See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Melissa Terras writes in the introduction to Digital Humanities Quarterly v1 n2 (2007): We at DHQ hope that we will eventually reach a wider audience (and trust our readers will help us do so), introducing the type and range of activities the digital humanities community is interested in, and featuring energetic, novel, and interesting articles…
A reader of Google Blogoscoped reveals that Google briefly posted a “confidential” video detailing its plans to compete with Facebook. Google’s recent big social effort is called Mocha-Mocha (or Mocka-Mocka?), and will become the infrastructure for all social stuff across all of their applications. As a part of this, a new feature called Activity Streams…
Clive Thompon is not writing from the same world where I live. Thirty-six hours? How in god’s name had I managed to spend almost four hours a day inside this game? I should point out that this was not the only game I’d been playing during that time. I’d also been hip-deep in BioShock and…
Metro.co.uk A trio of vandals are facing trouble after posting a video of themselves smashing up a Lotus Elise on the internet. The three filmed themselves leaping and jumping on the bonnet and roof of the £20,000 sports car, parked in Marylebone, Central London. After originally posting the video on their MySpace pages, the group…
Nick Yee (The Daedalus Project) writes an 8-part post (this quote is from part 2) responding to media reports about “internet addiction.” High school and college students on football teams regularly die during practice (1, 2, 3), but their deaths are dealt with by the media with a very holistic perspective. The media questions whether…
David Lazarus describes the Time Lady’s end in California. “It was always there,” said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell’s (and subsequently SBC’s) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. “Everybody knew the number.” Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell…
AP: A court on Friday fined a 15-year-old schoolboy for posting a video on YouTube of his teacher singing karaoke without her permission and claiming she was a lunatic. In the first case of its kind in Finland, Nurmes District Court found Toni Vesikko guilty of intentional defamation and fined him $120. He also was…
Elia Powers: Housing officers divided students into living groups, based upon major, age and other factors. So students who saw their list of 25, 50 or 75 (depending on the group) potential roommates already knew that those included would likely live on the same floor or at least in the same residence hall. It was…
Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d do some more work on the Wikipedia entry for Colossal Cave Adventure.
Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others. —BBC Wikipedia has a good collection of background resources on “corrupted blood,” the virtual…
A large majority of video games sold in the UK receive a rating under the voluntary Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system, but some games, about 6-7% of the total, are referred to the BBFC. In determining what classification to give, the BBFC employs much the same approach as it does to films and DVDs. However,…
I’ve been experimenting with MT4, and have in fact imported 5 years of blog entries from the indie software created by my former student, Will Gayther. I got used to the particular rhythms of Will’s software, which was very fast and configurable. But I got tired of having to fight the spammers on two different…
SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make…
Because so little primary historical work has been done on the classic text computer game “Colossal Cave Adventure”, academic and popular references to it frequently perpetuate inaccuracies. “Adventure” was the first in a series of text-based games (“interactive fiction”) that emphasize exploring, puzzles, and story, typically in a fantasy setting; these games had a significant…
There is ultimately no way to “justify” SCMRPG in the minds of those who find it deplorable but I believe even the game’s detractors will find that the film fleshes out the controversy to better understand the future of games as a medium. The film is essentially a challenge to game developers to rethink the…
Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley hypothesis states that, as artificial beings get closer to resembling real humans, the slightest errors or inaccuracies can shift our responses from empathy to disbelief and even disgust. It’s why, in Toy Story, we love Woody and Buzz Lightyear, but are totally unmoved by Andy, their human owner. This is something…
James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to help people who want to remove bits of photographs. The parts being removed could be unsightly lorries in the snaps of the rural idyll where they took a holiday or even an old boyfriend or girlfriend they want to rub out…
Lately I’ve had the urge to play text adventure games, but I’m not sure what to play. I’ve been googling, but I’m overwhelmed by the variety of games available and can’t seem to find a useful review site. So… what should I play? —Recommend a few good text adventure games! (MetaFilter) I missed this thread when…
The New York Times Co. (NYT.N) plans to stop charging Internet users for access to its columnists and Op-Ed pieces on a section of its Web site known as TimesSelect, The New York Post reported on Tuesday. —New York Times to end paid Web service: report (Yahoo! | Reuters) Certain upscale and targeted audiences will pay…
To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers. —Jakob Nielsen —Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Alertbox) It’s been a while since I checked out Nielsen’s site. His overall point against blogs — which we can sum up in the old saying “nobody buys…