See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Today, those never-ending online “massively multiplayer” games like “EverQuest” have matured into mainstream, vibrant attractions, drawing hundreds of thousands of paying customers – male and female. But their growth appears almost stagnant compared to the popularity spike for multiplayer online shoot’em-ups and other mostly war-themed fare geared toward users of console systems, led by Sony…
Since it was initially packaged with every Mac shipped, it’s likely the majority of buyers used it as a quicky Rolodex, if anything. But HyperCard’s biggest win was a very low entry threshold for those who wanted to build their own ‘stacks’ – combinations of user interface, code, and persistent data. There were plenty of…
I‘m looking at a dead pigeon laying on the sidewalk, headless, and I wonder: ?What am I doing here?? —David ThomasDo You Know the Way to San Jose (Buzzcut) So begins David’s coverage of the Game Developer’s Conference, where the most interesting-sounding panel seems to be on “serious games“. I can’t seem to figure out how…
[Grr… the Word file that has my abstract in it won’t open on this public terminal on the convention floor. I’m retyping this from my lecture notes.] When a curricular weblog program was made available to all students, faculty and staff at a small liberal arts university, the students, expected to blog as part of…
Sarah Jane Sloane, “Blog is My Co-Pilot: Blogs in a Graduate Classroom.” Cynthia Cox, “Blogging and the First-Year Composition Classroom” Bonne Smith, “All Along the Blogwatch Tower” Lisa Langstraat, respondent: “In Blog We Trust”Teaching the Blog (CCCC 2004) I wasn’t able to meet Sarah Jane Sloan, whose dissertation on interactive fiction, Interactive Fiction, Virtual Realities, and…
If you have an AOL Instant Messenger account, send an IM to InfocomBot or InfocomBot2. I set up an automated bot to play classic Infocom text adventure games from your favorite IM client, T-Mobile Sidekick, or any other device that connects to AIM. It supports “save” and “restore” commands, so you don’t need to lose…
Dennis Jerz, professor at Seton Hill University presented a paper on the history of Adventure, which I believe is acknowledged as the first text-based computer adventure game. I found many concrete suggestions in Jerz’s presentation for those of us looking to develop software to teach expert bodies of knowledge. —Modelling and scaffolding expert thinking (The…
—Technorati’s Speech Bubble Icon (Technorati) What Technorati used to call its “Link Cosmos” appears to have been replaced by “Web Conversations.” The speech bubble icon that calls up a list of inboud links referencing a particular website is now part of the Technorati logo. Much less new-agey, much more down-to-earth. I haven’t time to investigate that…
English teacher Tom McHale sets down his cup of coffee and boots up the computer at his classroom desk. It‘s6:50 in the morning. After logging in, he opens up his personal page on the school Intrablog. There, he does a quick scan of the New York Times front page headlines and clicks through one of…
No assembly lines. No wireless Internet service or lattes Most work was done with hand or horses. Unlike modern ?death march? projects, 27 people actually died in the course of engineering the Brooklyn bridge. Modern web developer Washington Roebling’s team 3 week / month release cycle 14 year release cycle Electricity Horses Coffee, doughnuts and…
This paper examines metablogging in terms of Dawkins’s concept of the “meme” and Reddy’s critique of the “conduit” metaphor for communication…. The language of metablogging uses metaphors that emphasize communality and proximity, and thus offers an alternative to the social risks Reddy associates with the conduit metaphor. —Dennis G. Jerz —(Meme)X Marks the Spot: Theorizing…
If you’re an academic who blogs, what prompted you to start blogging? And what keeps you going? What do you try to do in your blog? Does your blog have any relationship to your scholarship? If you’re an academic who just reads blogs, do you intend to start your own blog sometime? If yes, what…
Formerly viewed as a marginal activity restricted to the technically savvy, blogging is slowly becoming more of a mainstream phenomenon on the Internet. Thanks to much media hype and some high profile blog sites, these online journals have captured the public‘simagination. As novice authors plunge into the thrilling world of blog publishing, they soon realize…
Good voice acting can’t save a bad game, but talented actors can imbue a game script with genuine emotional freight. Some of the best in-game voice work is not the long bits of dialogue in boring cut-scenes, but tiny, subtle bits of atmosphere. In Tomb Raider, Lara Croft’s quiet, voluptuous moans as she hurled herself…
GREETINGS. MY BROTHER, THE LEADER OF A FOREIGN NATION, WAS RECENTLY DEPOSED BY A VIOLENT COUP THAT DESTROYED ALL KEYBOARDS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LOWERCASE LETTERS… GREETINGS. I AM NOT THE BROTHER OF A RECENTLY DEPOSED LEADER OF A FOREIGN NATION WHERE KEYBOARDS DONT HAVE LOWERCASE LETTERS. I AM INSTEAD SOMEONE WHOSE WEBLOG HAS RECENTLY BEEN…
The group’s volunteers pose as kids, and when an adult hits on them, they publish the person’s picture, phone numbers and e-mail address on the site so the group’s supporters can hound the person by phone and e-mail. Perverted Justice has made more than 600 such busts since it was formed in July 2002, and…
Some experts charge that the $1.4 billion antivirus industry is content with perpetuating a business model that is profitable for the companies, but onerous for the user. —Michelle Delio —Cashing In on Virus Infections (Wired)
Using voice-recognition middleware developed by ScanSoft, Lifeline can recognize over 5,000 words and 100,000 phrases. In practice, that means that the game’s main character, Rio, will understand anything that’s relevant to her predicament, as well as many things that aren’t. Lifeline is thus a unique step toward deeper player immersion in the game world, but…
Nobody won. Nobody even came close. But that didn’t stop organizers of the DARPA Grand Challenge from declaring an unusual race across the Mojave Desert a spirited success. —Marsha Walton —Robots fail to complete Grand Challenge (CNN) We’re safe, for a little while longer, from the robot rebellion that will inevitably overwhelm us.
The effects of music on performance on a computer-mediated problem-solving task were examined. Participants completed the task in anonymous dyads as they were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Results indicate that those in the Classical music condition performed better on the problem solving-task than those in the Punk music or…