DAVID FONO'S INTERNET WEBSITE
I make games, nifty interactive things, and happy cats.
@fonograph- linkedin profile
- hurried notes on game design
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Tweets
- @ecphory Hey, any chance you'd be able to advise on some random AI jargon in the next couple of days?
- @ecphory The doubles are not a mistake, that's just how they get printed. Great for Christmas cards!
- @oceanpark Totally.
- @oceanpark It looks like we're going back to the Drake again for something (Visitations remount?) in October... if you're planning a visit..
- @oceanpark I'm getting closer... there's still an inherent tension between the "game" and the "theatre" that needs solving.
- @oceanpark Thanks! Wish you could have seen it.
- @dd_toronto Anytime! The deck came with your Spirit ticket; added on the 3rd night, and mailed to audience who came before that.
- RT @Mirel_a: Looking forward to an interesting theatrical experience at #visitations at the drake.
- RT @MargaretAtwood: Fun! Went last week, broke into car, clue was in Paradise Lost :) Visitations at The Drake http://t.co/JXTeezFuPO 2 mo…
- For those keeping track, there's just one more day (tomorrow) to catch Visitations at the Drake Hotel! http://t.co/M3EQ7BrtTP
- RT @rocknecorrigan: Exploring new frontiers in interactive theatre: Toronto's @TheMissionBiz http://t.co/KwsBAH58TP
- RT @WestQueenWest: Have you seen Visitations at The Drake Hotel yet? See it tonight at 6:30pm. Be part of an interactive ghost story... htt…
- RT @nparts: Q&A: The Mission Business aims to put audiences in the middle of the action with Visitations at The Drake http://t.co/5fEljpELx6
- Nominate @themissionbiz for NOW's Best Site Specific Theatre Company... because we bleed for you people. BLEED! http://t.co/Yk04aN38IKMay 10, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @toronabee: Visitations was definitely one of my more random adventures in Toronto. It was quite the 'paranormal' experience. http://t.…
- RT @thedrakehotel: RT @byronist: #Visitations @thedrakehotel is sold out for rest of this week. Only May 13 and 14 are left. http://t.co/W…May 09, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @stitchmedia @andrhia The talk surrounding the taxonomy seems to suggest that what we should looking for is adjectives instead of nouns.
- Absolutely godawful graphic design and completely broken unsubscribe system, YOU are #THE1701.May 08, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @futuryst: Sunday, I did http://t.co/hXajccx6Rl. Interactive theatre envelope = pushed. Bravo @themissionbiz @trevver & co! /cc @ava…
- "Transmedia has done what it came to do." Sounds good to me, I'm ready to move on! http://t.co/yNIoIQvC5sMay 07, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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Info
- Summary
I make unusual games. I've made, oh, about a dozen or so. Soon, I'm going to update this bio. It's going to be wild!
Specialties: game design, experience design, writing, web development, programmingExperience- May 2007 - PresentCo-Founder / Game Designer & Developer / Atmosphere Industries
As Atmosphere Industries I and my collaborators develop innovative games and gamish experiences that delight and engage. We have:
- Created a locative game for Perth's ByteMe Festival, where players tracked down BlueTooth nodes across the city to unlock a story about the city.
- Developed an SMS-based game for Curtin University's Open Day festival, which had visitor solving situated puzzles across the campus.
- Ran a game on Twitter as a buildup to the Edge of the Web conference in Perth, and an SMS-based team-building game at the actual conference.
...and more! (The list sorely needs to be updated.)
- Nov 2009 - Oct 2011Lead Developer / Chocolate Liberation Front
- Led development on 4 major online entertainment projects, consisting of over 20 sophisticated Flash games and applications.
- Worked closely with other developers to manage software architecture; with artists to manage asset workflows on projects with substantial graphical requirements; and with producers on project planning and scheduling. Collaborated with the entire team to effectively respond to evolving project requirements.
-Contributed to all stages of project lifecycles, from idea conception and requirements analysis, to design and development.
- Led and/or contributed to game design and interaction design on all interactive project components.
- Took initiative in writing detailed functional specifications for large projects.
- May 2007 - Oct 2009Web Designer / Developer / Freelance
Developed sites for a variety of clients using PHP, .NET, MySQL and SQL Server.
- Oct 2006 - Apr 2007IT Consultant / Fantsuam Foundation
Independently developed web design curriculum, a 5-week course teaching basic design, HTML, CSS, and PHP skills; trained local staff on curriculum.
Coordinated development of for-hire web design services by local staff, and led initial consultation with clients.
Commended by management for turning Fantsuam Foundation into the “local expert” on web development.
- Feb 2006 - Sept 2006Founder / Lead Designer / Torgame
Founded organization and recruited executive team.
Served as lead designer for initial production: a two-week game with over 100 players that attracted press coverage from all major national papers, as well as several television stations and radio shows.
- Jun 2005 - Aug 2005Research Intern / Microsoft Research
Conceived, designed, prototyped, and evaluated a system for collaborative multimedia composition on mobile phones.
Designed a trial study for the prototype, and deployed to six groups of external users in order to analyze effects on sociability.
Presented and pitched project to staff across the organization several times.
Authored a write-up of the project, which won the Best Short Paper Award at the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work.
- May 2003 - Aug 2004Research Assistant / Queen's University
Independently conducted research in the field of human computer interaction.
Helped to develop prototypes of cutting edge eye-tracking technology, some of which were featured on major North American TV networks (ABC, Discovery, Space.)
Performed several laboratory usability studies to evaluate novel technology.
Co-authored two long papers and two short papers for the ACM CHI conference, one short paper for the ACM UIST conference, and one short paper for the ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences.
- Sept 2003 - May 2004Web Developer / General Knowledge
Developed first stages of web-based architecture and interface for an intelligent peer-to-peer distribution system.
- Jun 2001 - May 2003Designer / Developer / Visual Infinity
Built Internet storefront, a robust e-commerce system powered by Java Servlets and connected to a MySQL database, as well as numerous interactive applications for user access.
Created user interface artwork, product logo, and manufacturing artwork for flagship software.
Education-
2004 - 2006University of TorontoMSc in Human-Computer Interaction
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2000 - 2004Queen's UniversityBSc in Computer Science
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Honors:Best Note Award, 2006 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2005 Canada Graduate Scholarship
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Interests:games, stories, cross-media, internet, mobile computing, social technology, ict4d, args, pervasive games, locative games, technology, human-computer interaction, cscw
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Posts
- lessons learnt from visitations, vol. 1
a series of small challenges is perhaps not ideal for this format, because players don’t get a chance to settle and really understand what they’re doing. next time, it would be interesting to focus on a single, central mechanic: perhaps something currency-based.
when designing experiences that need to be communicated across multiple tiers of execution (designer—>director—>actor), it would be useful to accompany directions with an explanation of design choices.
do people want adventures, or do they want rides? even an MMO or open-ended RPG is carefully crafted to whisk people along predesignated flows of activity; it’s the big set pieces and the scripted conversations that get remembered, not the hours of aimless wandering around and killing monsters to afford a weapon upgrade. when people ask for choice, are they really actually asking for the ILLUSION of choice? “I want to feel like I’m making a difference, but you’d better be damn sure that the difference I’m making is interesting and compelling with lots of cool stuff that happens as a result.”
- one chance
Games are generally all about learning through failure, building skills, and achieving mastery over time and repeated attempts. What do you do when you make a game that is only played once? That’s what I’m dealing with right now. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve been dealing with it repeatedly, for a long time.
Presumably you have to put more emphasis on the experience as its own ends, rather than a pathway to “winning”. Of course, failure is failure and people generally don’t like that. Do you make failure impossible? Do you pepper the experience with enough inevitable small victories that it all averages out? Perhaps failure needs to be simply another fork in the trail, no less desirable in the long-run than winning. Or, perhaps you just tell the players that failing is part of life, and suck it up, and this is art goddammit.
- young culture
The experience of being a game creator is fairly novel compared to other media. One part of that is working right alongside the pioneers of the craft, who are all very much alive and mostly pretty young; which is quite a different situation than in, say, film, where many or most of the trailblazers are dead or dying, and the community of experts has become broadly distributed amongst a practically infinite number of film festivals, college courses, and what not.
I mention this because it leads to a lot of “community”, which is mostly quite a good thing, but can sometimes be mistaken for a cult of personality, which is sometimes weird and uncomfortable when the people who everyone is talking about are (a) your contemporaries, and (b) hopelessly outclass you. Do I really need to know who Jason Rohrer is, and what he thinks? Yes, it’s a good idea to play his games. But do I have to watch his GDC talks? Do I have to watch the five thousand other GDC talks?
Of course there’s no good argument against any of things, because knowledge is good and community is good and so on. But as a creator, as someone struggling, essentially, to become these people, I find that participating in this culture makes it difficult to actually create. There is such a constant stream of news and conversation in the community that it is very easy to become completely subsumed in it. Ultimately, I find the only way I can remain productive to completely turn off, tune out, and focus on my own work—and occasionally come up for air when I’m in between projects.
- dumbed down
I’ve been reading lots of editorials recently about modern games being “dumbed down” and skill gaps being compressed. This has been pretty undeniably going on, but I reject the apparently a priori assumption that this is a bad thing. There’s a missing discussion about the purpose of making and playing games, here.
Playing a game is a pretty meaningless act in itself. Climbing to the top of a leaderboard betters no aspect of the world or of yourself… unless you derive satisfaction, enjoyment, self-esteem, or whatever from the act. Doing well at a game, like any other entertainment or artistic experience, is first and foremost meant to elicit an emotion or thought. The means to that end is far from a relevant, but it’s a fatal mistake to assume that the means are the ends.
Learning and mastering skills in a game is one way to achieve certain desirable feelings. There are plenty of other ways. Arguably better ways—less frustrating ways. Granted, achieving gratification through hard work and mastery is more character-building than the alternatives, but the reality is that games are (almost always) just entertainment. Pretending otherwise is awfully myopic.
- "you're doing it wrong"
New, natural interfaces—touch, motion, etc.—come with a lot more ambiguity in input and control. Users can develop idiosyncratic techniques and tendencies around their input, which makes planning a good control scheme a lot tougher than it is with buttons and sticks. Here’s the question: how much ambiguity should the controls allow? If people use the controls non-optimally, should the game force them to correct themselves from the get-go? Or should it allow them to do what they feel, and guide them towards optimal behaviour more progressively? Is ambiguity simply the sign of poor design, even though its an inherent property of the input modality?
- This is for work.
Methods for a board game to interact with a separate on-screen software component?
Software to board game…
- software triggers events in the board game at random times
- software triggers events in the board game in set feedback loop
- software generates multiple iterations of the board game
- software presents isolated challenges that when resolved, modify the board game
Board game to software…
- enter state of board game in software when prompted
- enter an aggregate value or particular indicator when prompted
- take action in software as a result of player choice
- board game prompts an action in the software
- AR tracking (madness!!!)
- chaotic good
Normally in designing experiences, I seek to minimize chaos. This is the general rule of thumb. One of the interesting things about games, which runs contrary to other manifestations of interactivity, is that there needs to be some impedance on performance; some amount of confusion is often a good thing. I was recently reading a game design textbook that described this phenomenon in a formal sense; it talked about a feeling of emergent randomness within the rules that provided for a sense of possibilities, unpredictability, which can make games exciting. That’s true, but I’ve found that chaos has a certain aesthetic quality as well, which is more immediate and primal than the rational explanation. There is something about short, frenetic bursts of activity, and the scramble in them, that activates the senses in a unique way. I’m sure there’s an evolutionary explanation. Not all games have this, but when it happens, it’s pretty magical.
- emergence is like a religion
I’m extremely interested in being clever. I try very hard to be clever: I like all my words to have wordplay, I like my music intricate and layered, and I like my game mechanics to have that kind of “zam-zow” elegance that makes you believe they were created by astronauts from the future. In other words, I’m very into over-designing. My natural inclination is to believe that deep, compelling gameplay only results from deep, compelling game components.
This is often true, of course, but for every rule and asset one adds, there tends to be something lost; simplicity can give rise to more complex behaviour than complexity. It’s a tough rule to learn, and learning it has largely been the fundamental task of my game design career. I find it difficult to picture and predict that something complicated can emerge from something basic; it doesn’t make intuitive sense; I have to take it on faith. Of course, that makes it all the more wonderful when it works out.
- I hate complex gauges
I’ve got a quantity that behaves in different ways, depending on stages. Initially the player fills it up, and it only goes in one direction; once filled, it goes in both directions, depending on player performance; and if it drops below a certain threshold, it empties entirely, and returns to the first stage. The idea here is create a binary state for the player, affected by the quantity; either it is empty, and the player needs to fill it; or it has been filled, and the player needs to maintain it. But cramming all this functionality into a single gauge runs contrary to the simplicity of a standard UI element, and the assumptions that underlie it. There are UI design solutions around this, but that’s not something I want to futz around with right now.
Alternate solution: transfer the functionality of the gauge’s second state to a function of gameplay instead. The gauge only fills up, and once full, stays full. But once full, it is targeted by certain attacks from enemies; if those attacks are successful, the gauge is emptied. Players learn that the gauge needs to be protected from a unique threat once full, which is intuitive enough.
