This is fantastic. If you watch one video today, make sure this is the one. Last week at DICE, Jesse Schell founder and once creative director of Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio now on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University delves deep into not only the future of games, but the future of technology and how it will interact with our lives. It’s a great talk, and once you should sit down and watch.

The MIT GAMBIT Lab is hosting a Complete Game-Completion Marathon to help Haiti this coming weekend (February 26th-28th) and is accepting donations through its site.

It’s a good cause. Get involved.

(Totally stole this post from Brenda Brathwaite‘s Applied Game Design, which is another blog you should be reading.)

BioShock hacking system when view normally.

Negative Gamer posted a eye opening article (no pun intended) covering the new BioShock 2 hacking mechanic as it applies too color blind gamers. We as UI/UX designers needs to really perk up our ears and pay attention to these cries of foul play and not ignore the ramifications of our decisions.

Basing a in-game mechanic off a color matching systems isn’t anything new, however we need to make damn sure that players who suffer from color blindness in all it’s various forms can still enjoy our creations. It could be as simple as smart choices in our color selections, or allowing for color blind “modes” that switch colors around for great accessibility.

Negative Gamer’s John “wardrox” hooked us up with a good Color Contrast Analyzer. Use it, run your designs through it, and analyze the results making adjustments when necessary.

What BioShock 2's hacking looks like to someone who suffers from deuteranopia (red-green color blindness.)

With around 6-7% of gamers dealing we color blindness we’re facing a number to big to ignore. So, UI designers, keep color blindness in mind when your working on that neat little mini game, or building out status icons, etc. Let’s focus on designing products fully accessible to as many people as we can. It’s the least we can do.

Today Apple announced their IPad. A new, bigger version of what essentially is the IPhone minus the phone. Like most folks in the tech world I was interested in what Apple would bring to the table. Especially when it came to mobile gaming on the IPhone/IPad/IPod. I’ve been a critic in the past, and I was hoping to see something new. I wanted to see Apple move beyond the control problems that have plagued the IPhone/IPod from becoming a viable platform for games.

I wasn’t impressed. Apple brought nothing new to mobile gaming, especially when it comes to controls. Sure, the screen is bigger (9.7 inches) and the frame rate is improved, but this will come at a price. Weighing in at 1.5 pounds with the larger footprint will only makes motion controls clunkier, holding it up for long periods will making gaming strenuous. In the end tilting the larger screen to steer your car in EA‘s Need for Speed Shift won’t be “funner” it’ll just be more annoying. Couple this with more replicated traditional controllers as opposed to solid real world buttons and joysticks just rings towards more of the same coming from Apple.

Frankly, I don’t see this being a viable platform for gaming. Mobile Internet, fine. Doing some typing with the Keyboard dock, okay. When it comes to gaming on the go, I still think a user is going to be much better off with a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. The IPad just isn’t going to cut it, despite what Apple may try to tell us in the future.

My friend and boss Peter Roman sent the above video to me today, and it amazed me. I figured I’d share it with everyone here. The speed that this information can be calculated using just an IPhone is impressive, the flowers are great but when you see the tiny Darth Vader walking around on the desktop and moving via touch control is when it really shines.

Imagine the potential of this in gaming; players could eventually be using their IPhones to fight monsters within their city. With the Iphone 3Gs compass now the system will know which direction the player is facing as well. One monster could potentially be seen by multiple players allowing for epic encounters requiring groups of players meeting up in parks or other public spaces to fight some behemoth or defend their city from an invasion.

Augmented Reality could also be turned towards a more mystery/puzzle game where the player takes on the role of a CSI investigator. They could explore their space and work to solve a crime that happened in their own home. Walking around the room looking at the bullet holes in the wall, blood spatter across the mirror all added via AR.

It could even be used with educational gameplay. This type of augmented reality could herald a return of a localized version of Where In [Your City] Is Carmen Sandiego. Requiring players to explore their cities and environment casing the elusive thief. Teachers could take students to a museum and show the skin covering a dinosaur’s skeleton, or animated the background of a life-sized diorama of the battle of Gettysburg.

The potential for new types of gameplay, user interaction, and experience is really astounding. I dropped two more videos after the jump in a similar vein. One is from the same group working on the AR for the IPhone shown above. Around the 1:00 mark there’s a similar demo showing Vader and Ewoks fighting it out in a park. The other is a game coming out for the Playstation 3 by SCE London called EyePet that is a similar AR experience but far less mobile. If this sort of thing interests you I encourage you to check both.