Listening to: Vicarious - Strawpeople
The second question I was asked when I bought the Librie was “Why?”
(The first question was generally “what is it?”). One of the things I
wanted to investigate was the contribution eInk might make to games. What might a
gaming device that used eInk look like? How might it behave?
Of the devices that I could get my hands on the Librie was the best (I have also played
with some segmented displays out of Korea). I rapidly ran up against the design constraints
of the device (i.e. it’s an electronic book reader, not a generic computing platform).
Still, I was able to do some work that confirmed my general thoughts at the nature
of the games you might create:
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Image resolution would be paramount
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Larger format playing areas would benefit from this technology
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Refresh rates aren’t a huge consideration (most eInk devices I have played with generally
handle screen updates every second or so)
So as a first cut let me introduce the “Universal Game Board”. The teeny
footprint of the Librie does limit what I have been able to do (as can be seen in
the rather congested nature of the Chess board) but it does give you a sense of the
potential.
It does Chess:
If you can do Chess… then Checkers is a piece of the proverbial:
But Ludo is less of an obvious jump:
I could go on… but you get the idea… a dynamic display surface with a super high
resolution and contrast gives you a lot of room to move, allowing you to create books
of game boards. In general this is pretty obvious stuff but it does vividly demonstrate
the capabilities of a game board that utilises e-Ink.
The current demo represents pretty much the limit of what I have currently coaxed
out of a stock Librie. In real life your limits also include the pieces you use in
the game (you would need to carry around all the pieces for every type of game).
One concept I wanted to investigate was a map display for a role playing environment.
The screen has a resolution that is high enough to display detailed images of
classic role playing dungeons. Even in black and white they look great. By placing
a separate part of the map on page of an eBook and labeling the exits and entrances
with the appropriate pages it is possible to “move” through the map in
a “pick a path” type manner. Unfortunately the ability of the Librie to
allow for arbitrary page selection is rather limited.
What happens if you move away from the constraints of the eBook reader and allow your
imagination to roam a little? I guess my wish list of features would be:
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A greater display area
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An ability for the display to know about the pieces placed on it… their type, position and
their orientation
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A system that allows you to take the information about the pieces and alter the image
displayed on the surface
Once you’ve cracked these nuts then the idea of a gaming table with a dynamic surface
becomes pretty obvious. While immediately applicable for the likes of role playing
and war gaming… it also adds some interesting dimensions to card games like Pokemon
and Magic the Gathering. Cards might have RFID tags built into them to allow for the
electronic storage of the information about the card. The game table would then use
that data to determine outcome of the game rounds. The system would be able to depict
the battles as the combinations of cards appeared.
It gets very interesting if you added a 4th element to the wish list:
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A network connection.
Networked gaming tables would enable:
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Distributed wargaming
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Distributed role playing
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Distributed card games (though I don’t know how players might feel about having cards
with RFID type tags built into them)
And the limiting factor of the pieces? One solution would be to build an eInk surface
into the top face of the piece:
Making it programmable would allow the pieces to be configured as the game started.
