TonyPa first came to my attention with his impressive tutorials on tile-based games in Flash. Later, I discovered his games page, which includes a maddening simple and addictive game called “Gear Taker.” If you go to his site, click on “games” then click on the first game in the list “GEARTAKER” that’ll lead you to it (sorry, no direct links available). This is the finest example of a “one button game.” To play the game only requires pressing a single button (the left mouse button, of course). Yet with only that one means of input the gameplay is as addictive as any good game of Tetris or Bejeweled. And the aesthetics… well, the visuals are black-n-white, stick figures and gears (as simple as it gets), and the music has a single sample played at various pitches and tempos. And while the aesthetics perfectly understate the simple design, the music perfectly understates the incredible tension induced as your hapless stick figure flies across the screen.

Two words: perfectly simple. TonyPa, your creation serves as an inspiration to the rest of us. Thank god I don’t have this on my mobile phone.

I would only add one option, an advanced mode for the masochists that involves timing. But it’s probably for the safety of the masses that he didn’t include something such as that.

My best score is between 2500 and 3000, around level 6 or 7. Good luck!

Big announcement today from Apple. Along with all of the nice enhancements to the iPod line, and to the iTunes software/store, Apple made two announcements that stood out to me. First, they announced that you can now download games to your iPod. Second, they announced that in early 2007 they’ll release a settop box for your living room.

Games on the iPod isn’t too surprising, and actually I’m a bit surprised they haven’t embraced that before now. Sure, they had a few very simple games, even on the early iPods, but they couldn’t compete with the even the trivial games on my mobile phone. Apparently, the 5G iPods (iPods with video) have enough muscle for some custom versions of very popular casual games, such as Zuma and Bejeweled. Looking at some “animated screenshots” of the games, it appears that they translate very faithfully, even including Bejeweled’s cool level transitions (though I suspect they’re video clips on the iPod, whereas on the PC they’re 3D tunnel effects, but I’d love to be wrong). Of course, the games have been tweaked for the clickwheel interface. I’ve yet to find any more details, such as whether Apple will be opening up the iPod to other developers or what their future catalogue will look like.

Update: Apparently, some folks have already done a bit of reverse engineering on the games…

I’ve also not yet found any details on what the processing power of the 5G iPods are. Sure, they can play some pretty high quality video and decompress various codecs on the fly, so they’re doing better than my old 286, but they’ve likely got specialized chips optimized for decompressing streaming data — chips that are likely not appropriate for general purpose software (much like the vector units on a PlayStation2). If anyone has any pointers to some specs, I’d be interested (the Apple site, not surprisingly, is crawling right now).

The settop box is very interesting. Very small profile (half the thickness of a Mac Mini), and it eliminates all the “clutter” normally associated with media center devices. There’s no powerbrick, and the network connection is wireless (with an optional wired connection). I assume it has the same electronics inside it as a video iPod since it can do all the same stuff and doesn’t require a powerbrick or fans. I’m curious as to whether they used a standard harddrive instead of the smaller drives used in the iPods to save some money (but it is pretty small!). The price is great ($249), and the usability looks to be flawless (as expected). I look forward to grabbing one, particularly if the iTunes movie service really picks up. (I’m crossing my fingers that they do some kind of rental option, or Netflix-like subscription service.)

But let’s put two and two together… they’ve got games on the iPod. Great casual games, fine-tuned for the super simple click wheel interface. And soon they’ll have a settop-iPod in the living room, hooked up to your TV, controlled by a little white remote with the same click wheel interface. While Steve Jobs didn’t mention playing games on the “iTV” … I can’t see why one couldn’t! It looks to be the same hardware (or at least equivalently powered hardware).

So, my question is this: will Apple bring casual games to the living room? Microsoft is trying to do that with Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox360. And sure, the Xbox360 has all those media center elements like the iTV will. But, this is Apple, and the footprint is significantly smaller, and the interface more dedicated. Could we be seeing the birth of the casual games console?

Apparently, Godwin’s Law applies to US politics as well. While I don’t usually comment on politics on this blog, I couldn’t help but spread the excellent words of Edward R. Murrow (as quoted by the excellent Keith Olbbermann). Of course, this is in response to Rumsfeld’s idiotic Godwin…

Raph Koster teaches the Theory of Fun. Eric Zimmerman teaches the Rules of Play. Chris Crawford teaches the Art of Interactive Design. But they all need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the underlying psychology — not the “what” of games, and more generally play, but the “why.”

A Theory of Games for Just About Everyone by Aaron Ruby

Excellent article. In fact, so good that I am already eagerly anticipating the next article (he’ll have a series at Next Generation). Yes, so good that I am actively lamenting the fact that I think I gave away my copy of Smartbomb without reading it… To be honest, from the book’s cover (yes, I know I shouldn’t have judged…) and based on who gifted it to me, I had assumed (yes, I’m an ass) the book was more business, more shallow and less practically informed than what I’d be interested in. If it’s anything like this article, than I made a serious mistake.

Aaron suggests that play is part of what philosophers call “intentional attitudes.” While Koster, Zimmerman, Crawford, et al, prefer to define play (and by extension, games) through the physical actions that compose play/games, and by the context in which they occur, Aaron rises above those definitions and points out that play, like art, really is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, play is defined by the player, not by the specifics of his actions.

I absolutely agree with this definition, and I also agree with Aaron’s suggestion that by applying this definition, by looking at our medium through this lens, we can better understand both when/why we are successful with certain elements and in certain contexts, and where we can go to broaden our medium.

How can you argue with a definition that encompasses football, SimCity, Doom, Barbies, D&D and sex?