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Ed Webb

`Champions' to unleash virtual heroes and foes - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...us_games_champions_online

champions games gaming creativity RPG

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Launching next month, the new massively multiplayer online role-playing game "Champions Online" will let gamers create their own virtual superheroes.
  • "One of the things I like about having the `Champions' universe to play with is that players don't know what to expect," he said. "So they get to explore. They get to build, and they get to become the important heroes in the world, as opposed to having to live in the shadows of iconic characters that they've known and been reading about forever."
  • the hairy beast organically spawns in the game's Monster Island enclave and can only be taken down with a team of other superheroes.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • players can try to stop their adversary solo or invite other players to assist in throwing him in The Stronghold, a supervillain prison located in the game's virtual desert.
Ed Webb

Alan Kay, Systems, and Textbooks « Theatrical Smoke - 3 views

wedaman.wordpress.com/...lan-kay-and-why-textbooks-suck

education learning systems LiberalArts gaming

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • I discuss his key idea: that systemic thinking is a liberal art, and I explain a corollary idea, that textbooks suck
  • if you don’t have a category for an idea, it’s very difficult to receive that idea
  • the story of the last few hundred years is that we’ve quickly developed important ideas, which society needs to have to improve and perhaps even to continue to exist, and for which there are no pre-existing, genetically created categories. So there’s an idea-receiving capacity gap.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Education’s job should be, says Kay, to bridge this gap. To help, that is, people form these necessary new idea-receiving categories–teaching them the capacity for ideas–early on in their lives, so that as they grow they are ready to embrace the things we need them to know. Let me say that in a better way: so that as they grow they are ready to know in the ways we need them to know.
  • cultivate the ability to conceive of, work with, create, understand, manipulate, tinker with, disrupt, and, generally, appreciate the beauty of systems
  • The point is to be able to see connections between the silos. Says Kay, the liberal arts have done a bad job at “adding in epistemology” among the “smokestacks” (i.e. disciplines)
  • a game, or a simulation, thought of as a thing we might create (rather than a thing we only act within), is a visceral example of systems thinking
  • It’s the Flatland story–that we need to train our 2D minds to see in a kind of 3D–and Kay’s genius is that he recognizes we have to bake this ability into the species, through education, as close to birth as possible.
  • Systems thinking is to be conceived of as a platform skill or an increased capacity on top of which we will be able to construct new sorts of ideas and ways of knowing, of more complex natures still. The step beyond seeing a single system is of course the ability to see interacting systems – a kind of meta-systemic thinking – and this is what I think Kay is really interested in, because it’s what he does. At one point he showed a slide of multiple systems–the human body, the environment, the internet, and he said in a kind of aside, “they’re all one system . . .”
  • Seeing systems is an epistemology, a way of knowing, a mindset
  • What happens when you’re stuck in a system? You don’t understand the world and yourself and others as existing in constant development, as being in process; you think you are a fixed essence or part within a system (instead of a system influencing systems) and you inadvertently trap yourself in a kind of tautological loop where you can only think about things you’re thinking about and do the things you do and you thus limit yourself to a kind of non-nutritive regurgitation of factoids, or the robotic meaningless actions of an automaton, or what Kay calls living in a pop culture
  • A downside of being epistemologically limited to thinking within a system is that you overemphasize the importance of the content and facts as that system orders them
  • Bryan Alexander on 30 Apr 12
     
    Seems like, among other things, a call for learning with games.
Ed Webb

Citizen science: People power : Nature News - 2 views

www.nature.com/...466685a.html

science distributed games gaming research

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Aug 10 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 08 Aug 10
     
    This could be a Deep Blue story for gaming.
Ed Webb

Video game watchdog shuts down, victim of economy - Yahoo! News - 2 views

news.yahoo.com/...us_video_game_watchdog

watchdog censorship video games gaming

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Dec 09 - Cached
  • National Institute on Media and the Family
  • Bryan Alexander on 22 Dec 09
     
    I'm surprised nobody stepped forward to support this group. Surely conservative family groups would back this?
  • Ed Webb on 22 Dec 09
     
    I know, right? Perhaps their work is done.
Bryan Alexander

game pilot from JISC - 0 views

www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/...e-learning-pilot-project

gaming education

shared by Bryan Alexander on 22 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 22 Mar 13
     
    The pilot follows work undertaken by JISC Collections early in 2012, when a number of interactive educational software and games suppliers, as well as representatives of FE colleges, were interviewed to gauge the current extent and use of such software and online resources by the colleges.
Ed Webb

BLOG « failbetter - 2 views

about.failbettergames.com/blog

games text storytelling platforms

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 17 Oct 12
     
    I sense possibilities. Maybe it will be a little more user-friendy than Inform 7.
  • Brett Boessen on 17 Oct 12
     
    I've been playing around with it a little bit; had my students look at it briefly last week. It is *more* user friendly in that there are forms and boxes for you to input your story elements (ie, a little more visual than Inform). It is *less* useful in that the product is always in the Fallen London format, ie, cards/decks are "dealt" and story elements are uncovered in a point-based system. So if you're not looking for that particular format to deliver your story, I'm not sure it's as flexible as Inform is. But I think it's pretty neat that they've opened up their process to the public, and their wiki is CHOCK full of ideas, tips, hints, and other useful stuff for producing an engaging story of the Fallen London variety. And, they've got a new game to play in addition to FL called Cabinet Noir which is set in Richelieu/Musketeers France and is fun in a more historically accurate (maybe?) way than FL was/is. Kudos to Failbetter all around, if you're into IF. :)
  • Bryan Alexander on 17 Oct 12
     
    Pretty usable. I quickly generated a French Revolution game/story. Would be fun to do that right.
Bryan Alexander

New game "Honor Bound" sweeps Trinity's campus : Trinitonian - 1 views

www.trinitonian.com/...715

ARG game student-generated

shared by Bryan Alexander on 26 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Mar 12
     
    Trinitonian | March 23rd, 2012 - 8:44 am Senior's communications honors thesis pits students against each other with a $500 prize on the line by Maddie Rau Today marks the launch date of "Honor Bound," a Trinity campus game theory project created by senior Laura Schluckebier.
  • Brett Boessen on 27 Mar 12
     
    Love it! Glad to hear a student group could put together a project like this. Does anyone know someone at Trinity who was involved? I'd love to be introduced and talk to them a bit about pedagogical aspects.
Bryan Alexander

Norwich gets contract for cyber war game - 0 views

www.burlingtonfreepress.com/...-gets-contract-cyber-war-game-

simulation education

shared by Bryan Alexander on 23 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 23 Aug 13
     
    NORTHFIELD - A nonprofit organization controlled by Vermont's Norwich University is getting a $9.9 million federal contract to continue work on a cyber-warfare gaming system that helps financial institutions and others learn how to respond to attacks on their computer networks, officials said Thursday.
Ed Webb

Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation - 4 views

io9.com/...ion-universe-of-our-generation

games gaming scifi sciencefiction

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • The value of Mass Effect as a science fiction universe is that it is a critical starting point for discussion about the purpose of humanity in a materialistic universe. Without an answer to that question, there is no real reason for Ender to defeat the Buggers, or for humanity to seek out new life and new civilizations, or for us to not let non-organic life be the torch bearer for intelligence in the universe. Mass Effect confronts us with a female hero of our own creating, with the deepest implications of diversity, with the most dramatic questioning of the value of what it means to be human. Whether you are a feminist, a transhumanist, a theologist, a proponent of space exploration, a pacifist, a human exceptionalist, a bioethicist, a scientist, or a philosopher, Mass Effect demands you rethink your world.
  • Bryan Alexander on 23 Feb 12
     
    Bold claims, but 1+2 are really good.
Ed Webb

BBC News - Why Minecraft is more than just another video game - 2 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...magazine-23572742

minecraft

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 10 Sep 13
     
    Nice. One of the few games my children play together.
Ed Webb

BBC News - Police investigate Habbo Hotel virtual furniture theft - 1 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...10207486.stm

games gaming crime Finland virtualworlds

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 03 Jun 10
     
    Isn't there a Charlie Stross novel like this?
Todd Bryant

Controversial Videogame on the Battle of Fallujah | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/200861

Ethics Iraq Fallujah War

shared by Todd Bryant on 12 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 12 Jun 09
     
    Game being created about Battle of Fallujah. Touches on comparison to documentary, and history of backlash against new media and portrayal of war.
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