shattered the crystal, the crystal shards each held a refracted
copy of Sosaria.
[http://www.ralphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database‐sharding‐came‐f
rom‐uo/] (found in [Scheurer])
Content and Technology
1.
Create copies of your world to allow more concurrent players and map
those copies to different clusters
2.
Put „expensive“ action into separate, small instances which map to
single servers
3.
Use natural divisions in your world to create partitions
4.
Distribute content across your world carefully and watch the mapping
to servers
5.
Allow for different user behavior over the life-cycle (beginners, pro‘s)
by using feature management
6.
Do not concentrate new things in one place only!
7.
Create a continuous world to allow all players to interact – but beware
of overload and crashes!
8.
You can try to combine game logic with infrastructure – but it is hard..
„Sharding“ is now called „partitioning“ and it is a core technology behind
ultra-large scale sites like Facebook, Flickr etc.
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MMOG Infrastructure Architecture
Player 2
Player 1
PID 2
PID 1
Payment Information
Login Server
Auth DB
PID 1
Session-ID 984
Realm Selection Server
(R1 and R2 are in the
same Realm Pool)
(Realm List / Realm DB)
handover
R2
R1
Continuous
World Servers
Continuous
World Servers
(Clusters)
(Clusters)
PID 2
Session-ID …
Instance-ID 17
PID 1
Updates via PID
Log via Session-ID
Session-ID 984
(Both Players will join
The same instance)
Instance-ID 17
PID 2
Realm Pool 7
ok
ok
ok
Updates via PID
Log via Session-ID
handover
Distribution Server
(Distribution Servers are often
split per Realm Pool)
Game DBs
full
full
full
Session-ID …
Instance-ID 17
PID 1
Session-ID 984
Instance-ID 17
Instance Servers
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SECTION 5
Games in Science
Games in Science – Virtual Worlds for
Nanotechnology
The creation of 3D-Worlds for technical, economic or entertainment purposes is a
unique challenge for computer scientists and software developers.
•Desing techniques
•Usability concerns and patterns around spatial metaphors
•Security of platforms (both server and client)
•Scalabilty of infrastructures
•Distribution and performance of virtual worlds
•Collaboration and interconnection with existing media
•Feature management and content mapping strategies
There are currently few people who understand the complexity behind virtual worlds
and they presumably have a gaming background. But virtual worlds offer a unique
opportunity for the sciences as well: BWelabs is a research project that tries to
create a virtual world portal for scientists to collaborate and run virtual and remote
experiments.
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Games in Science – Virtual Worlds for
Nanotechnology
There are currently few people who understand the complexity behind virtual worlds
and they presumably are from a gaming background. But virtual worlds offer a unique
opportunity for the sciences as well: BWelabs is a research project that tries to create
a virtual world portal for scientists to collaborate and run virtual and remote
experiments.
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Games in Science – Virtual Worlds for
Nanotechnology
Virtual control of a microwave oven at FMF Freiburg
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SECTION 6
Games in Media – a fair Trial?
Games in Media – a VERY selective View
„Professional ZDF“
Amateur cam
A staged non-event courtesy of ZDF…
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SECTION 7
Game Demos and Discussion
1.
Guild Wars (MMOG)
2.
CrySis (Ego Shooter)
Stephan Soller, Jonathan Sachs, Markus Noack,
Kristian Sickinger, Norman Pohl, Valentin Schwind
Games at HDM – a good thing…
At the computer science and media faculty of HDM I learned a lot from our
gamers and game developers, game artists etc. Frequently they are among the
very best students, highly motivated, socially, emotionally and technically
competent people.
They are able to interact with students from different areas („Die Stadt Noah“
had students from many different universities working on this huge project).
They show interests in arts as well as technology and deal with complex social
situations.
I do not believe in the common wisdom of the media that playing computer
games turns you into a complete moron with tendencies to run amok. Instead, I
have begun using approaches from game development and game play in
scientific research and development.
And finally I question the intentions behind the raging war against computer
games. It is, finally, weapons that kill, not games! And don‘t blame games for the
breakdown of society due to economic pressures!
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Resources
1.
Trailer from Final Fantasy X. Demonstrating the story character of the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWpz_KUkRuw
2.
Trailer from Assassins Creed 2, building a bridge between art and film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaOPz5QLa60 game play view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdtucOTdNMI&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=0FA4A
E0AFCE9E82A
3.
Two faces of ZDF: one game, two completely different TV features
http://www.gamestar.de/news/vermischtes/1945305/die_zwei_gesichter_des_zdf.ht
ml http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIqGj1Fnv-o
4.
Andreas Stiegler, Shattering and Feature Management in MMOGs and Content
vs. Technology http://www.kriha.de/krihaorg/dload/uni/days/gamesday09.pdf
5.
Isolde Scheurer, Eve-Online - A Shardless MMOG https://www.hdmstuttgart.de/~is037/EVE_single_shard_Scheurer.pdf
6.
Aktion gegen Killerspiele - Amateurvideo.flv and ZDF TV feature
7.
Killerspiele in ARD, ZDF und WDR.mp4
8.
CryEngine trailers: CryEngine3 Beauty Trailer.mp4, CryEngine 3 GDC09
Trailer.mp4,
9.
CryEngine and Unreal Engine: Faces CryEngine vs. Unreal 3.jpg
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Want to know more?
www.kriha.org
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