Built from the ground up over the last 18 months, and consisting of industry veterans as well as staff from other disciplines, Good Science Studio is the developer behind Kinect Adventures, Microsoft Game Studios' minigame collection for Kinect. Don't call them minigames though, the company prefers to term each discrete activity an 'adventure'. Regardless of terminology, Kinect Adventures is the perfect ambassador for Microsoft's new device. It's accessible, wholly entertaining and just familiar enough.
Built from the ground up over the last 18 months, and consisting of industry veterans as well as staff from other disciplines, Good Science Studio is the developer behind Kinect Adventures, Microsoft Game Studios' minigame collection for Kinect. Don't call them minigames though, the company prefers to term each discrete activity an 'adventure'. Regardless of terminology, Kinect Adventures is the perfect ambassador for Microsoft's new device. It's accessible, wholly entertaining and just familiar enough.
In the last interview from issue 218's Kinect cover feature, we speak to Shannon Loftis, head of Good Science Studio, about adjusting to a control scheme that mirrors every one of your movements, balancing revolution and evolution and why prototyping is more important than ever.
Is the lack of physical feedback in Kinect titles a problem?
It’s just a different challenge - I wouldn’t call it a problem. When we're trying to measure whether or not our mechanics are impactful, we end up focusing a lot more on the on-screen effects and audio feedback in particular than we have had to with controller-based games.
It takes time to adjust tp Rally Ball's interpretation of your movements
One of the games in Kinect Adventures, Rally Ball, requires incredibly fast responses as the balls speed up. Is Kinect able to cope with that?
Well first of all, performance optimisation and rendering are generally the last things to be addressed in the development cycle. So performance is definitely improving. In the user tests that we’re doing, we’re not really getting a lot of negative feedback about lag. The on-screen avatar motion in Kinect Adventures is one-to-one - when I move my arm, my avatar moves her arm in exactly the same manner across the entire body. We call it 'avateering'. It’s a new experience for people, and some people interpret that sensation as lag.
What we are trying to do with the newness of the experience is to build in enough visual feedback and enough audio feedback so that people have time to prepare for whatever’s happening on screen. We want you to feel that you have to amp up your reflexes for Rally Ball when the balls started coming back down the court. It's really focused on the person who like to think fast, think on their feet and sharpen their skills in order to improve scores.
Head of Good Science Studio, Shannon Loftis
During testing, have you found that players adjust to 'avateering' easily?
They automatically do it. I’ve been working with the same user researcher for ten years now and he's, like many of them, as jaded as they come [laughs]. He doesn’t allow us to emerge from any of our user research tests or sessions with any of our delusions intact - if it isn’t supported by data or can’t be recorded on camera, then we’re wrong, basically. And after six months of testing with nothing more than a ball and stick men on screen, he sent this email to the team that basically said, "I don’t know if you understand, but this whole 'avateering' thing that people are doing is magic." And to have that guy say what we have is magic was amazing. Every time you put someone in front of the device and they see the avatar doing what they’re doing - that first moment is just priceless.
BigPark, who are developing Joy Ride, used biometric research to help minimise strain on players' limbs. Is that something you've looked at too?
Absolutely. We’ve been working with ergonomics experts pretty much from the beginning to make sure that we don’t encourage people to do things that aren’t good for them. So, for instance, the obstacle courses are pretty precisely designed to be played at a lot of different levels. You don’t have to necessarily leap to the side to clear the dodge obstacles - you can lean, and the visual encouragement is designed to ensure that. Making sure that people emerge from the experience of playing healthier is a big goal for us! [laughs]
Good Science Studio certainly doesn't want players to come to any harm - we're not so sure about its position on avatars though...
What’s the biggest difference you've found between developing for Kinect and developing a more traditional game for standard inputs?
We really try to break the process completely apart from the beginning. We had a little mantra within the group - no A B X Y thinking. So we were constantly vigilant to make sure that we weren’t doing any kind of literal translations of controller-based mechanics to motion control. At E3 2009, we also had the painting tech demo on stage, and to prototype that, we literally went out, put up a sheet and threw buckets of paint at it to see whether or not it was fun.
And then when we get to the point of deciding what we’re going to actually go ahead and do the code prototyping with, we set up a video camera and actually film ourselves playing the way that we would want people to play the game. Then we take that to user tests and ask people if they think it looks fun. So it’s really a much longer time before you start putting any code down, because there’s a whole kind of physical prototyping process that you go through.
Kinect Adventures includes a mix of cooperative, and competitive activities
What most impresses you about Kinect?
You know, the job I have that’s actually more important than my Microsoft role is that I’m a mum. The thing that I absolutely love about Kinect is watching the way my kids respond to it, and watching the expressions on their faces. I’ve got two boys and it’s incredible to watch the energy that they bring into every Kinect experience. And the focus, frankly, which is something you don’t see a lot in boys.
You can read more of this interview in issue 218 of Edge, available from UK newsagents now.