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Iffy “Cloak of Darkness” on Inform7/Parchment

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“Iffy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the “Cloak of Darkness” specification – a very simple pattern, designed to help programmers compare the strengths and weaknesses of various coding environments.

“Cloak of Darkness” is not going to win prizes for its prose, imagination or subtlety. Or scope: it can be played to a successful conclusion [...]

Aesthetics | Cyberculture | Design | Education | Games | Modding | Social_Software

Scratchy “Cloak of Darkness” on Scratch

“Scratchy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the “Cloak of Darkness” specification — a very simple pattern, designed to help programmers compare the strengths and weaknesses of various coding environments.

“Cloak of Darkness” is not going to win prizes for its prose, imagination or subtlety. Or scope: it can be played to a successful conclusion [...]

Cyberculture | Design | Games | Media | Modding | Technology

My Ouya arrived.

My Ouya arrived — a Kickstarter-funded gaming console.

I have never been a console gamer. Lately, I haven’t even been a PC gamer — when I have the time I would much rather create in Blender 3D or, in the past year or so, make a video.

But the principle behind the Ouya — that [...]

Cyberculture | Games | History | Media | Technology

Photo of William Crowther, 2012

Will Crowther Fall 2012

I just noticed that a few days ago, a Wikipedia user uploaded a photo to the bio for computing history legend Will Crowther. The caption reads “Will Crowther in fall of 2012 in the Shawangunk Mountains.” A bit of Google-fu leads to several photos showing Crowther is still climbing (the hobby he had long before [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Design | Games | Technology | Writing

Teaching Composition with Interactive Fiction

I’m on a committee that is exploring a multimodal a revision to my school’s freshman writing program. So far I have never seriously tried introducing new media content into a freshman writing course, but this may do the trick. After two semesters of teaching students to read, play, and write IF games, I can say [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Design | Education | Games | Modding

Games Based Learning through Text Adventures

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As I make progress in designing the class text adventure, I’ll post about my process and challenges. Right now, I’m foreseeing the following challenges:

how to let students know how far to read/play [...]

Business | Culture | Cyberculture | Design | Essays | Games | Media | Personal

LucasArts’ eulogy reminds us of the inhuman cost of game development

Game development culture often involves 18-hour work days during crunch times that last for months. I remember as a teen or college student enjoying a “lost weekend” of doing nothing but playing the latest game (the X-Wing games, The Dig, and Full Throttle come to mind), but expecting the professionals who produce games to work [...]

Culture | Design | Ethics | Games | Government | Media | Rhetoric

Pipe Trouble’s government woes highlight gaming illiteracy

Interesting discussion of a political hoopla surrounding a Canadian provincial TV station’s support of a video game on laying an oil pipeline. In a previous job, I was evaluated by people who asked me to submit printouts of my online work; my printouts were then evaluated according to criteria that were developed for print work. [...]

Cyberculture | Design | Games | History | Media | Technology

Academy of Interactive Arts & Science — D.I.C.E. Summit Awards

Gaming ledends Dave Lebling and Mark Blank honored for their pioneering work in text-adventure games, at Infocom. (Clips from Jason Scott’s GET LAMP documentary follow Dave Lebling’s introduction, around 1:35 or so.

Welcome to the Official D.I.C.E. Summit Website.

Cyberculture | Education | Games | Media

Video games ‘teach dyslexic children to read’

Playing games which require children to follow fast-moving events, track moving objects and pay attention to all areas of the screen teaches them to draw meaning from written words, researchers explained.

Dr Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua in Italy, who led the study, said: “Action video games enhance many [...]