We have been discussing what we can learn about visualizations from gaming. One broad area is to look at how games use HUDs (Heads-Up Displays). Another is to look at how games use the time of the player. Perhaps the most unintuitive use of time is the postponement typical of various pet simulators and the recently popular and translated Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector game. In pet simulations like the Tamagotchi the chronotope is not the intense, fast, immersive experience of a first-person shooter, but the slow everyday rhythms and spaces of life. You carry the toy with you and feed your pet in real time. For periods you can’t do much unless you speed up the time. The play is in how you sustain play with small interventions over time. Imagine if we had visualizations that postponed gratification?

The Kitty Collector game depends on your not playing. The idea is to collect stray cats by leaving food and toys out for them. You then have to leave and stay away, as you would with any cat, and wait until they choose to visit. The game is thus played over days and weeks. I tend to forget about the game and neglect to put out food so I’m not doing too well.

The interface to Kitty Collector is simple. You pick the things to put out (and buy the fancier ones in a pay-to-play-more model) and then you place them in your backyard (see above.) You go away and come back later to see if any cats have been tempted. Over time you collect snap-shots of the local strays.

How would this work for visualizations? Suppose there were visualization tools that similarly only worked if you put out sardines for truths? Suppose we hooked visualization tools up to the sort of hypothesis generating machine that Patrick Juola imagined with his Conjecturator. One might “paint” what sorts of results one is looking for in big data and then go away and let the visual toy generate possibilities from the data. You would come back to check what conjectures seem to match.

The point is that we can learn from how games play with the time of playing. Visualization like playing with a pet simulator doesn’t have to be a short intense immersion. Why can’t it involve postponement and the putting out of temptations?

In the meantime I need to go put out some new toys for the kitties. They are tired of the yarn.

Erik started his talk by commenting on how the ocular (sight) dominates how we know and explore. For Erik visualization goes way back and used to be connected to the acoustic and to architecture. You didn’t have visualizations detached from a space and without a soundscape.

He then talked about how games are not just about knowing visually, but also about knowing through the game-mechanics or the interaction. He gave the game September 12th: A Toy World as an example where the game mechanics are part of the way meaning is made.

He then argued that a data visualization can be different types of things for knowing or learning:

• A game that changes your ideas
• A presentation of visual uncertainty where people argue about reconstruction
• A “reading” diagram and data

He commented on how people tend to believe vizualizations. They have rhetorical power and can therefore be a way of presenting things to broader audiences. He also talked about how for many people the word “game” makese more sense than “visualization.” You tell people you have game for them to learn from and they know what to do.

He talked about what are the concerns of non-text? In his book on Critical Gaming he has an opening chapter on “The Digital Humanities and the Limit of Text.” Champion wants to go beyond text with visualization and games, not just use visualization as a way of exploring text. Some of the issues and ideas he mentioned included:

• Preservation of Digital Heritage. Erik’s work focuses a lot on developing virtual spaces for communicating about heritage or for letting people negotiate heritage. One of the major problems of this field is that virtual heritage projects tend to disappear and disappear faster than the actual project. There are no good standards for 3D data. He drew our attention to the UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage which is well meaning, but doesn’t seem to be having any effect.
• Infrastructure. A related problem is the infrastructure for non-textual digital work. We have a significant amount of textual infrastructure that we take for granted (think libraries and archives), but less visual. How is visualization supported and by who? PublicVR seems to be one organization trying to make 3D heritage available to schools.
• Process not Product. Fields like archaeology are a process not a product. The field cannot be communicated by texts. We need to think of how the digital can communicate process, collaboration and reflection and games could play a role in this. He mentioned Elegy for a Dead World as an example. It is a game where you write about the dead world you are exploring.
• Counterfactual History. How can we use simulations and games to explore “what if” scenarios. This is a way of knowing too. He mentioned Muzzy Lane Software who, for example, developed Making History.
• Pointing in 3D. How do we point in 3D worlds. Erik has a project where they have created avatars that point for you.

Champion showed a number of really interesting projects that we need to look at like Paper Machines (a Zotero text analysis tool) and Dead Men’s Eyes. Near the end he talked about Artificial Intelligence and how we can learn about AI in games. His idea is for people to play NPC’s and get the AI to figure out who they are – a reverse Turing game.