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The (geek) decision: Kinect developer Johnny Chung Lee leaves Microsoft for Google
After spending the last two and a half years helping Microsoft develop Kinect (and spending countless hours hacking Wiimotes before that), the illustrious Johnny Chung Lee has decided to take his talents to Mountain View and work for Google. Mr. Lee didn't say exactly what he'll be doing for Google, but we do know that he's joining a special projects team, and his title is "Rapid Evaluator." It's curious that Johnny has seemingly left his gaming roots to work for the search giant, but regardless we look forward to seeing what he's up to at El Goog and wish him the best in his new job. Here's hoping his new duties won't quell his penchant for at-home tinkering.
Johnny Lee: Natal will spawn new genres
If Johnny Chung Lee says something, we're inclined to believe him, and not just because we're almost certain he's a wizard. So when he says that Microsoft's body-tracking Project Natal will "almost certainly" spawn new genres, we're inclined to nod our heads in agreement."Natal provides a very different set of input capabilities than your typical game pad," he told 360 Magazine. "To really take advantage of those capabilities, new kinds of experiences will have to be explored."Wait, is "NAMBLA sim" a genre?[Via N4G]
Wiimote genius Johnny Chung Lee on Project Natal team
Here's an interesting piece of E3 news we missed due to being at E3. Johnny Chung Lee, the human-computer interaction Ph.D. who came to prominence for his brilliant Wiimote interface hacks, announced on his blog that he's part of the team making Microsoft's Project Natal, something that suddenly increases the believability factor of its functionality by quite a bit.Lee said that he isn't responsible for anything seen in the E3 demo, however. "The part I am working on has much more to do with making sure this can transition from the E3 stage to your living room - for which there is an even larger team of very smart, very hard working people involved." For once, we can say that Microsoft has made the absolute best move possible. If you're designing a new video game interface that uses a camera or motion tracking of any kind, hire this person.[Via CNet]
Top 5: Activities that Need Waggle
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Top_5_Activities_that_Need_Waggle'; Hardcore gamers sure do hate tacked-on waggle. Indeed, no one likes to flail their arms around like they're trying to signal aircraft when a simple button press will do. And the guys on the other sides seem to be under the impression that the Wii is nothing but a PS2 that replaces thumb pressing with wrist flicking. So when a new title or an iteration of an existing franchise gets announced for the Wii, the non-believers tend to thumb their snooty noses and prattle amongst themselves with ingenious statements like "Dead Rising on the Wii? More like Waggle Rising. YEAH! HIGH FIVE, BRAH!" All right, maybe they're not quite as neanderthalic, but the sentiment remains: the use of waggle is often met with skepticism from the core. To ignore the importance of waggle would be to forget what makes the Wii so awesome. Sure, some games have no real need for motion-based controls, but let us not forget the joy and immersion experienced by the non-gamer who first picked up a Wiimote and found themselves instantly engaged in a lively tennis match. To downplay motion controls would be to forget what made the Wii so successful in the first place. Without it, the Wii would be just a beefed-up GameCube. (THERE, I said it!) Just for a moment, let us forget about why Super Mario RPG has yet to be released on the North American Virtual Console and go back to the flood of imagination we felt when the Wiimote was first unveiled. Here are the activities we wish were made into games on the Wii. NEXT >> #ninbutton { border-style: solid; border-color: #000; border-width: 2px; background-color: #BBB; color: #000; text-decoration: none; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px; margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px; } .buttontext { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font: bold 14pt Helvetica; } #ninbutton:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #BBB; background-color: #000; } The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up.
Wiimote magician Johnny Lee on head tracking, Nintendo, and future videos
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/nintendo/Interview_with_Wii_Revolutionary_Johnny_Lee'; Johnny Lee is one of the most exciting innovators in the video game space right now; only thing is, Lee doesn't work in the video game space. He's a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University (graduating this week, congrats!) and his projects have not only made their way around the entire internet, thanks to sites like YouTube, but it even landed Lee a spot presenting at the prestigious TED conference.Our pals at Wii Fanboy caught up with Lee and picked his big brain on everything from head tracking getting pulled from Boom Blox ("it's actually a pretty complicated decision, and I don't know if I'm at liberty to explain exactly why"); Nintendo's reception of the technology ("I have been talking to some Wii game developers and they've said that ... if a game requires too much motion or requires ... too much movement on the player's part, Nintendo asks them to pull it."); and future projects ("Maybe next week or the week after that, I can push out another video."). Any guesses on what's next from Mr. Wiizard?
Johnny Lee: Better games are coming
NWF: Are there any that you've noticed that actually do make pretty good use of the controls? JL: Well, Nintendo has done the best, because they had the longest time to work with it. Wii Sports is fantastically done ... in fact, I was talking to a Wii game developer, and apparently Wii Sports is so good that it's a problem, because people buying the Wii almost don't feel compelled to buy another game, so they're having a hard time getting people to buy their games. It's also hard to make a competitor. For example, if you're making a baseball game, you're essentially competing against Wii Sports, and that's a challenge. There were some games I saw in prototype form, and I don't think I'm allowed to talk about them, but there are some interesting things coming down the pipeline. They weren't "WOW, AMAZING," or world-changing, but they were much better examples of the controls than some of the things we've seen before. NWF: Hey, that gives us hope! That said, I really just have one more question, and it's probably the one you won't answer. JL: [laughs] NWF: I've read in some other interviews that you have more projects coming. Can you give us any hint at all of what we can expect, or maybe when we'll see them? JL: I've been really busy lately... [laughs] It's sad, because I haven't been able to do any work since December. I've actually been on my job search the past few months, and dealing with my job search and dealing with the attention from the Wii remote projects has consumed my extra time. And then I'm defending my thesis -- I'm graduating next week, so I've had to deprioritize making new videos. I do have a couple more ideas. I don't know ... it's hard for me to tell if people are going to get excited about them. There's also a closing window here. I don't know how much time I can spend on publishing these videos, partially because once I start employment, I may not be able to continue openly publishing and sharing these Wiimote videos. My hope is that I can, but I don't know. Maybe next week or the week after that, I can push out another video. [NWF note: said graduation is now this week!] NWF: Well, on behalf of our staff, and all of our readers, everyone wishes you the best of luck and probably thinks that, out of everybody in the world, you shouldn't need much of that luck. I'm surprised you even had to search for a job. JL: Well, it's actually been a pretty easy search, and I had a lot of opportunities I didn't even ask for. And oddly enough, Nintendo was not among them. Nintendo never contacted me. NWF: Never contacted you at all? JL: Nope. It's okay. I don't think I'd actually want to work solely at Nintendo. I have a pretty diverse set of interests, only some of which are relevant to gaming, so working at a gaming company isn't very interesting to me. NWF: Congratulations on graduating, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us during this busy time! JL: No problem! < 1 2 3 4
Wii Fanboy Interview: Johnny Lee
In 2005, when the then-Revolution was unveiled, the hearts of Nintendo fans everywhere swelled with hope, but it took a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon to begin to actually fulfill some of the crazier dreams the console first inspired. Johnny Lee's Wii remote projects have widened our perceptions of what's possible with the technology sitting in our living rooms, and even broadened our ideas of what gaming could -- and maybe should -- be. Lee is a magician, and we're not the only ones who think so; he recently blew the lids off smarter brains than ours at the TED conference with his cost-effective Wiimote whiteboard and head tracking demos.But if you ask him, Lee insists he's just this guy, you know? And we did ask; in fact, we recently sat down for a talk with the Wiimote genius, and he dished up some pretty interesting tidbits on everything from the future of head tracking to his own recent job search. Before you ask, no, he's not going to Nintendo, but he may be headed back to YouTube soon for a few more project videos. 1 2 3 4 >
Johnny Lee: We may see head tracking from Sony or Microsoft first
NWF: Speaking of what the companies are doing and/or not doing, there was some discussion that EA was going to include your head tracking in BOOM BLOX, and then suddenly it was announced that head tracking was no longer going to be available as the discussed easter egg. We're pretty interested in what happened there, if you can discuss it at all. JL: I was a little disappointed to hear about that. I have been in touch with Louis Castle, who was involved in that decision, and it's actually a pretty complicated decision, and I don't know if I'm at liberty to explain exactly why, but I understand why they decided to take it out. Rest assured that I know EA is still interested in including it, and so are several other companies, so even if it doesn't come out next month, it will probably be integrated into games within the next year. NWF: So you do think we'll see it in this generation? JL: I think so. If Nintendo doesn't do it, I'm fairly sure that Sony and Microsoft may be interested in doing something similar. It's simply ... the kind of visual experience that head tracking provides is simply an evolutionary step in display technology and interactive displays, and it would be foolish not to embrace that progress in technology. It's not so much a feature, it's just a technological step forward, similar to 3D TV, that will eventually come. Nintendo may or may not decide that this is an okay idea, but even if they don't, it will come in some other form from some other provider. [NWF note: Sony, in fact, has a head tracking demo of their own] NWF: You know, that's interesting, because there's a lot of discussion any time we see another of your projects. Nintendo fans just blow up with excitement, because what you're doing with the Wii remote is so much more interesting than what a lot of actual Wii games have done with the motion controls. Why do you think that is? JL: Well, I don't have any rules to conform to. In truth, when choosing to make something for a game console, a developer has to sign a lot of agreements and play within a very well-defined space that determines what they can and cannot do. I have been talking to some Wii game developers and they've said that ... if a game requires too much motion or requires ... they had some word for it, but essentially, if it requires too much movement on the player's part, Nintendo asks them to pull it. There are all these internal guidelines they have to conform to that prevent them from doing anything too -- I hate using the term "outside the box," but this is a box that has been defined by Nintendo and they literally can't step out of it. The video game industry is also extremely market data driven, which is unfortunate. The investment levels keep going up and up, and the certainty of return keeps going down, and as a result, marketing has more control over development. And if marketing says something isn't going to sell, or if marketing has no data on it, so if something is too radical or if it's a new IP with a new story or new characters, and it's untested, marketing tags it as high risk. If there are safer, but more boring [laughs], the decision tends to be to make the more boring title, which is unfortunate. That's actually why I decided not to work at any game companies specifically, like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, because my ideas would have likely been squashed quickly by marketing. NWF: Do you think those same marketing people, or maybe anyone at these companies, is really paying attention to the reaction your projects are getting? Obviously somebody is listening, because they're contacting you, but do you think the reaction is enough to change some of those things you were just talking about? JL: I think so, or at least, that's my impression. The wonderful thing about my videos is that they're widely available, and they've given marketing departments some data that they can work with. It's put something out into the world for very low cost -- because all I did was make a video in my house, so I didn't have to invest much money -- but marketing can now look at the numbers associated with the video, like the number of views, or they can send out a survey or poll games about these particular features, and then marketing can make an assessment about the risk of the feature. So, I think the main contribution these videos have had, at least to the gaming industry, is that they've given marketing some data that indicates this is a worthwhile feature. Getting it integrated into near-term titles is a little difficult, though, because it takes a few years to build a game. If they're going to retrofit an existing title with these features, it adds risk to the title. If they're going to build a new title around this feature, it's not going to hit the shelves for at least two years or so, or a year if they do a really simple title. It's sort of interesting ... I've gotten exposed to the business of video games recently. It's unfortunate that the business of the video game industry almost seems designed to squash innovation, or at least discourage it, because it's risky. NWF: Well, that explains a lot of our Wii games! JL: The Wii also has another complicated issue. Actually, I would say there are two. One is that the input control system is so radically different from the other two consoles that the only way to make a good game is to start from the ground up for the Wii. If you port an existing game, it's usually not going to be very good, because the control schemes don't map over very well. Cross-console game publishing has become a popular business model, simply because it's a more attractive return on investment for game developers. So, for the Wii, they have to take on the risk of making a game just for the Wii instead of doing that. Another problem ... accelerometer data is actually very hard to work with, so most of the games have very simple shake recognition, sort of an analog shaking recognition, sort of like the Rayman games, where you make the person run faster by pumping faster. But really complicated gesture recognition is actually very hard to do. Some dancing games, for example, are very difficult to make trigger reliably, because you want to make sure you're getting positive movement. You want to correctly register movement, but you don't want to be too generous or too critical. If you're too generous, the game is too easy, it's not compelling, you can cheat at it .... If you're too critical, the game doesn't trigger properly and then you get frustration on the part of game players. NWF: I'd also assume shaking speed and method is harder to translate in a game manual than something like "press A for action X." JL: Right. And game developers just don't know how to use it yet, because it's pretty new. It's pretty radical, and it has a lot of its own technical issues, not only in coming up with interesting game content, but also in dealing with the control scheme. It may take another year or two before game developers are used to working with an accelerometer. They had a decade to get used to the joypad. The technology in the Wii remote is still new to developers and they aren't necessarily using it in the best way yet, so there are a couple reasons why Wii games have at times been less than stellar, and maybe haven't lived up to the hopes and dreams of Wii owners. < 1 2 3 4 >
NMS08: Head-tracking disappears from EA's Boom Blox
Remember how awesome it was when we found out that BOOM BLOX was going to incorporate Johnny Chung Lee's incredible head-tracking 3D demo? There was dancing in the streets (and an extra helping of crow for the staff here). Well, put away the maracas and forget the confetti: EA has cut the Easter egg from the title. Guess that means the device we rigged from a beer helmet, swim goggles, and an old bag of Cheetos is now completely useless, and we're denied the chance to try out the most amazing development for the Wii that we've seen -- and in a game that would have been perfect for it, too. What happened? EA is mum on the whys and wherefores, stating only that the Easter egg was never confirmed for inclusion.%Gallery-15446%
Johnny Lee's Wii-nnovations blow TED's collective mind
We've all witnessed the incredible ways that technomancer Johnny Lee can put a Wiimote to good use, but apparently, attendees of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference were unaware of the handheld peripheral's vast potential. You can actually hear their minds crackle, then implode as Lee shows off two of his cost-efficient tech demos -- the multi-touch whiteboard, and 3-D head tracking (which was further confirmed to be in EA/Speilburg's Boom Blox as an easter egg). Like all Johnny Lee videos, we can guarantee this to be the coolest thing you've seen today -- unless, of course, you've just watched the entire "American Ninja" quintology.
Johnny Lee rocks the TED conference
The TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference gives some of the brightest people in the world, across wildly divergent disciplines, a forum to share their brilliant ideas. This year's lineup of speakers included names like Stephen Hawking, Al Gore, and ... Johnny Lee. In the midst of a bunch of Very Serious Discussions about Very Serious Topics, Johnny manages to totally make a highbrow crowd care about the Waggle Wand. He does this by being awesome. There aren't any new demonstrations here, but it's totally worth it to see an audience's reaction to what is pretty much magic for the first time.
Wiimote genius Johnny Chung Lee interviewed
We've all stared slack-jawed at the amazing stuff Johnny Chung Lee can make the Wiimote do, from Minority Report-style interfaces to a virtual whiteboard. Now ActionTrip has interviewed the man behind the fingertips.Is anyone surprised that he is a graduate student in the field of human-computer interaction? It certainly explains a lot, like why he can do what he can do and we ... can't. He said that the ideas for his various interface tweaks were all generated during one furiously creative plane trip: "I decided to sit down and hammer out as many concepts that I think could potentially be done using the components within the Wii remote. The key was to think just about the components and not as a whole device."While he obviously has affection for video games, Lee doesn't have any particular desire to parlay his Wiimote wizardry into a career making games. He says that "I like doing interaction research and only some of my work is relevant to gaming," but we know that he just doesn't want to embarrass Nintendo too much by outclassing them.
Let your fingers do the manipulating
Forget Wii parties: the hot new trend is creating a 3D interface that you can manipulate with your fingers via the Wii. We can only guess that Minority Report, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and other media are heavily influencing people who want their virtual interfaces right now and see the Wii as a path to the future. Using our new hero Johnny Lee's efforts as a springboard, the guys at Cynergy Labs took the interactive interface and ran with it. With infrared gloves and a Wii remote, a picture is disassembled, reassembled, and moved around on the screen before our very eyes -- and everything is manipulated in mid-air, no actual touching required. The gloves allow for a more delicate (and accurate) range of movements, as is demonstrated later in the video, as they pair the set-up with an interface similar to Microsoft Surface for a distance-enhanced multi-touch experience.All we can say is: move over, robots. We've got to get busy welcoming our new fingertip overlords.
Friday Video: Taking a cue from Johnny Lee
While this may not be quite as exciting as Wii hacking, it's still worth noting. Johnny Lee is not alone in his experimentation with the Wii remote -- in fact, he's influencing others, like this Thai blogger. Take that banner and run with it, DIYers. We can only hope that developers are paying attention. We promise we won't complain about buying extra peripherals if you can deliver a truly unique experience!This video isn't quite as polished as Johnny Lee's, but it does have one thing in its favor, and that's Spider-man.
Friday Video: Taking immersion to new levels
Johnny Lee, who we're now elevating to the status of superhero around here, is back with an all-new Wii-centric project: Wii in 3D, thanks to head tracking. What's head tracking? Here, it's centered around mounting a sensor bar on your head (which is much cooler than it sounds) so that the software (and a Wii remote) can track the position of your head and allow displays to take on a full three dimensional scope, thus turning a flat screen into something more like a window. The result? Why, it could mean games that look like full-on virtual reality. Check out the video above, which was too good not to be in our weekly spotlight, to see just what it all means.[Thanks, Chad!]
Wiimote enables amazing doodling device
Johnny Lee, last seen letting his fingers do the waggling, is back with more Wiimote mods that put Nintendo's own work to shame. Using the Wiimote's infrared camera, an IR light attached to a pen, and some custom software, he created a virtual whiteboard system that allows him to control a computer touch-screen style using either a projector or an LCD.If you have an LCD and something capable of emitting infrared light (or have access to a Radio Shack), and if you can Bluetooth your way to Wiimote awesomeness (which we unfortunately cannot), then really, you should be messing with this right now.
