December 19, 2008

TiltnTwist Brings Motion-Based Gaming to Mobile Phones
By Louis Bedigian

“A few years ago Bob showed me a demo of this technology on a camera phone and I was totally entranced.”

Can motion-based gameplay invigorate the mobile games market? TiltnTwist, a developer and publisher of mobile games, is determined to find out, basing its entire development philosophy around the idea that motion makes it better. "In 2000, Bob [Goodale] and a number of friends of his had invested in GestureTek, which invented, and holds the key patents to, the technology which uses 'camera vision' to allow computers to control things," said Trev Huxley, who co-founded TiltnTwist with Robert Goodale.

"A few years ago, Bob showed me a demo of this technology on a camera phone and I was totally entranced. After building the first game, Tilt-a-World, which was on the Verizon deck for around 18 months, we decided to form a company and build some more. Tilt came out a few weeks before the Wii, so I guess we were pioneers but sometimes one has to 'just go with your gut,' and looking at its success one can only conclude that we were not alone in finding motion controlled games compelling."

Is TiltnTwist primarily a publisher or developer? I noticed that OneNine Studios worked on one of your projects. Who else do you have on board?

Trev Huxley: A bit of both I guess, though I guess in a strict sense we are publishers. We work with Super Happy Fun Fun, OneNine Studios, and some other folks and the process is a very collaborative one with lots of ideas, at every stage, going back and forth. Fundamentally, we all trust each other’s taste, business acumen, and “gut” a great deal which is essential when one tries to do something that is quite new.

TiltnTwist's games use GestureTek Mobile's technology, specifically the EyeMobile Engine. This uses a phone's built-in camera to track player movements. What else can you tell us about it?

TH: I’ll leave that to Bob and he may tell you to get the real details from GestureTek. Fundamentally it compares one frame of a video stream to the next frame and determines what has changed and then determines that the phone has (or has not) moved and in what direction.

Robert Goodale: There’s not much to add there! From the changes between each picture taken by the phone’s camera, the computer infers movement in the phone itself, which in turn is used to infer a simulated reaction to that movement in the video game playing on the phone.

Other motion technology works differently, so how does making games with a camera sensor differ from other methods?

TH: Let me say first that we are interested in gesture-controlled games and are not locked into any given technology. The only other motion technologies that I know of in use in cell phones are accelerometers (like in the iPhone) and we build games using both technologies. In fact we just launched our first iPhone game, HyperHamster. HyperHamster was actually built in Windows Mobile and then we ported it over to the iPhone. Obviously the motion-sensing technology is different, and both have advantages over the other, but what we do is build games that are designed to be controlled by motion and what we use to detect that motion is almost immaterial to the players.

RG: Of the two commercially available methods – optical and accelerometer – each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The nice thing about the optical method is that it’s slightly less predictable, which if you use it properly, can be a real strength in the game design. So for example, one of our games, “DUI: The Long Drive Home,” really came into being because of the kind of sloppy, loopy control you can achieve with optical input. It seemed to us to be very much like how a drunk might walk the line….and from that, a game was created!

How far along is the GestureTek Mobile technology? Do you think we'll see it evolve in the same way that video game consoles do, and the way console controllers have grown over the years with button content, button features (pressure sensitivity), and now motion control?

TH: The technology is quite far along, particularly in areas other than its uses in cell phones. I’ll let Bob expand on that.

RG: NTT DoCoMo is an interesting one in this regard, because they’ve had tremendous success over the last few years with a line of phones all focusing on optically-based gestural control. And one of the key differentiators they’ve had that we haven’t had here in the US and Europe has been two-camera input, where one camera faces the user (mainly intended for video phone usage). Providing gestural control technology where a user can control the input without having to have a physical device in their hand is one of the next places this kind of technology will go, and if you know anything about GestureTek, you’ll know they’ve been doing device-free gestural control for many years. As this kind of control (and camera setup) occurs on our phones, we’ll begin to also see this kind of control arrangement.

What are GestureTek Mobile's current limitations?

TH: I think its primary drawback is that you can’t play the game in the dark, so playing under the covers in bed is a tough proposition.

GestureTek is also behind some of the EyeToy technology. Is that at all cross-compatible with what you're using, thus allowing for the possibility of making scaled-down console game for a mobile phone?

RG: The EyeToy technology really illustrates the previous point about how device-free gestural control is an up and coming application for this technology on the phone (an application which of course no accelerometer can provide). The DoCoMo phones mentioned above do exactly this; a number of their applications look a lot like what EyeToy has been doing.

Let's talk about your current lineup: HyperHamster, Snowboarding TNT, DropZone and DUI: The Long Drive Home. The latter sounds rather adult, but in a childish sort of way.

TH: Here’s the scoop on our four new titles. In HyperHamster, players are Captain Weevil with his BALL (Ballistic Aerodynamic Lift-o-tronic Laboratory) which you roll around, avoid enemies on many adventures on many levels, jump up and down, and shake your hand to break free from gobs of goo. Snowboarding TNT is just that…you can shred through gates by moving left and right, and make jumps by moving your hand up and down. DropZone is our parachuting game where you must drop through airborne rings to land safely on the ground – or go splat! DUI: The Long Drive Home is fun for players of driving age. You follow Humphrey as he parties around town and attempts to drive home safely, and without getting nailed at a sobriety checkpoint along the way. But I must say that my 12-year-old nephew thinks it is “awesome,” though he doesn’t get the underlying humor (or lessons) of Humphrey’s drunkenness.

How big specifically must a player gesture to get the game to react? Does the phone have to be held in a specific manner?

TH: A little movement goes a long way and you don't have to hold the phone in any particular position because it is just comparing movement from the start of the game. If you start the game while standing on your head, holding the phone upside down, it will play fine but “level” is, in my example, a rather challenging position.

Give us some examples of the motion-based gameplay within each of your games.

TH: Well, to move the character in DropZone, our parachuting game, one has to move the phone in almost every direction as one tries to guide your character through colored rings as you free fall to Earth. In DUI: The Long Drive Home, one has to twist the phone left and right to get the key into the car’s ignition and then rapidly tilt it down to turn the key. It is very intuitive and very easy to learn.

RG: And our Snowboarding TNT game works just as if you were snowboarding, except with your hand, instead of your body. You can have the same rhythm and movement just as if you were actually out on the slopes.

Are there any button functions? Or is everything entirely motion-based?

TH: With very few exceptions, once the game starts, all the gameplay is motion-based.

Thank you for your time.

For more information, visit www.tiltntwist.com.

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