Games: November 2008 Archive Page

"It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online," said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report's lead author. "There are myths about kids spending time online - that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age."  -- MacArthur Foundation

Some details:

The researchers identified two distinctive categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven. While friendship-driven participation centered on "hanging out" with existing friends, interest-driven participation involved accessing online information and communities that may not be present in the local peer group.

Significant findings include -

• There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity.
  • Adults tend to be in the dark about what youth are doing online, and often view online activity as risky or an unproductive distraction.
  • Youth understand the social value of online activity and are generally highly motivated to participate.
• Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online.
  • Young people are learning basic social and technical skills that they need to fully participate in contemporary society.
  • The social worlds that youth are negotiating have new kinds of dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances, and is always on.
• Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online.
  • The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another.
  • Young people respect each other's authority online and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
• Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet.
  • Most youth use the Internet socially, but other learning opportunities exist.
  • Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible to pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups.
  • "Geeked-out" learning opportunities are abundant - subjects like astronomy, creative writing, and foreign languages.

I'm already aware of much of this. Knowing that students would rather learn from peers, I've added more group work, and I've added a requirement that students in my advance media classes publish a screencast about their final project to YouTube.  In future classes, I'll have students review those videos as part of their research process. 

My younger students (in the entry-level class) are generally much more excited about new media than the upper-level students (some of whom either barely tolerate or openly loathe the "new media" component of the "new media journlaism" program).  I've got to watch my lower-level students closely, so that I can adapt the upper-level classes to their strengths, and keep that process going throughout the major. That means I'm probably going to have to introduce more experimentaton in the lower-level classes, since I've got to cast a wider net to find out which techniques are the most productive.

Young people around the world are learning, in their pre-teen years, to use tools like Game Maker, Click & Play, Stagecast Creator and others to build simple games. As they move into their teens and twenties kids learn to master and use Flash, modding tools, and even sophisticated tools like C++, game engines and graphics tools to create the complex, sophisticated games they imagine and design. Many of these students go on to enroll in college and graduate school game design and construction courses and majors, creating, while in school, games at, or very close to, professional levels.

But can students design and build successful educational games? The answer appears to be yes, as well, especially under the right conditions. And that is very good news for our schools and our learners. Because the next generation of educational games - the games that will truly engage and teach students - is likely to come from the minds of other students, rather than from their teachers. -- Marc Prensky (PDF)

I'm surprised not to see a reference to MIT's Scratch. Otherwise, a very good article.

Jason Scott has started a new blog that will discuss the progress of his documentary, GET LAMP.  Here's a good entry on the contents of Steve Meretzky's basement.

As part of the GET LAMP project, I've been collecting artifacts and images throughout the commercial heydays of text adventures, and nobody got bigger than Infocom in the early 1980s. And Steve was one of the big designers at Infocom, creating or co-creating some of the most lasting games in the genre: Planetfall, Sorcerer, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Stationfall... and then went on after Infocom to make many other classics as well. He is a towering figure in the games industry, recognized as one of the greats, among other designers who have produced one-tenth his output. But beyond his place in the history of text adventures, he's also acutely aware of the history of text adventures, and the process, and the trends of a gaming industry.

It's pretty cool to see a Chronicle of Higher Education blog covering text games:

It's noon and you've still got 1,000 words to type. That might not seem like much, but it's been months since you've last worked on your dissertation and distractions are plentiful. To make matters worse, your girlfriend, Violet, says she's out the door and flying back to Australia if you don't finish the paper by the end of the day.

What's your next move?

This is the premise for Violet, a text-based computer game in which a graduate student is the main character. As the student, you must fight through countless distractions and solve a number of puzzles to finish the paper in time to save your relationship. The story is told by Violet, who allows you to examine objects in your office and ask for hints.

Created by Jeremy Freese, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, Violet recently won the 14th annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

[G]ames are inherently about exploration, in the abstract sense of discovering strategies and options, seeing how rules interact and so on. And yes, you can summon screenshots of Warhammer halls bigger than the Taj Mahal, or mountain vistas in Lord of the Rings Onlinethe Other: societies wholly different from mine, cultures built on assumptions so divergent from my own that I hadn't realized they were assumptions.

This, for me, is why playing MMOGs doesn't feel like travel. They offer too little of the Other.(Allen Varney, The Escapist)

The latest issue of The Escapist

Wired reviews Mirror's Edge

When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot -- precisely as they do when you're vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you're looking at your thighs as the world spins around you.

What's more, the Mirror's Edge world feels tactile and graspable. Because the game is designed around the concept of parkour, or moving through obstacles, most times when you see something that looks like you could jump on it, you can. The gameplay requires it.

The upshot is that these small, subtle visual cues have one big and potent side effect: They trigger your sense of proprioception. It's why you feel so much more "inside" the avatar here than in any other first-person game. And it explains, I think, why Mirror's Edge is so curiously likely to produce motion sickness. The game is not merely graphically realistic; it's neurologically realistic.

This will be an interesting update for all the dissertation chapters that have already been written on Lara Croft's virtual body.

The votes have been tabulated, and we have our winners! Congratulations to the top three games, Violet, Nightfall, and Everybody Dies, as well as to all authors for entering. And a big note of thanks to everyone who judged the games. The full results are available below. (IF Comp 08)

See the results page.

I heard about Bloxorz this afternoon at a meeting.

This evening, I came down to the study where my kids were playing Lego Indiana Jones for the umpteenth time, and without any fuss, started playing Bloxorz on the laptop.

Within thirty seconds, my six-year-old daughter was begging to play it. Within two minutes, my ten-year-old son wanted to play, so we fired up another computer for him.  I taught my daughter a few moves, which she then taught to her brother.

Now they are alternating turns (with some fussing and complaining, but no more than usual.)

Peter: "Oh, man! This the hardest game and the most fun puzzles I've ever played"

Carolyn (glaring at me) "Daddy, are you done blogging? Now, daddy? Now? Daddy! You said you'd let me play Bloxorz on your laptop! (Singing a song) Now, now now... now, now now.... now now now?"

So what exactly are the barriers of entry for great thinkers (or groups of thinkers) to leave their mark on games? What must happen for games -- or interactive entertainment, if you will, to mature as a medium?

While no one knows the answer to this question, many people (and companies) have stepped up to the plate to attempt to bring games to the next level. The Nintendo Wii has been a monumental development in the games industry, not because of its innovative technology, not because is has helped get people off of the couch, but because of the way it has changed the audience.

My mother, who claimed she could never play games, frequently plays Wii bowling with my aunt. A substantial amount of Wii owners claim that it is their first video game console. This means that, by taking away the buttons that confounded my mother and replacing them with movement-based controls, Nintendo has opened up the possibility that games could be for people other than kids. -- Brice Morrison, Gamasutra

Via

The FPP -- first-person painter! I wish the creator hadn't chosen to go eerie with the mood, that seems like cheating a little... it's so easy to go scary. Still, it's beautiful And it's an XNA-developed title. Interesting.

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.