After seeing Will Wright’s 2006 demo of Spore at SXSW, I was sold. I plan to pre-order it. I’m sure me and my nephew will have hours of fun playing it. (It will be released in September).

Here’s an article by Stephen Berlin Johnson if you want to know what the fuss is about.

I don’t have the exact details but I’ll be attending Owlcon Gaming Convention in Houston to play Dungeons and Dragons all weekend. I am excited.

I used to play Dungeons and Dragons for about 4 or 5 years. More precisely I used to be the Dungeon Master (I generally sucked as a player). In high school I organized 100-150 for a three round D&D tournament (which was a fund-raiser for my church–they had a liberal pastor there apparently).

Truthfully I haven’t touched the game in 20 years although I recently bought the 3.5  books (DM’s Guides, Monster Manual and Player’s Handbook). I don’t have time to dig up the links, but apparently Gary Gygax had a protracted battle over ownership of the trademark, and independents have spun off with their own own version of Dungeons and Dragons (called d20)  that allows modules to be created and published without the need for licensing. A sometimes commenter on my blog Preston Dubose is involved in Midnight Cellar, a Texas-based publisher of game modules and extras for various systems (including D20 D&D).

It’s funny. The game rules are extremely complicated, but the secret to D&D is that the players don’t need to understand the rules that well. They need merely to involve themselves in the story and their character (and contribute ideas to the other people in their party who do know the rules). 

In response to the announcement that SimCity will be ported to the One Laptop per Child platform, Alan Kay writes a long piece wondering whether Sim City is truly an example of constructivist learning. He talks about designing software environments for children and at the end concludes that Sim City might not be the best platform for that (he prefers something called etoys):

If “children first!” is the rallying cry, then it makes sense to try to invent computer environments that use the very best ideas (and these are very hard to come up with). This is why the various groups that got interested in this romantic quest via early contact with Seymour have always been colleagues and never rivals. The hard to come by ideas for projects, representations, user interfaces, experiments, etc., have been freely traded back and forth. The notions of “thresholds below which is not worth going” have been jointly refined, etc. One of the parasitic difficulties is that computer environments, once made (with lots of effort and dedication) tend to form tribal bonds that are rather religious in nature. The amount of effort required plus the attendant religion makes it extremely difficult to take new insights and ideas and make brand new better environments for the children. The strong tendency is to use and reuse and incrementally expand the old environments.

So, for young and youngish children (say from 4 to 12) we still have a whole world of design problems. For one thing, this is not an homogenous group. Cognitively and kinesthetically it is at least two groups (and three groupings is an even better fit). So, we really think of three specially designed and constructed environments here, where each should have graceful ramps into the next one.

The current thresholds exclude many designs, but more than one kind of design could serve. If several designs could be found that serve, then we have a chance to see if the thresholds can be raised. This is why we encourage others to try their own comprehensive environments for children. Most of the historical progress in this area has come from a number of groups using each other’s ideas to make better attempts (this is a lot like the way any science is supposed to work). One of the difficulties today is that many of the attempts over the last 15 or so years have been done with too low a sense of threshold and thus start to clog and confuse the real issues.

I think one of the trickiest issues in this kind of design is an analogy to the learning of science itself, and that is “how much should the learners/users have to do by themselves vs. how much should the curriculum/system do for them?” Most computer users have been mostly exposed to “productivity tools” in which as many things as possible have been done for them. The kinds of educational environments we are talking about here are at their best when the learner does the important parts by themselves, and any black or translucent boxes serve only on the side and not at the center of the learning. What is the center and what is the side will shift as the learning progresses, and this has to be accommodated.

OTOH, the extreme build it from scratch approach is not the best way for most minds, especially young ones. The best way seems to be to pick the areas that need to be from scratch and do the best job possible to make all difficulties be important ones whose overcoming is the whole point of the educational process (this is in direct analogy to how sports and music are taught — the desire is to facilitate a real change for the better, and this can be honestly difficult for the learner).

Specifically about Simcity he says:

SimCity is similar but more pernicious. It is a black box of “soft somewhat arbitrary knowledge” that the children can’t look at, question or change. For example, SC gets the players to discover that the way to counter rising crime is to put in more police stations. Most anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists would disagree violently. Alternate assumptions can’t be tried, etc.

Both of these packages have won many “educational awards” from the pop culture, but in many ways they are anti-real-education because they miss what modern knowledge and thinking and epistemology are all about. This is why being “above threshold” and really understanding what this means is the deep key to making modern curricula and computer environments that will really help children lift themselves.

Two nuggests from the slashdot discussion about whether Simcity is a truly educational tool. First, a comic dialogue exchange:

Is this to give the kids a virtual sense of what it’s like to live in a 1st world country? “look at all of the nice luxuries you will never experience!” how about the irony of building a nuclear powerplant on a computer you have to handcrank?

Reply: This comment is funny, but it relies on a common misperception that the poor kids for whom the OLPC was created have no idea what modern urban life is like. Most of them live in or in the shadow of large modern cities, Johannisberg, Kolkata, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Manila, and Mexico City, just to name a few. They have plenty of opportunities to see modern life, they just don’t have much opportunity to participate.

Let me help you out with a simple analogy. You read slashdot, right? So, you have plenty of opportunities to see beautiful women, but all you get to do is watch, from a distance. That’s why you bought that stick of Axe Deoderant.

A shout out to the blogosphere: does anyone have children who play Yu Gi Oh?

If yes, do you have advice about how to get started? i have a 7 year old nephew who I’m thinking of buying some cards for. Here’s a parents’ guide. Here are rules about basic gameplay.

James Paul Gee has written about this game before and spoken about it too.

I am embarrassed to say that I have never heard of Leroy Jenkins until yesterday. (Here’s the Internet video that made him worldfamous). Joel Warner wrote a great long profile about Leroy Jenkins and his reaction to his unexpected fame.

“Alex Trebek said my name,” says Ben. “When I saw that, I realized it had gone beyond anything I could control.” He shakes his head, flabbergasted, and returns to the game — more Ghostly Essences to collect. Soon, however, there’s another whisper. “Was the video really on purpose?” a character named Lucifuge wants to know. People ask him this constantly. Did the movie capture Leeroy accidentally screwing up his guildmates’ plans? Is the rumor true that Ben was away from his computer, reheating some KFC, while his buddies planned the famous dragon attack — hence his imprudent charge and his enigmatic last line, “At least I got chicken”? Or was it all completely staged, a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the geekiness of World of Warcraft gamers? Ben smiles while reading Lucifuge’s message. “I like people to decide for themselves,” he responds. “It is more fun that way.” This is his patented response on the subject; it’s all he’ll ever say.

Warner comments:

That Leeroy is the game’s biggest failure rather than its highest achiever may explain why he’s transcended the self-referential sphere of World of Warcraft and moved into the realm of pop culture. Everyone everywhere has pulled a Leeroy. “There’s something more universal about this guy who screws things up for everybody than someone who is the best at something,” says Henry Lowood, curator for film and media collections at Stanford University. “If you’re not a player in the game, you are not going to be that interested in how spectacularly good a player is. But you can relate to someone who messes up.”

These days, says Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, people don’t just identify with the lowly underachiever; they take subversive pleasure in using the Internet and other new social mediums to elevate him to a status previously reserved for the rich, talented or otherwise successful. As proof, Jenkins points to atrocious American Idol contestant William Hung scoring a record deal, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf winning the popular vote for People magazine’s most beautiful person and Leeroy Jenkins becoming enshrined in video-game history alongside Pac-Man and Mario. “For the first time, we as a society get to decide who’s famous,” he notes. “Having gained the right to project celebrities forward, we often choose losers, because in the past it was always success that connoted celebrity. If Leeroy Jenkins can become a celebrity, anybody can.”

(BTW, it was okay to do when he wrote it in 2005, but isn’t it time for a moratorium on quotes from Henry Jenkins?)

See also: South Park’s Make Love not Warcraft episode.

Here’s a list of game recommendations for my nephew. Surprisingly, it took a long time to compile a kid-friendly game list. (Or I could have asked someone at a used game store–nah, that would have been too easy). He already owns Harry Potter (so so), Lego Star Wars (super great!), NBA Basketball (great!), Jak & Daxter, and a drag racing game. Feel free to add titles here. See also this discussion and this reference guide . Here’s a good list of child-friendly games. Of course, one great thing about doing the research is that I end up playing these games too.

I ended up going with Kingdom Hearts 1. Simpsons Hit & Run and Stuart Little 3 Big Photo Adventure. Here is my list:

1. Ratchet & Clank Up Your Arsenal (well-regarded and cheap; other games in the series are supposed to be good too). One advantage is that it allows multiple players.
2. Jak & Daxter, cheap, 3 in the series. also highly regarded. Start with the first episode if you can. Update: They say to avoid Part 2 and Part 3.
3. A Dog’s Life (definitely the most interesting sounding game, but also $30). You play a dog roaming through the city. Recommended, but some felt the game was too short, and way too much bathroom humor for young people.
4. Stuart Little 3 Big Photo Adventure (based on the famous children’s novel by EB White). I eventually bought this. Some expressed reservations about the gameplay.
5. Cookie & Cream; innovative game that needs 2 players. One is a bunny, the other is a teddy bear, and together they must solve problems. Might be a little above an 8 year old’s level, but doesn’t sound too much above. Update: This probably is NOT a good game for an 8 year old.
6. Madagascar (well regarded, $25),
7. simpsons hit n run ((somewhat mature and based on cartoon, but very imaginative and intellectual). Recommended. I bought this. Update: My nephew loves this game, but I didn’t find it particularly interesting. There’s a lot of movement and crashing, not much strategizing. Still, there’s a lot of complexity which is not too challenging. One player only.
8. Sonic Mega Collection plus–not too stimulating intellectually, but very fun; classic games from the 1990s.
9. shrek 2 (well-regarded, but some disagreement, cheap!)
10. Godzilla Saves The Earth (rated teen, but supposed to be good clean fun suitable for younger ages,). expensive $30
11. Kingdom Hearts & Kingdom Hearts 2, a cross between Final Fantasy using Disney characters. Supposed to be innovative and fun, though gaming purists decry the merging of these two disparate worlds. (the original was supposed to be more fun, though the sequel has better graphics and was shorter). Update: Even though I ended up buying it, I later found out it is too complex for a child of that age. I looked at it again; it is a decent game, but you have to do a lot of reading–which might weary a child who cannot read well. Also, there were a lot of cut scenes–this grew old quickly! One player only!
12. Mega Man Anniversary Collection, a collection of several games popular in the 90s.
13. Ico, a visually rich game about a boy trapped inside a castle who needs to solve puzzles to escape. More of a puzzle game than a twitch game. Update: A person who played it said it is too hard for an 8 year old.
14. Mister Mosquito, innovative premise where the character is a mosquito who sucks/bites members of a Japanese family. Reviewers applaud the overall concept, though they say the novelty quickly wears off and gameplay is limited. Update: A person who played it said it is too hard for an 8 year old.
15. Magic Pengel, innovative game with a cool effect where a creature you draw will appear to come alive and be your pet throughout the game. Some have complained about gameplay, though overall it has positive reviews.
16. Spyro (any). Young dragon has to save friends/world from various meanies. Platformer like Mario, and perfect for the under-10 set.
17. Worms 3D
18. SSX. first is best.
19. Katamari Dimacy

This is definitely NOT safe for work (there’s graphic images), but here’s an essay about how to program your avatar to have sex in various video games:

First, some terminology. In Second Life, your character can be put into “poses”. Basically, this is an animation created in Poser or some other movement/animation program. You create the animation, loop it, and upload it to Second Life. These poses can be attached to what are known as Pose Balls. By having your character touch a pose ball (basically, clicking on it), you character will being using the animation that was contained in the pose ball. This is how sex is played out visually in Second Life. You touch one pose ball, your partner touches the other, and all of the sudden one is banging the other. Don’t you wish it was that easy in real life?

Now, you’ve got to remember, when I said you could do anything in Second Life, I meant ANYTHING. This game has some of the weirdest BDSM equipment I’ve ever seen, much of which really wouldn’t work in real life. Putting a stompy industrial boy in all of it is just hours of stupid, giggly fun.

Animations will run you somewhere between 200L$ and 500L$ ($.50-2US), sometimes upwards of 1000L$ (~$4US) depending on how drawn out they are. As with all aspects of the world, your body is scriptable. That’s right, you can program your nuts. They can do a happy little nut dance. There’s also erections and pumping and all that, but I’m totally fixated on the happy little nut dance idea now. There goes another 2 weeks of my life.

Animations can be speed controlled by writing a script that binds animations to buttons, and hitting those buttons to change what animation is displaying. This is how sex progresses.

From Eyder Peralta’s post about SXSW.

]]> http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2006/03/mechanics-of-sex-in-second-life/feed/ 0 http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2005/08/cookies-for-sisyphus/ http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2005/08/cookies-for-sisyphus/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2005 11:26:33 +0000 Robert Nagle http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398547

favorite games of Jane MacGonigal

View Jane game projects. She writes a lot about gaming and theatre (but alas only in PDF) .

Her latest project:

the artist will spell out Camus’ existential essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in cookies, one word at a time. each word will be installed in a public location and constructed from a different kind of cookie, locally-purchased or prepared. each word of the essay, 1406 in total, will appear in a different city. the project will continue indefinitely until the improbable event of its completion.

Also fascinating: a blog/course about Performance and Play (” investigating the connections between contemporary theater and games”). It’s a classroom in a blog.

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Favorite Interactive Fiction/ Games: by Nick Montfort. Another list. More here.

Here’s Emily Short’s Catalog of Best Interactive Fiction Games, sorted by genre. Great find, not “short” at all.

This (like Edward Picot’s in my previous post) are games in search of a form factor. Playing on PC’s really suck; It would really be nice to be able to play them on portable devices or to have an emulator to make this possible. Update: Apparently Nick Montfort has written up how to run IF on different platforms.

]]> http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2005/08/interactive-fiction-games/feed/ 0 http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2005/08/chandler-and-commenting-your-code/ http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2005/08/chandler-and-commenting-your-code/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:44:31 +0000 Robert Nagle http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398497

Chandler, an open source personal information manager (PIM) written in python. Still under development.

Mimi Yim on hierarchy systems. Brilliant comparison of different methods of organization. There are hierarchies, facets and tagsonomies. Her conclusion is that facets are the most flexible methods of organization, although they have this flaw:

(Facets) fail to go that final mile so crucial to storytelling: a linear dictation of what order to experience the facets in. Instead Faceted systems are designed to allow the user to construct their own storyline.

I’m really going to ponder this piece for a while. But the first thing that struck me after reading this is how agile Windows folders (with Details) are. If you set the folders to have details, you have three columns: filename, last modified and file size. By clicking on the top bar, you can indicate whether it should go in ascending/descending order, and which columns takes precedence in making a sequence. More importantly, you can also add columns (or facets, to use Mimi’s terminology) for other fields (bitrate, album, time, etc). That is an awfully robust way to customize your view, although it doesn’t allow introspection inside subfolders.

(If you haven’t read it already, check out Shirky’s Ontologies are Overrated).

Strategies for commenting your code

Facade, an interactive natural-language based dramatic game. See the NYT article about it and this glorious gamasutra review. Shoot, I just realized that my old computer doesn’t meet the minimum specs for the game. I’ve been delaying a purchase of a new computer until I figure out my requirements for my video production, although I have a feeling I might be buying something in the next month or so. It is an odd feeling, having the means to buy a video camera or computer without having the time or desire to. Never make a decision that you can’t delay until tomorrow. At the moment, my self-built 2000 computer works fine for me, though I will soon be upgrading.

Discussion on GrandTextAuto about whether to charge for interactive stories. Grandtextauto has always been one of the best groupblogs out there, and I’ve ignored it recently because I haven’t had time to follow online gaming. I’ll try to cover it more often.

Harry Potter copyrighters overreach in preventing content from leaking out.

Webartist Edward Picot has written some articles about the paying for content question. Also, does some fun multimedia pieces for children. See Chicks

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