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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.
Brett Boessen

On Authorship in Games - Click Nothing - 5 views

clicknothing.typepad.com/...on-authorship-i.html

ebert games art criticism blog post

shared by Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10 - Cached
  • interacting with a work does not shape the work, it ‘only’ reveals it.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Well put.
  • Because a game is a complete formal system
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Is he implicitly arguing here that games with emergent elements -- especially MMO's and games with heavy player-vs-player interactions -- are not games, or is he arguing that they also represent "complete formal system(s)"? Or did he simply misspeak? Because I don't see emergence as falling within any kind of closed system.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Aug 10
       
      I take him to be talking about elements that belong to the game proper, not to things that might emerge within and through the game as a result of player interactions. So in-game actions are part of the game. Forums for player discussion, clans etc are not part of the game, at least not part of the authored game. But I agree, it's very ambiguous and should be debated.
  • The rebuttal to this argument lies in a comparison to film or to music or to any other collaborative artistic creation.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Woops -- I thought he was going to address my points above, but he went in a different direction here. (I'm enjoying the point-by-point-rebuttal structure of the post immensely, though. I'd love more of my students to write this way. :)
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Aug 10
       
      I agree. The noise point is quite good. And careful comparisons with other media are useful.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • The Argument from Legitimacy
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      He rocks this entire section -- well done.
  • “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.”This is a much easier point to tackle simply because there is a fallacy in Ebert’s argument. He is implying that interacting with a work is the same as changing it. But this is not true. My ‘paint’ is not ‘what the player does’. My paint is ‘the rules that govern what the player can do’.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Agreed. Ebert probably should have read Bogost's Persuasive Games before he started all of this.
  • the audience must always interact with a work on some level
  • The artist is also capable of creating an entire expressive system space that explores a potential infinity of different notions
  • Where most other media require the audience to induce their meaning, games afford the audience at least the possibility of deducing their meaning.
  • GTA: San Andreas on the other hand – which I played for a good 100 hours or so, gave me such a world transforming view of racial tension and inequity in early 1990’s California, that I have been shaken to the core, and have been forced to re-examine a huge part of my world view.
  • while there can be an art of expression in the way someone reveals the art, this does not necessarily diminish the art in the design of the work itself
  • There is noise in these systems too – some of it comes from the collaboration of others, and some of it comes from random noise
  • Many filmmakers, from Taratino to Inarritu to Haggis and dozens more have been increasingly attempting to explore stories from multiple angles in an attempt to mimic – in a medium severely limited for this purpose – what games can do innately
  • Ebert is wrong for two important reasons
  • there is authorship in games, no matter how much we abdicate
  • I will accept Ebert’s roughly stated thesis that art requires authorship
  • Because a game is a complete formal system, the entire possible range of outputs from those systems is determined by me
  • how do you know you are able to express your thoughts and feelings in the design of interactive systems’
  • I know because I understand it. What I am expressing makes sense to me both intellectually and emotionally. If others do not understand it, it is not really a question of whether I am expressing myself, but rather one of whether I am expressing myself clearly
  • The next argument is whether or not it is, in fact, true that the entire possible range of outputs from a games’ systems are really determined by me
  • The next argument would be that audiences cannot reconstruct the meaning I intend them to by way of interacting with systems
  • Another argument against the existence of real authorship in games is the argument about the legitimacy of the kind of authorship I am talking about. In his responses to Barker, Ebert says:“If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices.”
  • The final argument that I see remaining is the one that asks ‘who is the artist here anyway?’ Ebert says:
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
Bryan Alexander

Traffic sim - 2 views

www.mtreiber.de/MicroApplet

simulation

shared by Bryan Alexander on 27 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 27 Oct 10
     
    Very neat little sim to use in several ways: -bond with any adult who drives -teach basic simulation principles -brainstorm "how to make this a game"?
  • Brett Boessen on 28 Oct 10
     
    That's funny -- I just had a student mention everyday life mechanics one could turn into a game, "like road construction or traffic patterns," that he's interested in somehow doing his end-of-course project on. :)
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 Oct 10
     
    Oh cool! What does he make of this one?
Ed Webb

YouTube - BBC Panorama: ADDICTED TO GAMES? - Part 1 of 2 - 2 views

www.youtube.com/watch

games gaming addiction

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 07 Dec 10
     
    See Part 2 also
  • Brett Boessen on 08 Dec 10
     
    Goodness. Love how they use WoW's own music against it...game addiction jujitsu!
  • Bryan Alexander on 15 Dec 10
     
    I gather that Panorama has gone downhill. And did have some fun poking at this on Infocult.
Bryan Alexander

Webinar from Learning Games Network - 3 views

www.learninggamesnetwork.org/...010-more-games-more-classrooms

games education conference

shared by Bryan Alexander on 12 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 12 Jan 10
     
    Could be useful.
Bryan Alexander

Learning the art of creating computer games can boot student skills - 2 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...100121101124.htm

gaming pedagogy

shared by Bryan Alexander on 25 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 25 Jan 10
     
    Computer games have a broad appeal that transcends gender, culture, age and socioeconomic status. Now, computer scientists think that creating computer games, rather than just playing them could boost students' critical and creative thinking skills as well as broaden their participation in computing." id="metasummary
  • Ed Webb on 26 Jan 10
     
    I totally agree. But from my experience having students write interactive fiction in a senior seminar, this is a very time- and resource-intensive way to impart those skills. Not sure it is doable as part of a broader course. Perhaps a full course in game design is yet another thing to add to the stack of basic literacies in the general curriculum...
  • Bryan Alexander on 26 Jan 10
     
    Perhaps thinner and/or lighter projects would work better. Thinner: spread the work even further across a class. Individual projects ->groups, groups ->whole class. Lighter: even easier to use tools. Inform is pretty easy, though...
Todd Bryant

US Budget game - 3 views

mashable.com/...microsoft-budget-game

Game Gov2.0

shared by Todd Bryant on 15 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 16 Apr 10
     
    This is so neat! What a good teaching tool it would be for all kinds of politics.
Ed Webb

Fun Inc: Why Games Are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business by Tom Chatfield | Book... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...fun-inc-games-tom-chatfield

gaming games book review socialscience

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Fun Inc.: Why Games are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business by Tom Chatfield 288pp, Virgin Books, £11.99
  • games might involve a lot of effort, but the payoff is that "effort is always rewarded".
  • elf-and-safety roleplayer World of Warcraft
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • First, games are interesting in themselves, as constructions of space, logic and ideas (games are "a kind of playground for the mind"); second, they are interesting in their potential effect on other realms.
  • he possibility of using gamelike structures to produce empirical results in the social sciences
  • Chatfield's emphasis on games' fecund variety, on the other hand, will be valuable to non-specialists: he writes evocatively not just about Grand Theft Auto but about indie gems such as Passage, where your quest is meaningless and you die after five minutes. His comparison of videogames to installation art, meanwhile, is striking, and he even manages to make World of Warcraft sound interesting – though his awed description of a particular sword as being "the length of a full-grown orc" is rather lovable nonsense to someone who doesn't know how long orcs grow.
  • "the best games are a trigger for discussion, reading and writing – not an end to it"
  • Ed Webb on 02 Apr 10
     
    games might involve a lot of effort, but the payoff is that "effort is always rewarded".
Todd Bryant

ilomilo: Southend's gorgeous storybook platformer for Xbox Live - Boing Boing - 1 views

www.boingboing.net/...ilomilo-southends-go.html

XBox360 Art

shared by Todd Bryant on 03 May 10 - Cached
  • Todd Bryant on 03 May 10
     
    XBox 360 game, visual
  • Todd Bryant on 03 May 10
     
    Wish we had an Xbox
  • Brett Boessen on 04 May 10
     
    I'm seriously thinking of buying an xbox, ps3, and wii for our department: there are several titles for each that would be useful to demo for students or even construct an exercise, project, or assignment or two around. I'll just have to figure out things like where we'll put them, which titles we'll buy, and whether they'll be in a lab where students can get access or just available to faculty.
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
Ed Webb

Bum Lee / De-Animator - 1 views

www.de-animator.com

games gaming lovecraft gothic fun flash casual

shared by Ed Webb on 22 May 10 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 24 May 10
     
    I would love to use this in teaching Lovecraft, or horror in general. Because it gets some stuff right (ambience) and some stuff wrong (nonstop violence), it would be keen to start discussions. (This is such a tough game. I die so quickly.)
Brett Boessen

A conversation on TED.com: We spend 3 billion hours a week as a planet playing videogam... - 1 views

www.ted.com/...end_3_billion_hours_a_wee.html

ted conversation mcgonigal janemcgonigal games gaming

shared by Brett Boessen on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 18 Feb 11
     
    That's a useful set of comments, esp. the critical ones.
Bryan Alexander

Game modding in class - non-digital - 0 views

paxsims.wordpress.com/...cation-as-a-classroom-exercise

pedagogy modding

shared by Bryan Alexander on 28 May 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 May 11
     
    Nice example of game modification, using cards.
Ed Webb

Solar System Builder | Known Universe- National Geographic Channel - 0 views

channel.nationalgeographic.com/...known-universe-interactive

simulation game space education

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 19 Aug 11
     
    That's a cute thing to play with. Could use in class pretty easily.
Bryan Alexander

Warco: an FPS where you hold a camera instead of a gun - 5 views

arstechnica.com/...-a-camera-instead-of-a-gun.ars

shared by Bryan Alexander on 22 Sep 11 - No Cached
Ed Webb liked it
  • Bryan Alexander on 22 Sep 11
     
    Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.
  • ...2 more comments...
  • edremy on 23 Sep 11
     
    I find the comment that "It will be difficult to market a First Person Shooter where you don't shoot" very odd. How many copies of Portal were sold? Prior to that, the Thief series sold well and won tons of awards. It's not even the first game to feature a camera as the primary mechanic- I can't remember the name but there was one I played years ago where that was the primary role. Step outside the box a bit guys.
  • Ed Webb on 23 Sep 11
     
    Thief is a great example of an FPS where the S isn't about shooting people. First-person sneaker, some people called it. One of my personal favorite games of all time. I agree with edremy that there is no marketing problem here at all. Quite the reverse - war correspondent is a glamorous kind of profession (from the outside) and likely to attract not only the usual FPS fanbase but also appeal more broadly.
  • Brett Boessen on 23 Sep 11
     
    I wonder about attracting the usual FPS fanbase, but I do take your point that there's no a priori feature of the gaming market that would make this a hard sell. Now politics, however, if they're foregrounded here, could be bad for the bottom line, as, of course, could clunky gameplay. If the levels require a significant amount of challenge and variety to complete, this could be quite popular. Did anyone see any kind of release date and cost?
  • Bryan Alexander on 23 Sep 11
     
    Agreed, edremy. Makes me think of _War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning_. Not yet, Brett.
Rebecca Davis

Geneology of Badges - Google Docs - 5 views

docs.google.com/...edit

geneology badges gamification

shared by Rebecca Davis on 27 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 28 Sep 11
     
    Who's the author on this?
  • Rebecca Davis on 28 Sep 11
     
    Alexander Halavais--He was in the Google Hangout with us yesterday and shared the link then.
Ed Webb

Tea Party Zombies Must Die! - 1 views

www.dangerousminds.net/...tea_party_zombies_must_die

games politics US USA advertising zombies

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 07 Sep 11
     
    Good example of a newsgame.
Bryan Alexander

a bunch of open source, mostly free game authoring tools - 2 views

eis-blog.ucsc.edu/...landscape-of-open-source-games

gaming platform

shared by Bryan Alexander on 30 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 30 Oct 09
     
    How cool is this? Anyone using 'em?
Bryan Alexander

Spore as Facebook game - 0 views

www.facebook.com/Spore

shared by Bryan Alexander on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 18 Nov 09
     
    Facebook games are taking off like mad this year. Anyone using 'em on campus?
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