JP Rangaswamion ReadWriteWeb. Weaponized Transhumans: Halo, Deus Ex, Crysis... The Weaponized Transhuman: Halo, Deus Ex, Crysis, Bioshock, Warhammer, and the Future of Wetware (Us) The Question We love games where we put on armor that gives us superhuman abilities.
We become transhuman. What future is there for humanity when this kind of technology arrives? At what point we do we stop calling the shots? Introduction (SPOILERS ENSUE) Halo is a narrative about the obsolescence of humans. Almost every major event in the Halo universe is, directly or indirectly, instigated by an AI. There's very little for humans to do in the Haloverse except acts as puppets. But it's popping up in games as well. Bioshock made this point most acutely: the player moves down a linear series of events, confined to the game's narrative by the fact that nobody has programmed any branches - a conceit that is lampshaded within the narrative by the fact that the player character is brainwashed and has no free will! Perhaps this is why the theme of AI puppetry works so well in games.
Crysis 2 J. How a computer beat Civilization by RTFM. Normally, covering computer science articles is a bit of a strain, but two things about a recent one had a strong personal appeal: I'm addicted to the Civilization series of games, and I rarely bother to read the users' manual.
These don't necessarily sound like issues that could be tackled via computer science, but some researchers have decided to let a computer teach itself how to play Freeciv and, in the process, teach itself to interpret the game's manual. Simply by determining whether the moves it made were ultimately successful, the researchers' software not only got better at playing the game, but it figured out a lot of the owner's manual as well. Civilization isn't the first game to catch the attention of computer scientists.
The new papers' authors, based at MIT and University College London, cite past literature in which computers were able to teach themselves Go, Poker, Scrabble, multi-player card games, and real-time strategy games. Functionality, Gamification, and Feedback Loops. A fantastic article on feedback loops at Wired gives a nice overview of what they are: “A feedback loop involves four distinct stages.
First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage. Second, the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in […] A fantastic article on feedback loops at Wired gives a nice overview of what they are: “A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. This description highlights the gigantic difference between visual design and interaction design. Apply here…successful people seek out and actively monitor feedback about what they’re doing.
Create Flash Games with Stencyl. How I invented games and why not. Jennifer Government: NationStates. Gamification Master Class with Gabe Zichermann - O'Reilly Media. Playing games has been around us for quite some time.
There are some great ideas behind it that Gabe reveals to us. During the class, you will be told how to provide people with fun, how to bound people to you via various means of gratification, discover players motivation, get the idea of users' stories, be aware of players' type, the mastery levels, ways of attracting people and many many more. You will be told how to approach these issues. How to utilize them in order to get most of them. You will get the basics of gamification process – where to start, how to develop the game's mechanics, how to adapt to new circumstances. Another great benefit is that you can actually follow the exercises that are solved during the class. What can I say when it comes to Gamification Video?
Drawbacks? The purpose of gamification. Frequently couched either as a question about demographics or as a personal statement (“I don’t ever play games”), gamification is dogged by questions of suitability of purpose, appropriateness of context, or even the semantic conflict around the use of the word “games” itself.
Whether you fall into the supporter or detractor camp, it’s clear that gamification is inspiring debate and raising questions: play vs. work, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, authenticity vs. contrivance, just to name a few. So perhaps the best place to start addressing these issues is with the basics: what can gamification do, why do we care, and what are its limitations. Gamification’s main purpose is to help people get from point A to point B in their lives — whether that’s viewed through the lens of personal growth, societal improvement or marketing engagement. We all have the intrinsic desire to be the best possible people we can be, and to make the world in our image of its maximum potential. Related: