Games: January 2003 Archive Page

Your name is Masakati, which means "White Queen" in the language of the Scorpion People. You were named this before you were hatched, when the serpent witches foretold to your mother Essekunit, the Tangeri Queen, that her child would be as great a ruler as had been not seen in this Age: that you would be Queen not only of the Tangeri but of all the Scorpion People, and take back the lands stolen by the Empire.

--The Wheel, Masakati Episode 1: The White QueenInterfable.net)

The beginning of a collaborative fantasy story. At the end of the chapter, readers vote on what happens next. Set in an interesting world that borrows mythology from the Zodicac. I rather enjoyed the multi-chapter story I read a few weeks ago... this is a new story.

"The problem may be that they are simply bored with the conventional curriculum, says the study, titled Morphing Literacy: Boys Reshaping Their Literacy. The study found it is a myth that boys do not read. While they are less interested in fiction or traditional literature than girls are, they read more on the Internet and memorize vast amounts of detailed material from games or stories they read in the newspaper, the research showed." Julie Smyth summarizes an academic report, but doesn't say where it was published.

--Study says boys do read, they just don't read booksNational Post)

Another telling quote, which reminds me of Sugata Mitra's minimally invasive teaching philosophy: " The researchers found boys are becoming literate "in spite of school instruction," and may end up better prepared for a career because their skills are more useful than being able to write a narrative or analyze a work of fiction....They found boys spend large amounts of time on chat sites and Web sites to get tips on how to "cheat" or compete at video games, read books about animals, sports and fantasy, and will pick up magazines and newspapers to read hockey scores, entertainment stories or news about things relevant to their lives, such as the death of Napster.

"Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org ), a community-built multilingual encyclopedia, is announcing that the English edition of the project has reached a milestone of 100,000 articles in development.... Wikipedia is a public WikiWikiWeb, a website where anyone can edit any article at any time. Users build upon each other's edits, and vandalized articles are quickly repaired by restoring an older version. In Wikipedia's second year, thousands of volunteer editors from around the world have added 80,000 entries to the English version and 33,000 more to the other language editions of Wikipedia. This surge in growth has made Wikipedia the world's largest and fastest growing open content encyclopedia and the largest WikiWikiWeb.'' --Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Reaches its 100,000th ArticleWikipedia.org)

Inspired by Wikipedia, in July of 2002, I launched a collaborative open-content Glossary of Interactive Fiction, which seems to have plateaued at about 180 or so terms. Anyone is free to suggest or revise an entry.

"At one time, voices glanced against its metal walls. Dates were made here, secrets exchanged. Once people lined up, shifting from foot to impatient foot, pointedly lifting their watches, Hey, lady, how long you gonna talk?

"But today, the pay phone by the Rodman's grocery store at Randolph and Selfridge roads in Wheaton stands empty, a smelly, rusting piece of metal and plastic. As if to highlight its obsolescence, Andres Castro stands right next to it and dials the office from his Nextel cell phone.

"He has come to demolish it."

--Requiem for the Pay Phone: As Cell Phone Use Increases, an Icon Gradually DiesWashPost)

I cannot resist this opportunity to suggest an inexplicably popular work of interactive fiction, "Pick up the Phone Booth and Die."

"From an educator's perspective, games may be the most fully realized educational technology produced to date. Tom Malone (1981) showed how games use challenge, fantasy, player control, and curiosity invoking designs to create intrinsically motivating environments. More recently, Lloyd Rieber (1996) has argued that digital games engage players in productive play -- learning that occurs through building microworlds, manipulating simulations, and playing games. Rieber argues that historically, educational games have relied heavily on exogenuous game formulas, meaning that content is inserted into a generic gaming template, like hangman, rather than seamlessly integrated with gaming mechanisms as in SimCity .(He calls this endogenuous game design)." Kurt Squire --Games-to-Teach ResearchMIT)

The artificial world of the college campus is, itself, a kind of simulation of real life. Via thinking with my fingers.

"Why is this a hobby horse of mine? Largely because I've been trying to promote the idea that games are an artform since I was a teenager, when I first started designing them professionally. Also because the rest of the world, both inside and outside the game industry, is starting to realize the validity of the idea--with increasing academic attention to games, increasing press coverage of them, and an increasing interest among game developers in thinking about design on a theoretical level. And finally, because so much nonsense is written about games that I think there needs to be a venue for a viewpoint that both values games and realizes their limitations--and the often stringent limitations of the sometimes soul-crushing engine we call the games industry." Greg Costikyan

--Games * Design * Art * Culture G*D*A*C)

Another comment from Costikyan: "Games are art. Most of them are bad art, to be sure." See also Costikyan's "I Have No Words and I Must Design. BTW, it was pretty easy figuring out which categories to use when I posted this entry.

"By downplaying competition, There hopes to attract women to its universe, which is roamed much like the legendary computer game Myst. In fact, some areas look and sound like the mythical Myst island with the constant chirping of birds and distant roar of surf. 'If we can build a product that women love, guys will show up,' Melcher said. 'The reverse is not true.'" --New Game "There" Puts you ThereCNN/AP)

And how will they build a world that women love? By letting gamers shop in virtual stores, for virtual clothes for their virtual bodies. An interactive Myst sounds like a good idea, but Atrus wouldn't have approved of the commercialization.

"2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world."

Top 5 gaining Google queries from 2002:

1. spiderman
2. shakira
3. winter olympics
4. world cup
5. avril lavigne

Top 5 declining Google queries from 2002:

1. nostradamus
2. napster
3. world trade center
4. anthrax
5. osama bin laden

--2002 Year-End ZeitgeistGoogle)

This listing indicates that the world is moving beyond the events of 9.11.2001. I had toyed with the idea of making Morrowind my next comptuer game purchase... the fact that it's 9th on the "gaining" list makes me more confident it will be a good use of my limited free time. The singers on this list mean nothing to me, though I've used Eminem (7th gaining) in class when my students complained that the rhymed verse of Moliere's 1660's play Tartuffe was unrealistic. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

"In 1811 the Herr von Reisswitz, the Prussian War Counselor at Breslau invented an innovative wargame. First, he constructed a table with a model actual terrain. He then represented units by blocks. Each side would give their orders to an umpire who was required to update the terrain table, resolve combat and tell each sides only what they would know. To determine casualties umpires first consulted complex tables that indicated a envelope of likely attrition based on range, terrain and other factors. The exact attrition was determined by a die role, to depict the uncertainties of the battlefield!" Matthew Caffrey --Toward a History Based Doctrine for WargamingAir & Space Power Chronicle)

"Proposal. Develop a false website and organization concentrating on the newest national concern: videogame addiction and violence. This organization is called Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (MAVAV, www.mavav.org). There is a great amount of stereotypes about people who play videogames (anti-social, depressed, unintelligent) and a lot of videogame violence bashing and blame (scapegoat) by the media and the government. So I decided to play off this, exaggerating all the common stereotypes, creating absurd facts, and officially linking violence in videogames to killers. :)" David Yoo --Interactivity Final Assignment: Create a Hoax. Submission: "Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence" (Parsons School of Design)

For years, undergraduates everywhere will be citing this website in their freshman composition papers. Hint to students: look for peer-reviewed academic journal articles, not web pages that pop up in response to a google.com search!