Games Alfresco is celebrating the first year on the air.
Among the festivities, I am sharing a talk I gave at the Winter Augmented Reality Event (WARM ’09) at Graz University (Austria) this February.
It makes the case for unleashing Augmented Reality into the mass market – Today.
The best part was the post talk conversation with a group of AR enthusiasts at the University. I guess I managed to get their juices flowing.
Hope it will have a similar effect on you.
Here it is: a year of research distilled into 16 minutes of uncut, fast-paced presentation – with a twisted voice over.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Many thanks to the augmented reality community for your contribution. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Are you in?
Filed under: AR Events | Tagged: Augmented Reality Today, Ori Inbar, WARM 2009 |
Games Alfresco 
My compliments for this, I think it is a very comprehensive and educative production, well done!
Nicely articulated. Although I think Apple’s Alex sounds more like Borat than you do! :)
Thank you for putting the virtual “.” on the real “i”
My wife’s comment was that she strongly disliked the idea of augmenting the outdoors reality to make it more interesting to children to play outside. She was strongly in favor of what you described as “boring”, the classical children outside game.
My attitude towards this is that I believe boredom is the source of creativity, I sometimes provoque situations where my children really have nothing to do (maybe that is silly). I try idealistically to make my children create rather than consume, and it is probably true that playing a computer game has much to do with consuming. – Well, maybe it is that what makes the difference: When I play soccer I do not have the impression that I am the consumer of a pre-defined entertainment experience. When I play playstation, I definitely do have that feeling. – no authoring is required for a soccer game to happen.
To the contrary, actually: Playing soccer or basketball definitely is a creative act in my view. The same I feel when playing chess or Go, that are all pretty creative games. They allow to express yourself, develop ideas, learn strategies. The classical dumb computer game does not allow much creativity. Typically you need to react quickly, and your repertoire of actions is extremely limited, you just want to get to the next game level (pong..Doom). – So I guess the AR game you are talking about, that gets kids hooked on to reality, should probably resemble more a mixture of basketball and chess than polluting reality with dumb games of the get-to-next-level kind. It is arguable if SimCity, the Sims, or ego-shooter team play are more creative than Asteroids or Doom, or even Karaoke. But I guess that much, much more is possible w.r.t. to digitally assisted creative expression. It is just that nobody from the games community focuses on creativity-enabling games. (Well, to some extent Photoshop could be the ideal thing here, maybe the next version should show you a continuously updated creativity score or a community rating).
In my opinion, games should be about 3D construction (modeling, design, fashion) and not about 3D destruction.
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nice, even though Borat probably sounds better then Sam.
Ori, you’re brilliant. Your talk is absolutely brilliant. I’m glad the sense of urgency is shared, and I’m glad you’re here to articulate things so much more clearly than I.
I am, however, going to agree with Sven. General application to education (and maybe even early-childhood ed, but I have concerns) is good, but I think that it is important to have simple, intuitive modeling tools built into AR from the get go, so that the focus is on collaborative creation in shared augmented environments. I grew up on SimCity (yes Sven, SimCity is more creative than Doom or Asteroids), SimEarth, SimAnt, Tetris (a nice balance of constructive and destructive ;-) ), MacPaint, MacDraw and later Canvas. My little sister had KidPix. My parents didn’t allow video games in the house. I love a good FPS, and dropped out of school more or less because of a Final Fantasy game (it was probably more symptom than cause, but I’m trying to make a point), but I’m grateful for the effort.
The point is that, while I was a child, creating virtual works caused me to be more engaged with the real world because the act encouraged active thinking, analysis, and creation. Later, as a student and better-trained consumer, I got hooked into a fiction that tore away my life for two weeks while everything came unraveled. There are serious distinctions to be made in content, and you made them, but I don’t know that young children are necessarily the ones to go after first. The market is there, but I just don’t think that the implications have been thought out enough to make that decision responsibly. On the other hand, you’ve thought about this a lot more than I have… I just know how easy it is to get hooked on a thesis.
So assuming that kids are the target users: how do we hook them on a reality as pervaded with branded marketing as their screens, and keep them safe from the mental predators that are marketers vying for their passive attention, money, and allegiance? There is a very serious issue of infrastructure control here. Honestly, I won’t trust anything like an interactive (but potentially passive) medium to evolve organically such that it is best suited to raise children into an ideal society. And since we’re talking about mediating reality and plugging the data pipe in pretty much constantly from an early age, we really are talking about a new stage/type of society. Who gets to shape it, or at least keep the grownups out long enough for the kids to do it? Somebody has to, and I’m sure as my doubt of hell that we can’t trust God to do it. And if the currently reality is any indicator, we can’t trust most of the current society to do it either.
And I dig your groovy XML stylins, Ori.
Excelent video, even if the combination of a robotic voice and stills made me think of the developing AI from the Terminator tv series.
(What would skynet have to gain from AI…hmmm)
My own beliefs closely follow those in the video.
I especialy agree about game pleasures, specificaly Action/Reaction.
I think this is what makes videogames such an addictive medium. Not only do they encompass almost all other artforms (visual, audio etc), but they also provide statisfying feedback for user actions.
I believe videogames in their idly form are better then Chess, or board games, or just about anything short of Lego.
You can not only get creative demends in the choices players make (which can be vastely more complex then the brief chooses made when playing sports), but you also get instant feedback on those choices, you get interactivity with players worldwide shareing those cause’s and effects. (often in complex feedback-like ways).
Really the only thing lacking from games is the physical nature. And if the Wii has shown anything, its that gamers still love to move about if they have the adventages of a videogame too.
Honestly, I think AR games arnt just better from a health aspex, arnt just potentialy more creative, but also better from a gameplay aspex too.
In fact, hyperbole though this may seem, I think AR Games might become the single biggest human recreational activity. They can, after all, emulate just about any other artform or activity inside of them, while simulantiously increaseing human contact as well.
Nice video, I really enjoyed that. And it helped me cement some of my beliefs. Thanks for that.
The voice was OK, you get used to it after a while. And a good prelude to what is to come anyways ;-)
I question more the potential AR holds. Education is definitely one of the potentials of augment reality, but how about others? How we work, how we communicate, travel, create, think?
You’re absolutely right, Kathryn. We start with learning games today, and everything else tomorrow…
The voice-over was a little jarring, but the video was very informational. I’m an avid gamer, an AR enthusist and a parent, so I was thoroughly interested in it. I’ve always been a strong believer in learning through games. My wife and I home school our children and we do a lot of learning through educational games. In fact, my son is on the computer next to me at this moment doing a math game. He’s six years old and breezing through multiplication.
I made a post on my website about your speech Ori and included a few learning game ideas suitable for the iPhone. Keep up the good work.
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I was reading something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective on it is diametrically opposed to what I read originally. I am still pondering over the various points of view, but I’m leaning to a great extent toward yours. And no matter, that’s what is so great about modern-day democracy and the marketplace of thoughts online.
[…] Here. […]
You could certainly see your expertise within the article you write.
The arena hopes for more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to mention how they believe.
At all times follow your heart.