Paper #4 - [DIS 2014] Some Variations on a Counterfunctional Digital Camera

This paper [1] is a pictorial presenting various concepts for counterfunctional digital cameras, and is intended as a companion piece to another paper by the same authors [2], in which the idea of designing counterfunctional digital objects or tools, pieces of digital technology given deliberate artificial limitations, is put forth as a new way of thinking about how we design digital tools. The second paper describes a counterfunctional thing as something that "figuratively counters some of its own functionality". Some examples from the pictorial include cameras that have to be smashed open to retrieve the images, cameras who's stored images can only be viewed at the time and place at which they were taken, and cameras that can only shoot at ultra-low resolutions, among other things.

Digital technology is often designed along the lines of Turing completeness - if it can be made to do something, it should be. As mentioned in the second paper, limitations are thus seen negatively - free trial software having locks on certain features encouraging the user to buy-up to the full version, for instance. However, both papers also provides salient examples of useful and engaging limitation, such as Twitter being limited to 140 characters, or Snapchat's time-sensitive photos. The pictorial serves as an illustration of how this line of thinking can be useful in design - each of the cameras shown may seem useless, broken, or obtuse, but they are at least interesting as alternatives, as ways of changing how a user thinks of or interacts with a camera.

This is the reason this paper and its companion jumps out at me - they playfully and informatively point out different and intriguing paths for design. Even if the results are odd or counter-intuitive, there is something fascinating about them, about imagining myself using one of these counterfunctional cameras. The pictorial's conclusion makes reference to findings that indicate we have "latent needs and desires for limitations", and talks about working within constraints and the "positive value of limitation."

Mentioned in a previous post, game designer Brendon Chung, while he might well have access to all manner of freely-available, high-end, modern game engines such as Unreal or Unity, purposefully uses an engine called Dark Radiant, an open-source level editor based on Doom 3's in-house id Tech 4 engine, designed for use with The Dark Mod, a total conversion of Doom 3 intended to emulate the original Thief. One of the reasons for his choice is familiarity, but another is the limitations imposed that make the final game more interesting - Chung if forced to work with simple lighting (by today's standards), low-res textures, and a low polygon budget. This is all self-imposed, and leads to him employing a unique style that is unlike anything else out there.

screenshot from Thirty Flights Of Loving, one of Brendon Chung's games

Many other game designers work like this too - JP LeBreton is creating (and designing games using) Playscii, an ASCII-based game- and art-creation program, with all the inherent and provocative limitations that entails. Numerous other designers still use older engines, or open-source variations on them, such as TrenchBroom's take on the original Quake engine.

JP LeBreton detailing some features of Playscii

example screenshot of TrenchBroom

Another example of a counterfunctional game engine, a game engine created with intentional limitations and constraints that at first may seem over the top, is the voxel-based level editor released with a recent patch to stealth game NEON STRUCT.

JP LeBreton takes a look at NEON STRUCT's intentionally limited level editor, as well as brief looks at Radiant and TrenchBroom

I find these approaches to game design fascinating because, in the modern gaming environment of ultra-realism, high-end graphics and engines that can simulate all manner of physical properties and the like, turning to old or limited game engines are not only interesting ways for designers to flex their design muscles and create things that are unlike most modern games, but are also in-and-of themselves challenges to the modern paradigm - an engine doesn't have to do everything. It can be limited and those limitations can be part of the appeal. This speaks to the broader conceptual ideas pointed-at by the papers at hand, and shows how valid these approaches can be, not just conceptually but practically and artistically.

[1] James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2014. Some variations on a counterfunctional digital camera. InProceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 131-140. DOI=http://dx.doi.org.cit.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/2598510.2602968

[2] James Pierce and Eric Paulos. 2014. Counterfunctional things: exploring possibilities in designing digital limitations. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 375-384. DOI=http://dx.doi.org.cit.idm.oclc.org/10.1145/2598510.2598522