The tiny kung-fu fighters are attacking again. Fortunately, my best mate's gran has seen them and is merrily swatting them away with her hands, her hairdo and a teaspoon. Five minutes ago, she had never played a computer game. Now she's just beaten my high score.
It takes a lot to shock a room full of games developers, but Richard Marks did just that in 1999 with his creation, EyeToy. When he stepped up to the stage at the Sony Europe developer conference, the main screen was filled with asterisks. He stood in front of a camera and calmly wiped them all away with his hand. The room fell silent.
"We all looked at each other and said `which one of us is going to develop this?'" remembers Mike Haigh, now EyeToy development director. The group that got the chance was Sony Camden, which later became part of Sony London Studios. Marks, an American who built cameras for underwater robots, moved to the UK and started working with Sony Camden on the technology.
The standard PlayStation 2 (PS2) controller has 15 buttons. The Xbox has 11. The EyeToy has none. It is a small camera that, once plugged into a PS2, displays on the screen an image of you surrounded by bright computer graphics. Buttons on the screen are pressed by waving your hands over them.
Everything works exactly how it would in the real world -- at least, how it would if you were as flat as the TV screen. Dirty windows can be wiped clean. Bubbles can be burst with your finger. A ball can be kept in the air with your head (or your elbow, or your tongue).
For perhaps the first time in the history of computing, things behave exactly as they should. There is no interface gap -- no character represents you, because there you are on the screen, waving your arms and moving things in front of you. No instruction manual.
Just plug in and start to play. And it makes a great party game.
"It involves a very natural interface -- body movement," said Gonzalo Frasca, a researcher in computer games at the IT University of Copenhagen. "So even people who have never played computer games feel they can give it a try. EyeToy did to my wife what seven years of marriage to a videogame researcher could not: get her into videogames."
The first EyeToy game, Play, came out in winter last year and was an instant success. Unusually for a computer game, it kept on selling -- more than 4 million at the last count.
The more people played it at others' houses, the more they wanted a copy of their own. And not all were in the usual games player demographic.
"When we trialed it at a games event, we had no idea we would get grandparents and mothers playing," says Ron Festajo, creative director of EyeToy.
"Normally, the parents would be sitting around talking, while the children played with the controllers. But when they saw their children washing windows with their hands, they were saying `let me show you how it's done, you haven't got a clue how to wash windows.' The parents were competing against their children.
"That's when we knew we had something special," he said.
A lot of the magic came from that launch game, which was like nothing people had played before -- and yet was simple enough for everyone to try.
"If we'd launched it as the obvious Webcam -- it's a camera, it sits on your PS2 and the killer app [application] is that you can see your friends and family across the world -- I don't think it would have been anywhere near as successful," says Haigh. "It's too obvious. It needed something that sparked the imagination."
To help develop the platform, Sony has made the device's development coding freely available. Chat is now available, as are plenty of third-party games. In the new year, Sony will release Kinetic -- an EyeToy personal exercise trainer developed with Nike. It uses a wider lens add-on to provide a full-body workout.
Sony London is also developing EyeToy for the forthcoming PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld, while Marks is playing with depth-sensitive cameras which, depending on per-unit cost, may or may not emerge on the PlayStation 3.
Meanwhile, the success of EyeToy means that both Nintendo and Microsoft are reportedly developing their own versions for the next generation of consoles available next year. PC and Mac Webcam games are also now appearing. ToySight, for example, was developed in Newcastle, and uses Apple's iSight camera to play EyeToy-like minigames.
Camera play is becoming a platform of its own, but the technology behind these games is nothing remarkable -- they could probably have been created years ago. It needed someone to take the risk and prove it could be successful.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source