Prof. Walter Kriha,

Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart,

Computer Science and Media Faculty

November 26, 2009

Computer Games

Agenda

1. On Gaming and Game Development

2. Games and Art3. Games and Virtual Realism4. Game Architecture5. Games in Science6. Games in Media – a fair Trial?7. Resources

SECTION 1

On Gaming and Game Development

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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…)

5

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

SECTION 2

Games and Art – Assassin’s Creed

SECTION 3

Games and Virtual Realism – CryEngine3

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Uncanny Valley

When will our brain no longer detect something „artificial“ in generated faces?

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‐from‐uo/] (found in [Scheurer])

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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 1Player 1

Login ServerLogin Server Auth DBAuth DB

PID 1PID 1 Session-ID 984Session-ID 984

okok okok okok Instance ServersInstance Serversfullfull fullfull

PID 1PID 1

handover

Game DBsGame DBs

PID 1PID 1Session-ID 984Session-ID 984

Updates via PIDLog via Session-ID

Distribution ServerDistribution Server

handover(Both Players will joinThe same instance)

Updates via PIDLog via Session-ID

PID 1PID 1Session-ID 984Session-ID 984

Instance-ID 17Instance-ID 17

Instance-ID 17Instance-ID 17

Continuous World Servers

(Clusters)

Continuous World Servers

(Clusters)

Payment Information

Realm Selection Server(Realm List / Realm DB)

Realm Selection Server(Realm List / Realm DB)

R1R1

Player 2Player 2PID 2PID 2

Continuous World Servers

(Clusters)

Continuous World Servers

(Clusters)

R2R2

fullfull

PID 2PID 2Session-ID …Session-ID …

Instance-ID 17Instance-ID 17

PID 2PID 2Session-ID …Session-ID …

Instance-ID 17Instance-ID 17

(R1 and R2 are in thesame Realm Pool)

Realm Pool 7Realm Pool 7(Distribution Servers are oftensplit per Realm Pool)

SECTION 5

Games in Science

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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 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.

•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

The creation of 3D-Worlds for technical, economic or entertainment purposes is a unique challenge for computer scientists and software developers.

14

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.

15

Games in Science – Virtual Worlds for Nanotechnology

Virtual control of a microwave oven at FMF Freiburg

SECTION 6

Games in Media – a fair Trial?

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Games in Media – a VERY selective View

A staged non-event courtesy of ZDF…

Amateur cam

„Professional ZDF“

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

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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=0FA4AE0AFCE9E82A

3. Two faces of ZDF: one game, two completely different TV features http://www.gamestar.de/news/vermischtes/1945305/die_zwei_gesichter_des_zdf.html 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.hdm-stuttgart.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