Confrence: Interacting with Immersive Worlds

I attended the above confrence on June 04-05. It was a great confrence, with my biggest regret being that I wasn't a clone or a triplet so I could be in more then one session at a time.

The confrence was divided into 4 streams:

Theory of Immersive Worlds explored:

i. the theory of interactivity, from perspectives such as narrative and gameplay (ludology);
ii. analyses of the cultural and psychological effects of immersive worlds.

Creative practices in Immersion examined interactive new media art, and its exploration of new idioms and challenges in immersive worlds.

Immersive Worlds in Education examined the application of immersive technologies to teaching and learning.

Immersive Worlds in Entertainment examines entertainment applications of immersive technologies.

The four keynote speakers at the conference were:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - spoke about Flow and the Phenomenology of Immersive Environments. He explained that flow is the phenomenon of being immeresed in an activity to the point of enrapturement or entrancement. That once an individual is in a state of flow they lose all sense of time, they are so caught up in what they are doing that there is no future or past just and extended present. Flow is critical to meaning making. The following diagrams show how flow is situated between boredom and anxiety and the cycle of flow as one learns a new activity or task

Arousal the state just before flow is the optimal position for learning to take place. Apathy is the least condusive state to learning - watching TV is an activity listed under this state. Prof. Csikszentmihalyi, then went on to list the 6 conditions which foster flow.

1. Attention is focused on a limited stimulus field. There is full concentration, complete involvement
2. Action and awareness merge – only participant not both participant and observer e.g. don’t think about where your fingers on the piano just playing
3. There is freedom from worry about failure – feel unstoppable
4. Self-consciousness disappears – ego which is presented to the world disappears
5. Time is distorted
6. The experience become its own reward - not expecting anything from the activity accept the activity itself – valuable for its own sake

In flow there are clear goals every step of the way and feedback is immediate.

When he was asked if there is a difference between cerebral and physical activities in relation to flow he said though he had not specificly set up his research to look for difference he also did not note any differences, the 6 conditions were found in both types of activities.

Chris Csikszentmihalyi - directs the Media Lab's Computing Culture group, which works to create unique media technologies for cultural applications. His presentation was entitled - No Do-overs: Technology and First Lives. He spoke broadly about ethics in technology and the convergence between technology and art.

James Paul Gee - Author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy spoke about the 7 core principles that make a video game motivating for learning.

1. Psyching out – how rules can be used for your advantage to accomplish goals to which you are personally and emotionally attached
2. Micro-control that gives rise to either embodied intimacy or an extension of power and visio
3. Experiential learning that meets all the right conditions for learning from experience
4. Finding and using Effectivity (skills) Affordance Matches between Bodies (given by micro control) or Tools and Worlds – invitation to action
5. Modeling and using Models to make learning from concrete experience more general and abstract
6. Player-Enacted Stories or Trajectories
7. Modding as adaptive rather than assimilating

Prof. Gee questions if serious game can have all 7 properties, and if not which properties are the most important, and should be kept in mind while designing serious games.

Gee says humans use the above principles daily in the "real world" however their control/agency over them is being eroded ,thus good videogames which employ these principles are addictive because they return the control and agency to the player/character.

Denis Dyack - Founder and Preseident of Silicon Knights, closed the confrence with a discussion on convergence in the gaming industry, called The 8th Art. Dyack said film is called the seventh art and videogames are the next step in the convergence of all other art forms (books, film, TV and radio), hence the eighth art. Dyack went on to discuss how despite technology rapidly changing it is having less and less of an impact on games themselves, i.e. developers don't have to worry about being outpaced by the technology resulting in bigger and better content instead of "technological tricks". Dyack predicts that the Internet will ultimately take over gaming hardware by digitally streaming software directly to the end-user in realtime thus eliminating piracy. Women make up 25% of the current gaming market, further the SIMS was one of the all time highest selling games with these two stats in mind Dyack sees a bright future for women in games both as players and developers.

In terms of education the strongest concept regarding videogames is their abilities to let learners make mistakes and "do-over" rather then penalize them for their mistakes.