Ambient Awareness
by jachilli
In social media, there’s a concept known as “ambient awareness” that describes the peripheral contact a user keeps with his contacts. It’s obviously not face-to-face contact, and the contact itself isn’t as substantial as in-person interaction, but it’s enough information and it’s of sufficent frequency for your contacts to passively let you know, “Hey, I’m still out here, and he’s a morsel of what I’ve been up to.” It’s friends lite, to be sure, but it’s far more functional than not being in contact with your contacts at all.
The WoW Armory similarly allows you a limited degree of game interaction while you’re outside the game.ArenaNet recently revealed a few upcoming features for Guild Wars 2 that allow players to keep an “ambient awareness” of the game when they’re not playing it traditionally, at the computer desktop. While the feature set is by definition smaller than the whole of GW2, the plan is to allow players to maintain an up-to-date information set even when they’re not in the game. Most importantly, communication between players in-game and using a mobile device are possible. While you’re at work, while you’re on the train or traveling out of town, you can still be a part of the experience. As well, note that it’s not something suggested by the world itself. Guild Wars is, of course, a fantasy game, without any in-setting equivalents of the mobile devices being used to keep those lines of communication. Is there a metaphor? Is your mobile device a crystal ball or some such magic-as-technology supposition? Or is it completely abstracted or not explained at all?
(That said, ambient awareness does have a limit to its usefulness and breadth. In most humans, the “Dunbar number” is 150. That is, the number of relationships a person can distinguish and maintain separate recognizance of is approximately 150. As to game application, that number becomes even more significant, as the ambient relationship with the game seems to suggest that it will occupy some proportion of that Dunbar number, which also has to be shared with the other players with whom the player relationships have been established. But that’s separate and, I suspect, extremely theoretical at this stage of massively multiplayer gaming.)
I’ve been researching ambient awareness for about a month. It’s potential is alarming on the freakishly cool side. The simple concept of a character sending you, the player, a text message, advising, “I’ve just arrived at a coffee shop. What should I order?” provides a lite and hopefully welcome immersive experience (so long as the messages aren’t overwhelming), while having a desktop widget with an information set keeping you up to date on in-game events, touches the player on a whole other meaningful, but approachable, level. You never really leave the game, only step into one of its expressions. As for the use of metaphor, sure, as it’s appropriate, and so long as it doesn’t transform your destop into an eyesore. Such widgets should compliment the desktop experience, and attract the player to repeated review.
I think I would go with something that explains the source of the communication, it is more immersive that way and doesn’t break the spell with metagaming..In GW2 I would go with writing that is written on a magical scroll or a book at the source of the communication and magically appear on a magically linked scroll that the user possesses, it is better than a Crystal ball because it explains the graphic interface and writing.In VTM MD settings, someone texting you via cellphone is a good explanation that is also pretty much what it is ;)
I’m going to break the boundaries of reasonable arrogance and actually quote myself – quote something I posted just two days ago.”Imagine, you are home and play your MMO in front of your 40 inch screen with full detail. But if you have to leave, you can still play on your phone. The interface is different, the things you can do are a bit different also – but its still the same game and the same character – you can help him progress, and do many of the things he normally does, on your phone. You can even use the phone to “call to” the in-game voice of your contacts.”Of course Im only quoting this because it shows how excited I am at the mere notion of anything that lets the end user keep track of in-game events in a mobile fashion. Be it called “Ambient Awareness” or more accurately “Having Absolutely No Life”, such a feature would be incredibly welcome and tie in more-than-nicely with ANY MMORPG. Giving the potential for the player to stay in touch with the game at all times is to MMOs what Facebook was to social lives. Nothing broadens horizons more than permanent contact. No matter the form or the limitation of such a feature, I heartily encourage CCP to try and bring as many functionality as possible relating to their upcoming titles to mobile plotforms. The day I can sit at my local Tim Hortons and get stuff done in-game on my Notion Ink Adam as I drink my chicken noodle soup and my coffee is the day you have really won me forever. :)
First, I agree with all posts above. There are many possibilities for features like that in MMOs.And in a modern setting implementing that in a plausible way would be easy.There could have a function to tie your in-game cell to your real cell then when you are offline people could send sms messages or even call you from inside the game.For texting I know there are some sites that do it for free, calling would require charging but VoIPs usually have goods prices.Functions to contact your NPC bots would also be great, for example if you have a bot running a shop you could ask how the sales are going and things like that.
I wonder if music might fit as a good ambient awareness metaphor or even a brand tool? It would be interesting if players could either create a soundtrack for their character by linking songs from their hard drive’s music library (or from the cloud, whereever) and run tracks asghey play the game, or if the game had a good music library to pull from. Even when you’re not playing you could listen to the WoD “radio channels” on the ambient awareness widget on your desktop or via a smartphone app.
Our tag heuer watches are very good!
I’d love the idea of a WoD radio app… What a great way to keep in touch with the game world on the go!
To Alan Drayson’s point, it would also be cool to be able to play the “soundtracks” of your coterie members too.
Even soundtracks barely scrape the surface of the potential for Ambient Awareness. Especially with a modern setting, we can get away with a lot of things that would otherwise require suspension of disbelief. (I.E. the GW2 “Crystal Ball” communication system mentioned above, as opposed to a cellular text from the game to an actual phone)
“Imagine, you are home and play your MMO in front of your 40 inch screen with full detail. But if you have to leave, you can still play on your phone. The interface is different, the things you can do are a bit different also – but its still the same game and the same character – you can help him progress, and do many of the things he normally does, on your phone. You can even use the phone to “call to” the in-game voice of your contacts.”I think this would be amazing. With today’s smartphones, it would be rather easy to build an app that looks exactly like the in-game cell phone (to continue a line of thought from the previous post). The potential to keep up with events in-game while you’re taking care of real-life concerns would be a huge bonus. The ease it would bring to coterie members keeping tabs on each other and advancing the story when not everyone can be physically logged in….wow.Text msg: You need to get to the museum right now. Big things are going down and your head is on the line.You: Tell “his majesty” I’m about to find out who’s causing all the recent problems he’s all hot and bothered about.And then you can finish filling all those reports in your office and the people online can springboard the story off of what you sent. Bonus points for maintaining the Masquerade or (if there is such a thing in the game) negative hits to your “Masquerade meter” if you’re sloppy.I totally agree with Valamyr. If you guys could make something like this happen, I’d hit the “lifetime subscription” button so fast, my mouse would break.
Agree with you there, Alan. Music is the softest ambient awareness expression. I would love nothing more than to play different expressions of the game on my iPhone and or desktop. Or my TV. For example, it might be interesting to keep track of your herd, manage your character’s financial accounts, read the in-game news, get updates on your coterie’s actions, etc.
Right Kerensky. I know alot of hopeless MMO addicts would love it. Some compagny will do it sooner or later and reap huge benefits. :)Maybe its something to think about for CCP!
I’m excited by the ground that GW2 is covering here, but I am way more excited about the potential possibilities of it for the World of Darkness Online. This has the potential to be truly immersive, in ways that others have already pointed out. From simple things like getting in-game messages on your cell phone, to more complex things like giving your ghouls some simple orders via text message or email. Or perhaps one of your in-game gang contacts lets you know that another Kindred is sniffing around, building up street rep and possibly looking to take over one of your areas.This has the potential to bring people back into the game too. Maybe I play the game a lot, get a nightclub, have fun, but then stop playing for a while. But then… I get a notice that someone is mucking around at City Hall trying to rezone the block that the club is on so that they can get control of it. Oh hell no, they’re not gonna steal my shit, even if I have let my subscription lapse! I’ll just resubscribe and take care of that little problem…