tag:www.twcdc.com,2009:/owen//9 2006-12-18T05:04:10Z Computer Games Theory and Practice, Fall 2006 Movable Type 3.31 tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.220 2006-12-17T23:34:29Z 2006-12-18T05:04:10Z

Okay a little out of order, but. . . the DL works now. Click here to DL the forums timelapse!...

Owen Hoskins Click here to DL the forums timelapse!]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.216 2006-12-13T20:09:28Z 2006-12-13T20:12:50Z

This is part A of a maze game system that pits a player controling an avatar in 3d gamestudio versus a maze builder with a plexiglass table and colored blocks....

Owen Hoskins ]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.202 2006-11-29T19:07:09Z 2006-11-29T19:20:55Z

This article, "The Principlas of Play," from Metropolis September 2006, asks the question: "can game designers reach a generation of students reared on technology and resistant to traditional methods of teaching?" The article is primarly about "Game Designer," a innovative...

Owen Hoskins This article, "The Principlas of Play," from Metropolis September 2006, asks the question: "can game designers reach a generation of students reared on technology and resistant to traditional methods of teaching?" The article is primarly about "Game Designer," a innovative educationally aimed game now in the works. The game provides an engaging and intutive structure for the player to design their own games. The article goes on to make a through argument for good games as essential educational tools. While the popular sentimant that "gaming is the mindless, time-wasting pastime of a nihilistic generation" is in general accurate. The argument is not that video games are good teachers, but that playing video games is often good learning. tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.172 2006-11-08T20:04:38Z 2006-11-08T20:38:34Z

From Frieze magazine: "Machinima, most usefully defined as, "moviemaking within a real-time 3d virtual environment', has its origins in the mid=1990s, when first person shooters such as Quake and Unreal started to include tools that let gamers record live in-game...

Owen Hoskins http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=275 Sims 2 - User movies The Awaking: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t_KibtJ6400 The Movies (Preview) A game that simulates Hollywood movie making in the 1920s. ]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.153 2006-11-01T20:34:06Z 2006-11-01T20:50:22Z

Components: Soccer field 2 teams, 11 players each 2 balls 2 referess Rules: The gmae is played according to the basic rules of soccer, except for the extra ball. Object: To score goals into the opposing team's goal. Duration: Two...

Owen Hoskins Components: Soccer field 2 teams, 11 players each 2 balls 2 referess Rules: The gmae is played according to the basic rules of soccer, except for the extra ball. Object: To score goals into the opposing team's goal. Duration: Two 30-minute halves. Note: In this game the player's chances of touching the ball are increased, and his/her movement is faster. He/she quickly abandons all familiar strategies, reacting to the new possibilities. History: First played in Lod, Israel, February 1996. tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.144 2006-10-30T19:59:45Z 2006-10-30T20:01:17Z

Click here to download my review of Indigo Prophecy!...

Owen Hoskins Click here to download my review of Indigo Prophecy!]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.127 2006-10-16T20:07:25Z 2006-10-16T21:50:10Z

I took a look at Storytron website before getting ahold of the Chris Crawford article. The websites descriptions are intriguingly vague and how the hell this world builder fuctions is curious. I actually don't understand how it is imagined to...

Owen Hoskins I took a look at Storytron website before getting ahold of the Chris Crawford article. The websites descriptions are intriguingly vague and how the hell this world builder fuctions is curious. I actually don't understand how it is imagined to literally work. The basic concept sounds like those Choose Your Own Adventure novels where the story gave you options that would affect the outcome. Albiet the options would be constant rather than every 10 pages. It seems that Crawford is trying to imagine an interactive movie where there are latent variables that arise to create a dramatic situtation, embbeded with a certain amount of scripting so the game play is as entertaining as watching a movie. While this still feels psuedo interactive, if a game replicated a real life--however fasinating the acomplishment--would it be worth playing? Movies are always so much more interesting than my life and thus enjoyable to watch. While limiting, the creativitiy and imagination of the story builder channeled into a maliable system could produce results that out strip anything seen or done prior. Perhaps even the expanding the global dramatic vocabulary... tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.124 2006-10-16T19:43:47Z 2006-10-16T19:51:10Z

I took a look at the speakers presentations on the web from the Serious Games summit and found myself interested not in a game particularly but the argument for games as a serious learning device. (We must defeat the Chinese!)...

Owen Hoskins I took a look at the speakers presentations on the web from the Serious Games summit and found myself interested not in a game particularly but the argument for games as a serious learning device. (We must defeat the Chinese!) I pulled this from Merrilea J. Mayo's powerpoint: ----------------- Preliminary finding of international comparisons (TIMSS, PISA) is that US students learn too much, too superficially, without understanding anything. From learning theory, we know some attributes assist deep learning Experiential learning (you do it, you learn it): Active participation; decisions that have consequences. Typical of immersive games. Inquiry-based learning (what happens when I do this?): exploration in games. Authenticity (the more like real-life the learning situation, the more easily learners will transfer the information to real life): virtual worlds Self-efficacy (if you believe you can do it, you will increase your chances of succeeding): rewards & levels in games Goal setting (you will make more progress if working towards a well-defined goal): game goal Continuous feedback: student in conventional classroom gets to ask only 0.11 questions/hr. In tutoring, student gets 20-30 questions/hr. (Fletcher, J.D. “Technology, the Columbus Effect, and the Third Revolution in Learning”, Institute for Defense Analysis, 2001. ). Carnegie-Mellon Algebra Tutor increases TIMSS scores by 30%. What result for games??? Cooperation (team learning): Studies of traditional learning show cooperative learning results in about a 50% improvement over either solo or competitive learning (meta-analysis of 122 studies by Johnson et al, Psych. Bull 89 (1981) 47-62. MMOG’s. -------------- The average time spent by teenagers in video game play is 5-8 hours/week. This is almost exactly equal to the time spent on homework by college-bound high school students. tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.91 2006-10-04T20:03:56Z 2006-10-04T20:04:41Z

JetSalom...

Owen Hoskins JetSalom]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.89 2006-10-04T19:34:27Z 2006-10-04T19:53:08Z

Partly inspired by the real vs. online player tag game by Blast Theory, this game (so far untitled) would pit a real person armed with colored building blocks and tiles versus an online player piloting an avatar. The real player...

Owen Hoskins Partly inspired by the real vs. online player tag game by Blast Theory, this game (so far untitled) would pit a real person armed with colored building blocks and tiles versus an online player piloting an avatar. The real player would build enviroments with the various structural elements in a specified area (like a table top or something). A camera would be trained directly above that area and read the color coded blocks and tiles which would then be translated into a computer simulated 3d virtual enviroment (possibily in real time). The online player must nagoitate the terrian an make it too a exit point as quickly as possible. To recap, the basic structure of the game is: real world construction toys are assembled into a enviorment in a specified area, that enviroment is than translated into a virtual enviroment that a player controlled avatar can travel through. Competetive rules could be applyed. For example, if the computer and real enviroment were in the same space (like a gallery) players could switch roles and try to make the best time in each others enviroments. tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.79 2006-10-02T07:11:50Z 2006-10-02T22:25:15Z

Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Players from anywhere in the world can play online in a virtual city against real players on the street. Tracked by satellites, the runners...

Owen Hoskins CAN YOU SEE ME NOW? UNCLE ROY ALL AROUND YOU ]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.74 2006-09-27T21:36:57Z 2006-09-27T22:02:05Z

http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/insidegames/Content/ViewCategoryProducts.aspx?SectionID=989 Found this when I was checking out Will Wrights Spore. An entire catagory of bubbly and relatively nonviolent games! Video Games: Sexist Tendencies by Professor James Woudhuysen.. if you really want to dive into it, read this (55 pages):...

Owen Hoskins http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/insidegames/Content/ViewCategoryProducts.aspx?SectionID=989 Found this when I was checking out Will Wrights Spore. An entire catagory of bubbly and relatively nonviolent games! Video Games: Sexist Tendencies by Professor James Woudhuysen.. if you really want to dive into it, read this (55 pages): http://www.woudhuysen.com/documents/ComputerGamesSexDifference.pdf#search=%22Video%20games%3A%20sexist%20tendencies%22 The intro is accessible reading however... ]]> tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.56 2006-09-23T19:58:03Z 2006-09-25T19:53:10Z

If this game is indeed as good as its said to be I can't believe I haven't played it. Personally, I would play America's army simply to get a good competitive rush off of it, easily ignoring the proganada. If...

Owen Hoskins If this game is indeed as good as its said to be I can't believe I haven't played it. Personally, I would play America's army simply to get a good competitive rush off of it, easily ignoring the proganada. If it's paramount goal is indeed recruitment it wouldn't phase me nor the mass majority of gamers either, I imagine. Halter describes the transformation of military theory for the 21st century in Sun Tzu to Xbox, to then illustrate: "Quick-thinking individuals who effortlessly operated inside high-tech communications systems? Sounds like your average video game player might be a match." Reaction time, spacial awarness, the use of intutation to guess enemy movements, and most importantly fluid team work are what makes the best Counter-strike player. Sounds like a good soldier, also. But would anyone want to do it for real? The only area that threatens me is the sublimial. The subject switch from completely fantastical, historical, or fabricated subject matter to the intensily real and contemporary is unnerving. Like Halter's mention of "Bad guy" termonology. He see's an easy transposition of the term bad guy from aliens to Iraqis as "natural, even subliminally comforting, in its simplicity, and puts a new spin on the concept of "demonizing" the enemy." Later in the article, when he discusses the seriousness of a war game durning a time of war, he writes: "creating or even playing a game that promises a realistic experience of war verges on an inconsiderate lack of respect at best, or a manipulative attempt at propaganda at worst." The army is giving you its best shot at a peachy and heroic simulation of being a soldier(i.e. the hero biographys on the website). A video game can't possibily be an acurate representation of such an experience and if one is subconciouslly mislead to think so I suppose that would be bad. tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.55 2006-09-22T01:20:47Z 2006-09-22T01:21:12Z

McLuhan's basic postulate is that Western man's games are "a collective rather than private dramatizations of inner life." To explain how he arrives at this conclusion he first compares modern western man (characterized as fearlessly individualistic) with ancient or non-literate...

Owen Hoskins McLuhan's basic postulate is that Western man's games are "a collective rather than private dramatizations of inner life." To explain how he arrives at this conclusion he first compares modern western man (characterized as fearlessly individualistic) with ancient or non-literate cultures (characterized as tribal social structures). This comparison demonstrates how the cultural world-view is reflected in art/games/ritual. This is example is potent because ancient tribal culture had a cosmic orientation that sharply contrasts the individualism of modern man. Therefor, by describing the shift from tribe to individual and the corresponding shift in the nature of games the link becomes obvious. McLuhan also sees games as a necessary piece of a heathy society; as in the example of today, games are an outlet not available in social and working life. Additionally, "Games are a popular art, collective, social reactions to the main drive or action of any culture." The most intersting observation is how games serve as a tool for cultural adjustment: "For individualist Western man, much of his "adjustment" to society has the character of a personal surrender to the collective demands. Our games help both to teach us this kind of adjustment and also to provide a release from it." When one considers social life to be a game--looking at usually invisible rules as what they are--it's rules are revealed to be as arbitrary as football. The author discuss war (much like poker) in terms of game but comes short of labeling it a true game, because like the stock market and business, the rules are not fully known by all participants. "Art and games need rules, conventions, and spectators." Where is the spectator in most online or single player video/computer games? tag:www.twcdc.com,2006:/owen//9.50 2006-09-20T20:34:26Z 2006-09-20T20:35:26Z

http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/insidegames/game/media/index/77/Spore.aspx That Spore game that keeps getting mentioned....

Owen Hoskins http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/insidegames/game/media/index/77/Spore.aspx That Spore game that keeps getting mentioned.