Hiyashi's Blog

26/01/2012

Dr Kurt Zarniko strikes again!

In this video, Dr Kurt Zarniko spoke about his life as a lecturer in the School of Media, Music and Performance at the University of Salford – a life that is not too remote for me. Either Dr Kurt Zarniko was telling my story in this video, or my life is simply performance, as if in Shakespeare‘s As You Like It (1600)

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:

“Life is like a play – we merely go through the stages of our life acting it out.” Or not?

30/12/2011

Proud to be

It has been 26 months since I joined the University of Salford and I can feel that the sense of belonging is growing stronger and stronger day by day.

In December, I attended several events organised by MMP staff and students, including

- the stand-up comedy night (on 7 Dec) at Islington Mill coordinated by Lloyd Peters (where trainee comedians performed routines that they had written and prepared themselves in front of a public audience, with two lecturers from the university attending the show to assess the quality of their comedy against the criteria such as timing, originality of script, facial and slapstick skills and how well they handle hecklers, as referred to in an old BBC news article),

- the Big Band Jazz night (on 12 Dec) at the Church of St. Philip with St. Stephen directed and conducted by Tim France featuring Robin Dewhurst (piano), Doreen Edwards (vocal), and Duncan Winfield (trombone),

- and last but not least, the Big Christmas Party at MCUK (on 16 Dec) where I joined the Carols singing for the very first time in my life in front of our MCUK building in typical windy and rainy English weather, and where I first saw and played Phil Brissenden‘s famous reverse action piano harp.

The qualities of these shows were outstanding and I was thoroughly entertained.

I’m going to close this year’s last blog entry by saying how much I’m proud of our students and colleagues, and how much I’m proud to be a member of Uni of Salford. I look forward to welcoming everyone back in 2012!

27/12/2011

Free/Open Source Software and Computer Games – Guest lecture by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen

Thanks to a pointer given by FSFE‘s UK representative, Sam Tuke, I had the opportunity of inviting a Danish game developer Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen (Leinir hereafter, as this is how he is more widely known in the free software world) to give a guest lecture to the CVG students on 29 November.

Leinir’s lecture was significant as (to my best knowledge) it was the first time that someone involved in free/open source software development, the subject I have been researching for more than a decade, was invited to talk about gaming and free/open source software at Salford Uni. Although I have covered free software / creative commons licensing and collaborative game development in a distributed environment in my lectures, nothing compares to the first-hand, real-life experience shared by someone who’s actually been involved in free/open source software and game development.

Leinir, a KDE contributor since 2002, is working for KO GmbH on Calligra at the moment. He holds a MSc degree in Game and Engine from Aalborg University in Denmark, specialised in Game AI (behaviour trees) programming.

In his lecture, he used Puzzletive, an online jigsaw puzzle game developed by a team of 15 at the Danish Institute for Digital Interactive Entertainment (DADIU) in 2009 within a month, to illustrate how to manage a game development process creatively but also methodically (brainstorming -> prototyping / protoducting -> sprinting -> polishing). To be able to develop a finished, shippable game within 30 days, the team used a modified SCRUM method (a typical SCRUM method was considered as too heavy in terms of time overhead, fo ra small team with limited time there was no time for a real heavy-weight SCRUM) to manage the process. Since time was tight and the team was small, everything prototyped would eventually become production – therefore everything created had to be carefully planned and had to be something that everyone could live with. So the prototyping was actually a protoducting task. The prototype was created during the 1st sprint, and at the 2nd sprint, the team defined all tasks, elements and started production. The entire last week (7 days) was dedicated to polishing (so basically 1/3 of the production time was spent on polishing). A demo video is available here.

Leinir emphasised on workflow assistance and version control. And in fact, these linked to a 2-year-old free software project Gluon, which he’s been involved in, whose ultimate aim is to provide a platform to streamline and transform game development processes by allowing game makers and players to share ideas, co-create / co-realise games, and distribute them across various platforms (and hopefully released under free/open source software licences or creative commons or equivalent licences). This platform, whose UI bears much resemblance to the proprietary game development tool Unity, is based on game sources from http://gameboom.net/, http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/, and http://gluon.gamingfreedom.org/. Gluon was demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference Europe 2011 with Intel AppUp. The developers were planning to release Alpha Particle in December 2011 (basically now!).

Leinir and I thought it would be cool if my CVG students could do some alpha or beta testing of this Gluon platform, or even better, get involved in its development. Leinir also encouraged them to participate in the 2012 Global Game Jam or Dare to be Digital. I think it’s a brilliant idea. In fact, I think we (the university, or even the whole academia) should encourage students to take part in such events like the Global Game Jam or any other free/open source software projects (as seen in Google’s Summer of Code Program), as much as like we encourage live briefs and/or placements. These are great opportunities to learn to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds in a dynamic, transient, creative environment. Students (future creative media workers) need to learn that they might not be working on the idea they found fun (as everyone has different ways of defining what’s “fun”), and they need to work together as a team to deliver (idea management, coordinated by the game director who usually has the final say).

There’s another good concept that Leinir delivered during his lecture: he said that programmers are just as much as an artist as the scripts / programs are “text-based art”, and writing codes is performing the art of game programming.

It has been a long time I tried to incorporate my interest in free/open source software with my teaching activities (I was told that Richard Shipman, Teaching Fellow at the Computer Science department of Aberystwyth University, has managed to do so). The highly commercial and competitive gaming/creative industry makes the entry of free/open source software difficult, but perhaps with perseverance and enough help, there will be more interest in free/open source gaming in academia.

Certainly I’ll be looking forward to welcoming Leinir back for another guest lecture, and perhaps also a live demo and hands-on workshop on Gluon, specifically designed for open collaboration on game development. But I also look forward to introducing more cool free/open source game projects to students. How say you – perhaps Crystal Space (a random suggestion from Google)?

When Leinir paid a visit to Manchester, he also gave an evening talk to the Manchester free software community. Here are some photos taken at his talk at MadLab.

ps. Glad to know that Leinir enjoyed his trip to Manchester – see Dent 1, Dent 2.

16/12/2011

A British Chapter of Media Convergence II – StarDotStar

Two members of the award-winning digital agency StarDotStar, Gez O’Brien (who identified himself as a retired graffiti artist) and Kate Fox (an alumna of the MA in Social Media programme) came to share their past and current work with our level 4 undergraduate students on the Creative Media Analysis (Media Convergence) module on 24 November. StarDotStar has an amazing track record of involving in media convergence, showcased by an unusually diverse range of projects such as the 2-screen Beaver Leaks project for Channel 4, data visualisation project for the Open University, IPTV prototypes for Channel 4 and the BBC (Radio 1, Graham Norton Show, Dragons’ Den), and last but not least – the interactive coffee tables placed at the lobby of the Salford University’s MediaCityUK campus.

No doubt that TV has been undergoing massive change for the past years, not only because of services such as iPlayer, FreeView, and then the forthcoming YouView and Set Up Box, but also because of other parallel media convergent cultures such as gamification, televisation (radio tv). StarDotStar has been developing prototypes that can release content (plots, audience’s comments online, tweets or dents from actors/actresses) before and during the show,so that interaction between the audience and the programme can be improved / intensified. However, this may challenge the traditional way script writers work, and how not to broadcast offensive audience’s comments (gatekeeping with proper filtering, re-contextualising) is another challenge.

Gez showed us some demo of Radio 1 on IPTV, Beaver’s tweet game (a social campaign on its own right involving groups of fans asking questions online). These demonstrate in the future we are going to see more interactive TV Game Show (e.g., the archive quiz, something more like a combination of QI + Where Million Pounds Drop). 2-screen (or multiple-screen) is also going to become more common. To facilitate the 2-screen experience and capitalising on ubiquitous computing, they have also been developing augmented audio scapes, mobile apps for Channel 4, involving the 2nd screen participant in the show.

Kate’s new project “We Make Jam” also tied in well with the media convergence subject. Jam, in a broader sense, is to improve audience participation, using cutting edge interactive technology to encourage content creation, create community and encourage participation. Kate’s career move somehow is telling – she was a publisher (University of Manchester Press), then a moderator of BBC’s Point of Views message board, and then a social media strategist for Cbeebies to engage with grownups/parents through the interactive website and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and now someone who is working closely with developers to develop a website to help the 3rd sector / charities to voice themselves and network through social media and easy-to-use interactive technologies. It kind of (implicitly perhaps) shows how a media worker’s career path has shifted from traditional print industry to a transient, dynamic digital industry.

When chatting with other colleagues teaching media convergence or similar topics, we often look for literature written by our North American or Australian colleagues. Students often question whether there is any British example. By blogging about these invited speaker’s work, I hope I’m documenting the fast-moving British version of Media Convergence, and make our learning resources at Salford University more widely available to readers out there.

08/12/2011

A British Chapter of Media Convergence (I) – BBC R&D

Liz Valentine is one of the many outstanding women I met at the BBC Future Media’s Women’s Networking Event on 14 September this year. I recalled Liz and her colleague from BBC R&D gave a good introduction about a female Dalek robot that can interact with the Doctor Who TV content to me, telling me how they conducted user-involved test-driven development. I immediately thought that it would be such a good idea to have Liz coming over to speak to our CVG students (about agile production management and test QA management) and BATAR students (about innovative technologies for driving media convergence).

Liz kicked off her lecture by explaining the role of BBC R&D (as one can see from their website they are award-winning enterprising innovator now) and her role as research scientist. She then introduced three projects (Production Labs: Storycrate and Ingex Logger, the free/open source software Universal Control: Accessible TV Clients, Second Screen Companions) to exemplify the innovation processes usually experienced within BBC R&D – how prototyping, user-centred development, trials and data analysis were conducted.

Despite the availability of digital technologies, the most commonly used devises / tools for conducting trails / testing are still paper, pen and stopwatch. And card sorting remains the most effective method for grouping and prioritising user requirements (and features on demands). Testing is an important part of technological development, and it’s even more important to document the contexts where the testing is being carried out. To meticulously document the testing, usually there are so many circles of observers: people who observe the users, and people who observe how those users are being observed (for example the testing for a future production tool Storycrate). And because of the amount of people involved in testing, it takes lots of efforts to arrange testing (including scheduling, running the test, managing all materials required and communication between departments).

The testing for 2-screening (or dual-screening or multiple-screening) is a classic example – researchers would like to know the viewers’ attention span, where their attention falls, how to measure the impact of a product in a 2-screening environment, or how to automate things on iPad.

In addition to understanding BBC R&D’s innovation processes, we also learned what future media technologies will be (or some have been) implemented or be trendy – such as the forthcoming YouView system, Set Top Box, Universal control clients. These new technologies drive (and perhaps their innovations are also shaped by the expectations of) media convergence. The future of content consumption and production is going to be ubiquitous computing, re-mediated by a robot dalek (an embedded device with Universal Control Clients installed that moves around a house, to facilitate the audiences’ 2-Screen experiences). Shame that it’s just been announced that the Dalek will not appear in Doctor Who for a while because they were overdone.

Students were interested in knowing how testers were recruited (some were recruited through marketing agencies with requirements of types of players clearly defined in advance), and how the needs of disabled audience are fulfilled (because disability is not often discussed when we talk about games development, and
Liz covered how to make games more accessible to audience/players with disability (through the set-top-box) – for more info see http://www.gamebase.info/ and http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/).

I’d like to thank Liz Valentine for delivering the guest lecture (twice! – on 15 and 17 November) to two different cohorts (level-5 CVG students and level-4 BATAR students respectively) so that we understand what cutting-edge media technologies we’ll be experiencing in the future. Her talk simply demonstrated that BBC is not just a public broadcasting service whose remits are entertaining, informing, educating the audience. The uniqueness of BBC is that it has been an active innovator that encouraged the advent of many important media technologies (including the much loved BBC Micro computers) and will always be (at least in the following decades to come).

30/11/2011

RIP David Sanjek

Today we were informed of the untimely death of a colleague of mine Prof. David Sanjek who passed away at the New York airport. Like many others, I was terribly saddened by this news.

Last time when I met David was at the screening of the Korean movie Shi (Poetry) at the Cornerhouse. After the screening, we were chatting about the outstanding performance of the lead actress and how lots of complicated emotions and events were smoothly pieced together, but our conversation was shortened because I needed to catch train home. I had no idea then, and still can’t believe that it would be the very last time I spoke to David.

Every time when I met him on the street (for example this summer at the Piccadilly station when he just came back from the United States, many times on the Adelphi Campus), he always smiled and warmly greeted me. He was a loner, but showed absolute passion for his work on popular music. He had so many ideas for book projects. Since he is a research professor, his remit did not include teaching. However, earlier this year, I had the privilege of inviting him to give a guest lecture to my now 3rd-year CVG students about copyrights and IPRs in media industries. Students loved his enchanting, biographical way of introducing this sometimes boring and complicated topic (about digital midi technologies, sampling, law and music business) – what a story teller. A talented Greek student Markela even made a portrait of him when he was speaking, and gave that painting to him after his lecture. He was absolutely delighted, I recalled. How sad that this intelligent and nice man has now left us.

Rest in peace, David – you will definitely be missed.

05/11/2011

How to be a good game developer (Peter Caddock, Studio Liddell)

The relationships between university, government and industry, the “triple helix”, has been extensively studied in social sciences. It is believed that the knowledge infrastructure of a knowledge society can be explained in terms of the dynamics emerging from the changing relationships between the institutions involved. For example, Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (2001) point out that “Arrangements and networks among the three institutional spheres provide input and sustainance to science-based innovation processes.” They believe that “In this new configuration, academia can play a role as a source of firm-formation, technological, and regional development, in addition to its traditional role as a provider of trained persons and basic knowledge.”

As a believer of research-informed or even research-driven teaching, I have been keen on trying out different methods of engaging with local creative industries and communities (here in the northwest). I have been inviting practitioners to deliver guest lectures to my students doing different modules in different programmes as a way of exploring potential collaboration as well as of bringing in fresh industry knowledge and experience to the teaching and learning at Salford.

Peter Caddock from Studio Liddell and his daughter Hollie Caddock who is doing a degree with FutureWorks came to MCUK to deliver a guest lecture to my CVG students on 1 November.

I met Peter Caddock at one of the “Accelerating Your Innovation” workshops that the FIRM project organised over the summer. Peter’s enthusiasm, experience and knowledge in new media technologies and in developing interactive games for different platforms immediately made him such a good speaker. He started by introducing the history of gaming technologies. He brought an actual Atari 2600 (VCS), a classic USB Joystick Controller. From Atari VCS to Kinect, he pointed out that the 0 and 1 “binary” is the thing that has been consistent over the past 40 years or so in the gaming world.

Peter then introduced the IPs he and team have produced, including the ss Great Britain Navigation Simulator in Bristol, quantum sheep. Peter used Quantum Sheep as an example to detail the process from drawings, through design, development to final implementation and installation. When producing Quantum Sheep, they needed to do lots of research (understanding the history and the appearances of the period objects and architectures in order to recreate the setting in the game), line mapping on the actual farm, do lots of testing (for example after lots of testing the team found out highlighting the treasures / bonuses is the way forward so that players won’t miss them).

Peter also talked about the new business models Studio Liddell is exploring: “free to play” or “in-app purchase”. Recently, to capitalise on the Halloween season, they developed a new mobile phone game Spook’em 2. Within a week, they have got lots of downloads (more than expected, epsecially when it being an app people have to pay). So that encourages Studio Liddell to further explore a new business model.

The advices he gave to students when asked how to secure a job and get noticed in today’s very competitive gaming industry:

1. Find out what top tools are used in industry and be good at them, know the tools inside out.

The industry standard tools used to develop these interactive games are Unity and UDK. For example, the game Roary the racing car game was developed by Unity. When asked how to secure a job in today’s very competitive gaming industry, Peter suggested students to master one industry-standard tool at least – “Find out what top tools are used in industry and be good at them, know the tools inside out.”

2. Go see what others are doing.

He also suggested students to see what’s on at some big creative festivals such as Edinburgh International. Go see what others are doing and learn. For example, many social networking sites have 13+ age policy, but young audience would so much like to network and play with other young children. A game company thus created Moshi Monsters, a social networking game that children can adopt a monster (like online Picachu) and chat with new friends. You get inspirations when seeing these sort of things.

3. “Show me what you’ve done. Don’t tell me what you’re going to do.”

Asked how to get noticed, he replied that “Show me what you’ve done. Don’t tell me what you’re going to do.” Perhaps doing SEO manipulation would help a bit, but without evidence, people won’t be able to admire or comment on your work.

4. Work in a small team with people you trust, and have lots of contacts so that you can manoeuvre resources (quickly compose a team of animators, renderer, modeller, people do texturing, lighting etc.).

5. Work closely with customers, know their requirements and know the brand well. Do lots of research.

Peter has got lots more to show to students on his iPad, including the augmented reality games they developed. Unfortunately, without Apple iPad’s very unique 30pin Digital AV adapter, Peter was unable to do so on a big screen. But that didn’t lessen the richness of his talk.

This semester, we have also had a guest lecture from Steven Craft and Antony White from Paw Print Games (20 October), and there are more to come. By sharing their experiences and work, these industry partners enrich the teaching and learning activities in the programmes we have been delivering at Salford. And I hope this form of collaboration will result in a win-win situation – even if it’s in an inconspicuous way like Peter merrily said to me afterward: “Thanks again for inviting me to speak today, I really enjoyed it.”

27/10/2011

What is media convergence

One of the new modules I’m teaching this semester is “Creative Media Analysis”, in which we explore the media convergence phenomenon and related cultures. Today I facilitated a “World Cafe” team activity where students collectively did a SWOT analysis on the changing media convergence landscape.

“World cafe” is a large group activity that is known for brainstorming and team building. It can provide a space for community/group conversations to emerge. Usually, some questions are framed in advance at different tables, and then participants will move between tables and meet new people where new perspectives are exchanged. This greatly enriches the possibility for new insights to emerge as they engage in ever-widening circles of thought.

I had four volunteers to run four “cafes” discussing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the current convergent culture. Here’s a summary of students’ thoughts:

Strengths:

- different platforms unit people and cultures worldwide
- access to anywhere from anywhere
- 24/7 immediate access to media
- more opportunities to make money
- more revenue for business or brands
- you can broaden your ideas across different platforms..
- explore content in various ways (including user generated content)
- everyone has an opportunity of being a content producer / citizen journalist.
- social media allows one to filter out news / personalise your news channels.
- news can be condensed so that you can read it quicker.
- interactive, participatory audiences
- niche audiences
- news on demand
- replay and watch as many times as you want

Weaknesses:

- choice fatigue (in terms of platforms and channels): too many choices can’t decide what platforms to use, and hard for audiences to ‘keep up’ with it all
- too complicated, confusing, overwhelming (YL: I guess students could be telling their feeling about the subject under study here)
- illegal downloads and piracy
- people lack of social skills (YL: perhaps students were referring to flamewars on social media or complaints sent to BBC’s Points of View)
- expensive and less cost-effective (YL: It’s an interesting point, especially when it’s raised as a weakness. Media convergence is usually adopted by media organisations as a strategy to plan their resources better, hence the 360-degree commissioning and programming. However, it could be expensive at the macro level including lying down the infrastructures (not just network cables, computers but also education and regulations. So indeed it could be an expensive business and in the short term perhaps not that cost-effective. However, there are many different kinds of values and currencies we can look at in this emerging world. In addition to economic values, we can also look at social values and public values. In addition to fiscal/monetary currencies, we can look at attention economy.)
- TV gets less ratings because there is other ways of accessing things.
- Less print and money lost for print industry
- Digital divide – some people have restricted access to technology therefore can’t participate in new media culture. (YL: The digital divide can be analysed from different angles: hardware (have or have-not); literacy (can or cannot). Some students for example point out that older people can’t cope, and not everyone is technology-savvy.)
- The market is too competitive. And ideas could be stolen in this highly competitive world.
- cost of keeping up with technology
- not all
- internet connection may fail
- content not interesting enough
- buffering
- time thief
- harder to reach a mass audience on one platform given the audience fragmentation
- copyright issues
- instant gratification
- Google Rage! (YL: My first encounter to this term. Feeling really LKK.)

Opportunities:

- employment – more jobs and different types of jobs (YL: Yes – vertical convergence requires a wide range of skillsets)
- networking
- franchise and merchandise
- more content
- interactivity
- 3D (YL: I guess this is about under-exploited or unexploited or emerging new technologies)
- different platforms
- peer production
- more people can voice and share opinions – “we media”
- self-made celebrity (YouTube “Stars” “Fame”)
- multiple platforms
- different audience groups

Threats:

- bullying
- technology failing
- technological determinism
- content being biased or lack of focus or lack of mediation
- difficult to keep up with all media platforms (for consumers as well as industry)
- Print could become obsolete due to online news becoming more popular
- Slander
- Copyright issues
- uncertainties
- competition between different channels
- dangerous to print industry (YL: But a risk can also be positive!)
- competition increasing
- law breaking (YL: guess they were referring to the hacking scandal)
- dependent on technology
- less new content, less innovative (excessively recycled)
- audience belive they can control the media when it is still chosen for them (YL: guess this is about gate-keeping and the tension between professionalism and amateurism)
- job losses

Really good contributions from everyone. It covers a lot of things we’ve discussed and instigates a lot more questions to be explore. Amid the computer-driven convergent trend where everything is vulnerable, transient and changing, I believe that the future of media should not be prescribed; instead, it should be defined and explored through actively engaging in a dialogue and constantly reflecting from what happened and what’s happening. And this belief is being embedded in my pedagogical activities.

I think we had lots of fun today. I also used the Crossword puzzle maker to create a “Media Convergence” crossword puzzle for the students to solve. Unfortunately, none of them got it all – no one claimed the prize. Will try again next week.

04/10/2011

First Teaching Day at MediaCityUK

University of Salford‘s MediaCityUK campus officially opened today. Despite of weeks of tireless preparation, as usual, there were still a lot of last-minute and emergent business to deal with. I was due to teach at the new, multi-million Digital Performance Lab (Room 0.11) at 10 AM this morning, but yesterday when I left the building in the afternoon, twenty-something theatre stage lights were still lying on the ground of the Lab. Plus, there was no sign of IT facilities in the room which can accommodate 100 students – the largest lecture room here in MediaCityUK. Luckily, this morning, all these lights were fitted and a laptop was connected to the Internet waiting for me there. Magic! I and my Level-5 2nd-year BSc students in Computer and Video Games were privileged to be the first to use this amazing space for our first session this academic year. A big thank you to all the colleagues who made this happen.

25/09/2011

SFD mapping weekend at Northern Quarter, Manchester

A small group of people came to MadLab for a low-key mapping party on the weekend of 17-18 September, as part of the celebration of 2011 Software Freedom Day (SFD). We took some prints from Walkingpapers and went around Northern Quarter.

One of the participants said that mapping allowed him to see the city he is so familiar with from different perspectives. He has heard that in the city centre there is very few public seating areas and a massive amount of CCTVs at every corner, so he paid particular attention to those objects. Mapping the locations of CCTVs and benches (public seating areas) politicises the map, and reflects the mapper’s concerns about a big brother society made of ubiquitous CCTVs and about lack of public seating space in an urban environment.

Another participant who is new to Manchester City said mapping gave her an excuse to go around the city and know the place better.

Given that Northern Quarter is being rapidly regenerated and redeveloped, the map badly needs an update because a lot of places have emerged and disappeared. We have added house numbers and POIs and after the mapping weekend the map around MadLab looks more complete (see a screenshot below). A big thank you to all participants!