See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Searching for Gregory Yob (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Gregory Yob wrote “Hunt the Wumpus,” a 1972 computer game that featured cave-exploration and combat. Of course, the game was all text, which makes it hard for most of my students to believe that anyone would possibly have enjoyed playing it. 1972 was also the year Atari released Pong.…
“You mean to tell me that we have just purchased a mega-expensive computer that will build robots, drive cars, walk, talk, and probably wash windows and you want a text computer game that requires less than 640K RAM and a black and white monitor to run?” Indeed that was what he wanted, and off we…
If you want to be “cool”, “hot”, or “whatever”, then you need to know the lingo. –compiled by Anette Lamb —Blog Lingo (Escrapbooking) I especially like “barking moonbat.”
Hollywood actors unions have reached a contract deal with video game publishers, accepting higher pay instead of the profit-sharing they had demanded, the unions said Wednesday, removing the threat of a strike. —Voice Actors Win Bigger Check (Reuters | Wired) Just following up on a story I blogged earlier.
Google has become the world’s most highly-valued media company after only 10 months of trading as a public company. It now dwarfs more traditional media companies such as Viacom and Walt Disney, which have stock market capitalisations of between $54bn and $55bn. — $80bn Google takes top media spot (BBC)
Much like the film industry, an overemphasis on blockbusters is one of the industry’s biggest weaknesses as far as encouraging innovation and creativity, say observers. “Future titles need to offer more than wild shootouts, violent explosions, and the wholesale cheapening of life,” says game designer Howard Sherman. “We’ve been moving in the wrong direction,” says…
The world is full of devices associated with the word ergonomic. A scholar trying to learn the word by studying the way it’s used in today’s culture is likely conclude that it means “curvy” or possibly “funny-looking.” Nearly all mice, trackballs, and other devices are now described as ergonomic; this doesn’t mean they’re all good…
What I am willing to predict, however, even at this early stage, is that the real loser in all of this will be PC gaming. Let’s start with Quake 4, which uses the “old” Doom 3 engine but still came across as one of the more impressive PC titles I saw at the show. Id,…
“(They’re) nuts if they think they deserve residuals for a half-day of voice-over work,” said Long. “A development team (might) slave away for two years to produce a title.” —Xeni Jardin —Coders Want Fatter Paychecks, Too (Wired)
Question 1: What do you consider the most important qualities and pleasures we *don’t* yet find in today‘sinteractive entertainment? And why are they needed? Question 2: Why haven’t these qualities been achieved? What are the obstacles, how daunting? Are they so technically difficult that incremental progress is not possible? Are players happy enough with what…
So let’s say you popped up your news aggregator of choice and have subscribed to each of those blogs. How much would you read? How much information would you get? Our little analysis shows you would have read a bit under 22,000 words. That would amount, in terms of printed pages, to 44 single spaced…
Often, when studying history, the details are lost in an attempt to fully understand the bigger picture. We do not look at what the individuals faced, the decisions they had to make. This project will not only examine the Holocaust as a whole event, but delve deeper into the history to see what choices people…
The traditional, dominant method for getting academic work, research and ideas reviewed and accepted by peers is for work to be published via a recognised source. Publication in a acknowledged journal demonstrates the work meets a required standard for acceptance into the academic community. When an academic is working on an idea at a very…
Check out the rather startling difference between the Atari 2600 title Jet Goblins Attack from 1980 and The Legend of Zelda just seven years later: The yellow block in the first screen is Batman. Now compare Goldeneye (1997) to Red Faction 2 (2004). Same seven-year span: We’re on a technological plateau. The next real leap,…
If the new consoles are built with a graphics-first mentality, how easy is it going to be to make games that stretch the boundaries of game logic and player freedom? And if so, can we at least have our damned adventure games back? But there’s another, less-obvious side of that muffin: if a machine is…
—Y! MIndset An interesting Yahoo! search engine that places “Shopping” and “Research” on opposite ends of a sliding scale, which you can adjust in order to change the weightings of of search results.
“People buy games for gameplay, not to hear voices,” counters Finlayson. “And technology creates gameplay, not actors. People who play these games understand that, and in fact, some gamers turn the volume down because (they) find those voices distracting. In film or television, the actor’s performance makes the experience. In video games, it does not.”…
Microsoft shouldn’t be hard to understand taking a cold, risky plunge for a taste of abalone many of the thousands of demonstrators in the city square cried – it was their first public forum in years behind failed Abu Ghraib plea internet attack is called broad and long-lasting a high-ranking Uzbek official said on condition…
Something important is happening in the world of journalism:. It’s an evolution from the lecture model, to which we in mass media have become accustomed in the past century, to something closer to a conversation. The shift stems from the collision of technology with media. This evolution is having an effect on all three major…
Rogers’ Predator is one of more than 1,200 UAVs in the US military arsenal; three years ago, there were fewer than 100 in the field. Today drones as small as a crow and as big as a Cessna are searching for roadside bombs, seeking out insurgents, and watching the backs of US troops. They’re cheap,…