Group items tagged

Nice article on Spielvogel's work!

Designed to show conflict between realism and modernism. Can find the game here: http://www.gamezhero.com/games/avantgarde

A thorough compendium of Koster's blogging over the past several years.

Don't know how I missed this before!

The bigger question is how you found it now. Sorry they stripped your name out when they edited the article.

Found it via https://twitter.com/#!/dsonmediacenter/status/133945316012601345

A stealth ARG?

Anyone played Taiga Park?

Third science game in a month. Check out the blog for a bit of controversy. It seems at least one advisor to the game is a proponent of "intelligent design", but I agree it makes sense for the game to focus on cell mechanics. Just because you control the cell, doesn't mean the game is making an argument for an omnipotent creator of all living things. Found it via an article in Kill Screen magazine "Back to School" (no online version)

Very cool idea. I need to snag a copy of the article, now.

I'm an ISA member and will have a paper copy quite soon - I'll scan it for you.

Via James Schirmer on Buzz. As I commented there:  This is quite sensible. Since I do want to dismantle capitalism, I don't agree with that bit. More subtly, I am concerned about the entrenchment of simplistic binary thinking in western, particularly US, culture, so "Game designers often like to see an epic battle between good and evil - even where there isn't one - but that's part of the charm" - for me that's a significant drawback. To the extent that a game includes an argument about how the world is or how the world should be, then reinforcing oversimplification (rather than the simplification necessary in any model of the/a world, be it a book, movie, academic article or game) is problematic. I like my myths/theories/stories multifaceted.

this article compares video games and digital texts, not in terms of their supposedly shared narrative content (not in terms of their content at all) but, rather, formally-in terms of how they model complex systems, how both video games and digital-text environments work by creating networked environments for the production, reproduction, transmission, and reception (indeed for the continual reediting) of their respective content-objects. Both texts and video games are systems, with their own special affordances and constraints, that provide both "spores" and "spurs," seeds and provocations, prompts for new performances of meaning.

Videogames are important cultural and economic artifacts. They also present challenges that anticipate the problems inherent in any complex digital interactive system. Not only are they digital and hence very difficult to preserve but they also are software systems that have significant hardware, peripheral, and network dependencies, which are difficult to collect and formally represent. This article reviews the literature related to videogame preservation. In addition to covering the traditional technology-related issues inherent in all digital preservation endeavors, this review also attempts to describe the complexities and relationships between the traditional acts of technology preservation, representation, and collection development. Future work should include the identification of important user groups, an examination of games' context of use, and the development of representational models to describe interaction of players with the game and the interactions between players playing the game.

Very neat. Interesting to see that it's a solitaire game.

Nice sketch of a political simulation, plus good reason for teaching with sims.

Requires login?

Yeah. FP has gone semi-arsehole, requiring free sign-up and log-in to see their stuff. Even some of their own staff are complaining. I suspect it will go away at some point.

Yikes. Well, I logged in under my Facebook hat.

Should colleges create simulation games as iOS apps, if this kind of blockage can happen?

Yes, and especially since tablets are becoming more common, tools formatted for the web don't have to be squished onto a smartphone screen as much as they once might have been.

Good point. Perhaps we'll see phones hew to apps, and tablets cleave to the Web.

Oh fun. I hope it succeeds.

I wonder what an overall survey of all current offerings from the gaming industry would reveal. Index each game along a continuum from Big Brother to V for Vendetta.

If I get tenure, I might just write that article.

Yeah! Would be fun for a class project, too.

By Jamin Warren Posted 03.29.2012 at 10:13 am On October 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program bill into law, delivering $450 billion to failing banks on the premise that it would prevent their collapse and stimulate a faltering economy.