Jesse Schell: Visions of the Gamepocalypse
ALEXANDER ROSE:I'm Alexander Rose; I'm the Director of the Long Now Foundation. As some of you know who come to these talks every month we do a little short film before each talk which we call a "long short". This is a shortterm film that exemplifies longterm thinking. Our long short this month is called "Pixel". Alright enjoy. STEWART BRAND:I'm Stewart Brand from the Long Now Foundation.
Cultivated Play: Farmville
[This essay was given as a talk at SUNY Buffalo, 28 January 2010, the day after Howard Zinn’s death. I have left the text unaltered, to better reflect the spirit of the talk.] “I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing.” — Howard Zinn
Video Games and Motivation
Every year globally, people spend huge amounts of money and time playing video games. Most people who engage in video game play choose to do so voluntarily, because it is fun and they enjoy it. This makes it an intrinsically motivating activity. Research into video game play has tended to focus on either the positive effects e.g. a sense of efficacy or improved learning or the negative effects e.g. lower productivity or violent tendencies on players1. However, some studies have examined the motivating effects of video games, albeit from different perspectives. Sherry and Lucas2 found that players engage in video games to access one or more of the following psychological states:
Pixel Poppers: Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement
When I was old enough to care whether I won or lost at games, but still too young to be any good at them, I decided RPGs were better than action games. After all, I could play Contra for hours and still be terrible at it - while if I played Dragon Warrior III
The 6 Most Ominous Trends in Video Games
Our generation will be remembered for our video games. Every generation is remembered by its popular art; when you think of the 60s you think of Woodstock and hippie music. When you think of the 80s, you think of Miami Vice and the birth of music video. So when your grandchildren think of the 2010s, what will they picture in their minds?
Theory of Gaming Motivation
Purpose: To model the psychological reasons people play video games. Relevance: To help understand how video games can help us and hurt us. Think of such fields as video game addiction and video games in education.
Features - The Deaths Of Game Narrative
It's been quite a year for epic, narrative-driven games -- titles vast in scope, grand in ambition, and gorgeous in execution -- and I have fought my way through a few of the best. In recent months I have transformed into an exiled Florentine nobleman thirsty for vengeance in Renaissance Italy; I masqueraded as a continent-hopping, chiseled chunk of vainglorious derring-do in search of lost treasure; and I traveled the western wilds of the United States as a battle-scarred loner fighting to restore his dignity and return to his family. To the ear of an outsider, this might sound like a pretty diverse scrapbook of experiences, and I'd say this was half right. But there's one element that draws all these titles together under a cozy umbrella. In each game, the protagonist -- my avatar -- is a mass murderer. Perhaps this is an unfair choice of words.
Download Ultima VIII - Pagan
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Butchering Pathologic – Part 1: The Body
By Quintin Smith on April 10th, 2008 at 7:42 pm. [Wandering RPS-associate Quinns went native in a Russian art-videogame called Pathologic and has been exciting us with rants about it ever since. It's an enthralling game that, when I reviewed it, felt compelled to give a mark in the low fifties ("This will be someone's favourite game of the year. That somebody almost certainly won't be you."). John gave it a 6/10 review which nevertheless left anyone with a soul desperate to play the thing. It's a brilliant game that the traditional reviewer has to condemn.
Sweatshop HD is the latest victim in Apple's war on serious games
According to UK developer Littleloud, Sweatshop HD is an iPad game that "challenged people to think about the origin of the clothes we buy". But it has now been removed from Apple's online marketplace. Why? Well, because the App Store gatekeeper was "uncomfortable selling a game based around the theme of running a sweatshop".
Butchering Pathologic – Part 2: The Mind
By Quintin Smith on April 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm. [Following on from yesterday's installment, Quinns continues his examination of the award winning Russian obscurity Pathologic. Spoilers abound. Oh - and if all this has tempted you, it turns out it is available as a digital download from GamersGate.] Butchering Pathologic Part II: The Mind In a single word, Pathologic is dark.
Physics with Portals
Really, the question should read, “Why the Source engine?” Over the years, game developers have recognized that the easiest way to make ultra realistic games is to build a game world that follows laws of physics. Rather than using a blank slate and adding objects with imbued laws of physics, game developers have created a physics backbone that determines how objects should behave. Let’s say a game developer wanted to build a game with two boxes of different masses and dimensions that both follow the laws of physics.
