Remembering You Don’t Know Jack

In the CD-ROM era there were a few brilliant titles that we referred to often for inspiration and illustration. The lush worlds of Myst (Cyan, 1994) and Puppet Motel (Voyager, 1994) relied on beautiful graphics. Sound was integral to the experiences, but the visuals came first.

When Jellyvision’s You Don't Know Jack came out the next year our minds were a little bit blown. You Don't Know Jack is an irreverent trivia game that makes you feel like you are part of a taping of a live game show. The simple type heavy graphics were smart and snappy, tailored to the limitations of the early pcs. The bigger revelation was how immersive sound, story and great writing can be. Much of YDKJ works with your eyes closed. To people who grew up with radio drama this would seem obvious, and we assumed some of those people were on the Jellyvision team.

For the next few years, when speaking to students at Sheridan College or OCAD, I would take along YDKJ and make the following proclamation: “Three of you are going to play this computer game and the rest are going to watch. And you will all be entertained.” In a post Guitar Hero big screen world it’s common to gather and watch people play games, but in the 1990s this was a great demonstration.

After a short game of YDKJ a room would be full of energy and we’d talk about what makes great interactive digital media.

Over the years Jellyvision has kept the game alive on the web, and has adapted its multiple-choice-made-fun approach to training applications. There was even an effort to make it into a real TV show. This January they are launching a new version for all the various game platforms, getting it into the family game room where it belongs.

(The link for Puppet Motel above links to a pretty good and short video demonstrating and describing features of the original CD-ROM experience, created by Laurie Anderson and artist-programmer Hsin-Chien Huang. There are no better descriptions online and not even a Wikipedia stub. It’s hard to guess how many, if any, Puppet Motel discs are anywhere near a computer that will run the software. More on this later.)

The latest and greatest Rosetta Stone release

Smackerel is excited because Rosetta Stone TOTALe version 4 just launched and the world can see some of what has been keeping us very busy this year. And learn a language along the way...

Smackerel designed the user experience of Rosetta Stone TOTALe, in collaboration with our awesome clients at Rosetta Stone. The latest and greatest release, available in 24 languages, combines all the best aspects of the standalone CD-ROM and online editions into one complete package, with many upgraded features and all-new activities. Self-paced immersion based learning is supported with interactive coached sessions with native speakers, as well as language learning games and activities designed to get you talking.



Smackerel has been providing user experience leadership to the Rosetta Stone team for four years, helping create the overall look and feel of multiple generations of their award-winning language learning software. We’re proud of our work with Rosetta Stone, helping shape the skilled efforts of hundreds of people into a great learning experience. Our efforts are a tribute to all of them.

Congrats to the whole team on this huge release!

Please visit RosettaStone.com and try an interactive demo of the course. We’ll be posting more extensive case studies of our work with Rosetta Stone this fall.

Express yourself by changing the world

This weekend I learned of a game called Minecraft. The first I saw was a YouTube video being discussed at Metafilter.

In the video a game player is showing off the house he has built out of giant 3d pixel cubes of a virtual world. As he shows how to use flint to make fire, the fire unexpectedly spreads. He turns to his pool and grabs giant blocks of water to throw on the fire. This effort fails and he flees the burning house.



From the discussion I learned that Minecraft is a multiplayer creative sandbox game where players can mine all kinds of materials and make many different useful things. Oh, and there is a day/night cycle. Night brings monsters. Hopefully you planned for this during the day.

What I also learned from the discussion was that people love this game.
It’s been gaining increasing exposure and fans. For the last few months over a thousand people have been buying the game every day, and in the last weeks it has been five times that (stats). This weekend many, including me, got to try it out for free, and the word is spreading. (As of now you still can at the Minecraft site.)

At first a game of Minecraft seems like an early 3D shooter, but it’s just using a visual language we understand already. This isn’t a premade maze of surfaces with texture maps, it’s a world of building blocks and physics. Every giant 3D pixel – I feel pretentious using the word ‘voxel’ – is an object with properties and rules.

The enthusiasm for this game makes Smackerel smile. Years of graphics improvements in 3D shooters didn’t really make them much more fun. (Marathon is still our fave.) Graphically, Minecraft is barely Castle Wolfenstein, but the world is endlessly interactive.

The simplicity of the graphics makes this different from virtual worlds like Second Life. Your avatar is too low res to really matter; you express yourself by changing the world.

For examples of the creative possibilities check these YouTube videos of rollercoasters made in Minecraft.

Android 'App Inventor' based on Scratch

Have you heard of Scratch? Its a point and click programming environment for kids developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Now Google has basically adopted 'Scratch' as its new Android DYI app maker. Its got a more grown up look, and its called AppInventor, but as far as I can tell its the same thing as Scratch.
Which basically means that first movers on the AppInventor wave are 10 or 11 years old today.

Here's an column on 'Seeking Alpha' about Google's App Inventor. Follow the link for more screen shots.

Tom Wujec speaks at TED

I just saw this video of Tom Wujec speaking at the TED conference in 2009. In the video, Tom delivers a very entertaining lateral-thinking parable. Different teams are given the task of building a tower out of sticks of spaghetti. Apparently, young kids are 3 times better at this task than business school grads.
via Boingboing



We worked with Tom a long time ago, and its great to see him doing well. Back when beveled edges where cool, Tom Wujec ran the Interactive department at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 1993 he hired Mackerel to collaborate on 'Light and Gemstones', a touch screen exhibit for the ROM's Gem gallery (pictured below). It ran for more than a dozen years, and was finally taken off display when the museum was renovated.

Good news / bad news

The good news is smackerel has been really busy this winter, (though we're always available to talk about your future projects.)

The bad news is, our own website needs a major spring cleaning. We promise to give it some loving attention as soon as we've hit some big deadlines in March.