News and Analysis

The Great Science Fiction Gap?

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I was talking with a friend who’s a fellow Silicon Valley resident and professional about the various devices and gizmos we’d seen – and that frankly we weren’t sure about what the holidays would bring. Nothing enthused me, the gaming platforms seemed to be headed for weirdness and overstepping. Nothing seemed, well interesting. Or new.  Or meeting a need.

This quickly led to discussions about innovation, where we needed to innovate, and why we innovated. This in turn led to science fiction.

A realization settled: we’re living in the technical worlds that we saw created in the 80’s and 90’s.

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Gaming Needs Experimentation!

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There’s a wonderful little game called Dungeon Hearts by Cube Roots that I picked up recently.  One guides for adventurers through a series of battles to meet the Dark One (who graduated from the school of unoriginal names), relying on special skills and a puzzle-like interface to fight enemies.  The core of the game is the ever-advancing line of symbols called “The Fatestream” where you move symbols around to create attacks, destroy enemy symbols that can harm you, and achieve other goals.  It’s a classic rythm/buzzle/motion game in the vein of Klax or guitar hero and the like.

The game stands out for a colorful aesthetic, little touches of blackstory, and a well-crafted interface.  But The Fatestream at the core really makes it work because it takes a common game interface of the moving-puzzle pieces, and uses it as a metaphor for the game and the weaving of fate you do to guide the heroes.  It’s one interface used, rather cleverly, to symbolize something else.

Now I’m not going to pretend this was necessarily some great insight – maybe it was, maybe someone said “hey I want a moving puzzle adventure how could I explain it?”  But either way the idea of The Fatestream works and is rather cleverly.

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What I Learned From Dinklage

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Sadly, this column is NOT about me and Peter Dinklage on a road trip where we learn valuable life lessons.  OK, that would probably be pretty cool (“He’s a Project Manager!  He is constructing a house entirely out of Emmys!  They’re on a trip to wackiness!”), but no, Dinklage is my phone.

I got a Droid Razr Max HD, and since it’s small and powerful and gorgeous,  I nicknamed it Dinklage for obvious reasons.

The phone has taught me some valuable lessons.  Without a road trip.  I share them because this phone is an example of buying a personal device based on what my friend Doug calls “Use Cases” – what we want to do and what we buy or make to address it.  In turn there’s a lot of lessons for technology and those of us who use it and work in it.

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