Hard for Whom?

Today I was playing The Best Game Ever Made - which goes by the alternate title of Bioshock - when I noticed how vague the wording is on most games' difficulty settings. Games (including Bioshock) often have three difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, and Hard. But framing different difficulties in such absolute terms isn't very helpful at all. It doesn't give the player any cues as to just how difficult the game might be - what's easy for a veteran gamer might be very hard for a novice. At the very least, I think games should use more descriptive terms, although this really amounts to calling a rose another name. Just slightly better is adding descriptions to the difficulty options. Bungie's Halo series does both, by using more novel terms and giving a (sometimes humorous) description of the potential experience. For example, the description of Halo 3's most difficult mode, "Legendary," reads "Tremble as teeming hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest error with instant death... again and again." This definitely gives the player a clearer picture of what to expect!

Some games have taken an even better route by attempting to adjust the difficulty dynamically according to a player's skill. This approach isn't without its problems - most notably how to determine "skill" - but it seems to make more sense from the perspective of immersion; how often does one get to choose their preferred difficulty in life? The most engrossing game is often challenging, but not frustrating. Dynamic difficulty adjustment helps to ensure that the game maintains a constant level of challenge for newcomers and old hands alike. I'd like to see more games experiment with approach.

Project 2 Progress

Progress is going well so far, if cutting it a bit close to the deadline. Yesterday we (I'm working with Liz Arrowsmith) went to the Mesa apartments and asked some residents questions about their living space. We're interested in seeing whether residents' living space reflects the way they work and collaborate, and conversely, whether the invariant aspects of that space (for example, window positioning, room layout) to some extent affect those same activities.

I think the work and contributions have been fairly equal to this point. We both came up with and decided on a set of questions to ask the residents. Liz drew furniture layouts atop floor plans we brought and I wrote notes while we took turns asking questions. I would consider our approach a semi-structured interview, as we asked the residents the same set of questions but allowed them to expand on their answers. Now that we've got our data, we'll analyze it and get started on our report. I anticipate that we'll both contribute more or less equally to this portion of the project as well.

When is a Mobile Phone Like an Airhorn?

A thought occurred to me not too long ago, as I was startled out of a quick doze by the ringing of my cell phone, which was right next to my head on my nightstand.

A bit of background: I turn the volume up when I drive in the car because I often have music playing. (I don't converse on the phone while driving, but I do like to let people know I'm not ignoring them.) The volume is set fairly high while I'm out as well, because I usually keep it in a cargo pocket in my pants - a bit far from my ear, to say nothing of the ambient noise level. This problem could be partially ameliorated by using the vibration function, but it's pretty weak on my phone so I don't usually notice it.

Now, I concede being (often more than) a bit scatterbrained. I typically don't remember to adjust my phone's volume when I move into a different setting - say, from the car to my bedroom. The result is that I often get startled by a very loud ring, or I miss hearing one altogether.

Wouldn't it be nice if my phone could adjust its volume for me? Perhaps it could monitor the ambient sound level and use that to determine an optimum volume. A user could set a minimum and maximum volume, including vibration, to keep the phone in a comfortable range. A really nice feature, in my opinion, would be to allow the user to calibrate the phone's sensitivity: "If I'm in a place that's this loud, ring at this volume." Of course, good research could prevent requiring me to do such calibration in the first place.

It would be extremely convenient to be able to, say, walk from one of the many construction sites on campus into the library and not have to worry about upsetting anyone with an obscenely loud ring. Or to come inside out of the car and lie down for a bit without being scared out of my skin by an unexpected ring.

Of course, such an automatic adjustment feature wouldn't solve all volume issues. A lecture hall is definitely louder than a library, yet phone ringers should be completely off, not just quiet, during lectures. Since many mobile phones support syncing schedules with various computer programs, I propose a method to control how one's phone rings depending on the current state of the calendar. For example, I could set my phone to be silent during COGS 120; then if the time were between 9:30 and 10:50 on a Tuesday or Thursday, it wouldn't ring.

Personally, I would find such features infinitely more useful than playing music or watching video on my phone. Maybe some already do this; all I know is that mine doesn't!