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Ed Webb

BBC News - Minecraft game adds Ordnance Survey GB terrain data - 2 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-24177844

minecraft map UK Britain

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 25 Sep 13
     
    "I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps..."
Bryan Alexander

Putting a human face on science storytelling - 1 views

tiie.w3.uvm.edu/...student-made-geology-games

education games pedagogy storytelling augmented reality

shared by Bryan Alexander on 17 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 17 Sep 15
     
    "These are middle schoolers building mobile, place-based games with ARIS, taking advantage of the game editor's powerful new re-design and one science educator's trust in letting his students demonstrate what and how they learn."
  • Brett Boessen on 18 Sep 15
     
    Very cool. I appreciate that he takes the time in the video interview to lay out how one could take a more standard pedagogical model - his "5E" model (which I had not heard of before) - and augment/alter parts of it to incorporate the new technological elements he's interested in having his students explore.
Ed Webb

10 Interactive User Interfaces For The Future - Gizmo Watch - 0 views

www.gizmowatch.com/...user-interfaces-for-the-future

interfaces computing computers technology future futuretech

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 25 Jun 10
     
    New UIs could be important for extending the appeal of games and gaming.
Ed Webb

Violent video games touted as learning tool - Yahoo! News - 1 views

news.yahoo.com/...us_games_for_learning

games learning gaming education educational_games

shared by Ed Webb on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • "As you know, most of us females just hate those action video games," she said. "You don't have to use shooting. You can use, for example, a princess which has a magic wand and whenever she touches something, it turns into a butterfly and sparkles."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 28 May 10
       
      Wait, wut?
  • you learn to learn
  • Bryan Alexander on 01 Jun 10
     
    "You could use stereotype powers, too!" Sigh. This was odd: "Games for Learning, a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video games and computer games. The event, the first of its kind..." Really?
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?
Rebecca Davis

Game Center researchers to reinvent computer games :: UC Irvine TODAY - 0 views

today.uci.edu/...nr_gamecenter_090901.php

gaming virtual_world

shared by Rebecca Davis on 01 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Rebecca Davis on 01 Sep 09
     
    New center for computer games and virtual worlds
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.
Ed Webb

Google Develops a Facebook Rival - WSJ.com - 1 views

online.wsj.com/...3292704575393531040685308.html

google facebook casual social games gaming

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • A Facebook spokesman said the company wouldn't speculate about Google's initiative but said the company expected new social-networking efforts by others and "looks forward to seeing what others have to offer."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 28 Jul 10
       
      Translation: "bring it!"
    • Bryan Alexander
      Bryan Alexander on 28 Jul 10
       
      Indeed. I note that Google is seeking gaming assistance in this quest.
  • Many users now rely on their friends on Facebook—not just Google—to discover content and products they can purchase on the Internet. And much of the content generated by users on Facebook is generally kept out of view of Google's search engine.
  • In an interview this week, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt declined to confirm the development of a social-networking service that would incorporate social games, rumored to be called "Google Me." When asked if Google's service might resemble Facebook's, Mr. Schmidt said "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • For social-game developers, a successful Google offering would mean they wouldn't be so heavily dependent on Facebook, where the vast majority of users access the games. Consumers' appetite for social games is booming— Zynga's "Farmville" game has more than 60 million active monthly users—and that is attracting bigger players looking to tap new sources of growth. On Tuesday, Walt Disney Co. acquired Playdom for $563.2 million plus up to $200 million more if performance targets are reached. And retailer GameStop Corp. agreed to buy online game distributor Kongregate Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
  • Game developers pay Facebook 30% of the earnings from virtual-good purchases in their games. Google already has an online payment mechanism called Checkout that, in theory, it could use to collect payments for social games on its platform.
Ed Webb

56 Million Americans Are Playing Social Games [STATS] - 1 views

mashable.com/...social-gaming-study

gaming social demographics survey

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Aug 10 - Cached
  • A new study from market research firm NPD Group shows that one out of every five Americans over the age of six has played an online social game at least once
  • Social games can help create a new revenue stream, one that solely relies on end users opening their wallets to third-party applications. Virtual goods and currencies are a huge part of the social gaming market, and they turn a casual user experience into big business for the startups, developers and platforms that offer them.
  • 10% of respondents had spent money playing social games and 11% said they planned to do so in the future
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • the social gaming crowd tends to be older and female; around 53% of players are women
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.
Victoria Pullen

Gamers make faster decisions than nongamers, just as accurate - 4 views

arstechnica.com/...amers-are-just-as-accurate.ars

gamersgoodmkay

shared by Victoria Pullen on 15 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 15 Sep 10
     
    Maybe we should aggregate stories like this, to be ready to show people.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Ed Webb on 16 Sep 10
     
    In part, that is what this group is for. But I think it would be good to agree on a tag that we can all use for evidence about skill and learning outcomes from games. Once we agree that, we can start to use it for new bookmarks and also go back through this group's bookmarks to tag as necessary. How about "gamesrgoodmkay"? OK, maybe something shorter.
  • Victoria Pullen on 16 Sep 10
     
    no, no, "gamersgoodmkay" is perfect.
  • Bryan Alexander on 16 Sep 10
     
    I like it!
Ed Webb

UPDATED: Modern Warfare 2 Player Attempting To Reach Rank 70 Without Killing Anyone - N... - 2 views

gameinformer.com/...70-without-killing-anyone.aspx

games gaming pacifism military simulation

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 06 Sep 10
     
    This guy isn't the only gamer who has tried this, either. There was a World of Warcraft player who was doing it as well -- he even equipped a fishing rod as his "weapon" so his weapon skill would remain low. I *think* this is the player's blog: http://pacifistundeadpriest.blogspot.com/
Ed Webb

Watching violent TV or video games desensitizes teenagers and may promote more aggressi... - 4 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...101018211820.htm

gaming games violence K12 adolescents

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10
     
    Hmmm. I'd like some expert opinion on this...
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Brett Boessen on 19 Oct 10
     
    Well I wouldn't call myself an expert, although I _have_ looked at this issue several times before with students. The usual elements are here: very small sample size, heavily controlled experiment, undefined categories ("low," "mild"), and murky description of the results (although that could definitely be the fault of the journalist reporting the findings, too). However, these are all possible issues with any social science experiment. There are some other things that often come with media effects specifically. If you haven't seen David Gauntlett's "Ten Things Wrong with Media Effects Research," it's worth a look: concise but packed with criticism (and easy to use in class). http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm Otherwise, to me this sounds like the same research that occasionally comes out about games and violence, and has been so for at least a decade. The new wrinkle here could be the MRI readings, and I'll admit I'm no expert there either. But given the limited degree to which science really understands the relationships between thought, behavior, and brain activity, I'm not sure the correlations they're showing in the evidence are all that helpful either.
  • Bryan Alexander on 19 Oct 10
     
    I don't have much to add to Brett's fine comment. Yeah, this is part of a kind of study which shows that well-produced media tends to elicit emotions. Er, yes. There are some hilarious stories about porn like this. But yes, the big deal is MRI, over time. I don't know if the rest of the boys' experience has been successfully gapped out.
  • Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10
     
    MRI will maybe change things. Not for the better, I fear. I'm watching the emerging field here: http://www.diigo.com/user/edwebb/neurocinematics
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.
Ed Webb

M/C Journal: "Artificial Intelligence" - 0 views

journal.media-culture.org.au/...08-losh.php

bogost politics censorship USA Congress games rhetoric islamism jihad

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusement – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source.
  • The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists.
  • a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal.
  • The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property.
  • lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions.
  • To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses.
  • The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries.
  • hroughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order.
  • The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era.
  • In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.”
  • “oral tradition”
  • In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.”
  • Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see.
Ed Webb

Admongo, the government video game that teaches kids about the perils of advertising. -... - 5 views

www.slate.com/2253449

gaming game government USG advertising education children kids K12

shared by Ed Webb on 11 May 10 - Cached
  • Admongo.gov, the new Web site from the Federal Trade Commission, seeks to educate kids ages 8 to 12 about the nuances of marketing. In the Admongo video game, players confronts advertisements at every turn—at bus stops, in magazines, on TV, even as part of other video games within the video game. Whenever an ad appears (they're all for fictional products, including a soda, a cereal, a movie, and an acne wash), the player is encouraged to ask three questions: Who is responsible for the ad? What is the ad actually saying? What does the ad want me to do
  • there's no evidence I know of showing that media literacy has an impact on consumer behavior. Ads target emotions, not logic. You can know you're being manipulated but still be manipulated. People talk about how media-savvy kids are these days, but that just means they recognize a lot of brands
  • the most interesting thing about Admongo is its emphasis on the ubiquity of ads. A previous FTC-designed game, called You Are Here, also urged kids to consider where ads come from and to examine the truth of marketing claims. But in Admongo, a major part of playing the game is understanding that ads can be anywhere and can take many different forms. The player encounters text-message ads, ads inside videogames, cross-promotions, and product placements. This element of Admongo is testament to the explosion of new advertising platforms and the fierce intensity of modern marketing. According to Linn, in 2008 American Idol—consistently a top-rated show for 2-11 year-olds—featured 4,151 product placements in its first 38 episodes, averaging 14 minutes of product placement on each show. Kids are now constantly in front of screens of all kinds, and those screens are brimming with ads that pretend they aren't ads. These days, just being able to recognize when you're being marketed to is a useful skill.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • check out the Admongo poster, which the FTC includes with the package of curriculum materials it makes available to teachers. The poster is meant to be hung up in classrooms. It's an illustration that helps kids spot all the different places ads can appear, from cereal boxes to magazines to blimps in the sky. Ironically, in the poster's lower right corner is the logo for Scholastic—which worked with the FTC on the Admongo project, and which sells books and other products through its catalogs to a captive school-kid audience. "The Scholastic name helps in terms of getting our curriculum into classrooms," said one FTC representative I spoke to. "With Scholastic, you're talking about a known commodity for teachers, while they might not be that familiar with the FTC." Behold the power of branding, kids. And consider this a learning opportunity
  • Ed Webb on 11 May 10
     
    Persuasive game about, er, persuasion
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