BETA | HARDWARE // GOOGLE GLASS
A games development spectacle
While Google Glass is still very much in its infancy, Guillemot brothers-backed French studio AMA is already making games for the device. Will Freeman meets the team at the frontier of wearable computing
SINCE GOOGLE’S GLASS was unveiled in 2011, the impact it may have on gaming has been the subject of much imaginative speculation. The public’s thirst for wearable gadgetry has been fuelled by concept videos showing a walk to work reimagined as a first-person shooter and commentators predicting bold new AR-based genres. But what is the reality of making a game for the Glass, where widely available game-specific middleware is but a thing of fancy, and even getting to hold the hardware remains the reserve of a chosen few? And how relevant is wearable tech to the future of games development? One studio that is closer than most to
AMA’s first Glass game Escape (main image) and Glass-sporting team members Andrei Urucu and Guillaume Campion (top-to-bottom)
knowing the answer is AMA, the French developer of Glass game Escape, which enjoyed much attention at this year’s GDC Europe and Gamescom. The game is by necessity a simple creation; something of a hybrid of arcade icon Frogger and tabletop classic peg solitaire. Escape is controlled through Glass’ touch sensitive side panel, and offers just a glimpse of what might be possible with hardware you can wear. Escape’s status as the first Google Glass game is difficult to establish when the hardware is yet to enjoy a true consumer release; BrickSimple’s GlassBattle, for example, was shown before Escape, but ‘release date’ rarely means much on tech still in development. What does matter is that AMA has made a Glass game, and that puts them in extremely limited company. Indeed, their unit is one of only a handful in Europe outside of Google’s laboratories. What’s more, along with Escape,
22 | OCTOBER 2013
they have another three Glass games and app prototypes underway.
WEAR NEXT? “Wearable technology is by itself very exciting,” offers AMA’s head of production Guillaume Campion. “And this is just the beginning. Google Glass is a great platform to start with. Even if the design and the interface are very new and innovative, the hardware and the fact that it runs on Ice Cream Sandwich are pretty common.
Working on such a new device is
definitely the kind of challenge we look forward to when choosing to work in this industry.
Guillaume Campion, AMA “This is really a key point that allows us to
focus on what is major, [for example], the user interface display. As a games developer, we love to brainstorm about new gameplay, new game mechanics, so working on such a new device is definitely the kind of challenge we look forward to when choosing to work in this industry.” Campion’s comments give just a glimpse of the attitude that secured AMA early Glass access. Sat down to discuss making games for
the hardware, he is immediately focusing on what comes after Glass. But the team is equally modest. Ice Cream Sandwich may be familiar
territory for many developers, but knowledge of common SDKs and APIs are not all that is needed to make a game. That’s especially true when the hardware offers as unusual a combination of inputs as touch sensitive arms, an eye-level camera, voice recognition, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, ambient light and proximity sensors, and visuals delivered through an optical head-mounted display. But, insists AMA senior programmer Andrei Urucu, beyond challenges around the unusual ‘screen’ and controls Glass presents, little troubled the Escape team from a technical perspective. “The basic Android SDK and APIs were used; not the Mirror API,” he explains. “There were challenges related to the unusual screen size, density and controls. Also, in order for voice controls to work, we had to make some tweaks, but nothing unorthodox.”
A DIFFERENT GLASS So it might just be that making Google Glass games, from a technical standpoint at least, is something most developers will find relatively easy; if anything is ever simple in the realm of games making. But AMA has something special up its
sleeve that not every studio can boast of, and that is variety of experience. “AMA’s DNA is innovation,” asserts Campion. “We always love to try new
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