Designing Asymmetrical Collaborative Gameplay for Heterogeneous Device Ecosystems A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Drexel University by Robert Sean Speck in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Digital Media June 2013 © Copyright 2013 Robert S. Speck. All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATIONS This thesis is dedicated to my family: my mom, Amy; my dad, Michael; and my sister, Holly, as well as the rest of my immediate relatives. My family has always been there to encourage me in my most difficult endeavors, both academic and otherwise. I would also like to dedicate this work to the close friends I have had throughout my life. My family and friends have kept me on course whenever I’ve felt overwhelmed, and humored me all the times I’ve gone on excitedly about new technologies, game ideas, and miscellaneous media-related topics they don’t have any involvement with. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the dedicated members of my thesis committee: Dr. Paul Diefenbach, Jervis Thompson, and Robert Lloyd. Their unique perspectives and areas of expertise have been invaluable in shaping this thesis into a useful academic contribution to our field. Over many meetings with Paul, he helped me articulate my scattered ideas and gave me detailed and on-point feedback on avenues of research I should pursue. Jervis’ technical skillset helped me past several important roadblocks in my prototype development, and he was always there to caution me against biting off more than I could chew. Rob offered a different perspective outside of academia, and gave a lot of great feedback on my thesis proposal and paper. I’d like to also extend my thanks to a number of other Digital Media faculty who have mentored me over my graduate career. Thank you to Glen Muschio for introducing me to technical writing and offering extensive assessments on my earlier thesis directions; to Michael Wagner and Jichen Zhu, who gave helpful critiques each week of thesis class and helped me perfect my “project pitch”; and to all the other Digital Media professors who have offered their advice and feedback. Thank you to all of my good friends in Digital Media and the graduate program: Girish Balakrishnan, Nate Lapinski, Glenn Winters, Sonia Havens, Yujie Zhu, Kevin Gross, and Ian Woskey. Special thanks to Girish and Nate for always keeping me on-track when everything seemed to be going wrong. I hope I’ve been able to reciprocate a fraction of the support that my friends both in and out of the Digital Media program have given me over the last several years. My classmates have inspired some of my best work, and challenged me to make it even better. This thesis is the culmination of everything I’ve gained on my own and with the support of my friends and professors. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... ix 1. KEY TERMS .............................................................................................................................. 1 2. INTRODUCTION & THESIS OVERVIEW ............................................................................. 2 3. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ........................................................................................... 4 3.1. MOBILE GAMES................................................................................................................ 4 3.1.1. MOBILE / HANDHELD PLATFORMS ...................................................................... 4 3.1.2. DATA SHARING ....................................................................................................... 10 3.1.3. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF MOBILITY ............................................................... 12 3.1.4. FORM-FACTOR LIMITATIONS .............................................................................. 15 3.2. HETEROGENEOUS GAME ECOSYSTEMS .................................................................. 18 3.2.1. CONSOLE-BASED ECOSYSTEMS ......................................................................... 18 3.2.2. NETWORK-BASED ECOSYSTEMS ........................................................................ 25 3.3. GAME DESIGN FOR HETEROGENEOUS ECOSYSTEMS ......................................... 28 3.3.1. CROSS-PLATFORM GAME DESIGN ..................................................................... 28 3.3.2. CROSS-PLATFORM SHARED EXPERIENCE ....................................................... 32 3.3.3. CROSS-PLATFORM HUMAN FACTORS ............................................................... 34 4. APPROACH ............................................................................................................................. 36 4.1. INITIAL EXPERIMENTATION ...................................................................................... 39 4.1.1. DEVICE CLASSIFICATIONS ................................................................................... 39 4.1.2. DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS .......................................................................... 41 v 4.1.3. UNITY DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS ..................................................................... 43 4.2. HARDWARE CONSTRAINTS ........................................................................................ 44 4.2.1. PROCESSING POWER .............................................................................................. 45 4.2.2 RENDERING PERFORMANCE................................................................................. 46 4.2.3. FORM FACTOR AND DISPLAY.............................................................................. 48 4.2.4. CONTROLS ................................................................................................................ 51 4.3. GAME EXPERIENCE ....................................................................................................... 53 4.3.1. PLAYER ROLES ........................................................................................................ 53 4.3.2. GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE ............................................................................ 57 4.3.3. COMMUNITY ............................................................................................................ 59 4.4. NETWORK COMMUNICATION .................................................................................... 60 4.4.1. LATE JOIN / EARLY LEAVE ................................................................................... 60 4.4.2. CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS ...................................................................................... 61 4.5. DEVELOPMENT CONSIDERATIONS ........................................................................... 63 4.5.1. DEVELOPMENT TOOLS .......................................................................................... 63 4.5.2. MARKETABILITY .................................................................................................... 64 4.5.3. EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES ................................................................................. 64 5. FUTURE WORK ...................................................................................................................... 66 6. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 67 7. LIST OF REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 69 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Mobile gaming device comparisons ................................................................................. 5 Table 2. Major gaming consoles and functionalities .................................................................... 19 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. iPad with Retina display example [4] .............................................................................. 7 Figure 2. Kindle Fire HD (left) and Nexus 7 (right) [5] ................................................................. 7 Figure 3. Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 RT example [7] ...................................................... 8 Figure 4. Xperia PLAY (left) and PS Vita (right) [10] ................................................................... 9 Figure 5. Nintendo 3DS example [11] .......................................................................................... 10 Figure 6. Evernote sharing feature example [13] .......................................................................... 11 Figure 7. Virtual joystick obscuring game screen [23] ................................................................. 16 Figure 8. Sony Remote Play example [28] ................................................................................... 21 Figure 9. Wii U GamePad game extension example [30] ............................................................ 22 Figure 10. Microsoft SmartGlass example [32] ............................................................................ 24 Figure 11. OnLive touch interface example [34] .......................................................................... 25 Figure 12. GameCenter feature examples [35] ............................................................................