[image yoinked from IGN]
The videogames industry is expanding and maturing at an incredible speed, considering its youth. Perception of gaming has changed: videogames are not just games, they are experiences with social, cultural and economic importance The problem is that many of those who want to take part of this compelling industry do not understand games or the gamers who play them. Read the rest of this entry »
So last night I tossed a guy into a furnace. Just dragged him over there with both hands while my back-up handled his bodyguard: one quick shove with my hands, and in he went. It was a job for The Family, but I’d never even met the guy myself. By roasting him in the furnace (as opposed to simply bending his neck over a length of pipe or erasing his head with a shotgun), I recieved a bonus for my handiwork.
The Godfather: Blackhand edition is without a doubt the most violent game I’ve ever played. Following the spirit of the movie, the only way to gain respect is through money, violence, or a combination of the two. Much like the movie, you are a mobster equal parts brutality, loyalty and corruption. Read the rest of this entry »
(image from frenchculture.org)
A friend im’ed this link to me about another one of Jack Thompson’s battles in his crusade against video games. This one is concerning the lack of enforcement of the rating system for video games, and in a letter to Bill Gates, Thompson threatens to hold Microsoft responsible if Halo 3 is sold to kids in stores or via the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Last September, I went to an event in New York City called “Come Out and Play.” Created and managed by a team of NYC-based game designers, artists, and LARPers, the event was three days of so-called “big” or “street” or “ubiquitous” games. It concluded with a panel of discussants that included Jane McGonigal, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and Nick Fortugno, among others, who all discussed the merits of taking gaming to the streets, so to speak. Read the rest of this entry »
I guess it was only a matter of time before someone thought there was enough emotional distance to create a game based on the V-Tech shootings. However, unlike Super Columbine RPG that attempts to de-construct and examine the Littleton tragedy, Ryan Lambourn’s V-TECH RAMPAGE simply exploits the shooting to gain what will hopefully be no more than 15 minutes of Internet fame. I actually took a moment to play this because I felt so many quickly derided the Columbine game without knowing what it was really about. Do yourselves a favor, don’t waste your time. This 8-bit mock-up of the V-Tech campus plays as a top-down shooter where you just run around the campus and kill the students as they run and scream. That was as far as I needed to go to know that I had already given this disturbed individual too much of my time. Read the rest of this entry »
I love this little guy.
This piggie bank helps users set their financial goals and pesters you if they are not met. The screen on the front has a little “guy” who gradually acquires splendor (digitally displayed!) as the coins pile up into the bank.
Read the rest of this entry »
So I’ve been reading and enjoying this spunky girl-gamer blog for a while now. It’s well designed, regularly updated, and altogether lovely.
What pushed it over the edge to being bloggable is that when Alice posted her “ding! 70” post, I realized that I actually *know* her. She was in my old guild, and Crystaltips was a dungeon crawling pal extraordinaire. The blagonets are a small place sometimes, it seems.
There are a lot of talks and discussions out in the world how to make games more exciting and more fun. And there are a lot of discussions about how to make games for learning more fun. Clearly, plenty of people love to play video games in their free time. But a lot more hardly ever play games (except perhaps board games such as monopoly). As a designer for educational games this is an enormous challenge because your target group is much bigger, much more diverse, and comes with differing expectations about the game play experience. Read the rest of this entry »
“This is a bunch of crappy crap crap. It is dumbing down the curriculum. It is pandering. It is exposing kids to something that quite frankly, and I guess that I’m willing to go out on a limb and say Hip Hop Music, right now, is not in the top three positive influences on young people today.” (Charlie Sykes, WTMJ)
“Why don’t you go out and prove that this stuff actually works , before we apply it to our kids and use these kids as guinea pigs. Is that really too much to ask?” (Charlie Sykes, WTMJ — entertaining podcast here)
The other week, as part of our effort to go out and prove that this stuff actually works, we went out to a North Milwaukee seventh grade class and played Hip Hop Tycoon — an AR game designed by Ben Devane and Chris Holden. It was at the Ridge Point Mall, and the weather was crappy (wet and cold mist), and the GPS units had what MIT diagnosed as a “Bluetooth stacking” problem, so we played it in manual mode, and the kids ran around the sidewalk of the strip mall for an hour and interviewed and hired virtual characters for their virtual Hip Hop store, making their decisions based on salary costs, sales potential, community involvement, etc.
(the fun bit follows the jump) Read the rest of this entry »
Image lovingly nodding toward Campus Technology
I recently saw a presentation at work with this Youtube clip about Ohio State’s Second Life Campus:
…I’m sure someone reading this right now has probably blogged about this already somewhere else on the interblag. Congrats to you, it must have slipped passed my RSS feed.